BIN RAPPORT 1903-04 ANNEXE A 
(Perrersson). They have sometimes been sterilised by rinsing out with sublimate 
solution and then boiling the water off; in this way a layer is formed on the glass 
and the evacuation is afterwards accomplished as before. According to the C. L.’s 
experience it requires quite exceptional care to get this method to work reliably. 
A better method of evacuation is to seal with the blowpipe several tubes — say 
20 — on to a mercury pump and to exhaust to a high vacuum with occasional 
warming. To sterilise the tubes, a simple and thoroughly satisfactory method is 
to enclose two or three crystals of sublimate inside each tube before sealing on to 
the pump; the tubes are after evacuation, gently heated and the sublimate volati- 
lised in the high vacuum; on cooling a fine cloud will be deposited over the glass. 
Glassblowers seem to find this method quick and easy, and it is quite reliable. 
In the new apparatus recommended by the C. L. the water-sample is not 
actually heated in its containing vessel but in a flask, and for this purpose a 
laboratory method in which ordinary soda water bottles, each fitted with a rubber 
stopper and bearing a suitable tube can be employed, has been worked out. A 
few ec. of sublimate solution are enclosed in each bottle and a number of them 
connected with a water pump, a manometer and a Kırp’s apparatus supplying 
hydrogen. The bottles are heated and?evacuated by the combination of water 
pump, hydrogen, and steam issuing from the sublimate solution. This method is 
very quick and cheap, and can be carried out quite satisfactorily by an intelligent 
mechanic in the laboratory, Samples as large as desired can be collected with no 
inereased trouble or expense, and the sterilisation is instantaneous because the 
sublimate is actually in the form of a solution whereas in other methods a long 
time often elapses before solution has occurred. 
VIII. At the meeting of the Council in Hamburg, February 1904, the C. L. 
was instructed to thoroughly examine the laws of compressibility of sea-water and 
to determine the solubility of the atmospheric gases in sea-water. 
The C. L. had already in April 1903 received a letter from Mr. J. W. Sanp- 
strom, Stockholm, suggesting a method for measuring the compressibility. The 
sample should be contained in a glass-vessel connected by a capillary with a smaller 
vessel filled with mercury; the apparatus should be lowered to a known depth in 
the sea and the compression of the water measured by weighing the mercury 
pressed into the larger vessel. A piezometer based on this principle was ordered 
from Rıcuter in May 1903; it is arranged on the principle of the reversing thermo- 
meters so as to be independent of subsequent dilatation and contraction of the 
water sample. 
A good reversing thermometer, an apparatus for measuring the compress- 
ibility of the glass and for controlling the depths, and two ,reversing piezometers* 
