June i6, 1910] 



NATURE 



467 



xplored the western Italian coast, and made some observa- 

 ons further east in the southern Adriatic and off the 

 uoast of Greece. The results are of great value and 

 interest. Special attention may perhaps be directed to the 

 section of the region west of the Straits of Gibraltar made 

 between February- 20 and 28, 1909, which may be compared 

 with a similar section based on Dr. Wolfenden's observa- 

 tions made in the Silver Belle in 1904. 



In the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy of 

 Sciences of December g, 1909, Prof. W. Trabert discusses 

 the connection between the temperature conditions of the 

 atmosphere and the pressure at the surface of the earth. 

 The inquiry is based upon observations of the temperature 

 of the upper air during 1903-8 made by the aeronautical 

 observatory at Lindenberg, and on the simultaneous 

 behaviour of the barometer at the ground level. For this 

 purpose those days were selected on which the air-column 

 over Lindenberg was colder than the previous and following 

 days, and vice versa. The results show, inter alia, that 

 the barometer rises during the existence of cold air-columns ; 

 the minimum of pressure occurs generally on the day 

 before, and the maximum on the day following. With 

 warm columns of air the reverse holds good. After an 

 extreme of pressure a column of extreme temperature occurs 

 as a rule on the first or second day afterwards, viz. a 

 warm column follows a high pressure, and vice versa. 

 There is, at all events, an intimate connection between 

 temperature conditions in the free air and pressure at the 

 ground level, from which fact the author agrees with the 

 opinion generally obtaining at the present time, that " the 

 hope of meteorology lies in the upper regions." 



An extended series of tidal observations on the Pacific 

 coast was obtained by the Canadian Tidal Survey during 

 the summer of 1909, under the supervision of Dr. W. Bell 

 Dawson, the superintendent of the Survey. There were in 

 all a series of twenty recording tide-gauges in simultaneous 

 operation along the coast of British Columbia. One note- 

 worthy result obtained is that the time of high and low 

 "ater at the head of the long inlets on the coast is very 



rle later than at the mouth. For instance, at the head 

 ■i Bute inlet high water is only seven minutes later and 

 low water fourteen minutes later than at Lund, sixty-six 

 ~iles below. The range of the tide at the head of the 



her inlets is only from 2 to 12 per cent, greater than 

 at their mouth. This rapid progress of the tidal undula- 

 tion must be due to the great depth of such inlets. Where 

 the depth is so great, the whole surface of the inlet rises 

 and falls simultaneously, in correspondence with the 

 impulse at its mouth given by the rise and fall of the tide 

 in the open. It would also appear that there is little 

 current except in the mouth of the inlet, where the pulsa- 

 tion takes place. The results obtained by Dr. Dawson 

 provide valuable information upon the subject of the pro- 

 gress of the tide in ordinary shallow estuaries and in deep 

 inlets. They are in no sense, therefore, of merely local 

 interest or local application, but they illustrate the general 

 question of the rate of progress of the tide relatively to 

 the depth of the channel or inlet. 



The velocities of certain reactions between metals and 

 the halogens in solution form the subject of a paper by 

 Messrs. R. G. van Name and Graham Edgar in the current 

 number of the Zeitschrift fiir physikalische Chemie 

 (May 24). Solutions of iodine and bromine in potassium 

 iodide and bromide solution respectively were allowed to 

 react with mercury, cadmium, zinc, copper, and silver at 

 25° C. and 35° C, and the velocities of solution of the 

 metal measured. With iodine the velocity of solution was 

 NO. 2120, VOL. 83] 



found 10 be practically independent of the nature of the 

 metal. The temperature coefficient of the reaction was 

 found to be unusually low, about 1-3 for 10° rise, instead 

 of 20 generally found for reactions in homogeneous 

 systems. 



Sj'ECiai. interest attaches to a paper by the late Dr. 

 Ludwig Mond on " Some New Metallic Carbonyls," which 

 appears (with an introduction by Dr. R. L. Mond) in the 

 Journal of the Chemical Societj-. A description is given 

 of the apparatus, by means of which the action of carbonic 

 oxide on metals could be tested at temperatures up to 

 450°, and at pressures up to 500 atmospheres. An account 

 is also given of a new black cobalt carbonyl, Co(CO)3, 

 prepared b}- the decomposition of the red tetracarbonyl, 

 Co(CO)^, recently described, of a ruthenium carbonyl, of 

 which only a small quantity was obtained as an orange- 

 yellow deposit, and of a molybdenum carbonyl, Mo(CO)s, 

 forming highly refractive white crystals which sublime 

 without melting in an atmosphere of hydrogen or carbon 

 monoxide at 30° to 40°. 



Prof. H. B. Dixon's presidential address to the Chemical 

 Society, reproduced in the Society's Journal, deals with the 

 " Union of Hydrogen and Oxygen in Flames." He con- 

 siders that the explosion of the two gases is a direct 

 action, (i) because well-dried mixtures of electrolytic gas 

 always explode with a spark ; (2) because the velocity of 

 explosion in a well-dried mixture is greater than when 

 steam is added ; and (3) because the explosion-wave is 

 propagated exactly in the same way as a pressure-wave in 

 the gas. In the case of the combustion of the gases at 

 moderate temperatures, he agrees with Dr. Baker that 

 steam plays an important part in the interaction of the two 

 gases, but suggests that if once a flame is started the 

 presence of moisture is not necessary for its propagation. 

 During the combustion small amounts of hydrogen peroxide 

 are formed, which can be preserved by allowing the jet to 

 impinge on ice or on solid carbon dioxide. It has been 

 suggested that hydrogen peroxide is the first product of 

 the interaction, and this view has been supported on various 

 grounds, as, for instance, on the ground that the primary 

 interaction in a gaseous mixture must be between two 

 molecules only. For these views no sufficient support 

 appears to be forthcoming, and many of the arguments 

 used in its favour are shown to be fallacious. 



The idea first expressed by Lord Rayleigh, and after- 

 wards by Prof. Liebenow, that the high electrical resistivity 

 of allo\-s was due to thermo-electric forces set up at the 

 points of contact of the constituents of the alloys, has been 

 taken up by several physicists, but no attempts to establish 

 its truth experimentally have succeeded. In the Physik- 

 alische Zeitschrift for May 15 there is a communication 

 from Mr. K. P. Brooks which appears to prove definitely 

 that the idea is untenable. Mr. Brooks has measured the 

 resistivity at different temperatures of columns consisting 

 of a large number of thin gold and silver discs, and of 

 sticks of compressed gold and silver dust, and has found 

 that their resistivity and their temperature coefficient of 

 resistivity lie between those of their constituents, and vary 

 with composition according to the ordinary law of mixtures. 

 .Alloys of the two have, on the contrary, higher resistivities 

 and lower temperature coefficients than have their con- 

 stituents. 



In the Revue generate des Sciences of April 30 Prof. E. 

 Cohen, of the University of Utrecht, writes of what he 

 terms the " infectious diseases of metals." Under this 

 heading he describes svstematic observations on the alio- 



