206 



NATURE 



[October 22, 19 14 



speech extremely inspiring and helpful to our 

 young- University. 



The week-end was devoted to excursions, and 

 amongst other places visited were the mines at 

 Gympie and at Mount Morgan, the sugar and 

 fruit-growing districts of Nambour and Cleve- 

 land, and the Prickly Pear infested country of 

 the middle West, and the Prickly Pear experi- 

 mental station at Dulacca. The officer in charge 

 of this station is Dr. Jean White, who at present 

 has more than 2000 experimental plots under in- 

 vestigation, and the object of whose work is to 

 ascertain the best means of exterminating the 

 pest. 



After the close of the Brisbane session, the 

 party separated, some returning to Europe by way 

 of America, others through Java and India, and a 

 large number of the party travelled by the mail 

 route through the Suez Canal. 



[One of the week-end excursions during the visit 

 of the British Association to Melbourne, referred 

 to in an article in our issue of October 8, was to 

 the Warburton district, where the giant ferns and 

 gum-trees, rising in some cases to a height of 

 about three hundred feet, gave the visitors im- 

 pressive views of Australian bush scenery. The 

 two photographs here reproduced show the party 

 watching a wood-chopping contest, and in one of 

 the gullies of the forest rich in objects of botani- 

 cal interest.] 



t^OTES. 

 The Harveian oration on advances in knowledge 

 regarding the circulation and attributes of the blood 

 since Harvey's time, was delivered at the Royal Col- 

 lege of Physicians on Monday, October 19, by Sir 

 Douglas Powell. After the oration Sir Ronald Ross 

 was presented with the Bissett Hawkins Memorial 

 Medal for distinguished services in the advancement 

 of sanitary science and public health. 



The question of the continuance of meetings of 

 scientific societies during the war, raised by Dr. W. T. 

 Caiman in a letter which appears elsewhere in this 

 issue, is one which each society must decide for itself 

 after taking into consideration the papers likely to 

 be forthcoming, and the number of fellows or members 

 likely to attend meetings at which they are presented. 

 It is to be hoped, however, that if meetings go on as 

 hitherto, any German or Austrian members of the 

 societies will absent themselves for the time being, as 

 objection might be taken to their presence under 

 existing conditions. 



Many leading men of science in the British Isles, 

 as well as distinguished representatives of other 

 branches of learning, have signed a statement which 

 has just been issued in reply to manifestoes published 

 by various university professors in Germany. The 

 statement refers to the policy of national aggrandise- 

 ment based on the threat of war advocated by von 

 Treitschke, von Billow, von Bernhardi, and strongly 

 supported by public opinion in Germany ; and it sum- 

 marises the diplomatic papers in which the events are 



NO. 2347, VOL. 94] 



described that forced Great Britain into the present 

 war if she wished to preserve an honourable position 

 among nations. The concluding paragraph is as 

 follows: — "The German professors appear to think 

 that Germany has in this matter some considerable 

 body of sympathisers in the universities of Great 

 Britain. They are gravely mistaken. Never within 

 our lifetime has this country been so united on any 

 great political issue. We ourselves have a real and 

 deep admiration for German scholarship and science. 

 We have many ties with Germany, ties of comrade- 

 ship, of respect, and of affection. We grieve pro- 

 foundly that, under the baleful influence of a military 

 system and its lawless dreams of conquest, she whom 

 we once honoured now stands revealed as the common 

 enemy of Europe and of all peoples which respect the 

 Law of Nations. We must carry on the war on which 

 we have entered. For us, as for Belgium, it is a war 

 of defence, waged for liberty and peace," 



The Royal Photographic Society has just opened to 

 the public a house exhibition of photographs by Mr. 

 Lewis Balfour, "Bird Life on the Bass Rock." There 

 are upwards of one hundred of these pictures showing 

 the various sea birds and incidents in their lives. The 

 public will be admitted free, daily from 11 a.m. to 

 5 p.m., until November 28. 



The second Thomas Hawksley lecture wih be de- 

 livered in the meeting hall of the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers on Friday evening, October 30, 

 by Mr. W. B. Bryan, the subject being "Pumping and 

 other Machinery for Waterworks and Drainage." The 

 Thomas Hawksley fund was founded by Mr. Charles 

 Hawksley to perpetuate the memory of his father who 

 was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 

 1871 and 1872, and president of the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers in 1876 and 1877. The income 

 of the fund is devoted to the maintenance of a lecture 

 and to the award by the council of the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers annually a "Thomas Hawks- 

 ley " gold medal, with or without a premium, in 

 money, books, or otherwise for the best original paper 

 read at a general meeting of the institution or printed 

 in its proceedings. 



Prof. David Todd, who passed through London 

 a few days ago on his return to the United States 

 from Russia, where he observed the total solar eclipse 

 of August 21, as will be described in a later issue, 

 brought with him a very successful kinematograph 

 film of the eclipse, and by the courtesy of Messrs. 

 Pathe Freres it was projected upon the screen of their 

 theatre in Charing Cross Road. The film reproduced 

 the solar corona with the narrow crescents before 

 and after it with great fidelity. It was taken by Dr. 

 N. V. E. Nordenmark, of Stockholm, at Solleftea, 

 Sweden, latitude N. 63° 12', longitude 45' west of 

 Stockholm, where the sky was absolutely free from 

 cloud. The lens was a 50 mm. Zeiss of 305 mm. 

 focus, and the exposures were about six to the second. 

 In all there are more than seven hundred excellent 

 pictures of the corona, which is well seen even into 

 the partial phase. 



