September 3, 1914] 



NATURE 



notls. 



The president of the Board of Trade has appointed 

 committee to consider and advise as to the best 

 leans of obtaining for the use of British industry 

 iflficient supplies of chemical products, colours, and 

 yestuffs of kinds hitherto largely imported from 

 ountries with which we are at present at war. The 

 ommittee is constituted as follows : — Lord Haldane 

 Aairman), Dr. George T. Beilby, F.R.S., Dr. J. J. 

 )obbie, F.R.S., Mr. David Howard, Mr. Ivan Levin- 

 tein. Prof. Raphael Meldola, F.R.S., Mr. Max 

 luspratt. Prof. W. H. Perkin, F.R.S., Mr. Milton 

 harp. Sir Arthur J. Tedder, Mr. Joseph Turner, Mr. 

 '. Tyrer, with Mr. J ohq Anderson, of the >tational 

 iealth Insurance Comn^ission, and a representative 

 ►f the Board of Trade. The secretary of the com- 

 nittee is Mr. F. Gossling (of the Patent Office), to 

 vhom all communications should be addressed at the 



Commercial Intelligence Branch of the Board of 



QTrade, 73 Basinghall Street, E.G. 



The closing of the Baltic ports and shortage of 

 abour in the Bordeaux district of France have greatly 

 reduced the normal supply of pitprops. As the pro- 

 vision of an adequate supply of mining timber is of 

 great importance, the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries, in cooperation with the English Forestr}' 

 .\ssociation, are taking steps to stimulate the market- 

 ing of home-grown timber. The timbers most in 

 demand are larch, Scotch pine, and spruce of 3-in. 

 diameter and upwards at the small end, but small 

 [hardwood timbers, such as oak, coppice, and beech are 

 I used to some extent. The standard lengths of pitprops 

 differ in the various districts. Owners of extensive woods 

 who may have timber which they consider suitable for 

 this purpose but are in doubt as to the best method 

 of marketing it or of obtaining it with least damage 

 to the future welfare of their plantations, are invited 

 to communicate at once with the secretary of the Board 

 of Agriculture and Fisheries, or with the secretary, 

 English Forestry Association, Farnham Common, 

 Slough, Buckinghamshire. 



The present crisis will affect the electrical industry 

 on account of the shortage of carbons for arc lighting. 

 There is only one works manufacturing carbons in 

 this country, the great majority of carbons having 

 been imported from Germany and Austria. France 

 also exports carbons to England, and there is a small 

 factory in Spain. A limited supply may be available 

 from Spain, but no imports are, of course, available 

 from Germany and Austria, and the French factory 

 is situated in the heart of the fighting at Nancy. 

 The only carbon factory- in America cannot do more 

 than supply American wants, even if it is able to do 

 this, as .\merica imports carbons largely from Ger- 

 many. Public lighting as well as the electrical in- 

 dustry will suffer, owing to the neglect and refusal 

 of electric lighting authorities to support the enter- 

 prise which twelve years ago started manufacturing 

 carbons in this country. The Admiralty and certain 

 other Government departments which have recog- 

 nised for some time past the necessity of having a 

 source of supply independent of foreign carbons are 

 now reaping the reward of their foresight in being 

 NO. 2340, VOL. 94] 



able to obtain their supplies in this countrj-. The 

 present output of the carbon works in question is not 

 sufficient to supply more than one-tenth of the carbons 

 required in this country, but a very different state of 

 affairs Would have been the case if the carbon works 

 had been properly supported in the past, for, in this 

 case, the works would by now have been at least 

 three or four times their present size. We can only 

 hope that sufficient support will be given to British- 

 made carbons in the future to allow of the present 

 works being extended sufficiently to meet at least all 

 public lighting demands for this country. 



While continuing their excavations in the Piltdown 

 gravel last week, Mr. Charles Dawson and Dr. A. 

 Smith Woodward met with a second portion of a 

 molar tooth of Mastodon larger and more character- 

 istic than the fragment originally described. The 

 new specimen agrees well with the teeth of Mastodon 

 arvernensis found in the Red Crag of Suffolk, but 

 it is merely a waterworn hindmost ridge, and is 

 evidentlv a derived fossil of earlier date than the 

 deposition of the Piltdown gravel itself. 



Two important additions have been made to the 

 exhibited collection of Ichthyosaurians in the British 

 Museum (Natural History). A nearly complete 

 skeleton of Ophthalmosaurus, collected with great 

 skill by Mr. Alfred N. Leeds from the Oxford Clay 

 of Peterborough, has been mounted on an iron frame- 

 work with all the bones approximately in their 

 original relative positions. It is thus possible to 

 realise the shape and proportions of this reptile during 

 life much more readily than can be done by an ex- 

 amination of the crushed specimens in slabs of rock. 

 The closeness of the ribs immediately behind the 

 shoulder-girdle is especially interesting. The verte- 

 bral column is stoutest at the hinder end of the 

 abdominal region, and the downward prolongation 

 in the lower lobe of the tail-fin is gracefully curved. 

 The paddles must have been very flexible, with much 

 cartilage between the ossifications, and the hind 

 paddles are so small as to be almost rudimentary. A 

 slab of L'pper Lias from Holzmaden, Wiirtemberg, 

 shows a complete skeleton of Ichthyosaurus actiti- 

 rostris with the surrounding soft parts as a bitu- 

 minous impression on the rock. The specimen is 

 one of the finest examples of Mr. Bernhard Hauff's 

 work in preparing such fossils. The triangular 

 dorsal fin and the vertically extended tail-fin are 

 clearly seen, and there are several structures in the 

 dorsal region of the trunk which still need interpreta- 

 tion. 



As already announced, in consequence of the war 

 the Comit^ des Forges de France has been obliged 

 to cancel all -arrangements for an autumn meeting 

 of the Iron and Steel Institute in France this year. 

 In the circumstances, the council of the institute has 

 decided that it would be advisable to postpone for the 

 present the organisation of any alternative arrange- 

 ments for an autumn meeting for the reading and 

 discussion of papers. A number of papers have been 

 submitted with a view to their presentation at the 

 meeting which was to have been held at Paris, and 

 the council proposes to print in the usual way advance 



