382 



NATURE 



[May 26, 1 9 10 



has become necessary to issue a report on similar lines 

 to those already sent out from other West Indian colonies. 

 The first of these, which has been sent to us, contains an 

 account of the sugar experiments which are still being 

 continued, of experiments to find more suitable types of 

 cotton than those at present in cultivation, and on 

 important food crops such as sweet potatoes, cassava, 

 eddos, and tannias. 



The March number of the Journal of the Board of Agri- 

 culture contains an article by Mr. A. D. Hall summarising 

 the results of trials at Rothamsted on the new nitrogenous 

 fertilisers, cyanamide and calcium nitrate (" nitrate of 

 lime "). Both proved equally as effective as sulphate 

 of ammonia and nitrate of soda in increasing the yield of 

 grain, but the nitrates were perhaps the better for straw 

 production. Sulphate of ammonia and cyanamide gave 

 somewhat less offal corn than the nitrates — 10 per cent, 

 of the total, against 13 per cent. — but the differences 

 throughout are so small that they may be disregarded. 

 The choice between the manures will therefore be dictated 

 by their relative price and by the character of the soil. 



The results of the experiments carried out by the 

 scientific staff of the Royal Agricultural College, Ciren- 

 cester, have hitherto appeared in the Agricultural Students' 

 Gazette, but it has now been decided to publish them in 

 a separate journal, the first issue of which has reached us. 

 Summaries are given by Prof. Kinch of the experiments 

 on grass land carried on continuously since 1888, the 

 general result being that nitrogenous and phosphatic 

 manures are particularly necessary, and the addition of 

 potassium salts desirable, over a long series like the 

 present. The cereal experiments (barley from 1885-91, 

 oats from 1894-5) ^""e also described, together with others 

 that have gone on for a shorter period. A meteorological 

 summary would add to the interest of these papers. Whilst 

 there are many advantages in separate college bulletins for 

 the publication of demonstration results, we hope that all 

 papers of general interest bringing out new facts will 

 appear in the recognised journals, where there is no risk 

 of them being overlooked. 



In the Bulletin of the Cracow Academy, 1909 (June and 

 November), Dr. Maryan Smoluchowski discusses the 

 instability or " buckling " of elastic plates and its applica- 

 tions to problems of mountain formation. 



In the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ixxiii., 

 I (1910), Mr. G. Udny Yule gives a solution, based on 

 probability considerations, of the problem of the distribu- 

 tion of deaths with age, based on the supposition of a 

 succession of causes of death which act cumulatively, and he 

 considers applications to deaths in man caused by disease 

 and to the extinction of bacteria by successive applications 

 of disinfectants. 



and Ideler, and the present list evidently represents purely 

 typographical errors which escaped notice, and which would 

 probably in most cases be obvious to anyone who happened 

 to take these particular logarithms from the tables. 



The assessment of income-tax is a question which does 

 not, as a rule, fall within the purview of a scientific 

 journal. We have, however, received a reprint from the 

 Daily Telegraph of an article on this subject by Mr. 

 William Schooling (London : Constable and Co., 1910), in 

 which the author proposes a substitute for the present 

 illogical and unscientific system of graduation. .-Xccording 

 to his system, the tax which a man pays would increase 

 continuously with his income, as shown by a continuous 

 graph. Under the existing system the tax increases dis- 

 continuously at certain points where the rate becomes 

 infinity in the pound, and the amount of the tax depends, 

 not only on a man's income, but on whether this income 

 falls on a lucky number such as 4999 or on an unlucky 

 number such as 5001, the man in the latter case paying 

 more and receiving less than in the former. Mr. School- 

 ing's system is much more rational and scientific, and 

 has all the advantages which he claims for it. 



The illustrated catalogue of microscopes and accessories 

 recently issued by Messrs. Flatters and Garnett, 32 Dover 

 Street, Manchester, provides a very full list of apparatus 

 by leading English and foreign makers for which they 

 act as agents, and numerous sundries, some of which are 

 the special designs of the firm. Among these are the hand 

 microtomes provided with discs, for regulating the thick- 

 ness of sections and arrangements for keeping the paraffin 

 blocks steady. The firm also specialises in turn-tables, 

 water-baths and ovens, and slide cabinets. 



We have received separate copies of several contribu- 

 tions from the Jefferson Physical Laboratory of Harvard 

 University which appeared in the March number of the 

 Proceedings of the American Academy of .Arts and Sciences. 

 Amongst them is one on certain thermal properties of 

 steam by Mr. H. N. Davis, in which the author, after a 

 critical examination of the experimental work on the sub- 

 ject done during the last twenty years, comes to the 

 conclusion that the total heat of saturated steam up to 

 190° C. is best represented by the expression 



H = H, 00- + 0-3745 (' - 100) - 0-00099 U - 100)-, 

 where Hj^o^ has the most probable value 639-11. Outside 

 this range of temperature the latent heat L is best given 

 by an equation of the form suggested by Thiesen, i.e. 

 L = 92-93(365 -<)"'^*■^ in which 365° is the critical tempera- 

 ture of steam. The question of the true value of the 

 specific heat of steam at constant pressure cannot be 

 settled on the contradictory, experimental data at present 

 available. 



In the Popular Science Monthly for March and May 

 Prof. John B. Smith gives an address on " Insects and 

 Entomologists : their Relations to the Community at 

 Large." While the first article deals with insects in their 

 economical aspect, the second consists of a collection of 

 biographical notices, with portraits of the principal 

 entomologists of America. 



Dr. Jean Mascart, of the Paris Observatory, has issued 

 a list of errata which he has discovered in Borda's classical 

 tables of logarithms. It is interesting to note that the 

 tables were completed by Borda by the year 1792, but 

 were not all. in print at the time of the author's death. 

 The publication was concluded by Delambre, who carefully 

 checked them with the help of BriggP, Ylacq, Y6ga, Hobert, 

 NO. 2 II 7, VOL. 83] 



Messrs. A. Gallenkamp and Co. (19 and 21 Sun Street, 

 E.C.) have just issued a circular containing a description 

 of a technical series of physical apparatus. The majority 

 of the items described are connected with the subject of 

 heat, and relate to the determination of coefficients of 

 expansions of solids, liquids, and gases, vapour pressures, 

 and specific heats. A simple apparatus tor the rapid 

 determination of specific heats consists of a Dewar flask 

 which contains a hot liquid ; into this the cold body under 

 test is dropped, and the fall of temperature is noted; the 

 procedure is therefore the converse of that usually adopted 

 in the method of mixtures. The use of the Dewar flasl< 

 enables this to be done without sensible error. A lecture 

 apparatus to illustrate Carre's ice machine is designed tc 



