132 



NATURE 



[October i8, 19 17 



regions of the atmosphere are always highly ionised, 

 and that it has yet to be proved that any addition of 

 ions can excite premature condensation in unsaturated 

 air (see Nature, August 9, p. 467). 



An extraordinary feat of engineering is reported 

 from America in the Times for October 10, under the 

 heading "A Standardised Air-engine." Our Amer- 

 ican friends seem to have realised at the outset the 

 inadvisability of using a number of engines of different 

 design, and have sought to standardise an engine from 

 the first. With this object in view, two eminent 

 engineers, whose names have not yet been disclosed, 

 were invited to meet and discuss the question of an 

 ail-American engine, embodying the best experience- 

 available on engine design. Manufacturers and con- 

 sulting engineers have also co-operated, and, we are 

 told, have patriotically given up trade secrets to assist 

 in the new design. The work of designing and con- 

 structing a trial engine was completed in the amaz- 

 ingly short space of one month, and the new engine 

 was run in Washington on Independence Pay for the 

 first time. The United States Official Bulletin of 

 September 13 states that the tests have given complete 

 satisfaction, and even goes so far as to say that the 

 tests "Justify the Government in accepting the engine 

 as the best produced in any country." This is high 

 praise indeed for an engine so rapidly designed and 

 made, and motor engineers will await details of the 

 design with considerable interest. Little is said in the 

 Official Bulletin as to the details of the new engine. 

 Standardisation is the keynote of the design, and the 

 cylinders have been so arranged that engmes having 

 either eight or twelve cylinders can be built from the 

 same standard paris. It is, of course, impossible to 

 criticise the engine from a technical point of view 

 with so little definite information, but the Americans 

 are to be congratulated upon their early appreciation 

 of the importance of a standard engine, and the 

 immense amount of time in production and repair that 

 can be saved by adopting such a design. 



_ In a circular letter received from the Decimal Asso- 

 ciation, and headed "The Breakdown of the Penny," 

 a prioposal is again put forward for the establishment 

 of a system of decimal coinage based on the sovereign, 

 or pound sterling, which would retain its present 

 name and value, and would represent " 1000 mils." 

 It is pointed out that most of our existing coins down 

 to and including the sixpenny-piece are available for 

 incorporation in such a system without any alteration 

 whatever in their respective values, and that the corn- 

 pletion of the system by the division of the florin into 

 100 parts would involve only a slight modification in 

 the values of our present bronze coins. The circular 

 states that war-time conditions have completely 

 changed the purchasing power of the penny, tha't 

 the inflexibility of our subsidiary coinage has been one 

 of the causes accentuating the high prices of daily 

 necessities, which have been found to be the root of 

 so much industrial unrest, and that the proposed 

 changes will be of advantage to the industrial classes. 

 Prices of halfpenny goods have in many instances 

 been raised to a penny and those of penny goods to 

 three-halfpence for lack of coins having values inter- 

 mediate between our present halfpenny and penny 

 and between the penny and three-halfpence. The pro- 

 vision of an enlarged range of low denomination coins 

 in closely graduated steps would accordingly afford 

 much relief to purchasers while enabling the seller to 

 get a fair increase of price for his article. A table 

 of the proposed decimal coinage, given in a pamphlet 

 accompanying the circular, shows that the new coins 

 introduced would be nickel pieces of 10, 5, and 2J mils, 

 and, if necessary, bronze pieces of 4, ?, and 1 mils. 



The annual report for 1916 of the Agricultural and 

 Horticultural Research Station, Lon^ Ashton, Bristol 

 (the National Fruit and Cider Institute), forms an 

 interesting record of work continued under great diffi- 

 culties owing to depletion of staff. Cider and apple 

 investigations form, as usual, the most prominent 

 feature of the report, whilst several questions relating 

 to black currants have also been studied. In addition 

 to the staple research work of the station a number 

 of questions which have arisen out ,of war-time condi- 

 tions have been investigated, including experiments on 

 the utilisation of cider apples and apple pomace as 

 food for live stock and the substitution of glucose for 

 cane-sugar in jam-making. 



The Bulletin of the Imperial Institute (vol. xv.. 

 No. i) gives an account of the results of examination 

 of Ecdeiocolea fnonostachya " leaves " from Western 

 Australia, Neoboutonia macrocalyx timber from the 

 East Africa Protectorate, and bark of Brachystegia 

 Randii from Rhodesia, which have been investigated 

 at the institute recently as sources of pulp for paper- 

 making. The results on the whole were such as to 

 indicate that these materials could be satisfactorily 

 employed for the purpose. A further addition to the 

 valuable information on oil-seeds supplied by the insti- 

 tute is given in articles on manketti nuts, babassu 

 kernels, tucan nuts, and Paraguay kernels. In an 

 article on the production of wheat in Egypt 

 Mr. G. C. Dudgeon, of the Ministry of Agriculture, 

 arrives at the conclusion that, except in years when 

 the cotton crop is largely restricted in area, Egypt 

 cannot grow enough cereals to supply completely her 

 own necessities. Other reports, articles, and notes, 

 covering a wide variety of subjects, contribute to make 

 an interesting number. 



In his address to the Physical and Chemical Sec- 

 tion of the Franklin Institute in January last Prof. 

 Millikan, of the University of Chicago, dealt with one 

 of the unsolved problems of modern physics — the rela- 

 tion of the electron to the absorption and emission of 

 radiation. The fact that short-wave radiation passes 

 through matter without influencing more than one in 

 a thousand billions of the atoms in the space traverse'd 

 forces us to assume either that the energy of the 

 radiation is not spread evenly over the wave front, or 

 that there is some property of the atom which, while 

 permitting it to take in energy from the radiation 

 gradually, only admits of that energy being emitted in 

 bundles or " quanta." The former alternative has 

 been adopted by Thomson and by Einstein, but Milli- 

 kan points out the objections to it, and is disposed to 

 think the second alternative the more promising, 

 , although in its present state it leaves us in the dark 

 as to the conditions which exist within the atom and 

 the modification of them that the incident radiation 

 brings about. Prof. Millikan 's address is reproduced 

 in the September number of the Journal of the insti- 

 tute. 



Two i|-metre comparators, complete with the neces- 

 sary standards, have recently been completed and 

 shipped for the Imperial Japanese Government. The 

 object of these comparators is to enable the final 

 standards of length, as used by our Japanese Allies, to 

 be comparable with those in use_ at the National 

 Physical Laboratory at Teddington. ' The supreme im- 

 portance of accurate final standards, from the point of 

 view of interchangeability of ordnance, is universally 

 recognised. The standards themselves are divided in 

 metric units, and consist of H -shaped bars of 58 per 

 cent, nickel-steel with platinum-iridium divided sur- 

 faces. In their general method of construction, all 



NO. 



2503, VOL. 100] 



