2IO 



NATURE 



[May 15, 1919 



New Siberia Islands, and Koliuehin Island. These 

 stations will co-operate with those already existing at 

 Yugor Strait, Cape Mare Sale (Yamal), and Dickson 

 Island (Yenisei). Attention is to be paid to economic 

 conditions and the possibilities of trade. 



Sir Edward Sharpey Schafer writes that the 

 remarks made in a note in Nature of May i^ p. 173, 

 with reference to his address on "The Position of 

 Physiology in Medicine " is apt to give the impression 

 that he would favour a plan of allowing the student 

 to see something of hospital work at the commence- 

 ment of his course. We regi-et the possibility of this 

 misunderstanding. The suggestion was made as an 

 attempt to remedy the admitted difficulty of convincing, 

 the student of the value of physiology. Sir Edward 

 Sharpey Schafer, on the contrary^ contends that it is 

 a positive disadvantage to give any premature attention 

 to clinical medicine and surg^ery ; and that it is not only 

 useless for understanding these subjects, but also fatal 

 to the attainment of a proper grasp of physiology, 

 which must, in the first instance, be studied, as a pure 

 science. We are glad to have the opportunity of 

 making his position clear. 



Prof. G. Elliot Smith has been elected president 

 of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. 



The ninth annual May lecture of the Institute of 

 Metals will be delivered bv Prof. 1^'. Soddy on •' Radio- 

 activity," at Caxton Hall," Caxton Street, AVestminster, 

 on Monday, May 19, at 8 p.m. 



Sir Napier Shaw has resumed the administrative 

 duties of the directorship of the Meteorological Office, 

 from which he was relieved in May of last year by 

 the appointment of Col. H. G. Lyons to be acting 

 director for the period of the war. 



In connection with the fifty-sixth annual meeting 

 of the British Pharmaceutical Conference, which is 

 to be held in London on July 21-24 inclusive, there 

 is to be a memorial lecture as a tribute to the memory 

 of the late Lt.-Col. E. F. Harrison. 



We are asked to state that, in compliance with a 

 suggestion by the Ministry of Labour, Appointments 

 Department, the library and reading-room of the 

 Society of Engineers (Incorporated), 17 Victoria Street, 

 Westminster, S.W.i, have been placed at the disposal 

 of officers at present looking out for appointments in 

 the engineering and allied professions. All such 

 officers are also cordially invited to attend the ordinary 

 meetings of the society, particulars of which may be 

 obtained on application to the secretary. 



Dr. Ferdinand G. Wiechmann died recently in New 

 York at the age of sixty. He was an instructor in 

 chemistry at Columbia University from 1883 to 1897, 

 since which time he had been mainly occupied as a 

 consulting research chemist. He was a specialist in 

 the chemistry of sugar, and had written largely on that 

 subject. 



The Smithsonian Institution at Washington has 

 announced that the studies carried on at Calama, in 

 Chile, and Mount Wilson, in California, with regard 

 to solar radiation and its effect on weather conditions 

 have proved so satisfactorv that it contemplates estab- 

 lishing three or four additional observing stations in 

 widely separated and almost cloudless regions, such as 

 Egypt India, South Africa, and Australia. It is 

 reported that the weather forecasts of the Govern- 

 ment of Argentina are now based on observations 

 made at the Calama station. 



The death is announced, in his eighty-sixth year, 

 of Prof. Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, who was pro- 

 NO. 2585, VOL. 103] 



fessor of mechanical engineering at Yale from 1884 to 

 1909. Prof. Richards was frequently called upon by 

 the American Government as an expert adviser, and 

 in 1889 was U.S. Commissioner to the Paris Exposi- 

 tion to report on all mechanical exhibits. He was 

 made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for his 

 invention of the Richards steam-engine indicator. 

 Prof. Richards edited the engineering and other 

 technical words in Webster's International Dictionary. 



By the death of Mr. G. M. Apsey on May 3 the 

 Admiralty loses one of its most faithful servants, and 

 the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors one of its best- 

 known and valued officers. A summary of Mr. 

 Apsey 's career is given in Engineering for May 9. He 

 entered Sheerness Dockyard in 1877, and became a 

 student at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in 

 1882. He was inspecting officer for torpedo-boat 

 destroyers from 1895 to 1902, and became chief con- 

 structor at Gibraltar in 1913. He also served at 

 Rosyth and Portsmouth, and joined the Department 

 of the Director of Dockyards in July, 19 16. He was 

 in his fifty-sixth year at the time of his death. 



The North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and 

 Shipbuilders is to hold a summer meeting at New- 

 castle-on-Tyne on July 9-1 1. The following papers 

 have been arranged for: — "Women's Work in En- 

 gineering and Shipbuilding during the War," the Hon. 

 Lady Parsons ; " Shipbuilding and Marine Engineer- 

 ing done on the North-East Coast during the War," 

 E. L. Orde; "Aviation during the War, and its 

 Possible Future," Lord Weir; "Dazzling of Ships," 

 Lt.-Comdr. Wilkinson; "Limits of Thermal Efficiency 

 in Diesel and other Internal-combustion Engines," Sir 

 Dugald Clerk; "Ship-repairing during the War," 

 M. C. James and L. E. Smith; "Transmission of 

 Power," G. Constantinesco ; and a lecture by Prof. 

 J. C. McLennan. 



The Home Secretary has appointed a Committee 

 to inquire and ■ report on possible improvements in 

 miners' lamps as regards safety and illumination and 

 alterations which may be desirable in the present 

 methods of testing and approving such lamps for the 

 purposes of Section 33 of the Coal Mines Act, 191 1. 

 The Committee consists of Mr. W. Walker (chair- 

 man). Prof. F. Edwin Armstrong, Mr. T. G. Davies, 

 Mr. V. Hartshorn, M.P., Mr. G. A. Mitcheson, Mr. 

 S. Roebuck, Mr. J. Wallwork, and Dr. R. V. 

 Wheeler, Director oif the Home Office Experimental 

 Station at Eskmeals. Mr. E. G. Fudge is the secre- 

 tary, and communications on the subject should be 

 addressed to him at the Home Office, Whitehall, 

 S.W.i. 



Arch^ologists will welcome the appearance in 

 L'Anthrofologie (vol. xxix., Nos. 1-2) of another 

 Instalment of L'x\bb6 H. Breuil's valuable accounts of 

 paintings in Spanish caves. He now deals with dis- 

 coveries made in 1909 in the valley of Bateucas, Sala- 

 manca. If these drawings in artistic skill fall short of 

 those already discovered at Altamira, Marsoulas,_ or 

 La Mourthe,"^ they still possess much Interest, including 

 rude figures of human beings, animals, and fish. The 

 question of the age of these paintings is still under 

 discussion, but M. Breuil remarks that it seems diffi- 

 cult to assign the Bateucas frescoes to the Neolithic 

 age in the apparen^t absence of anv monument, or 

 object in the vicinity characteristic, of that period. 



In the Quarterly Review for April Dr. R. R. Marett, 

 taking as his text Sir James Frazer's "Folk-lore in 

 the Old Testament," discusses the current modes of 

 interpreting folk-beliefs, and suggests a rnethod more 

 in accordance with the psychology of the folk. 



