May 25, 19 1 6] 



NATURE 



267 



the seventeenth International Congress of Medicine, 

 held in London in August, 1913. Thanks to the 

 generosity of its founder, Mr. Henry S. Wellcome, 

 the collections then brought together were rearranged 

 and embodied as a permanent institution in 1914. 

 " One of the chief objects of the museum," remarks 

 Mr. C. -J. Thompson, its curator, " is to stimulate 

 among medical practitioners of to-day the study of the 

 history of medicine, and thus to suggest fresh fields 

 of research." Mr. Thompson has illustrated his 

 article with some excellent photographs. Other items 

 of interest in this number refer to the considerable 

 extension of museum work in Germany. One new- 

 picture gallery and no fewer than sixteen war museums 

 have been founded since hostilities began. This con- 

 trasts unfavourably with the efforts, in the name of 

 "economy," which have been made to close museums 

 in Great Britain. 



Mr, H. F. Witherby makes his fourth series of 

 records on the moulting and sequences of plumage in 

 the British Passeres in the May number of British 

 Birds. This is, of its kind, a most admirable piece 

 of work, and should earn the gratitude of all ornitho- 

 logists. In the course of the present article he gives 

 a most interesting example at one and the same time 

 of the recapitulation theory and the disappearance of 

 structures by degeneration, or "evolution by loss," as 

 Prof, Bateson has it. To wit, he shows that in the 

 larks the outermost primary in the first, teleoptyle, 

 plumage is almost twice as large as that produced in 

 the next and all subsequent moults, this outermost 

 quill having, for some reason, become superfluous. 

 In the same issue Miss E. L. Turner makes some 

 noteworthy observations on the breeding habits of the 

 sheldrake. She adds to our knowledge of their court- 

 ship habits, as well as to that of their post-nuptial 

 behaviour. At one point on Holy Island, the scene of 

 her studies, she found sheldrakes breeding in consider- 

 able numbers, and here, while the females were incu- 

 bating, the males indulged in " regular organised 

 games, and were more or less gregarious." On other 

 parts of the island they were breeding in isolated pairs, 

 and in these cases the males would " sit about in 

 solitary grandeur." 



The results of a botanical exploration of Lower 

 -California are given in a useful paper by Mr, E. A. 

 ■Goldman in Contributions from the United States 

 National Herbarium, vol. xvi,, part 14. The author 

 and Mr. Nelson spent nearly a year in traversing 

 .this interesting region, which floristically is separable 

 into two main divisions, one identical with that of 

 southern California, the other, in the south, of a more 

 austral type, derived from or related to that of the 

 adjacent Mexican mainland. The higher mountains 

 are crowned by oak arid pine forests, and in the more 

 arid parts monstrous forms of plant-life have been 

 developed, which give the landscape an aspect of 

 unreality. Several remarkable genera are peculiar to 

 the peninsula. As a result of the expedition twenty- 

 two new species were discovered. Good plates are 

 given of the more interesting plants, and among those 

 especially noteworthy from the dry regions are Pachy- 

 cormus discolor (Anacardiaceae), a monotypic genus 

 confined to the peninsula, Fouquieria peninsularis and 

 Idria columnaris (Fouquieriaceae), reminding one of 

 the extraordinary desert forms of S.W, Madagascar, 

 and Ibervillea sonorae (Cucurbibaceae), with a large 

 woodv base. 



The term aerography is a new one, and probably 

 ■makes its first appearance in an article by Prof. Alex- 

 ander McAdie, of Harvard University, in the Geo- 

 :graphical Review for April (vol, i,. No. 4). It is sug- 



NO. 2430, VOL. 97] 



gested to restrict it to a description of the atmosphere 

 at different levels, or, as the author puts it, a descrip- 

 tion of the structiire of the atmosphere. Prof. McAdie 

 pleads that the base-level of the sea, familiar in 

 meteorology, must be discarded in aerography, and 

 replaced by the base of the stratosphere. In this he 

 agrees with the opinion of Sir Napier Shaw. The 

 paper is a short one and much condensed, but it con- 

 tains some useful suggestions, such as a plea for 

 maps showing the atmospheric conditions at various 

 levels, and for measurements of the vertical flow of air 

 and its cartographical representation. The construction 

 of charts of air structure would have a practical 

 importance to aviators. 



The provision of a standard scale of seismic in- 

 tensity is a problem which has for many years engaged 

 the attention of seismologists. In his presidential 

 address last year to the Seismological Society of 

 America (Bulletin, vol. v., 1915, p. 123J, Prof. A. 

 McAdie suggested that the well-known Rossi-Fore! 

 scale had oudived its usefulness, and that it should be 

 replaced by a dynamical scale of intensity. He offered 

 one on the lines of the Omori and Cancani scales, 

 but consisting of ten degrees, of which the lowest 

 corresponds to an acceleration of i-io mm. per sec. 

 per sec, and the highest to one of 5000-10,000 mm. 

 per sec. per sec. Prof. McAdie's suggestion is the 

 subject of an interesting discussion in the last bulletin 

 of the society (pp. 177-89). Though the general 

 opinion seemed to be that some absolute scale would 

 in time be adopted, the difficult}^ of determining the 

 intensity accurately from seismographic records is 

 noticed, and also, if it were otherwise, the impossi- 

 bility of providing the instruments in sufficient num- 

 ber. The wide variations of intensity within a limited 

 area, such as Prof. Milne showed to exist in his 

 seismic survey of Tokj-o, might also have been men- 

 tioned as militating in favour of the Rossi-Forel or a 

 similar scale. 



Scientific Paper No, 264 of the U.S. Bureau of 

 Standards, by Messrs. Middlekauff and Skogland, 

 deals with the photometry of gas-filled tungsten incan- 

 descent lamps. It is found that when the volts on 

 such a lamp are kept constant the current transmitted 

 and the candle-power are higher when the tip is up 

 than when down. If the lamp is rotated about a 

 vertical axis the current increases, reaches a maxi- 

 mum, decreases to its initial value at a speed depend- 

 ing on the shape and number of loops of the fila- 

 ment, and at higher speeds decreases still further. 

 The changes are greater with the tip up than with it 

 down, and the candle-power in each case changes in 

 the opposite direction to the current. The authors 

 have succeeded in tracing these curious effects to the 

 convection currents in the gas in the lamp. They 

 suggest that in the practical tests of such lamps the 

 speed of rotation should be so chosen that both current 

 and candle-power have the normal values. For lamps 

 of similar construction this speed is fixed, and is in 

 many cases 30 or 40 revolutions per minute. 



In a paper read before the Society of Chemical In- 

 dustry on April 3, Prof. H. E. Armstrong urged the 

 formation of an Imperial Society of Scientific and 

 Industrial Chemistry, similar in character to the Royal 

 Medical and Chirurgical Societ\-, which in 1907 united 

 the activities of seventeen previously existent societies 

 of medical men. Prof. Armstrong enumerates mort' 

 than a dozen societies, now entirely independent, which 

 could be made constituent societies of such an Imperial 

 L'nion. He points out the necessity of co-op>eration 

 in order to ensure the progress of chemical science 

 and chemical industry, both terms being used in their 



