September 25, 1890] 



NATURE 



533 



occur in the succession. Mr. A. Irving dealt with the chemical 

 and geological characters of the Bagshot sands, their bedding, 

 and fossils, and argued that they must have been deposited in 

 an estuary opening on the sea. 



Chief amongst the palaeontological papers must be placed 

 Prof. Marsh's restorations and descriptions of the Ceratopsidae, 

 of the skulls of which he exhibited life-size diagrams, some 

 more than six feet in length. Prof. Seeley gave a description of 

 the mural arch in the Ichtliyosauria from Liassic and Oolitic 

 specimens. Mr. Smith Woodward exhibited five examples and 

 plates of fishes from the Ilawkesbury series, and, on behalf of 

 Prof. Anton Fritsch, plates and descriptions of Palaeozoic 

 Elasmobranchs, while Dr. P. II. Carpenter, dealing with the 

 morphology of the Cystidea, compared them with the Crinoids 

 and Blastoids, and suggested that in forms without a genital 

 pore the anal pyramid may have subserved generative functions, 

 while in two forms a fourth opening may possibly have been 

 nephridial in function. . 



With the exception of local papers, petrology was thinly 

 represented. Mr. Hunt read a paper on the saline inclusions of 

 the Dartmoor granite, and favoured the idea of their derivation 

 from the sea ; and Mr. Brindley gave a useful account of the 

 principnl marbles of the Mediterranean — a pendant to Sir Lam- 

 bert Playfair's address to the Geographical Section. Other 

 foreign papers were, one on the geology of Nicaragua, and a 

 second on human footprints in recent volcanic mud in the same 

 area, by Dr. J. Crawford, an account of the minerals of New 

 South Wales, including coal, gold, silver, tin, copper, antimony, 

 iron, diamonds, and ornamental stones, by Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, 

 and a paper on the seismic origin of the " Barisal Guns" of the 

 Gangetic delta, by Mr. T. La Touche. 



There only remain to be mentioned, Dr. Tempest Anderson's 

 photographs and descriptions of landslips and volcanoes in 

 Iceland'; Mr. Logan Lobley's paper containing an estimate of 

 the gold scattered through the pyrites in the clays and chalk of 

 south-east England ; Mr. Hart on volcanic paroxysms ; and a 

 paper by Mr. Browne on historical evidences for changes of sea 

 and land levels in the south-east of England. 



MECHANICS A T THE BRITISH ASSOCIA TION. 



'T'HERE was a full programme in Section G at the recent 

 ■*■ meeting of the British Association at Leeds. It is ques- 

 tionable, however, whether quantity was not obtained some- 

 what at the expense of quality. We are aware of the great 

 difficulty there is in regulating the supply of papers in the Me- 

 chanical Section, and so long as the present mode of procedure 

 remains in force the difficulty will also remain. There should 

 be a limit to the number of papers to be read, and there should 

 be a fixed day on which contributions might be sent in. The 

 day being fixed, it should be adhered to with absolute severity — 

 not the names of all the professors and all the science-knights 

 should suffice to break the law. The papers that were deemed 

 most worthy would be accepted, whilst those with less merit 

 would be returned with thanks. This would create a competi- 

 tion amongst contributors, and would-be contributors, which 

 would, we are sure, have a most healthy influence on the pro- 

 ceedings of the Section. We do not make these remarks simply 

 by the way ; the fact is, the proceedings in Section G are be- 

 coming of a scrambling and hap-hazard character. It is not 

 long since that one gentleman in this Section read a paper he 

 had previously read before the Institution of Naval Architects. 

 He did not take the matter and re-dress it, but calmly read 

 from the proceedings of the latter society, word for word. This 

 year we have had a great deal of matter that has already ap- 

 peared in some of the technical journals. The discussions on 

 the papers were, as a natural consequence, generally of a poor 

 description. There was so much to get through that the presi- 

 dent was obliged to be constantly hurrying, and any one who 

 was not of the elect was treated with somewhat scant ceremony. 

