350 



NA TURE 



[March i6, 1922 



other apparatus," and some scientific workers may- 

 envy the lot of the two members of the staff of a 

 sugar company who have a " candy kitchen " at 

 their disposal. It is flattering to the chemist to 

 find how largely he preponderates in the various 

 staffs, but many an industry would be better served 

 by the co-operation of other scientific workers, 

 especially physicists. 



Among the pioneers of the locomotive a high place 

 is deservedly given to Timothy Hackworth, who was 

 bom December 22, 1786, and died July 7, 1850. No 

 complete biography of Hackworth has yet been 

 written, and his merits apparently escaped the notice 

 of the compilers of the " Dictionary of National 

 Biography." This rendered all the more welcome 

 the interesting review of his work which Mr. Robert 

 Young, a grandson of Hackworth, gave to the 

 Newcomen Society at the meeting held on March i. 

 Hackworth's youth was spent atWylam CoUierj^ where 

 Hedley built his " Puffing Billy." By 1824 he was 

 sufficiently well-known to take charge of Stephenson's 

 works at Newcastle, and the following year he 

 became engineer and manager of the famous Stockton 

 and Darlington Railway. For this line he built the 

 " Royal George," which definitely asserted the 

 superiority of steam over horse traction, and a year 

 or two later the " Sans Pareil," a powerful com- 

 petitor with Robert Stephenson's " Rocket " in the 

 Rainhill trial of October 1829. If for nothing else 

 Hackworth deserves recognition for his discovery 

 of the proper manner of discharging the exhaust 

 steam up the funnel so as to create a powerful 

 draught through the furnace. He was, however, 

 far more than a successful inventor. For fifteen 

 years he managed the Stockton and Darlington 

 Railway, and his workshops at Shildon became a 

 training ground for locomotive engineers. He was 

 also a great captain of industry and set an example 

 in his treatment of his workmen. All these matters 

 were touched upon in Mr. Young's paper, and in- 

 formation was given about many of the engines 

 Hackworth constructed, among them being the first 

 locomotive to be sent to Russia, and also the first to 

 be run in British North America. 



Prof. B. Brauner, professor of chemistry and 

 director of the chemical laboratory, Bohemian 

 University, Prague, has sent us an article, which we 

 hope to publish in a week or two, on work done by 

 Bohemian men of science during the war and after. 

 He has been a reader of Nature for forty-two years, 

 and has on a number of occasions made original com- 

 munications to its columns. We particularly appre- 

 ciate, therefore, the following reference to this 

 journal in an article contributed by him to the leading 

 Bohemian periodical, Ndrodni Listy, of December 21 

 last : — " My favourite reading is the London journal 

 Nature, circulating over the whole world and bring- 

 ing articles about all acquisitions of the human spirit, 

 from bacteria to the Egyptian ' Book of the Dead,' 

 from the structure of atoms to the structure of the 

 universe. The magnificent work of my teacher 

 Bunsen and of Kirchhoflf on spectrum analysis, 

 NO. 2733, VOL. TO9] 



together with the principle of our Doppler (who lived 

 in Prague), which led us to understand of what and 

 how the stars are formed and how they move ; the 

 work of Kekule ze Stradovic, a descendant of the 

 Protestant exiles of Bohemia three hundred years ago, 

 on the structure of matter ; photography, Darwinism, 

 theory of evolution, Mendeleeff's periodic system, 

 Rontgen's discovery, Becquerel's discovery of radio- 

 activity and the great chemical and electrical dis- 

 coveries connected with it, which led to our know- 

 ledge of the innermost constitution of the atoms — of 

 all these discoveries and their evolution and progress 

 Nature brings each week the most recent informa- 

 tion. Everything described is connected together as 

 a whole and yields a magnificent picture of Nature 

 on the earth and in the universe. It is our religion — 

 reverence|(o the One Who all this, and also ourselves, 

 created of the original nebula, i.e. almost of nothing, 

 and at the same time admiration of the human spirit 

 which investigated and conceived it." 



On Wednesday, March i, there was opened at the 

 British Museum a special exhibition of Greek and 

 Latin papyri presented at various dates by the 

 Egypt Exploration Society. This body (formerly 

 the Egypt Exploration Fund) is celebrating the 

 twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of its 

 Grajco-Roman Branch, the excavations of which at 

 Behnesa (Oxyrhynchus) and elsewhere have made 

 so many additions to our stock of Greek literature 

 and to our knowledge of the political, economic, and 

 social history of Graeco-Roman Egypt ; and it is in 

 honour of the anniversary that the Museum is arrang- 

 ing its exhibition. A guide-book to the exhibition, 

 with introduction, detailed descriptions of the papyri 

 shown, a preface by Sir Frederic Kenyon, and one 

 photographic facsimile, is being published by the 

 Society, and will be on sale at the Museum, price is. 

 The exhibition, which will be found in the MSS. 

 Saloon, Case A, includes many interesting papyri of 

 various kinds, selected to illustrate the wide range 

 of papyrological discovery. There are examples of 

 famous additions to Greek literature, like the Paeans 

 of Pindar, the poems of Cercidas, and the Oxyrhyn- 

 chus historian ; theology is represented by the Sayings 

 of Jesus ; and the economic and social life of Egypt 

 finds illustration in many non-literary documents, 

 several of them rich in human interest. 



In the middle of January the first issue of a new 

 technical publication appeared entitled Oil Engineer- 

 ing and Finance, a journal intended for the producer 

 and user of petroleum and also for the investor. A 

 feature of the enterprise is the division of the paper 

 into sections, each dealing with a particular phase 

 of the industry, such as oilfield development, oil 

 refining, fuel and lubricating oils, oil fuel, heavy oil 

 engines, and the home oil industry, each section 

 being under the editorship of a specialist in the 

 particular branch under discussion. The first issue 

 is almost entirely devoted to a comprehensive review 

 of the petroleum industry in 1921 under the above 

 headings, and, as such, is a most useful number. It 

 is well put together, carefully printed, and the illustra- 

 tions are good, and we can only express the hope 



