22 



NATURE 



[August 4, 192 1 



Notes. 



The French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science is meeting this week at Rouen under the 

 presidency of M. Rateau. The scientific proceedings 

 of the association will be carried on in twenty-two 

 sections and sub-sections. There will be two lec- 

 tures — one on the synthesis of ammonia by M. G. 

 Claude, and the other on aviation of to-day and in 

 the future by M. Br^guet. 



The council of the Museums Association has elected 

 Mr. T. Sheppard, of the Municipal Museums, Hull, as 

 president of the association for 1922-23. 



Dr. D. Segaller, who has been with the British 

 Dyestuffs Corporation, Ltd., since the firm of Messrs. 

 Read Holliday and Sons was acquired by British 

 Dves, Ltd., is severing his connection with the Cor- 

 poration. As head of the technical department he has 

 been in charge of a staff of chemists engaged on re- 

 search on various problems connected with the activi- 

 ties of the Corporation. 



A DESCRIPTION of ball lightning seen in the sky at 

 St. John's Wood during a thunderstorm in the early 

 morning of June 26 has recently been received at 

 the Meteorological Office. The phenomenon, a large 

 incandescent mass floating in the air below the clouds 

 and apparently stationary for some minutes, is of 

 great rarity, and the Director of the Meteorological 

 Office, London, S.W.7, would be greatly obliged if 

 persons who observed it on this occasion would com- 

 municate with him. Prof. L Galli has brought 

 together a number of observations of globular 

 lightning recorded in classical literature, as well as 

 many from modern scientific publications, and has 

 described them in several papers issued by the 

 Portificia Accademia dei Nuovi Lincei of Rome. 



In consequence of the retirement of Sir Hercules 

 Read, the department of the British Museum hitherto 

 known as the Department of British and Medieval 

 Antiquities and Ethnography has been divided, and 

 the following appointments have been made by the 

 principal trustees : — Mr. O. M. Dalton to be Keeper 

 of the Department of British and Medieval Antiqui- 

 ties ; Mr. R. L. Hobson to be Keeper of the Depart- 

 ment of Ceramics and Ethnography ; Mr. T. A. Joj'ce 

 to be Deputy-Keeper in the Department of Ceramics 

 and Ethnography. Mr. Reginald Smith, hitherto 

 Deputy-Keeper in the undivided department, becomes 

 Deputy-Keeper in the Department of British and 

 Medieval Antiquities. The prehistoric collections fall 

 into the Department of British and Medieval Antiqui- 

 ties, and the Oriental collections into that of Ceramics 

 and Ethnography. 



On Thursday, July 21, a memorial was unveiled 

 in the public gardens at Dartmouth to the memory 

 of Thomas Newcomen, the great pioneer of the 

 steam engine. Newcomen was born in Dartmouth 

 in 1663 ; he followed the trade of blacksmith there, 

 and was also a Baptist preacher. He appears to 

 have been associated with Thomas Savery in his 

 work on the use of steam, but to Newcomen belongs 



NO. 2701, VOL. 107] 



the credit of developing the cylinder and piston 

 steam engine, the first one being erected near 

 Dudley Castle in 1712. By 1716 similar engines 

 were at work in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Corn- 

 wall, and Flintshire, and the engine had no rival until 

 the time of Watt. One or two Newcomen engines 

 were at work until the beginning of the present cen- 

 tury. During the latter part of his life Newcomen 

 lived in London, and he died there on August 5, 

 1729. He was buried in the Bunhill Fields burying- 

 ground. The memorial at Dartmouth consists of 

 two engraved brass tablets mounted on a large rough 

 granite block. After the memorial had been unveiled 

 by the Mayoress, Mrs. C. Peek, a wreath was placed 

 upon it as a tribute from the Newcomen Society, 

 which was formed last year to further the study of 

 the history of engineering and technology. 



Col. Howard Bury's latest dispatch from the 

 Mount Everest expedition to the Times is dated from 

 Tingri Dzong on June 26. It describes the fortunes 

 of the expedition during the march from the Arun 

 Valley up the valley of the Bhong. On the way a 

 visit was paid to Shekai Dzong, an important ad- 

 ministrative centre and the site of a large monastery. 

 Major Morshead and his surveyors have already 

 mapped some 25,000 square miles of new coun try- 

 along the route of the expedition. Rinderp)est in the 

 Bhong Valley necessitated the use of donkeys only 

 for transport, but they proved quite satisfactory. 

 Tingri Dzong, which is to be the main base of the 

 expedition, is forty-four miles in a direct line from 

 Mount Everest, which rises gradually from the plairr 

 of Tingri Maidan without any intervening ridges. 

 Some six weeks will be spent at Tingri and its neigh- 

 bourhood in reconnoitring the slopes, and the expedi- 

 tion will then move to Kharta to spend another six 

 weeks examining the valleys on the east and north- 

 east of Mount Everest. Mr. A. F. R. Wollaston has 

 rejoined the expedition after accompanying Mr. 

 Raeburn back to Sikkim, and later will visit the- 

 neighbourhood of Gosainthan for botanical researches. 

 Col. Bury says that the western slopes of Mount 

 Everest appear to be very much steeper than had been 

 anticipated, but he believes that the east and north- 

 east slopes present the fewest difficulties. The- 

 weather was cloudy, and the expedition was getting^ 

 few distant views. 



The first technical session of the International Com- 

 mission on Illumination, the successor of the Inter- 

 national Photometric Commission, was held in Paris 

 on July 4-8. Those interested in illumination pro- 

 blems in Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, 

 Switzerland, and the United States of America were 

 represented at the session, which was opened by the 

 Minister of Public Works, who welcomed the dele- 

 gates in the name of the French Republic. The 

 British delegates, nominated by the National Illumina- 

 tion Committee of Great Britain, were :— Major K. 

 Edgcumbe (Institution of Electrical Engineers, chair- 

 man of the National Committee), Mr. C. C. Paterson 



