I30 



NATURE 



[June io. 189; 



The French Association for the Advancement of Science 

 will hold its twenty-sixth meeting at Saint Ktienne on August 

 5-12, under the presidency of M. Marey. 



Mr. Percy S. Pilcher has invited a number of friends and 

 persons interested in aerial navigation to witness one of his 

 experiments with a soaring machine at Upper Austin Lodge, 

 Eynsford, Kent, on Saturday afternoon, June 19. 



The important discovery by two Japanese botanists, of the 

 existence of spermatozoids in certain flowering plants {Ginkgo 

 hiloba and Cycas revoluta), has already been recorded in the 

 pages of Nature (vol. Iv. p. 396). Original preparations, by 

 Prof Ikeno and Dr. Hirase, illustrating their discovery, will be 

 exhibited by Dr. D. H. Scott, F.R.S., at the next meeting of 

 the Linnean Society, on June 17. This will be the first occasion 

 on which this remarkable observation, obliterating one of the 

 chief supposed distinctions between Phanerogams and Crypto- 

 gams, has been demonstrated to European botanists. 



The annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute will be 

 held at Cardiff on August 3-6, under the presidency of Mr. 

 Edward P. Martin. A detailed programme will be issued when 

 the arrangements are further advanced. 



The Croonian Lectures of the Royal College of Physicians 

 will be given by Dr. Hale White, at the Examination Hall, on 

 June 15, 17, 24, and 29. The subject of the lectures is "The 

 means by which the temperature of the body is maintained in 

 health and disease. " 



The forty-second annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic 

 Society will be held from September 27 to November 13. 

 Negatives, transparencies, photo-mechanical prints, stereoscopic 

 work, photographs of purely scientific interest, and photographs 

 coloured by mechanical means will be admitted to the exhibi- 

 tion, and medals will be awarded by the Judges. Exhibits must 

 reach the Secretary of the Society, 12 Hanover-square, London, 

 W., on or before September 8. 



We regret to have to record the following deaths : — Dr. Julius 

 von Sachs, Professor of Botany in Wurzburg University, and 

 Foreign Member of the Royal Society ; M. Slouguinoff, Director 

 of the Physical Institute of the Imperial University of Kazan ; 

 Mr. H. B. Chamberlin, who presented the Chamberlin Observa- 

 tory to Denver University, and in other ways assisted m the 

 advancement of science ; Mr. William God ward, formerly of 

 the Nautical Almanac Office, and author of some useful astro- 

 nomical tables ; M. Manen, Correspondant of the Section of 

 Geography and Navigation of the Paris Academy of Sciences ; 

 and Baron Oscar Dickson, who fitted out several Arctic expedi- 

 tions, including the Vega expedition of Baron Nordenskiold. 



The organisation and federation of local scientific societies is 

 a work well worth doing. Prof. Meldola pointed out in these 

 columns a year ago (vol. liv. p. 114) how science would be better 

 served if the efforts of the legion of amateur naturalists were co- 

 ordinated by the formation of groups of societies. The South- 

 eastern Union of Scientific Societies is a group of this character, 

 and the success of the congress which the Union held at 

 Tunbridge Wells towards the end of last month, under the 

 presidency of the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing, F.R.S., will, we 

 hope and believe, lead to the federation of other local societies. 

 The societies which have joined the Union are almost exclusively 

 natural history societies. They are friendly to philosophy and 

 literature, to mathematics and chemistry, to agriculture and 

 political economy, to astronomy and the use of the globes ; but 

 they find their own more special and serious employment in 

 zoology, botany, and geology. What the British Association 

 does on an imperial scale, the Union hopes to do for a limited 

 area. The pursuit of natural knowledge will thus be encouraged, 

 NO. 1 44 I, VOL. 56] 



the results of investigations will be made more widely known, 

 and, best of all, public opinion will be enlightened as to the 

 value of scientific work. 



Nothing is worse than fog at sea. A storm may cause dis- 

 comfort, an accident may cause delay, but in neither case does 

 the traveller feel so helpless as when his vessel is completely 

 shut in by a dense fog. To lessen the danger which then exists, 

 Prof. E. C. Pickering, the Director of the Harvard College 

 Observatory, suggests, in a pamphlet just received, a method of 

 determining the position of a vessel in a fog, based upon the 

 velocity of sound. If two fog-horns of different pitch be placed 

 at equal distances from the middle of a channel or entrance to 

 a harbour, and be sounded simultaneously at regular intervals of 

 about a minute, it will be evident that a captain of a vessel will 

 be able to locate his position with fair accuracy by noting when 

 the sounds of the horns are heard. If the two sounds are heard 

 at the same instant the vessel will be in the middle of the 

 channel, and if they are heard after one another it would be 

 possible to judge from the interval between the two how much 

 the vessel is out of the middle of the channel. For vessels 

 passing one another, Prof. Pickering suggests that each should 

 whistle or blow the horn or syren as soon as the sound is received 

 from the other vessel. Then, if 'they are five miles apart, each 

 will whistle every fifty seconds, and the distance in miles be- 

 tween the two vessels can always be determined by dividing the 

 interval in seconds by ten. By placing two different fog- whistles 

 on a long steamer, one at the bow and the other at the stern, 

 and arranging that the sounds emitted by both should be heard 

 together by an observer standing at the bow, many collisions 

 might be prevented. Instructions could be given to sailing 

 vessels to keep quiet so long as both signals were heard 

 separately, for they would then be in no danger, but to fire a 

 gun or make other loud noise when both whistles were heard 

 together, for they would then be in front of the steamer. These 

 various methods may be combined indefinitely, and they seem to 

 be worth the consideration of navigators. 



An appeal is being made to iron -masters of the various im- 

 portant iron-making countries for annual subscriptions towards 

 the maintenance of a central laboratory for the testing of iron and 

 steel, to be founded at Zurich under the auspices of the Inter- 

 national Society for Testing of Materials of Construction. The 

 Society was founded at a congress held at Zurich in 1895, ^^^ 

 none of the tasks which it has imposed up:)n itself are of greater 

 importance, while none present greater difficulties, than the uni- 

 fication of the methods for the chemical analysis of iron and 

 steel. Efforts have been made in several countries for some 

 years past to lay the foundations of a better knowledge of this 

 subject. But whilst to the fullest extent recognising the very 

 great value of the work already done locally, the Council of the 

 International Society decidedly believes that the work hitherto 

 done in many isolated places should be brought together in a 

 common focus where it would be classified, compared, and 

 reduced to a common standard. Such a central laboratory 

 would also have the task of following the progress of both 

 industry and science, of examining all new methods of any im- 

 portance brought forward in various quarters, of searching for 

 new methods whenever new problems were presented, and ot 

 serving as a guide to the individual chemists when they were 

 beset by the difficulties inseparable from their avocation. Ztirich 

 has been chosen as the seat of the institution ; and ample 

 accommodation has been secured in the magnificent chemical 

 laboratory of the Federal Polytechnic School. The Federal 

 Council has granted the use of these rooms, free of rent, for the 

 projected central laboratory. Hans von Jiiptner, chief chemist 

 of the Neuberg Iron and Steel Works in Austria, has been 

 appointed as the head of the laboratory. 2000/. per annum is 



