February 7, 1918] 



NATURE 



449 



microscopes, incubators, balance, autoclave, centrifuge, 

 microtome, ice-chest for water samples, and numbers 

 of accessories, the whole being packed in thirteen can- 

 teens, which ensures safety in transit under the 

 roughest conditions. A water tank fitted with pump 

 is fixed on the roof of the car, an electric lighting out- 

 fit, with dynamo and accumulators, is fitted, and 

 apparatus for the stafT mess and sleeping accommoda- 

 tion for the staff are provided. Much ingenuity has 

 been exercised, so that everything is conveniently 

 grouped and easily accessibFe, and can be packed or 

 unpacked in about two hours. The formal presenta- 

 tion of the laboratory was made a few days ago to 

 Col. Stanistreet, the representative of the War Office. 



The Times of February i contains an account of an 

 improvement by Dr. S.' A. Kapadia in the Lawton 

 method of preserving perishable foodstuffs. In that 

 system the produce was kept under anaerobic condi- 

 tions, so that putrefactive and other changes were 

 arrested, but the objection to it was that the gas used con- 

 tained carbon monoxide, forming an explosive mixture 

 in the preserving chamber. The gas used by Dr. Kapadia 

 consists of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with only a 

 trace of oxygen. Australian apples which had been 

 kept for five weeks in this atmosphere were found to 

 be in as good condition as at first, and the rottenness 

 from some of the specimens had not spread to the 

 neighbouring sound fruit. Raspberries, a fruit very 

 difficult to preserve fresh, after a fortnight of the same 

 treatment were as fresh as when the experiment 

 started, and, moreover, they retained this freshness 

 for four days after removal from the preserving cham- 

 ber, thus allowing time for the fruit to be marketed. 

 After salted fish had been kept in the preserving 

 chamber for six weeks it appeared to an expert to be 

 in exactly the same condition as when introduced. 

 Similarly, eggs which had been preserved for twenty 

 weeks in the same way could be afterwards boiled 

 without the shell cracking, as if new-laid. 



On account of the warmth and dampness of the air 

 in mines, the timber which is used for props, sleepers, 

 etc., underground is very liable to decay, set up by 

 fungi. Pitwood as a rule lasts a very short time, and 

 has to be speedily replaced. Before the war this class 

 of timber was very cheap, and nothing was done in 

 Britain to lengthen its duration by preservative treat- 

 ment, although it was known that economies in this 

 direction had been effected in France owing to the 

 experiments that had been undertaken by M. Fayol 

 in the collieries of Commentfy, and by Prof. E. Henry 

 in the mines near Nancy. The U.S. Forest Service 

 had also treated a large number of timbers by various 

 methods, and placed them in the coal mines at Potts- 

 ville, in Pennsylvania, with convincing results of the 

 efficiency of creosote and zinc chloride as preservatives. 

 Several mining companies in the United States have 

 been using treated timber, and have found it econom- 

 ical. It is most important at the present time to 

 lengthen the life' of pitwood in our mines and col- 

 lieries, as this will result in a lessened demand for sea- 

 borne timber. With this end in view, the Department 

 of Scientific and Industrial Research has issued Bulle- 

 tin No. I, Memorandum on the Preservation of Timtjer 

 in Coal Mines, by Prof. Percy Groom. Practical reme- 

 dial measures against the spread of the spores of the 

 destructive fungi in the galleries are clearly described. 

 The fructifications can be readily removed and burned, 

 provided careful inspection of the timbers is made 

 periodically by an intelligent workman. The mycelia 

 accessible on the surface of the pitwood can be washed 

 off by an antiseptic solution and removed. All the 

 fresh timber put down in the mines should be treated 

 beforehand with creosote or zinc chloride, applied by 



NO. 2519, VOL, 100] 



brushing or impregnated by immersion or pressure 

 methods. When the wood has to last only a relatively 

 short time, other substances may be used, as common 

 salt, magnesium sulphate, and certain mine waters. 



-\ REPORT just issued of the Meteorological Com- 

 mittee for the year ended March 31, 19 17, the sixty- 

 second year of the Meteorological Office, shows that 

 considerable activity is maintained in meteorology. Sir 

 Napier Shaw is director, and no change has taken 

 place in the Meteorological Committee constituted 

 under the authority of the Lords Commissioners of 

 H.M. Treasury. The observatories and the stations 

 for the daily weather service have been kept regularly 

 in operation. There has been an unprecedented in- 

 crease in the work of the forecast division and the 

 instruments division. Many calls have been received for 

 new publications and new editions of existing publica- 

 tions from various sub-departments of the Admiralty, 

 War Office, Air Board, Ministry of Munitions, Board 

 of Trade, and Colonial Office. To meet the increased 

 requirements in the office and to supplement the 

 absence of many members of the staff on military 

 service, use has been made of members of the staff who 

 have reached or passed the age of superannuation in 

 the office. " Summer-time ' has entailed some addition 

 to the work, and as the diurnal variations of the 

 weather are so essentially controlled by the sun, the 

 office obtained permission under the Act to retain 

 Greenwich time for the hours of its observations, but 

 this by no means freed the office from much com- 

 plexity. .'\n interesting inquiry is mentioned, at the 

 instance of Dr. Walker, Director-General of Indian 

 Observatories, into the statistical relation between the 

 weather in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean 

 and subsequent weather of north-western Europe. 

 Especial mention should be made of an important new 

 work, " Roseau Mondial," for which data have been 

 prepared, which give a compendious review of the 

 meteorology of the globe. This work is a great ad- 

 vance in international meteorology, and the report 

 states that the work is fairly completed for the years 

 1911, 1912, and 1913. 



The Bihar and Orissa Research Society continues to 

 do excellent work on the antiquities of the province. 

 In the Journal of the society for September last (vol. 

 iii., part 3) Mr. C. W. .Anderson describes a find of 

 prehistoric stone implements in the Singhbhum dis- 

 trict. The first discovery of such remains dates from 

 1868. Generally speaking, the trap implements may 

 be classed as Mesolithic, intermediate between the Neo- 

 lithic and Palaeolithic periods. This definition would 

 bring them in line with Prof. Sollas's Azilian stage, if 

 the assumption be made that there was an uninter- 

 rupted sequence of industries. But this is by no 

 rneans a necessary assumption, and such implements 

 as can be compared with European collections rather 

 point to an origin contemporary in the stage of cul- 

 ture, if not in age, with the Magdalenian. If the view 

 recently expressed be correct, that the language of the 

 Kolarian tribes in India may be connected with those 

 of races in the Malayan Peninsula and the Andaman 

 Islands, the present discovery may lead to further 

 interesting identifications. 



The importance of Syria and Palestine as fields for 

 the investigation of prehistoric antiquities is fully illus- 

 trated in an important paper by Le Fre Ndophytus, 

 entitled " La Prehistoire en Syrie-Palestine," published 

 in L' Anthropologic, vol. xxviii., parts 4-5, forijuly-^ 

 October, 1917. Th0 practice of human sacrifice >n the 

 form of immolntien of new-born children in funereal 

 jars is fully established. The historical surv'ev of 



