November 28, 1895] 



NATURE 



79 



.the grass was literally burnt off the earth, and the mortality 

 among stock was great. The railway trains carried supplies of 

 ■water from lakes and rivers to all stricken points along the lines, 

 selling it at the rate of twenty-five cents a thousand gallons. 

 The water supply of many towns entirely failed, the incon- 

 venience experienced was acute everywhere, and many agri- 

 culturists were ruined. 



" All through our own South the drought has been remarkable 

 in its length, and some odd situations have occurred. In Ken- 

 tucky the beds of many streams that have never before been dry 

 are now full of dust, the mud having become baked hard, and then 

 broken by the wind. At Uniontown, Kentucky, the Ohio was so 

 low that an old coal vein under the river-bed was worked, and 

 thousands of bushels of coal were taken out. In many places 

 along the Ohio, Mississippi, and other streams, old wrecks have 

 Ijeen uncovered by the lowering of the water, and the residents 

 along the banks have recovered lots of more or less valuable cargo 

 and junk. At Milton, Kentucky, there is a large sandbar on 

 M hich many a barge of coal has struck and foundered. This bar 

 was entirely uncovered recently, and the people living near by 

 went to work with ordinary field ploughs and turned up tons of 

 coal. In Maine and other eastern States the drought has been 

 severe. The ice crop promises to Vie short, because lots of lands 

 have gone almost dry, and there is no water to freeze. These 

 general conditions have existed all over the continent, and in the 

 north-west the situation is as bad as in the east and south." 



987654321. It may be of intere.st to p<iint out that this is not 

 an isolated numerical curiosity, but is, I find, one of a group of 

 similar curiosities which are included in the following easily 

 proved theorem. 



If the number formed by writing down in ascending order 

 beginning with unity the first n digits of any scale whose radix 

 is r be multiplied by r- 2, and n be added to the product, the 

 result is equal to the number formed by writing down in 

 descending order the last n digits of the scale beginning with 

 the last. William Lucas. 



/ = ZP^ 



r- ( 24 T - To _ (T - T,.)^ I 



\ 27 3T, -"2T0 - T (T, - To)2 / • 



If the " Law of Diameters" were consistent with the equation 

 of state, the formula; would be the same. G. Barker. 



Schiedam, Holland, October. 



"L'Arithmetique Amusante." 



Jn the review of the above book (Nature, November 7), 

 mention is made of the curious fact that 8x123456789-1-9 = 



NO. 1 36 1, VOL. 53] 



The Pressure of a Saturated Vapour as an Explicit 

 Function of the Temperature. 



. I.N Nature (October 24), Mr. Donnan observed that the 

 "Law of Diameters" in c<imbination with any equation of 

 state, such as Van der Waal's, which applies to the region of 

 coexistence of liquid and vapour, supplies an (empirical) ex- 

 pression for the maximum pressure of a vapour at any tempera- 

 ture T in the form of an explicit function of this temperature and 

 (:nown constants. 



Led by the same thought, I have found the equation for the 

 vapour tension. 



The " Law of Diameters," in combination with the law of 

 Maxwell-Clausius and the equations : 



C1 + C2+ C = 3C< 



{^^ = density of the liquid, Ci = density of vapour, C = density 

 lying between fj and C2 (labile state)} 

 gives me 



._ JT-To)^Wo tJ 

 ^ - ^ 3T. - 4T0 



T T,, 

 .^,To = temperature, at which the tension of vapour is nil.} 

 T< = critical temperature. 

 The method of Mr. Donnan gives : 

 T 



Metallic Resistance and Radiation. 



A RESULT published by Dr. Aschkinass, to the effect that 

 the electrical resistance of thin metallic sheets like tinfoil is 

 affected by the impact of radiation (electric waves), is often 

 quoted ; but, so far as I know, it has not been confirmed. My 

 own experience tends to disprove it ; but if any one has succeeded 

 in confirming it, perhaps they would give us the benefit of the 

 information. It is easy, of course, to get spurious effects with 

 bad joints, in accordance with the discovery of Branly ; and I 

 See in your "Notes" (p. 60) to-day, that a Japanese experi- 

 menter, Mr. Mizuno, is of the same opinion. 



November 22. Oliver J. Lodge, 



Mr. Lucas's theorem is quite correct : the cases for ; = 10 

 have been given by E. Lucas in his " Theorie des Nombres," i. 

 p. 28, as well as (if I remember rightly) in the " Arithmetique 

 Amusante." M. E. Lucas was probably acquainted with the 

 general theorem ; whether he published it, or whether it has 

 ever been published, I cannot say. ('■. B. Mathews. 



Upper Bangor, November 19. 



The Society of Medical Phonographers. 



The addtess of Dr. Gowers on " the art of writing in 

 relation to medical and scientific work," delivered to the Society 

 of Medical Phonographers, which was mentioned in your issue 

 of August 8, and was published in the British Meiiical Journal 

 for October 7, has been reprinted by the Society. There are a 

 few spare copies, and any scientific worker, who is interested in 

 the subject, can obtain one by sending a penny stamp to Mr. 

 Wm. Holmes, printer. Diversion. 



It may be of interest to state that the number of members of 

 the Society is now 202. I shall be glad to know the name of 

 any scientific worker who uses shorthand. 



James Neil, Hon. Sec. 



Warneford Asylum, Oxford, November 22. 



THE RO YAL COMMISSION ON SECONDAR Y 

 EDUCATION. 



IT would be difificult to produce a document more 

 typically English than this Report, dated .August 13, 

 1895, of the Royal Commission appointed on March 2, 

 1894, " to consider what are the best methods of establish- 

 ing a well-organised system of secondary education in 

 England, taking into account existing deficiencies, and 

 having regard to such local sources of revenue, from 

 endowment or otherwise, as are available, or may be 

 made available, for this purpose, and to make recom- 

 mendations accordingly." 



That our country does not possess even an approach 

 to a system, let alone a well-organised system, of 

 secondary education, is in itself a sufficiently remarkable 

 circumstance ; but some may think it even more remark- 

 able that, having recognised this, a task so difficult as that 

 before the Royal Commissioners should have been 

 entrusted so recently as last year to persons who, how- 

 ever worthy individually, as a body but very imperfectly 

 represent the vast interests involved in such an enquiry. 

 More than a quarter of a century has now elapsed since 

 the publication of the report of the Schools Enquiry 

 Commission appointed in 1864, and in the interval science 

 has not only advanced with giant strides, but has also 

 been applied to industrial purposes to an extraordinary 

 extent, with the result that a revolution has taken place 

 affecting not only all our actions, but our very modes of 

 thought also, and requiring us to take cognisance of many 

 entirely novel conceptions and considerations. Mean- 

 while also, our national prosperity has received a most 

 severe check through the competition of those who have 

 been quicker than ourselves to avail themselves of scien- 

 tific discoveries and methods of working ; and the 

 probability is great that such competition will rapidly 

 increase in severity and become unbearable unless we, as 

 Huxley said, " organise victory " — to do which, however, 

 we must march very fast, as we have both to overtake 

 those who are already far ahead of us, as well as go 

 quickly when we come up with them. It was therefore 

 imperative that in considering the organisation of 



