552 



NATURE 



[October 8, 1903 



An influentially signed memorial on the subject of the 

 improvement of agriculture was recently sent to the Govern- 

 ment of Bombay, and is summarised in the Pioneer Mail. 

 The memorialists propose that two botanic gardens should 

 be established, one at Poona and one near Bombay, the 

 former as the centre of investigation for the Deccan, and 

 the latter for the Konkan and Gujarat. Each garden should 

 be provided with a herbarium and with chemical and 

 botanical laboratories, and to each should be attached a 

 farm for agricultural and horticultural experiments. It is 

 suggested that the scientific staff might be one chief 

 botanist, one assistant botanist for Poona, one assistant 

 botanist for Bombay, one chemist, one entomologist, and 

 one mycologist. It is also suggested that the number of 

 the experiment stations should be increased and the scope of 

 the experiments extended ; that local bodies should be 

 encouraged by grants in aid to conduct experiments on lines 

 prescribed by the department ; that publicity should be given 

 to the work of the department, and results of practical 

 interest should be communicated through leaflets printed 

 in the vernacular ; that further measures for the improve- 

 ment of agricultural stock should be taken by the State ; 

 and that the Forest Department should be invited to co- 

 operate with the Agricultural Department in the work of 

 experimenting with products likely to succeed in forest 

 areas. 



The method of scientific investigation by observation and 

 experiment was touched upon by Mr. Sidney Lee at the 

 Working Men's College on Saturday last, in the course of a 

 lecture on Bacon, who advocated and inaugurated the 

 revival of experimental philosophy. Bacon's main anxiety, 

 said Mr. Lee, was to see research in every branch of science 

 adequately endowed and equipped, and in his " New 

 Atlantis " he planned in somewhat fanciful language a 

 great palace of invention, a great temple of science, where 

 the pursuit of knowledge in all its phases was to be 

 organised on principles of the highest efficiency. Whether 

 a temple of science on the scale that Bacon imagined it 

 would ever come into existence remained to be seen. At 

 present the portents were not favourable for its emergence 

 in this country. It seemed more likely to come first to 

 birth in Germany or in America, where things of the mind 

 received from the general public a consideration which was 

 denied them here. The experience of a recent visit to America 

 showed Mr. Lee that there was nothing here to compare 

 with the widespread eagerness arhong the youth of the 

 United States to enjoy academic scientific training. 

 England's prestige owed very much to the triumphs won 

 by men who were Bacon's disciples in methods of scientific 

 research, many of whom stood indebted to ancient 

 educational benefactors. Bacon was well alive to the means 

 whereby a nation's intellectual prestige could best be 

 sustained. He argued that for a nation to apply a sub- 

 stantial part of its material resources to the equipment of 

 scientific work and exploration, a share of its resources 



which should 



grow greater with the growth of population 



and the increasing complexity of knowledge, was the surest 

 guarantee of national glory and prosperity. 



In tke report of observations made at the Bombay 

 Government Observatory in the years 1900 and 1901, a 

 feature which differentiates it from the reports of previous 

 years is the prominence given to records obtained from 

 seismographs. In the previous report a series of seismo- 

 grams and a register of disturbances obtained from a Milne 

 seismograph were given. These are now supplemented by 

 similar information derived from a pair of heavy horizontal 

 pendulums, which record with ink on a metal cylinder, and 

 NO. I 77 I, VOL. 68] 



which have a sensibility for tilting three or four times that 

 of the Milne apparatus. The chief differences in the records 

 obtained from these two types of instruments are the ratios 

 of the recorded amplitudes. These differ so widely that il 

 may be inferred that " the dominant feature of the move- 

 ments in the majority of disturbances does not indicate 

 tilt." We are not told, however, whether the free periods 

 of the three horizontal pendulums are identical or different. 



M. E. EsTANAVE contributes to the Journal de Physique 

 a list of the theses in mathematical and experimental 

 physics presented for the doctorate of science in French 

 universities during the nineteenth century. 



Mr. p. E. Jourdain contributes a note on Gauss's prin- 

 ciple of least constraint to the Mathematical Gazette, and 

 a general theorem on the transfinite cardinal numbers of 

 aggregates of functions to the Philosophical Magazine for 

 September. 



A COMPARISON of Maxwell's theory with the older and 

 newer theories of electromagnetism is given by Mr. Emil 

 Cohn in the Physikalische Zeitschrift for September. It is 

 pointed out among other conclusions that Maxwell's theory 

 accounts in the simplest way for those phenomena which 

 it is competent to explain. 



In a note contributed to the Lombardy Rendiconti, Prof. 

 M. Cantone discusses the question whether the elastic con- 

 stants of a substance are affected by the surrounding 

 medium. The results obtained negative the idea of any 

 such connection. In determining the torsional rigidity of 

 platinum and caoutchouc filaments, the immersion of the 

 filament in water produced no deviation in the torsion 

 balance. 



In the Proceedings of the Physical Society, Dr. G. J. 

 Parks describes some experiments on the thickness of the 

 liquid film formed by condensation on the surface of the 

 solid. In the case of cotton silicate, it was found by weigh- 

 ing the material before and after condensation that the 

 thickness of the film came out to be about 13-4 X 10- ° of a 

 centimetre, and when the film had reached this thickness 

 no heating was produced on immersing the silicate in 

 water. 



The Journal of the Western Society of Engineers con- 

 tains a description of the latest experiments in aerial gliding 

 by Mr. Wilbur Wright. A noticeable feature of these 

 "experiments is that the machine sustained as much as 165 lb. 

 to the horse-power as contrasted with 28 in Mr. Maxim's 

 machine and 31 in Prof. Langley's model of 1896. Further- 

 more, while Mr. Chanute's best experiments in 1896 gave 

 angles of descent< of 7^ to 11 degrees, Mr. Wright has 

 succeeded in gliding at angles of 6 to 7 degrees, and even, 

 in one case, at as low an angle as 5 degrees. 



In the Rivista d'ltalia, Mr. Italo Giglioli, director of 

 the agricultural station at Rome, deals with certain agri- 

 cultural questions affecting the south of Italy. After re- 

 viewing the principal vegetable products now produced by 

 Italy the author suggests, as possible outlets for fresh 

 enterprise, the cultivation of (i) the camphor plant (Laurus 

 camphora) ; (2) the insecticide Pyrethrum cinerariaefolium ; 

 and (3) the india-rubber plant (Ficus elastica). The author 

 sees no reason why the production of india-rubber in Italy 

 should not be a success. 



Prof. Alessandro Volta, in a note appended to a paper 

 in the Lombardy Rendiconti, directs attention to an un- 

 published manuscript of Volta in which it is stated that 

 negative electricity is dissipated with three times the facility 

 of positive electricity. It thus appears that the difference 



