I 2 



NATURE 



[June 14, 1917 



A JOINT meeting of the Society of Glass Technology 

 with the Faraday Society will be held at the Applied 

 Science Department, the University, Sheffield, on 

 Wednesday, June 20, at 3.30 p.m., when a discussion 

 will take plgce on " The Choice of Refractory Materials 

 for Use in the Glass Industry." The discussion will 

 be opened by Prof. W. G. Fearnsides, with a paper on 

 " Supplies of Refractory Materials for Use in the Glass 

 Industry." 



The council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh has 

 made the following awards of prizes : — (i) The Mak- 

 dougall-Brisbane prize to Dr. R. A. Houstoun, for his 

 series of papers on "The Absorption of Light by In- 

 organic Salts," published in the Proceedings of the 

 society ; (2) the Gunning Victoria prize to Sir Thomas 

 Muir, for his series of memoirs upon "The Theory and 

 History of Determinants and Allied Forms," pu]?lished 

 in the Transactions and Proceedings of the society 

 between the years 1872 and 1915. 



The second annual meeting of the Geological 

 Physics Society was held at the rooms of the Geo- 

 logical Society on May 25, with the president, Prof. 

 Benjamin Moore, in the chair. The following were 

 elected members of the council : — Prof. B. Moore 

 (president). Dr. G. Abbott, Dr. V. Elsden, Dr. Dawson 

 Williams, Messrs. G. W, Bulman, C. H. Grinling, 

 W. F. Gwlnnell, E. Haviland, W. H. Richardson, 

 E. K." Robinson, and'A. C. Young. Mr. H. Dayey 

 was appointed hon. secretary pro tern. A discussion 

 on "The Origin of Flints" was opened by the presi- 

 dent. 



The battle of Messines opened on June 7 at 3.10 a.m. 

 with the simultaneous explosion of nineteen large 

 mines along a front ten miles in length. The total 

 amount of explosives fired is estimated at about 450 

 tons, and one of the largest craters was afterwards 

 found to be about one hundred yards in diameter and 

 seventy feet in depth. Several people in and _ near 

 London, including the Prime Minister, are said to 

 have heard the sound, and a small movement recorded 

 by a seismograph at Shide may have been a result of 

 the explosion. The distance of London from Mes- 

 sines is about 145 miles, and that of Shide about 185 

 miles. 



Dr. F. O'B. Ellison sends us a description of a 

 curious meteorological phenomenon observed by him 

 on June i at about 5.4.:; p.m. G.M.T., on leaving St. 

 Mary's Hospital Medical School. He writes:— "The 

 western sky was covered with a sheet of cirrus of a 

 somewhat patchy appearance. The sun was shining 

 through it strongly, about 20° above the horizon. 

 There was no halo round the sun. About 20° from 

 the zenith, and with Its centre apparently at the zenith, 

 was what appeared exactly like a very bright rainbow, 

 in length a quarter of a circle, with the red on Its 

 convex border towards the sun. It was brightest when 

 I first saw it, and gradually faded, having disappeared 

 in about fifteen minutes. The bow was of unlforrn 

 brilliance, with no ' mock sun ' upon it, and was of 

 sufficiently striking aspect to attract the attention of 

 some railwaymen working near." 



A TELEGRAM from the President of the Republic of 

 Salvador to the Legation In London announces that 

 an earthquake produced by the San Salvador volcano 

 has destroyed a great part of various places in- the 

 Department of La LIbertad and some In the Depart- 

 ment of San Salvador. The capital has suffered con- 

 siderably." It is estimated that there were forty kilkd 

 and 100 Injured In Armenia and Quezaltepeque, but 

 none at San Salvador. The tekgram does not give 

 the date of the disaster, but It was known on June 7 



NO. 2485, VOL. 99] 



that the volcano of San Salvador was in eruption. The 

 city of San Salvador was founded in 1528, close to the 

 great volcano of the same name. In less than four 

 centuries it has been ruined eleven times by earth- 

 quakes, four times in the last century, namely, in 1806, 

 1815, 1854, and 1873. This recurrence of disastrous 

 earthquakes in the same limited region seems to point 

 to their volcanic origin, for great tectonic earthquakes 

 are subject to constant focal migrations. 



The death is announced, in his seventy-seventh year, 

 of Dr. Arnold Hague, ' who had been one of the 

 geologists of the U.S. Survey since 1879. He had 

 previously been connected with Clarence King's ex- 

 ploration of the 40th parallel, and with the official 

 survey of the Cordilleras of North America from the 

 Great Plains to the Sierra Nevada. In 1877-78 he 

 was Government geologist of Guatemala, and travelled 

 extensively over that country, especially in the mining 

 and volcanic districts. In 1878 he was engaged by 

 the Chinese Government to examine the gold, silver, 

 and lead mines in northern China. He was best 

 known by his work In the Yellowstone District, and 

 most notably by his investigations of the geysers in 

 connection with the extinct volcanoes. He was a 

 member of the commission appointed by the National 

 Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S. 

 Government In 1896 to prepare a plan of the national 

 forest reserves. He received honorary doctorates from 

 Aberdeen and Columbia Universities, was a vice-presi- 

 dent of several international geological congresses, 

 and In 19 10 was president of the Geological Society of 

 America. 



Lieut. Alan Gordon Harper, whose death Is an- 

 nounced at twenty-eight years of age, was educated at 

 Dulwich and at Magdalen College, Oxford, of which 

 he was a demy. In 1912 he took the honours school in 

 botany, and afterwards the diploma In rural economy. 

 For work on the effects on the timber of defoliation 

 by the caterpillar of the large larch sawfly, Namatus 

 Erichsoni, he secured the degree of B.Sc. A pre- 

 liminary report on this research was made to the 

 British Association at Dundee in 1912, the full work 

 being published in the Annals of Botany in 19 13. After 

 acting for a year as assistant in the Botanical Depart- 

 ment of the University College of North Wales, Lieut. 

 Harper returned to Oxford as demonstrator in the 

 School of Rural Economy, where he carried out a 

 research on the structure of timber as influenced by 

 pressure stimuli (Quarterly Journal of Forestry, July, 

 1914). He also worked on the protomorphic shoots of 

 PInus, publishing a paper in the same journal in April, 

 1914. The acceptance of the post of deputy professor of 

 botany in the Presidency College of Madras gave him 

 the attractive opportunity of first-hand acquaintance 

 with Indian vegetation. At the outbreak of war he 

 secured a commission In the R.F.A., and on June i 

 of this year he met an Instantaneous death on the 

 Western front. 



That Italy realises the necessity of founding spienj 

 tific laboratories Is evident from a paragraph In 

 recent number of L'Economista d'ltalia. So far 

 can be gathered, the scheme would appear to ha\ 

 been inaugurated by the " National -Scientific an^ 

 Technical Committee," which was formed last yeal 

 in Milan. At a recent meeting of the industrial sec- 

 tion of this committee (on which the leading Italian 

 manufacturers are represented) it was stated that the 

 desire of the committee was to " raise scientific labora- 

 tories to the level of similar Institutions abroad." 

 Signor RuffinI has already promised one million lire 

 (40,000!.), together with an annual donation, and the 

 warm support of the Government and of leading manu- 



