130 



NATURE 



[June 9, 1898 



exhibition, and will be well placed. For the encouragement of 

 exhibitors, the city of Como has decided to give a sum of 10,000 

 francs in prizes for new inventions in the field of electricity, 



The title of the evening lecture which Prof. W, J. Sollas, 

 r.R.S., will deliver at Bristol on September 9, at the meeting 

 .of the British Association, will be " Funafuti, the Study of a 

 •Coral Island." Mr. Herbert Jackson has chosen " Phos- 

 phorescence" as the subject of his evening discourse on Sep- 

 tember 12. Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., will be the chairman 

 of the conference of delegates of corresponding societies. Sub- 

 scriptions to the local fund being raised for the expenses of the 

 meeting now amount to 3665/., and it is hoped that this will be 

 increased to at least 4000/. 



Our Paris contemporary, the Revue Gineraledes Sciences, ha.s 

 arranged with the Orient Steam Navigation Company, Limited, 

 'for the Lusitania to make a special cruise to Norway and the 

 North Cape from July 15 to August 10. The boat will leave 

 Dunkerque on the former date and proceed to Bergen, from 

 which place it will go up the coast to the North Cape, calling at 

 Trondhjem, Tromsoe, Hammerfest, and other places of interest. 

 After viewing the midnight sun, the party will leave the North 

 Cape on July 25, and will be taken down to Christiania, visiting 

 imany places on the way. Prof. J. Thoulet, professor of 

 mineralogy and oceanography at the University of Nancy, and 

 Baron Jules de Guerne, general secretary of the Societe 

 Rationale d'Acclimatation de France, will accompany the 

 tourists, and will give short lectures, with lantern illustrations, 

 ■on the various features of interest in the places visited. The 

 programme is an attractive one, and provides a pleasant and in- 

 structive means of spending a holiday. 



A VALUABLE circular (No. 18), dealing with the physics of 

 timber, has just been issued by Prof. B. E. Fernow, Chief 

 erf the Division of Forestry of the U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture. The paper is given exceptional importance by the 

 development of a formula worked out by Mr. S. T. Neely, 

 showing how the strength of beams can be determined from 

 the compression strength. In testing timber to obtain its 

 various coefficients of strength, the test which is at once the 

 simplest, most expedient, satisfactory and trustworthy is the 

 " compression endwise test," which is made by crushing a 

 specimen parallel to the fibres. AH other tests are either me- 

 chanically less easily performed, or else, as in the case of 

 ■cross- bending, the stresses are complex, and the unit co- 

 efficient can be expressed only by depending upon a doubtful 

 theoretical formula. It is, therefore, of great practical 

 value to have a relation between the cross-bending strength — 

 the most important coefficient for the engineer — and the com- 

 pression strength, and this is what Mr. Neely has found. 

 His discovery is expressed in the following conclusion : — "The 

 strength of beams at elastic limit is equal to the strength of the 

 material in compression, and the strength of beams at rupture 

 can be directly calculated from the compression strength ; 

 the relation of compression strength to the breaking load 

 «f a beam is capable of mathematical expression." This 

 enunciation is of far-reaching importance, and a comparison 

 af calculated with observed results given in the circular 

 is convincing as to the efficiency of the formula. It is 

 to be hoped that other and similarly successful scientific 

 investigations into the physics of timber will be made in the 

 U.S. Division of Forestry. 



The mysterious phenomenon known as " Barisal Guns " or 

 ^' Mist-poeffers " forms the subject of a useful paper by Dr. A. 

 Cancani in the last Bollettino (vol. iii. No. 9) of the Italian 

 Seismological Society. The observations on which his dis- 

 cussion is founded are collected from places in or near the inland 

 province of Umbria, where the noises are known as " m^riaa,' 

 NO. 1493, VOL. 58] 



it being the popular belief that they come from the sea. The 

 sound is quite distinct and easily recognised ; it is longer than 

 that of a cannon-shot, and, though more prolonged and dull, it 

 is not unlike distant thunder. It invariably seems to come from 

 a distance and from the neighbourhood of the horizon, some- 

 times apparently from the ground, but generally through the 

 air. The weather when the "marina" is heard is calm as a 

 rule, but that it often precedes bad weather is shown by the 

 common saying, " Quando tuona la marina o acqua o vento o 

 strina." The interval between successive detonations is very 

 variable, sometimes being only a few minutes, or even seconds. 

 They appear to be heard at all times of the day and year, the 

 experience of observers differing widely as to the epochs when 

 they are heard most frequently. With regard to the origin of 

 the " marina," Dr. Cancani concludes that they cannot be due 

 to a stormy sea, because "mist-poeffers " are frequently observed 

 when the sea is calm ; nor to gusts of wind in mountain gorges, 

 for they are heard on mountain summits and in open plains. If 

 their origin were atmospheric, they would not be confined to 

 certain special regions. Nor can they be connected with arti- 

 ficial noises, for they are heard by night as well as by day, and 

 in countries where the use of explosives is unknown. There 

 remains thus the hypothesis which Dr. Cancani considers the 

 most probable, that of an endogenous origin. To the obvious 

 objections that there should always be a centre of maximum 

 intensity (which is never to be found), and that they are so 

 rarely accompanied by any perceptible tremor, he replies that, 

 in a seismic series, noises are frequently heard without any 

 shock being felt, and of which we are unable to determine the 

 centre. 



The American Academy of Arts and Sciences have decided 

 to award the Rumford Medal to Prof. James E. Keeler, director 

 of the Lick Observatory, " for his application of the spectroscope 

 to astronomical problems, and especially for his investigations 

 of the proper motions of the nebulae, and the physical con- 

 stitution of the rings of the planet Saturn, by the use of that 

 instrument." 



The honour of Knight of the Order of the Polar Star has 

 been conferred upon Dr. J. Scott Keltie by the King of Sweden 

 and Norway. 



Dr. R. Koch has been consulted by the East African Pro- 

 tectorate as to preventive measures against rinderpest, which is 

 again rampant in the interior. Dr. Macdonald, the principal 

 medical officer, and Veterinary-Captain Haslam, M.D., have 

 visited Zanzibar to represent the Protectorate on this and other 

 infectious diseases. Dr. Haslam will proceed to the seat of 

 the disease, and direct preventive measures. 



We learn from the British Medical Journal that the monu- 

 ment to Pasteur, which is to be erected in Paris in the .'space 

 in front of the Pantheon, is now almost completed. M. Fal- 

 guiere, the sculptor, has introduced certain modifications into 

 his original design, in which Pasteur was simply represented 

 as overcoming Death, which was in the act of flight. Now a 

 group of a mother with her child, thanking Pasteur, has been 

 added on the right, while behind the central figure Fame is 

 shown crowning him with laurels. The international subscrip- 

 tion to the memorial now amounts to nearly 13,000/. 



The Local Government Board, acting under the recommend- 

 ations of recent Commissions as to the cultivation in glycerine 

 of vaccine lymph before such is applied to the human body, 

 has (says the Times) leased a large laboratory and several 

 office rooms at the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, on 

 the Thames Embankment, for the purpose of cultivating the 

 lymph. The bacteriological expert who has been appointed to 

 take chief control of the new laboratory is Dr. F. Blaxall, 

 lecturer on bacteriology at Westminster Hospital. He will have 



