250 



NATURE 



[May i8, 1916 



THE "SUMMER TIME" BILL. 



'pHE main provisions of the "Summer Time" Bill, 

 •*■ which was introduced in the House of Commons 

 on May 9 by the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert 

 Samuel, and was read a second time in the House of 

 Lords on May 16, are as follows : — 



(i) During a prescribed period the local time in 

 Great Britain is to be one hour in advance of Green- 

 wich mean time. 



(2) The prescribed period this year is from two 

 o'clock in the morning Greenwich mean time on Sun- 

 day, the twenty-first day of May, until two o'clock in 

 the morning Greenwich mean time on Sunday, the 

 first day of October, and during the continuance of 

 the present war the Act can be declared by Order in 

 Council to be in force for any prescribed period. 



(3) During the prescribed period any expression of 

 time in any Act of Parliament, Order in Council, 

 order, regulation, rule, or by-law, or in any deed, 

 time-table, notice, advertisement, or other document, 

 is to mean "Summer Time." 



(4) The Act is to apply to Ireland as to Great Britain, 

 with the substitution, however, of references to Dublin 

 mean time for references to Greenwich mean time. 



(5) Greenwich mean time is to be maintained as 

 hitherto, for purposes of astronomy or navigation. 



No particular time is prescribed for meteorologists, 

 who are left to decide for themselves whether to record 

 their observations at the same hour G.M.T. through- 

 out the year, or to adopt the Summer Time for five 

 months and G.M.T. for the remainder. A like diflfi- 

 culty arises with self-registerinsr meteorological instru- 

 ments, which are used to record continuously day and 

 night. Either the instruments are to be an hour 

 wrong in the summer, or meteorologists are to use a 

 time-system different from that of the general public. 

 For example, the five thousand voluntary observers 

 connected with the British Rainfall Organisation re- 

 cord their readings at 9 a.m., which is to be 10 a.m. 

 Summer Time. Dr. H. R. Mill, director of the 

 Organisation, has had to announce to his observers 

 that the readings should be taken, if possible, at 

 9 a.m. G.M.T., as hitherto, or a note should be made 

 on each page of the observation book if the readings 

 are taken at 9 a.m. Summer Time. Anyone who is 

 concerned with the preservation of records for long 

 series of years must contemplate with blank dismay 

 the dual system about to be introduced. 



Lighting-up times, as was stated in last week's 

 Nature, depend upon local times of sunset, and are 

 therefore based upon Greenwich mean time, with differ- 

 ences for latitude and longitude. The Law Journal 

 points out that since sunrise and sunset always mean 

 in law the exact moment at which the sun rises or 

 sets at any particular place, the obligation to light 

 up vehicles an hour after sunset — an interval which is 

 reduced to half an hour during the war — is not affected 

 by the Summer Time Bill. The law will thus maintain 

 local time for many of the statutes in which time is 

 mentioned, and this, for nearly all places in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, will be later than Greenwich 

 time, not an hour earlier, as the Summer Time Bill 

 prescribes. As the tides, sunrise and sunset, lunar 

 phases, and like occurrences belong to navigation and 

 astronomy, they will continue to be tabulated in ad- 

 vance in Greenwich time; but all public clocks are to 

 show mid-European time. 



The economic and social advantages claimed for 

 this introduction of confusion into an orderly system 

 of time-reckoning remain to be seen ; but whatever 

 they are there can be no question that the scheme of 

 a fluctuating time-standard has no natural basis. It 

 is the duty of a scientific journal to point out the 

 objections to the scheme, even though it stands alone, 



NO. 2429, VOL. 97] 



and, in the opinion of the public, may represent what 

 is contemptuously termed scientific theory as some- 

 thing apart from the practical needs of life. The diffi- 

 culties are not appreciated by our legislators, and few 

 writers in the public Press have shown any intelligent 

 understanding of them, while scientific interests have 

 been completely disregarded. The only satisfaction to 

 be derived from this childish method of promoting 

 the increased use of daylight is that the measure is 

 limited to the period of the war. 



PURIFICATION OF COAL-GAS. 

 OROF. FRANK CLOWES read a paper before the 

 ■^ Society of Chemical Industry on May i dealing 

 with the past and present of the sulphur impurity in 

 coal-gas. He recalled that the higher temperature 

 carbonisation arising from the displacement of iron by 

 fireclay retorts had resulted in an increased amount 

 of sulphur coming into the gas, not only in the form 

 of hydrogen sulphide, but more noticeably as sulphur 

 compounds of an organic nature. Purification by 

 iron oxide is sufficient to remove sulphuretted hydro- 

 gen, but the removal of these organic compounds is 

 much more difficult. " Sulphided lime," prepared by 

 passing coal-gas containing hydrogen sulphide, but 

 free from carbon dioxide, over freshly slaked lime, 

 was in common use for the purpose, but its action 

 was so uncertain that a Board of Trade Committee 

 which inquired into the subject came to the conclusion 

 that any statutory requirement that the sulphur im- 

 purities should be removed to such an extent as to 

 demand the use of lime ought to be discontinued. 

 The detrimental physiological effect and very slight, or 

 non-existent, disinfectant value of the sulphurous pro- 

 ducts of combustion of coal-gas were, however, plainly 

 indicated by Dr. Haldane, and experimental results 

 were also brought forward which proved that these 

 sulphurous products caused leather to rot and ulti- 

 mately to crumble, and that some fabrics were simi- 

 larly affected. 



Dr. C. Carpenter and his collaborators have ad- 

 vanced matters by working out on the large scale a 

 practical method of removing carbon bisulphide by 

 passing the gas at a temperature of about 450° C.^ (the 

 author gives the temperature 450° F., presumably a 

 misprint) over fireclay surfaces impregnated with re- 

 duced nickel. The hydrogen sulphide formed is re- 

 moved by subsequent exposure of the coal-gas to iron 

 oxide, and the carbon deposited on the fireclay-nickel 

 surface is burned off; the sulphur of the coal-gas is so 

 reduced to about 8 grains per 100 cubic feet. 



A similar process is in the hands of an investigator 

 in France, and it appears that the immediate pos- 

 sibility of distributing a much purer gas supply is 

 presented to the gas industry. 



PREHISTORIC ART. 



A MELANCHOLY interest attaches to a paper 

 entitled " Nouvelles decouvertes k Laugerie 

 Basse : Rabots, os utilises, ceuvres d'art," by Capt. 

 Bourlon, published in the last issue of L' Anthropologic 

 (vol. xvii., Nos. 1-2, for January- April), because the 

 gallant officer was killed at the opening of the war. 

 The paper has now been edited by M. I'Abb^ Breuil. 

 These new discoveries in this famous cave are of 

 remarkable interest, including a fine collection of flint 

 implements, among which the rabots, or scrapers, are 

 of exceptional interest. We have also fine examples 

 of work In bone, including many heads of animals 

 engraved on this material. The engravings on stone, 

 besides those of the normal type, display some curious 

 variants. Of these the most remarkable are a splen- 



1 Trans. Inst. Gas Eng., 1914, p. 213. 



