454 



NATURE 



[April 8, 1922 



A DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE has been appointed 

 by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries " to 

 inquire into the origin and circumstances of the 

 recent outbreak pf foot-and-mouth disease and into 

 the poHcy and procedure which was pursued in 

 dealing with the disease, and to report whether any 

 alteration of the methods of administrative control 

 hitherto adopted, or any amendment of the existing 

 law, is necessary or desirable." The committee is 

 constituted as follows : Capt. E. G. Pretyman (chair- 

 man), Mr. A. Batchelor, Mr. David Ferrie, Mr. F. W. 

 Garnett, Mr. H. German, Mr. William Graham, Mr. 

 Alfred Mansell, Sir G. Douglas Newton, Prof. 

 J. Penberthy, and Mr. W. R. Smith. The secretary 

 of the committee is Mr. S. A. Piggott, Ministry of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries, 4 Whitehall Place, S.W.i, 

 to whom all communications should be addressed. 



The British Rainfall Organization has removed its 

 quarters from Camden Square, where its work has 

 been cariied on for more than half a century, 

 to the Meteorological Office at South Kensington. 

 For about three years the organization, which 

 was formerly of a private nature, has been carried 

 on as part of the official meteorological service of 

 the country. It is thought that the general 

 meteorological work will be greatly facilitated by 

 being under the one roof in Exhibition Road, South 

 Kensington. The Rainfall Organization was trans- 

 ferred from March 20. The absorption of the 

 Meteorological Office in the Air Ministry has made 

 it necessary for parts of the Office to be at the 

 Air Ministry Offices in Kingsway. The office at 

 South Kensington deals with climatology and 

 instruments. 



Mr. Robert Sargeant has retired from the 

 Meteorological Office after rather more than 50 years' 

 service. He entered the office in 1871 when it was 

 controlled by a Committee of the Royal Society, at 

 a time when ordinary weather forecasts, initiated 

 by Admiral Fitzroy, had been discontinued. At 

 that time weather reports were both received and 

 published ; they were used for the issue of storm 

 warnings. Throughout the whole period of his 

 service, Mr. Sargeant was engaged in the Daily 

 Weather Report and Forecast Branch. He was also 

 an Inspector of Meteorological Stations, and prior 

 to his retirement had become Assistant Superintendent 

 of the Forecast Branch. Mr. Sargeant's claim as a 

 forecaster was based upon long experience and was 

 chiefly as.sociated with empirical rules ; indeed, he is 

 almost the last of a class which ig being superseded 

 by mathematicians and physicists who are working 

 at the foundations of weather forecasting along 

 strictly scientific lines. 



The number of journals entirely devoted to the 

 study of earthquakes and volcanoes is small, and we 

 welcome the publication of a new one, Seismological 

 Notes, issued by the Imperial Earthquake Investiga- 

 tion Committee, Japan, and intended to contain 

 preliminary reports on the Tokyo seismograph ical 

 observations. To the first number Prof. Omori 

 contributes two notes, one of which, on the great 



NO. 2736, VOL. 1 09 J 



Chinese earthquake of December 16, 1920, contains 

 reproductions of several Tokyo seismograms. He 

 locates the origin in lat. 37° 5' N., long. 106° 5' E., 

 a point close to several towns at which the shock 

 was most disastrous, and between the centres of the 

 great earthquakes of 1556 and 1561. The former of 

 these earthquakes, by which more than 830,000 

 persons were killed, was probably the most disastrous 

 of which we have any record. 



The third general meeting of the West Yorkshire 

 Metallurgical Society, held in the City Museum, 

 Leeds, on Saturday, April i, took the form of a 

 symposium of papers on the electric melting of metals ; 

 three original papers were read and discussed. The 

 meeting was the last of a very successful winter 

 session of this newly- formed metallurgical society- 

 The membership, open to metallurgists, engineers, 

 students, and others technically interested in the 

 refining and working of metals, is steadily growing, 

 and it is hoped that by next session the roll will 

 contain a hundred members. The winter programme 

 consists of meetings for the reading and discussion 

 of papers in towns covered by the Society's activities, 

 such as Leeds, Bradford, and Huddersfield. In 

 addition to this and a summer programme comprising 

 afternoon visits to works of interest to the members, 

 the Society hopes to carry out suitably organised 

 co-operative research through its members.- The 

 first president is Mr. T. E. Hull, and the hon. sec. is 

 Mr. H: C. Dews, 17 St. John's Road, Huddersfield. 



The second annual report for 1921 of the Glass 

 Research Association contains, in addition to the list of 

 officers and members and its balance sheet, a- state- 

 ment of the problems already investigated and those 

 under test. It appears that in addition to laboratories, 

 now fully equipped, which the Association itself 

 possesses at 50 Bedford Square, London, W.C.i, 

 other institutions such as the National Physical 

 Laboratory, the Department of Glass Technology, 

 University of Sheffield, the British Refractories 

 Research Association, and the Industrial Fatigue 

 Research Board have all undertaken problems on 

 behalf of the Association. Of the specific and definite 

 results, one may refer to an investigation on the 

 detection of cords in glass, the formation of " bloom " 

 on lamp-blown glassware, the purification of m^ercury, 

 the determination of the viscosity of a series of glasses 

 over a limited range of (comparatively low) tempera- 

 ture, and the effect of the presence of chlorides and 

 sulphates on the melting rate, working properties, 

 and development of opalescence in lead glasses. 

 On these subjects reports have appeared in the 

 Bulletin of the Association. On the subject of 

 glass-works practice, a new type of annealing lehr 

 has been designed and erected, and -a new furnace, 

 an oil burner, and a cracking-off machine developed. 

 References to other work and to research contem- 

 plated range over a wide field, but one of the 

 subjects specially emphasised is that of glass refrac- 

 tory materials, and it is expected that co-operation 

 with the British Refractories Research Association 

 will carry forward investigations in this field speedily. 



