412 



NATURE 



[July 19, 1917 



become like children in faith and fancy, we should 

 not expect to add much that is fundamentally new to 

 the kingdom of mathematics"; "Science is not 

 primarily a grazing country; large tracts are suitable 

 for agriculture and mining,' and so on. One very 

 remarkable discovery is referred to, namely, that the 

 Maya people of Central America had a positional 

 system of notation with various different signs for 

 zero. Wihile recogniskng «he value of scientific 

 organisation and the promotion of research. Prof. 

 Miller gives the timely warning that "the greatest 

 danger of research to-day is /that its popularity tends 

 to research hypocrisy." We may perhaps add to this 

 that a good training in mathematics is one of the 

 best preventives of hypocrisy and intellectual dis- 

 honesty of every kind. Finally, we rnay note that, in 

 the speaker's opinion, mathematics is so far abreast 

 of the time as to be ready to discuss the problems 

 arising from our new views about the constitution ot 

 the physical world. This is good hearing, because 

 Prof. Miller knows as well as any man alive the 

 difference between analysis which deals with con- 

 tinuous variables and that which is concerned with 

 discrete sets of elements. 



A LECTURE on "Chemistry in Industry" was de- 

 livered at the Roval College of Science for Ireland, Dub- 

 lin, on Tuesday, July lo, by Prof. Gilbert T. Morgan, 

 who is now conducting a summer course in " Wool 

 Dyes and Dyeing " under the auspices of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for 

 Ireland. The relation between chemistry and the 

 food-.producing industries shows how essential it is 

 to follow up every clue discovered in the laboratory in 

 the hope that ultimately the discovery may prove to 

 be of practical value. Chemistry is also intimately 

 concerned in the production of cement, glass, and 

 ceramic ware. Its services in the production of muni- 

 tions of war are even more obvious. A remarkable 

 characteristic of chemical industries is the tendency 

 for the enterprises to become merged together, so that 

 the waste products of one section become the raw- 

 material of another manufacture. It is only by en- 

 couraging this association of related industries that 

 chemical manufacture can be conducted efficiently. 

 Manufacturers of high explosives utilise their plant 

 in the production of fine chemicals. Dye^jproducers 

 drift into the manufacture of synthetic drugs and 

 photographic chemicals. 



Dr. James Moir, in a paper read before the Royal 

 Society of South Africa on " Colour and Chemical 

 Constitution," describes the colour changes produced 

 by substitution in some fifty derivatives of phenol- 

 phthafein and fluorescein. The most striking novelty 

 in the paper is the discovery that when these sub- 

 stances are dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid 

 they give a coloration which is five times as intense as 

 in alkali, and is produced by a band of lower wave- 

 length, the frequency being half as fast again in 

 sulphuric acid after allowing for a constant load due 

 to combination of sulphuric acid with the oxygen of 

 the dye. As, however, fluorescein in alkali and phenol- 

 phthalein in sulphuric acid give identical absorption 

 bands, it is suggested that there is in each case a 

 linking up of the phenolic rings, thus : — 



>CO 



yO.CeH4x /O ^ 



SO C^ 



'^O.Csh/ ^c,h/ 



Phenolphthalein in H2SO4. 



HOv 



/QW4V 

 0( >C.C«H,.CO.OK 



^' 



FTuorescein In "otash. 



NO. 2490, VOL. 99] 



The Journal of the Society of Engineers for May 

 contains an account, by Lord Headley, of the goods 

 clearing house system and machinery. It is now some 

 eight or nine years since Mr. Gattie and Mr. Seamen 

 introduced to public notice the extremely ingenious 

 system of electro-magnetic machinery for dealing with 

 heavy goods, and practical demonstrations have been 

 given with full-sized machinery at the works of the 

 New Transport Co., at Battersea. It is estimated 

 that 97 per cent, of the life of railway wagons is 

 spent standing still in sidings or shunting yards, and 

 that 0.5 per cent, only is spent in running loaded. It 

 is claimed that the goods clearing system would enable 

 80 f)er cent, of these wagons to be dispensed with. 

 Official estimates of the surplus profits of the proposed 

 London goods clearing house on its first year of work- 

 ing give a profit of 9,295,948^. on a capital outlay of 

 14,000,000/. It would appear that there are serious 

 abuses due to railway mismanagement, and it is 

 claimed that the new system would abate or do away 

 with these. In brief, the system proposed is to collect 

 all goods by motor lorries and to deliver them at one 

 building instead of at many scattered stations. On 

 arrival, the body of the lorry containing the goods is 

 hoisted off by electric cranes, another body is dropped 

 into place, and the lorry sets off immediately on another 

 journey. The goods are sorted inside the house, 

 according to their destination, by means of rnachinery, 

 consisting of endless chains of trucks electrically con- 

 trolled in such a way that goods may be picked up or 

 deposited in any portion of the house. The control 

 is effected from a central switch-board, and when the 

 proper key is depressed the goods on the truck con- 

 trolled are moved along and transferred to other trucks 

 leading to other bays on the same floor, or up escala- 

 tors to other floors. The goods are carried on trays, 

 and the trucks are fitted with roller magnets which 

 automatically transfer the trays at the proper instant. 

 There is little doubt that such a system would go far 

 to relieve the congestion in many London streets, and 

 would dispense with a large amount — if not all — of the 

 shunting operations at railway goods stations. 



It is announced that the "Dictionarv^ of National 

 Biography " has been presented to the University of 

 Oxford by the family of the late Mr. George M. 

 Smith, and will in future be published by the Oxford 

 Universitv Press. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 



The Relativity Theory and the Motion of Mer- 

 cury's Perihelion. — ^The circumstance that especially 

 attracted the attention of mathematicians to Einstein's 

 new theory of relativity was the fact that it accounted 

 for the whole excess of motk>n (43" per century) of the 

 perihelion of Mercury over that indicated by planetary 

 theory. Dr. L. Silberstein, in a paper entitled "The 

 Motion of the Perihelion of Mercury deduced from the' 

 Classical Theory of Relativity" (Montlily Notices, 

 R..A.S., April, 1917), points out that it is not necessary 

 for a relativity theory to explain the whole excess of 

 Mercury's perihelion; part of it can reasonably be 

 ascribed to the stratum of ' matter composing the 

 zodiacal light. He himself prefers the older, simpler 

 relativity theory, which he asserts to be unobjection- 

 able in its foundations, and to accord well with ob- 

 servation in the field of physics. He notes that it 

 would not indicate the bending of a ray of light in a 

 gravitational field, as Einstein's does. It is hoped 

 that this critical experiment may be made at the 

 total solar eclipse of May, 1919. 



In the classical relativity theory, as in Newtonian 

 mechanics, the rate of increase of momentum mv is 