 As no one knew what the papers were to be about, the most 

 that could be said as a rule was of a superficial and common- 

 place character, some of the most noted exponents of this 

 school of discussion being especially to the fore. It is very 

 certain that, unless Section G Sets its house in order, the 

 mechanical science of the British Association will become a 

 byeword amongst engineers. When one contrasts the scant and 

 listless audience at Leeds last week with that at a meeting of 

 the Institution of Civil Engineers, or of the Institution of Naval 



NO. 1 09 1, VOL. 42] 



Architects — the meetings of the latter are more akin to those of 

 the British Association — one cannot but feel that there is need 

 for very radical reform. The two chief reforms we would suggest 

 would be that a limit should be put to the number of contribu- 

 tions, and that abstracts should be printed in good time and 

 copies be previously sent to members and associates on applica- 

 tion. The former would raise the quality of the papers — because 

 that which every one can get no one values — whilst the latter 

 would raise the quality of the discussions. 



There were thirty items on the five days' programme in 

 Section G, namely twenty-seven papers, two reports of Com- 

 mittees, and the Presidential address of Captain Noble. The 

 proceedings commenced at 'noon of Thursday the 4th inst., a 

 later hour than usual being selected in order that the members of 

 the mechanical section might hear the Presidential address of 

 Dr. Glaisher in the Mathematical and Physical Section. Captain 

 Noble's address we have already printed in full. 



The first paper on the list was by Mr. J. F. Green, of Black- 

 wall, and was entitled "Steam Life-Boats." The historic firm 

 at Blackwall Yard have at last succeeded in solving a problem, 

 oft attempted but never before with success, and have produced 

 a steam life-boat which has given satisfaction to the Royal 

 National Life-boat Institution. The vessel is driven by the 

 reaction of a stream from a turbine, a mode of propulsion which 

 certainly finds a useful position for life-boat work, whatever may 

 be its shortcomings in the matter of mechanical efficiency. The 

 boat has been placed on the Harwich station, and gives, we 

 think, every promise of success. The great question is un- 

 doubtedly that of expense, first cost of boat and cost of upkeep. 

 That however is a matter to be settled by Messrs. Green and 

 the Life-boat Institution. We would suggest that this boat 

 might be improved by the use of liquid fuel on the principle 

 adopted by Messrs. Doxford, of Sunderland, and applied by 

 them to the big^ torpedo boat they have recently constructed. 

 We know the danger of including too many experiments in one 

 vessel, but now that Messrs. Green have proved their design so 

 far they might venture a step further ; and we can speak as to 

 the practicability of the liquid fuel system in question. 



"The Victoria Torpedo " was the title of the next paper, which 

 was contributed by Mr. G. R. Murphy. This weapon, which, 

 like all other torpedoes, is to beat everything that has gone 

 before in murderous potentiality, has not yet assumed tangible 

 shape, but the form it is to take when completed was fully 

 illustrated and described in the columns of one of our technical 

 contemporaries a few weeks ago. A paper on aluminium bronze, 

 which calls for no special comment, came next, and was followed 

 by one of the most interesting contributions to the section, in 

 the shape of a paper by Prof. Barr and Dr. Stroud, on new 

 telemeters and range finders. Without illustrations we could 

 not give a fair description of the ingenious instruments, in which 

 the authors of the paper have applied certain mathematical laws 

 to judging of distance, and we will therefore leave the subject for 

 a future occasion. 



On the following day, Friday, the Sth inst. , the proceedings 

 commenced with the reading of two reports of Committees, 

 namely the Estuaries Committee, and the Graphic Methods 

 Committee. Both these were very brief, and consisted in sub- 

 stance in saying that the work was still progressing. A paper 

 on the manufacture of netting from sheet metal dealt with 

 a process already described in a technical journal. A number 

 of short slits are made in a sheet of metal by a special shearing 

 press, and the slits are opened out so as to form a number of 

 diamond-shaped holes. The invention is ingenious, and the 

 "netting" possesses the great merit of rigidity. Cable tram- 

 ways next occupied the attention of the Section ; Mr. W. N. 

 Colam reading a paper in which he described certain devices 

 which he has devised in connection with this means of dealing 

 with passenger traffic. The "Serve" tube and the simplex 

 brake were the subjects of two papers by Mr. W. B. Marshall. 

 The former is for boiler tubes, and has ribs of metal running the 

 whole length of the interior of the tube. These ribs extend 

 down into the stream of hot gases, and so absorb much of the 

 heat that would otherwise go to the uptake. Of course the 

 heating surface of the tube is much increased, and this is effective 

 heating surface, as the resistance to absorption is greatest at the 

 surface. The Thome Type Composing Machine, which next 

 came before the Section, appeared to us as an old friend which 

 we think made its dibut in Europe at the American Exhibition, 

 if not before, and was duly illustrated and described in the 

 technical journals of the day. The Benier hot air motor had 



