250 



NATURE 



[May 29, 1919 



had a number of wireless telegraphy stations in close 

 proximity, interference with each other would 

 have made an efficient service quite impossible. 

 That was a thing of the past. There was no reason 

 why there should not be wireless telegraph and wire- 

 less telephone services between all the principal 

 centres throughout this country. London could talk 

 to Manchester or Edinburgh or Dublin without any 

 possible danger of interfering with any other station, 

 and those messages could not be overheard by any 

 other station. In telegraphing and telephoning, the 

 same thing exactly applied. Mr. Isaacs regarded that 

 as an epoch-making invention. He thought a very 

 great service would be done if wireless telegraph and 

 wireless telephone services were constructed as 

 auxiliaries to land-lines. Wireless to-day could do 

 150 words per minute simplex and 300 words a minute 

 duplex. It would require but a very small mechanical 

 improvement to double and quadruple that number of 

 words transmitted by wireless. Mr. Isaacs "was 

 quite satisfied that, so soon as wireless traffic needed 

 the greater speed of transmission, mechanical im- 

 provement would be introduced, and they would get 

 something in the neighbourhood of 600 words per 

 minute. 



'Mr. Vaoghan Nash and Sir T. H. Middleton have 

 been appointed Commissioners under the Development 

 and Road Improvement Funds Acts. 



Sir Albert Stanley has, on account of ill-health,- 

 tendered his resignation as President of the Board of 

 Trade, and Sir Auckland Geddes has been appointed 

 as his successor. 



The appointment of the Ray Lankester investigator 

 having been suspended during the war, the following 

 have now been appointed, beginning or expected to 

 begin work at the Plymouth Marine Biological 

 Laboratory on the dates named : — Mr. L. R. Craw- 

 shay, March I (Porifera) ; Mr. H. M. Fox, June 21 

 (marine insects) ; Mrs. Redman King, July 3 

 (Echinus) ; and Prof. W. Garstang (Ascidians). 



The Ipswich Field Club has lately investigated two 

 of the tumuli on Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, and 

 proved them to belong to the Bronze age. Mr. J. 

 Reid Moir, who superintended the work, gave an 

 account of the results to a meeting held on the spot on 

 May \^. He showed the remains of a very thin bronze 

 bowl, which seemed to be partly covered with a 

 material like linen in a good state of preservation. 

 It contained incinerated human bones, part of a bone 

 comb, a bead, and other fragments apparently of orna- 

 ment. Traces of hearths were distinct in the larger 

 mound examined. 



The Board of Agriculture and the Road Board have 

 appointed a joint sub-committee to arrange for ex- 

 periments to be carried out to ascertain whether there 

 is any foundation for the allegation that tar-treated 

 roads are a source of danger to fisheries ; if so, to 

 what extent ; and what measures can be taken to 

 minimise or obviate the possible danger. The sub- 

 committee consists of : — Dr. Jee, Chemical Adviser to 

 the Board of Agriculture ; Dr. Hammond Smith, 

 Scientific Adviser to the Salmon and Trout Associa- 

 tion ; Mr. W. J. A. Butterfield, Consulting Analytical 

 Chemist to the Road Board; and Mr. W! J. Taylor, 

 County Surveyor of Hampshire. 



Ix a recent issue of the Fishing Gazette (April 5) 

 Mr. W. J. A. Butterfield discusses the question of the 

 poisoning of fish bv road-washings. As regards tarred 

 roads, it is noted that the constituents of coal-tar 

 most directly injurious to fish are the phenols. These 



NO. 2587, VOL. 103] 



may be present to the extent of 3 per cent, in tar for 

 road use, though generally the proportion is much less. 

 Water dissolves out a little of the phenols, and such 

 contaminated water draining into rivers may, no doubt, 

 under particular conditions, be deleterious to fish, 

 althoug-h exp>eriments have shown that, so long as the 

 prof)ortion of phenol is not more than 0.25 in 100,000, 

 the water is perfectly safe. Considerable pollution is 

 possible where the river runs through a valley and is 

 crossed by the road, so that drainage from the inclines 

 on either side flows into the river. The periods when 

 a tarred road is likelv to be most danirerous to fish 

 life are (i) when the tarring is quite fresh and 

 followed by heavy rainfall, which washes away some 

 of the tar before it has set; and (2) when the coating 

 of tar is broken up by wear-and-tear, so that rain can 

 percolate freely through it. A tarred surface "scari- 

 fied " preparatory to remaking may be very dangerous 

 to fish, and care should be taken that the material 

 removed is not left lying where rain-washings from it 

 will enter fishing waters. Oil-droppings from motor 

 traffic are, speaking broadly, unlikely to be directlv 

 mischievous, but indirectly they may be injurious 

 through destruction of insect life, on which the fish 

 depvend for their food supply. 



Dr. George Ferdinand Becker, who was on the 

 staff of the United States Geological Survey since 1879, 

 died on April 20 in Washington, at the age of seventy- 

 two. His name will always be associated with tne 

 days when the survey, by the liberality and the wide 

 distribution of its publications, began to make itsdf 

 known throughout the scientific world. Becker's work 

 was mostly devoted to the geology of important mineral 

 deposits, and he showed ap^ain and again how mining 

 development assisted in the understanding of the rela- 

 tions of rock-masses in the crust. His monograph on 

 "The Geology of the Comstock Lode," published in 

 1882, directed attention, at a comparatively early date, 

 to the importance of the study of thin rock-slices with 

 the microscope, and its beautiful series of illustrations ^ 

 followed only three years after those issued by Fouqu^ W- 

 and Levy in their famous " Mineralogie micro- 

 graphique." The width of rangfe in Becker's work is 

 further illustrated by his bulletin on " Schistosity and 

 Slaty Cleavage" (1904), in which he urged that rock- 

 cleavage is due to a weakening of cohesion, antecedent 

 to rupture, on planes of maximum slide, supporting 

 his thesis by experiments on natural clays. 



By the death of Mr. Richard H. Curtis on May 21 

 meteorology has lost one who took a keen interest 

 in its various branches for more than half a century. 

 Mr. Curtis entered the Meteorological Department of 

 the Board of Trade under Admiral FitzRoy in 1861. 

 For a long time he prepared for the Press the results 

 of the work of observatories, and in 1907 he became 

 superintendent of the instruments and observatories 

 division of the Office. For manv years Mr. Curtis 

 lived at Warlingham, Surrey. He retired from the 

 Meteorological Office in 1912 at the age of sixty-five, 

 but continued to supply anemometric records to the 

 Office and rainfall records to Symons's Meteorological 

 Magazine unti\ a few months ago. He was a fellow of 

 the Royal Meteorological Society, and served on the 

 council for several years. Mr. Curtis contributed 

 many papers to the society's Journal on various sub- 

 jects, and especially on sunshine and wind-force. He 

 introduced an imorovement in the mounting for the 

 lens and bowl of the Campbell-Stokes sunshine re- 

 corder, and carried out interesting experiments on the 

 distribution of wind-pressure upon flat surfaces. He 

 also aided in working up the atmospheric effects of 

 the Krakatoa eruption of August, 1883, the results 

 of which were incorporated in the report by the Royal 

 Societv. 



