October i, 1903] 



NATURE 



529 



On the invitation of the leading engineering societies of 

 the United States, it has been decided that the next autumn 

 meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute shall be held in 

 New York on October 24-26, 1904. After the meeting 

 there will be an excursion to Philadelphia, Washington, 

 Pittsburg, Cleveland, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo, return- 

 ing to New York on November 10. Arrangements will 

 also be made for a visit to the St. Louis Exhibition. 



The death is announced of Mr. John Allen Brown, who 

 was the author of numerous papers on geological and 

 anthropological subjects, and of a volume " Palaeolithic 

 Man in North-west Middlesex." 



The trials on the electric railway between Zossen and 

 Marienfeld, near Berlin, have been continued during the 

 past week, and on September 26 a speed of 118 miles an 

 hour was attained, as against 114 miles recorded last week. 



It has been decided to hold the American Conference on 

 Tuberculosis at Washington on April 4-6, 1905, and not 

 at St. Louis in 1904, as previously arranged. This course 

 has been adopted so that the American meeting shall not 

 clash with the International Congress on Tuberculosis to 

 be held in Paris next year. 



We learn from La Nature that M. Dybowski, the In- 

 spector-Geheral of Colonial Agriculture, has just been 

 appointed by the Minister of French Colonies to undertake 

 a mission to Senegal and French Guinea to study the con- 

 ditions existing in these possessions with a view to future 

 enterprise in the direction of agricultural colonisation. 



The Harben lectures for 1903 will be given under the 

 auspices of the Royal Institution of Public Health in King's 

 College, London, by Prof. Ferdinand Hueppe, of Prague, 

 on October 8, 12, and 15. The subjects for the respective 

 days are : — (i) the etiology of infectious diseases from the 

 standpoint of natural science ; (2) hygienic lessons to be 

 derived from the serum treatment ; and (3) tuberculosis. 



Two violent shocks of earthquake were felt on the night 

 of September 22 at Blidah at an interval of three seconds. 

 Th» total duration is estimated at fifteen seconds. The 

 direction was from the south-east to the north-west. A 

 slight shock lasting from four to five seconds was felt at 

 Algiers at the same time. Two earthquake shocks also 

 occurred in the Canaries on September 22, and caused cracks 

 in the walls of several houses. 



M. De La Vaulx made a balloon ascent from St. Cloud, 

 Paris, at 7 p.m. on Saturday, September 26, and reached 

 Hull at II o'clock on the following morning. The balloon 

 started with a favourable wind, and reached the Channel 

 at I a.m. on September 27, crossed it in an hour and fifty 

 minutes, and passed over the Thames at 5 a.m. almost 

 midway between Greenwich and Chatham. As the balloon 

 skirted the Wash four hours later it was evident that the 

 wind was changing. From there the voyage to the Humber 

 occupied an hour and fifty minutes. When nearing Hull 

 it was seen that the journey could not be continued without 

 danger of being blown out to sea, so a descent was made at 

 11.40 six miles north-east of Hull. 



A COMMITTEE has been appointed by the Cunard Steam- 

 ship Company to investigate the application of marine 

 turbines to steamers, with special reference to the suit- 

 ability of this class of engines for the two great vessels 

 which are to be built under the agreement with His 

 Majesty's Government. The Admiralty is represented by 

 Engineer Rear-Admiral Oram, Deputy-Engineer-in-Chief of 

 the Navy, and he will be assisted by Engineer Lieutenant 

 NO. 1770, VOL. 68] 



Wood as secretary of the committee. Sir William White, 

 late Director of Naval Construction, has also consented to 

 give his assistance. Ordinary marine engines powerful 

 enough to propel the projected Cunarders at 25 knots would 

 be so excessively heavy that the comparative lightness of 

 marine turbines would be a considerable advantage if their 

 trustworthiness could be demonstrated. The questions of 

 steam consumption and fuel economy of the turbines will 

 also be investigated. 



In a letter to the Times (September 15), Mrs. Garrett 

 Anderson, M.D., gives a valuable analysis of the data pub- 

 lished in the " Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board " 

 respecting the 1901-2 epidemic of small-pox, in order to 

 discuss the evidence there afforded upon (i) the protective 

 influence of infant vaccination and the limits of its dura- 

 tion ; (2) the necessity for systematic revaccination at school 

 age; (3) the cost to the ratepayers of the method now 

 employed. In the epidemic of 1901-2, 9659 persons were 

 admitted to the small-pox hospitals, of whom 1663 died, 

 equal to 17- 1 per cent. Disregarding all doubtful cases, in 

 1901, 264 vaccinated persons under twenty contracted small- 

 pox, of whom 175 were between fifteen and twenty, that is, 

 they had reached an age when the protective power of 

 infant vaccination is seriously weakened. In 1901 there 

 were no deaths of vaccinated children, whereas there were 

 65 deaths of unvaccinated children under ten. In 1902 there 

 were no deaths of vaccinated children, but 337 deaths of 

 unvaccinated children under seven. Among vaccinated 

 children up to fifteen years of age who contracted the 

 disease, the mortality did not exceed 17 per cent, at 

 different age periods, while among the unvaccinated it was 

 not less than 32 per cent. From fifteen to thirty years of age 

 the mortality is 48 and 304 per cent, respectively among the 

 vaccinated and unvaccinated. Even up to thirty years of 

 age the protective power of infant vaccination is, therefore, 

 still an important factor, but is evidently waning, em- 

 phasising the need for revaccination. As regards the cost 

 of the epidemic, Mrs. Anderson points out the great expense 

 the ratepayers have been put to in order to provide hospital 

 accommodation ; she estimates that- in Battersea every case 

 cost 71/. -js. id. There has to be added to this, of course, 

 the economic loss to the community of the able-bodied 

 through the sickness and death of those attacked. 



We have received from Mr. H. C. Russell No. 7 of his 

 interesting current papers. We are glad to see that the 

 number of these papers is increasing year by year. Up to 

 October, 1902, 105 notices had been recovered, and for the 

 last seven years the number of papers amounted to 703. 

 One of the bottles referred to in the last paper had a drift 

 of 292 miles a day ; it was thrown overboard in the Socotra 

 Sea on January 28, and found in the Gulf of Aden on 

 February 9, having travelled 350 miles in twelve days. 

 With one exception, this is the most rapid drift on record, 

 so far as this series of observations is concerned. The 

 pamphlet is accompanied by charts illustrating the drift of 

 the bottles. 



Symons's Meteorological Magazine for September con- 

 tains an interesting summary of the British Rainfall 

 Organisation on the occasion of the retirement of Mr. 

 Sowerby Wallis, who has been intimately connected with 

 the undertaking for more than thirty years. Most of our 

 readers are probably aware that the system was commenced 

 by the late Mr. G. J. Symons in 1859, by hunting up old 

 rainfall records and the collection of actual observations. 

 The first results were published for i860, from the records 

 of 168 stations. In ten years the number of stations 

 reached 1500, and in 1890 3000 stations. Dr. H. R. Mill, 



