July 30, 1903] 



NATURE 



301 



electrochemistry are therefore cheap and accessible power, 

 experimentation on a semi-industrial scale, men with heads 

 full of ideas and inventiveness in applying them to the 

 industrial needs of the country, more research companies 

 and a further cultivation of the beneficent results of our 

 society meetings. 



By thus doing, cheap raw materials will be converted by 

 the electrochemist into valuable products with constantly 

 increasing ease and constantly decreasing cost, and thus 

 electrochemistry will achieve its great raison d'etre by 

 increasingly ministering to the needs, the comforts and the 

 pleasures of life, and thus it will become an increasingly 

 important factor in social progress. 



No modern science can progress if it adopts the mediaeval 

 practice of the alchemists, and carefully guards its wisdom 

 for the exclusive use of the initiated. Widespread dis- 

 semination of the literature of our science, not only among 

 our own fraternity, but among educated people in general, 

 and even down to the rising generation of expectant men of 

 science, is as necessary to our progress as is the recruit- 

 ing of the human family to the preservation of the race. 



The literature of our science consists of transactions, 

 journals, treatises, monographs and text-books. Without 

 these, and without the constant extension, improvement 

 and dissemination of the same, our science would soon be 

 dead indeed. 



The transactions of our societies are the standing record 

 of papers and discussions presented at our meetings. The 

 contents represent the labours of many heads and hands, 

 and the opinions of many minds. As such, they form a 

 permanent record of the latest advances and the best 

 thought in electrochemical lines. They are the reservoirs 

 of information from which the other literature of the 

 science, such as treatises and monographs, is largely com- 

 piled. They are of particular value to people who cannot 

 personally attend the meetings which they report. Their 

 value is augmented by being quickly printed and dis- 

 tributed, and the publication committees having that task 

 in their charge should receive the cooperation of all authors 

 in their efforts to prevent the transactions from becoming 

 ancient history before they are issued. We may be pardoned 

 referring with a little pride to the fact that the report of 

 our Niagara meeting was distributed seven weeks from 

 the close of the meeting, and that 25 per cent, of the papers 

 presented at this, our most notable New York meeting, 

 were in print before the meeting began. 



The increasing membership of our societies, and the 

 placing of such transactions in scientific and public 

 libraries, are potent means towards interesting and instruct- 

 ing the world in electrochemistry, and recruiting the army 

 of electrochemical workers. 



Our text-books, intended to give beginners their first 

 ideas of electrochemistry, should be most carefully written. 

 Nothing sticks so permanently in the mind as a correct 

 idea taken in youth from a good text-book — except an 

 incorrect idea taken from a bad one, and I think that the 

 latter often sticks the hardest. It used to be remarked 

 that every professor elected to a chair of mineralogy in 

 Europe felt himself expected to write a treatise on crystal- 

 lography — and he generally wrote it ; it is, of course, an 

 exaggeration to say that every privat-docent elected to 

 lecture on electrochemistry writes a text-book on the 

 elements of the science, but it is an exaggeration with a 

 grain of truth in it. There are entirely too many imperfect 

 or partisan or downright execrable text-books of this kind ; 

 one good one, written by a master, is worth more than all 

 of these poor ones put together. Electrochemistry should 

 also be better presented in the elementary text-books of 

 chemistry and electricity. The interrelation of these sub- 

 jects is so intimate that the fundamentals of either neces- 

 sarily include some of the fundamentals of the other, and 

 beginners are wonderfully apt at comprehending the 

 essential fundamental facts if they are skilfully presented. 

 I recall to mind a very complete modern text-book of in- 

 organic chemistry, written by a splendidly-informed 

 chemist, in which the electrochemical part was turned over 

 to an assistant, and, as a consequence, abounds in mis- 

 statements. We cannot afford to have our students started 

 wrongly, and it is therefore of the highest importance that 

 our text-books, while being as brief as is necessary, should 

 be as accurate as is possible. 



NO. 1 76 1, VOL. 68] 



NOTES. 



The monument which was unveiled last month at Bonn,, 

 in honour of Prof. Kekul6, stands away from the city and 

 just in front of the building of the chemical laboratories 

 of the University of Bonn, the place in which Kekul6 

 laboured and taught for so many years and with such 

 pronounced and conspicuous success. The statue stands 

 on a granite pedestal, and is life-size and of bronze. On 

 each side of the sculptured figure of Kekul6 is a sphynx. 

 The character of the man, simple and unpretentious, yet 

 convincing, is well brought out, and some of his greatest 

 scientific achievements are clearly represented in relief on 

 the pedestal. At the unveiling ceremony many universi- 

 ties and scientific bodies, foreign as well as German, were 

 represented, and so also were numerous firms engaged iiv 

 the chemical industry. 



The third International Mathematical Congress has been- 

 arranged to take place in Heidelberg on August 8-13 of 

 next year. The congress will be divided into six sections, 

 dealing respectively with arithmetic and algebra, analysis, 

 geometry, applied mathematics, history of mathematics, and: 

 paedagogics. In addition to the business and sectionat 

 meetings, there will be conversaziones, a banquet, and an. 

 excursion up the Neckar, and illumination of the Castle. 

 The year 1904 is the centenary of the birth of C. G. J. 

 Jacobi, and the occasion will be celebrated in connection! 

 with the congress by the publication of a memorial volume 

 on Jacobi under the authorship of Prof. Konigsberger. The 

 secretarial work of the congress is in the hands of Prof. 

 A. Krazer, of Carlsruhe. 



The Anthropological Institute announces that Prof. Karl 

 Pearson, F.R.S., has accepted its invitation to deliver the 

 annual Huxley memorial lecture this year. The lecture 

 will be delivered on Friday, October 16, at 8.30 p.m., in 

 the lecture theatre of Burlington House. Prof. Pearson has 

 chosen for his subject, " On the Inheritance in Man of 

 Moral and Mental Characters, and its Relation to the In- 

 heritance of Physical Characters." 



A Reuter message from Strassburg states that the second 

 International Seismological Conference, the object of which 

 is to found an association for the study of seismological 

 phenomena in countries interested in the question, was 

 opened there on July 24. Twenty States were represented. 

 The Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, who is patron of 

 the conference, welcomed the delegates in the name of the 

 German Empire. 



The Government has appointed Captain Harry Mackay, 

 a Dundee whaling master, to the command of the Discovery 

 relief expedition. The relief ship Terra Nova will be 

 manned by an entirely civilian crew, chiefly whalemen. 

 The ship is expected to be ready for sea in about a month, 

 and it has been decided, instead of making a long passage 

 round the Cape, to proceed by the Suez Canal. Arrange- 

 ments will be made to ensure that, after passing Gibraltar, 

 the Terra Nova will be towed by fast vessels of the Royal 

 Navy attached to the Mediterranean and East India 

 stations. The' relief ship will proceed to Hobart, where 

 she will be joined by the Morning. 



The bust of the late Sir William Flower, prepared for 

 the Flower Memorial Committee by Mr. Thomas Brock, 

 was formally presented to the trustees of the British 

 Museum, at the Natural History Museum, on Saturday last. 

 Dr. P. L. Sclater gave an address in the name of, and on 

 behalf of, the 185 subscribers to the fund. 



