January 14, 191 5] 



NATURE 



541 



made at the Manila Observatory during the calendar 

 vear 1912. There is but little variation in the mean 

 values from year to year, and nothing exceptional 

 occurred during- the year in question beyond an in- 

 crease in seismic activity; e.g. the annual departures 

 from the normal of forty-eight years were, for tem- 

 perature, — oi5°C .; rainfall, +3-8 mm.; it is there- 

 fore unnecessary to add to the remarks made in our 

 previous issues. During the fiscal year 1911-12 the 

 earthquakes reported from various parts of the archi- 

 pelago numbered 230, 90 per cent, above the average. 

 Only five of the shocks were severe; that of July 12, 

 iqii, has been registered all over the world with the 

 characteristics of a " great earthquake." The Manila 

 seismographs recorded 318 disturbances. The rela- 

 tions with other services in the Far East have recently 

 been much improved ; the observations are now syn- 

 chronous, and although not yet simultaneous, the con- 

 struction of synoptic charts from available data is 

 much more satisfactorj'. 



I\ the "Sluseums journal for December Mr. Alan 

 Pollard advocates the practical use of Cartesian co- 

 ordinates for locating objects in a museum or other 

 rectangular room. He suggests that a foot may be 

 a convenient unit for the purpose, and that a rough 

 scale may be sufficient for purposes of localisation, 

 the centre of the object being the point specified. As 

 it is necessary to specify which faces of the room are 

 to be taken as co-ordinate planes, the author proposes, 

 the wall containing the door by which the room is 

 entered as plane of (x, 2), arid the wall to the left of 

 this as plane of (y, 2). For a line or plane parallel 

 to one edge or face of the rooms, he proposes to 

 specify numerically the given co-ordinates using letters 

 for the indeterminate ones ; for example {x, 29, 2) 

 represents a wall 29 ft. from the plane of {x, 2). 



There is a growing tendency among postgraduate 

 students, and indeed mathematical writers generally, 

 to produce papers containing no new ideas, but merely 

 clothing ideas already familiar to readers in slightly 

 different form or notation. As examples we may 

 illustrate the waste of university endowments on 

 students who merely propose to express well-Known 

 formulae of electrostatics or attractions by means of 

 quaternions and elliptic functions. Mr. George 

 Paswell contributes to the Bulletin of the American 

 Mathematical Society for December " An Appeal to 

 Producing Mathematicians " which we hope will be 

 read in very great earnest by all teachers of advanced 

 students and writers of papers. He points out that 

 the profession of civil engineering is teeming . with 

 problems awaiting the solutions of a Laplace 

 or a Newton, and he instances the theory of 

 elasticity as requiring the most urgent attention. 

 He further attacks the shallowness of the courses of 

 mathematical instruction given to applied science 

 candidates, and though his strictures apply particularly 

 to America, it is equally true that in Great Britain 

 candidates can obtain University degrees in engineer- 

 ing on work that is scarcely up to intermediate pass 

 standard. A paper by Mr. Sidney Withington on the 

 NO. 2359, VOL. 94] 



catenaries of one of the American trolley railways 

 in the Journal of the Franklin Institute for December, 

 1914, illustrates this point well. The author on page 

 721 employs the binomial theorem with a reckless 

 waste of neglected terms to prove or rather to fail 

 to prove an obvious geometrical result which he can 

 only accomplish by inserting or omitting a factor 

 2 from one or other of two quantities to be proved 

 equal, the explanation of this factor being quite dif- 

 ferent from anything clearly and explicitly stated in the 

 paper. While strongly supporting Mr. Paswell's plea, 

 we greatly regret that he has omitted the subject most 

 urgently requiring research at the present time, viz., 

 aeroplanes. Aeroplane problems are running to waste 

 by the dozen, and they practically never, or at best 

 rarely, figure in mathematical transactions. 



The Electrician for December 25, 19 14, reproduces 

 the provisional report of the committee of the Physi- 

 cal Society on Nomenclature and Symbols. Some of 

 the most noteworthy features of the report are its pro- 

 posal to use capitals for the amplitudes, and small 

 letters for the instantaneous values of quantities var>-- 

 ing harmonically ; its restriction of the termination -ity 

 to specific, and its use of the termination -ance for non- 

 specific, properties. Thus we have the resistance, con- 

 ductance, and inductance of an electric circuit, but 

 the resistivity, conductivity, and permeability of the 

 material of which it is composed. The term capacity 

 of a condenser is, however, retained, and forms an 

 exception which might be got rid of by the substitu- 

 tion of the word capacitance. In terrestrial magnetism 

 . and atmospheric electricity the terminologies are in a 

 chaotic state, and the evil is not likely to be mitigated 

 so long as colourless words like declination and inclina- 

 tion are adopted by theoretical writers for the effects 

 graphically described by the words deviation of the 

 compass and dip respectively. It is much to be desired 

 that the various committees now considering the 

 question of symbols should confer with each other in 

 order if possible to introduce unanimity into their 

 reports (see p. 544). 



Under the title " Chemistry and Practical Life " has 

 been reprinted an address delivered bv Dr. G. T. 

 Beilby before the Chemical Society of the Roval Tech- 

 nical College, Glasgow. Whilst fully recognising the 

 great indebtedness of modern civilised society to 

 science and its discoveries. Dr. Beilby emphasises the 

 enormous debt which had already been incurred to the 

 countless generations of workers who had lived and 

 worked before the advent of chemical science. In 

 reviewing the position of chemical industry in this 

 country, a subject on which Dr. Beilby speaks with 

 authority, it is pointed out that " long after the 

 scientific development of chemical engineering was 

 well under way in Germany, scientific and academic 

 chemists completely ignored the necessity for this new 

 hybrid, the ' chemical engineer,' or openly scoffed at 

 the idea." Too frequently in the colleges of this 

 country " there appears to be an absence of any real 

 conviction that the call for instruction in chemical 

 science with a deliberate view to its application in the 



