468 



NATURE 



[August 15, 191 8 



Han- soil is "self-nitrogenating. " Phosphatic 

 manures, on the other hand, apf>ear to be bene- 

 ficial. Another feature of interest in Australian 

 developments is the g-rowth of farmers' institutes 

 or bureaux, as they call them. In this country a 

 remarkable and parallel development is now in 

 progress (as an outcome of the war) in the shape 

 of women's institutes. The guiding motive in 

 both cases is the stimulation of interest in the 

 problems of rural life through the agency of what 

 modern sociologists would call " herd " instincts, 

 for it seems possible to stimulate in a meeting 

 intellectual interests which remain dormant in the 

 home ! 



But in regard to agricultural science, Australia 

 is, above all, fortunate in the number of special 

 problems which, as a "new " country, it pro- 

 vides ; the investigator finds numberless questions 

 awaiting solution ; he is not hampered by age- 

 worn traditions and practices and the habit of 

 mind which they engender ; and he has not only 

 a virgin field on which to demonstrate the effi- 

 ciency of the new weapons which the scientific 

 method has forged, but also, if we may judge from 

 what is recorded, a population ever willing to 

 hear, and even to adopt, some new thing. B. 



NOTES. 



The British Scientific Products Exhibition, organised 

 by the British Science Guild, is being opened bv 

 Lord Sydenham at King's College, London, as we 

 go to press. The exhibition has aroused wide public 

 interest, and there is no doubt that it will be decidedly 

 successful in stimulating that close union between 

 science and industry upon which progressive prosperity 

 depends. Since the advent of the war much more 

 intelligent attention has been paid to the co-ordination 

 of these national activities than was given in earlier 

 years. The spirit of distrust which existed between 

 scientific workers and manufacturers has been largely 

 dispelled, and an alliance is being formed which should 

 go on increasing in strength for the benefit of each. 

 The man of science formerly confined himself too 

 closely to an academic atmosphere, and did not trouble 

 to understand the problems of industry ; while the 

 manufacturer neglected to avail himself sufficiently of 

 the potential industrial developments represented by 

 the rich stores of scientific knowledge accumulated in 

 the laboratory. During the last four years, however, 

 science and industry have been brought into closer 

 relationship, and some of the results of this entente 

 cordiale are shown in the British Scientific Products 

 Exhibition. Much yet remains to be done before we 

 can recover all the ground lost by inactivity and un- 

 wise legislation; but by giving aii indication of what 

 has been achieved, a new spirit will be created which 

 should lead to further progress. 



We much regret to see the announcement of the 

 death on August lo, at seventy-eight years of age, of 

 Prof. O. Henrici, F.R.S., emeritus professor of 

 mechanics and mathematics in the Central Technical 

 College of the City and Guilds of London Institute. 



The Times announces that Mr. W. M. Crowfoot, 

 of Beccles, Suffolk, who died on April 6 at eighty years 

 of age, bequeathed a collection of exotic butterflies and 

 moths to his wife for life and then to the Natural 

 History Museum, University College, Nottingham ; a 

 collection of shells from the Paris basin, his crag- 

 NO. 2546, VOL. lOl] 



shells, and other fossils to the Norwich Museum ; a 

 collection of shells from the Italian Pliocene basin and 

 a collection of marine, land, and fresh-water shells to- 

 the Ipswich Museum. 



An association of chemists engaged in the oil and 

 colour and allied trades has been formed for the pur- 

 pose of considering and discussing the many complex 

 points which are continually met with in the course 

 of their work. The need for this associadon has been 

 felt for a long time, and the work undertaken by the 

 chemists of the paint trade on the linseed-oil substitu- 

 tion products has been the foundation on which the 

 association has arisen. The first president is Dr. F. 

 Moll wo Perkin, and the secretary Mr. H. A. Garwood, 

 53 Groombridge Road, London, E.9. 



The autumn meeting of the Institute of Metals will 

 be held in the rooms of the Chemical Society, Bur- 

 lington House, on September 10 and 11. Among the 

 communications to be submitted are :— The Resist- 

 ance of Metals to Penetration under Impact, including 

 a note on The Hardness of Solid Elements as a 

 Periodic Funcdon of their Atomic Weights, Prof. 

 C. A. Edwards; Grain Growth in Metals, Dr. Z. 

 Jeffries; Rapid Recrystallisation in Deformed Non- 

 ferrous Metals, Mr. D. Hanson ; The Influence of 

 Impurities on the Mechanical Properties of .'Admiralty 

 Gunmetal, Mr. F. Johnson; and A Peculiar Case of 

 Disintegration of a Copper-.Muminium Allov, Dr. R. 

 Seligman and Mr. P. Williams. 



The Minister of Munitions has issued an Order 

 prohibiting the purchase, sale, dr delivery of any radio- 

 active substances, luminous bodies, or ores without a 

 permit, and providing that such returns of stocks, etc., 

 shall be made as are from time to time prescribed. 

 The Order applies to all radio-active substances, in- 

 cluding actinium, radium, uranium, thorium, and their 

 disintegration products and compounds, luminous 

 bodies in the preparation of which any radio-active 

 substance is used, and ores from which any radio- 

 active substance is obtainable, except uranium nitrate 

 and radio-active substances which at the date of the 

 Order form an integral part of any instrument, in- 

 cluding instruments of precision or for time-keeping. 

 Applications in reference to this Order should be ad- 

 dressed to the Controller of Optical Munitions, Minis- 

 try of Munitions, 117 Piccadilly, W.i. 



Prof. Stephen Farnum Peckham, who has died at 

 Brooklyn at the age of seventy-nine, was director of 

 the chemical department of the U.S. Army Labora- 

 tory during the Civil War. He held' successively the 

 chairs of chemistry in Washington and Jefferson Col- 

 leges, Maine Agricultural College, Buchtel College, 

 and the University of Minnesota. In 1898 he was 

 appointed director of a laboratory of the Commis- 

 sioner of Accounts of New York, and later of the 

 Department of Finance of that city. He had been 

 State assayer to Maine, Minnesota, and Rhode Island. 

 He was the author of an elementary book on chemistry 

 as well as of a report on the production, technology, 

 and uses of petroleum and of a treatise on solid 

 bitumens. 



The death is announced, in his sixty-seventh year, 

 of Dr. Richard Rathbun, the acting director of the 

 Smithsonian Institution at Washington. On gradua- 

 ting at Cornell University in 1875, he was appointed 

 assistant geologist to the Geological Commission of 

 Brazil. In 1879 he was for a short time an assistant 

 in zoology at Yale. He was scientific assistant on the 

 U.S. Fish Commission from 1878 to 1896, having 

 charge of the scientific inquiries subsequent to 1887, 



