50J 



NATURE 



[August 29, 191 1 



the Hotel Xettuno. It is true that we have pro- 

 fessors' common rooms in this country, but there 

 was a certain indefinable element about the " Sala 

 dei Professori " which we seem rather to miss 

 here. G. H. Bryan. 



NOTES. 



We- announce with deep regret the death on 

 August 26,- in a flying accident, of Prof. Bertram Hop- 

 kinson, C.M.G., F.R.S., professor of mechanism and 

 applied mechanics in the University of Cambridge. 



The position of the company known as British Dyes, 

 Ltd., appears to have been at last determined by the 

 results of a meeting at Huddersfield, on August 21, at 

 which the shareholders approved, by an overwhelming 

 majority, a scheme for amalgamation with Messrs. 

 Levinstein, Ltd., of Manchester. Tt will be remem- 

 bered that British Dyes, Ltd., was the company formed 

 in 19 15 on the basis of the previously well-known firm 

 of colour-makers, Messrs. Read Holliday and Co., and 

 subsidised by the Government to the extent of a million 

 sterlings with extra provision for research. There have 

 been many expressions of dissatisfaction with the pro- 

 gress made under the original directorate, and the 

 view has alread}' been expressed in the columns of 

 Nature that the board required amendment by a larger 

 representation of science in its composition. In the 

 statement made recently in the House of Commons by 

 Sir Albert Stanley this aspect of the question was not 

 referred to, but the conditions laid down appeared to 

 afford satisfactory guarantees that after the war there 

 would be such a restriction of imports as to afford 

 time for the struggling industry to be firmly estab- 

 lished, while the dye users would be sufficiently pro- 

 tected as to both supplies and prices. There can be 

 no doubt that the amalgamation when effected will 

 have good results in putting an end to undesirable 

 competition between the two companies and in bringing 

 the operations .at British Dyes, Ltd., under the in- 

 fluence of Dr. Herbert Levinstein's experience, which 

 really amounts to giving science, as against pure 

 finance, a more definite position in respect to the 

 affairs of the company. The history of the origin and 

 progress of the famous colour works of the Badische 

 Company at Ludwigshafen on the Rhine has still to 

 be written so as to be at once instructive and con- 

 vincing to the British commercial world. 



The David Livingstone centenary medal of the 

 American Geographical Society has, it is stated in 

 Science, been awarded to Col. Candido Mariano da 

 Silva Rondon in recognition of his valuable work of 

 exploration in South America. 



It is announced in Science that Prof. S. J. Barnett 

 has resigned his post as professor of physics at the 

 Ohio State University in order to accept the position 

 of physicist in charge of experimental work at the 

 department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington. Prof. Barnett entered 

 upon his new work at Washington on July 15. 



The Council of the Institution of Electrical En- 

 gineers has been in communication with the Ministry 

 of National Service with reference to the utilisation, 

 with due regard to their skill, of members of the 

 institution called up for military service under the 

 Military Service Act, 1918, No. 2. With the view of their 

 being posted, so far as vacancies are available, to 

 technical units, members of the new military age, on 

 being called up for military service, are therefore in- 

 vited to communicate with the secretary of the in- 



NO. 2548, VOL. lOl] 



stitution, who will supply them with the form and 

 certificate approved by the Ministry for this purpose. 



The twenty-ninth annual general meeting of the In- 

 stitution of Mining Engineers will be held at Uni- 

 versity College, Nottingham, on Friday, September 13, 

 under the presidency of Mr. Wallace Thorneycroft. 

 The Institution medal for the year 1917-18 will be pre- 

 sented to Mr. C. E. Rhodes. The following papers 

 will be submitted : A, Method of Determining the 

 Magnetic Meridian as a Basis for Mining Surveys, 

 T. Lindsay Galloway; The Chance Acetylene Safety- 

 Lamp, W. Maurice; Recent Developments in the 

 Coalfields South of Sydney, New South W'ales, Dr. 

 J. R. M. Robertson. 



No. 10 of the Berichte der deutschen chemischen 

 Gesellschaft, which has been published after some 

 delay, contains the announcement of the death of Dr. 

 Johannes Thiele, professor ot chemistry in the Univer- 

 sity of Strasburg, at the age of fifty-three. Prof. Thiele 

 first became well known by his work on nitro- and 

 amino-guanidines, which opened up new methods of 

 preparing hydrazine and hydrazoic acid, and secured 

 for him an appointment as extraordinary professor at 

 'Munich. Here, as a result of Baeyer's work on the 

 reduction of muconic acid, he took up the study of 

 what were afterwards called conjugated double- 

 bonds, and developed his theory of partial valencies, 

 by which he was best known. Prof. Thiele was ap- 

 pointed successor to Fittig at Strasburg in 1902. 



The German Chemical Society has celebrated its 

 jubilee by collecting a fund of 2^ million marks for 

 the more extensive publication of chemical works of 

 reference, such as Beilstein. We notice further, in a 

 report of the annual general meeting, that an agreement 

 has been concluded with the Verein deutscher Chemiker 

 with regard to publications. The Chemisches Zen- 

 tralblatt will deal more fully with technical chemistry, 

 and will be available to ' the members of the latter 

 society at a reduced rate. The Berichte will be sub- 

 divided, one section dealing with reports of meetings, 

 notices, etc., the other containing the original 

 scientific publications. The annual subscription to the 

 German Chemical Society will become 10 marks, but 

 will then only entitle members to receive the first of 

 the above-named sections. A separate subscription 

 will be required for the scientific section, as was 

 alreadv the case with the Zentralblatt. 



Dr. a. C. Haddon discusses in the August issue of 

 Man, with numerous sketches, an anomalous form of 

 outrigger-canoe attachment in use in the Torres 

 Straits, and its distribution. The normal arrangement 

 of connecting the float to the outrigger booms is in 

 the Y form. This occasionally becomes modified into 

 the V or U form. Some doubt still exists as to the 

 origin and distribution of these modifications. But 

 Dr. Haddon states that his "main object in compiling 

 these notes is to emphasise how suggestive such an 

 apparently insignificant feature as an outrigger attach- 

 ment may be in the elucidation of the problems of 

 distribution." 



Mr. T. Sheppard has reprinted from the Naturalist 

 for July an account of a small but interesting exhibit 

 of Bronze-age weapons from the collection of the late 

 Cotterill Clark, now deposited in the Doncaster 

 Museum. The specimens include a rapier-shaped 

 blade, six spears, one flat axe, eight palstaves, three 

 socketed axes, and a chisel, all from the eastern side 

 of Doncaster where, owing to the prevalence of fen 

 bogs, such objects would be likely to be lost. One 

 of the palstaves is of a somewhat unusual pattern, 

 those with a transverse edge; as Sir J. Evans re- 



