January 15, 1903] 



NA TURE 



251 



A general exhibition, devoted to hygienic milk supply in 

 all its branches, will be held at Hamhurg on May 2-10, 1903. 

 Applications by intending exhibitors should be made, not later 

 than February 15, to the Geschafftstelle, 46, Kampstrasse, 

 1 laniburg. 



The Carnegie Institution has, sajs Science, granted 1600 

 dollars to Prof. E. W. Scripture, of Vale University, for the 

 prosecution of researches on the voice ; 5000 dollars to Prof. 

 W. O. Atwater, for his work with the respiration calorimeter, 

 and has also made grants, the amount of which is not reported, 

 to the Peabody Museum of Vale University, and to send Dr. 

 II. S. Conrad, of the University of Penns) lvania, to Europe to 

 study varieties of the water-lily. 



An exhibition is being held in London of the results of what 

 is described as a new process for the preservation of p.nimal 

 tissues, by the injection of a fluid, the composition of which is 

 .not made public. The process is said to afford a satisfactory 

 method of embalming animal bodies and of preserving museum 

 specimens in a condition closely resembling life. The period 

 which has elapsed since the application of the process to the 

 various preparations exhibited is said by the inventor to range 

 from a few weeks to thirty years. 



A WRITER in the Times of January 7 suggests that wireless 

 telegraphy should be used for sending time-signals from 

 Greenwich and other places at definite instants, so that they 

 could provide a means of determining longitude on ships having 

 instruments capable of detecting the signals, or for regulating 

 clocks pr chronometers. The same suggestion was made by 

 Mr. John Munro in Nature of August 28, 1902 (vol. lxvi. 

 p.,4j6), and the idea has doubtless occurred to others. Another 

 writer, in Satmda)'s Times, suggests that some steamers crossing 

 the Atlantic should be equipped with instruments for sending 

 wireless messages as to meteorological conditions in mid-ocean, 

 so as to provide material for weather forecasts and Warnings. 



Reuter's Agency announces that the British and German 

 Governments have decided on the immediate dispatch to West 

 Africa of a mixed commission to demarcate the boundaries laid 

 down by the Anglo-German Agreement of 1893. The frontier 

 which is now to be fixed is that from the southern shore of Lake 

 Chad to Vola, a distance of some 300 miles. The commis- 

 sioners will proceed up the Benue direct to Vola, where they 

 hope to arrive by the end of March, and will then work their 

 way along the frontier to Like Chad and, after fixing the posi- 

 tion of Kuka, will return .by the same route. T.ie work is 

 expected to occupy about a year. 



We learn from the Lancet that Dr. Michael Grabham, of 

 Jamaica, a zealous exponent of the West Indian Culicidae, is at 

 work upon the mosquitoes of the Atlantic islands and has 

 already obtained interesting results. The Azores have yielded 

 no specific forms of any interest, but from the Madeiras he has 

 sent to the British Museum four or five new varieties of culex in 

 addition to one or two already well known and described. 

 Dr. Grabham has found at Teneriffe, on the south side, a small 

 anopheles identical with, or allied to, the malarial insect of the 

 west coast of Africa. He has found also the same mosquito as 

 is concerned in the spread of yellow fever at Havana. 



N a letter from Dr. Lrgan Taylor, the leader of the Sierra 

 Leone expedition of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 

 reference is made to the progress of the expedition in SierTa 

 Leone. A very decided absence of anopheles larvae in places where 

 1 it was formerly easy, to get any number has been noticed, and is 

 due to their not being able to breed owing to the pools being 

 either swept out'Or oiled regularly. iCompared with the cor- 

 responding time last year, in some of the notoriously bad 



NO. 1/33, VOL. 67] 



streets, where in a single house as many as six, seven> or a 

 dozen anopheles mosquitoes could be found in the early morning,, 

 this year, alter searching house after house with great difficulty, 

 one, or perhaps two, adult insects alone were discovered. Since 

 the members of the Liverpool School expedition stopped clear- 

 ing up yards and emptying out the water containing culex larva?, 

 no one else has taken up the work, and these insects are getting 

 bad again, a nd unless the Go\ err riient or the scheol will keep- 

 on the woik, the money the school has spent on it will be almost 

 thrown away. 



The copy of Sowerby's "English Botany" Supplement in 

 the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is ircom) lete, 

 wanting plates 2912 to 2960, with letterpress and index, also- 

 plates, with letterpress, 2964, 2977, 2978, 2983, 2987, 208S to 

 2999. The director appeals to the public to assist him in com- 

 pleting this classical work on Biitish botany, either by presen- 

 tation or sale. 



A NEWLY issued part of the "Conspectus Faunae Grbn- 

 landice," which is now beirg prepared by the naturalists of 

 Copenhagen, relates to the mammals, and has been written by 

 Mr. Heiluf Winge. The known mammals of Greenland are 

 slated to be ihirty in number, but sixteen of these are Ceta- 

 ceans. On land there are two rodents (the polar hare and the 

 lemming) and two ungulates (the reindeer and the musk-ox> 

 found in Gieenland, but the remaining ten are all Carnivores,, 

 til which four only are terrestrial and six are marine, i.e. seals. 

 The four terrestrial mammals are the Arctic fox, the wolf, the 

 polar bear and the stoat or ermine. 



In the Sitzungsbcrichte der niedcrrheinischen Gesellschaft 

 (Bonn), Herr Constantin Koenen discusses the age of the human 

 remains of the Neanderthal. The first of these, known as- 

 " Homo neanderthalensis I.," is referred to the second epoch of 

 the Quaternary PaUeolithic period, or " Mouster's epoch,'' and 

 the second form, " Homo neanderthalensis II.," to a somewhat 

 later period. 



Mr. Lotus Bevier's paper on the vowel I (as in pique),, 

 forming one of a series of papers on the various vowel sounds in 

 the Physical Review, leads to the conclusion that the sound of 

 I is characteiised by a powerfully reinforced upper partial at 

 some pitch generally lying between 1900 and 2500, usually 

 nearest the value 2500, a chord tone which is generally present 

 with a much larger amplitude than for the more open vowels,, 

 and beyond these two tones comparatively little intermediate 

 resonance. The latter peculiarity seems to give the vowel its- 

 peculiar thin tone. It aupears that Ihe American I is more open 

 than the German, and its characteristic upper partial lower, 

 pitched. The author proposes to present, in the course of time, 

 similar studies on the labio-gutteral vowels from A to U. 



In the Cracow Bulletin, No. 8, Dr, Ladislaus Natanson dis- 

 cusses from a mathematical standpoint the problem of the de- 

 formation of a thin cylindrical disc of plastico-viscous materia! 

 under the action of normal pressure on its opposite faces. The 

 investigation bears directly on Von Obermeyer's experiments. 

 In connection with the question as to how far a plastic solid is- 

 re-pre^entable as a viscous fluid, an interesting idea is intro- 

 duced. If we imagine it possible for I he pressure on the disc to 

 be varied in such a way as to maintain the disc of constant thick- 

 ness, then, according to the theory considered by Dr: Natanson, 

 the pressure would be an exponential function of the time, the 

 modulus of decay and therefore also the time of relaxation 

 being finite. For a viscous liquid, on the other hand, the time 

 pf relaxation vanishes. From experiments such as thpse of 

 Vpn Obermeyer, Dr. Natanson considers it possible to determine 

 both the "coefficient of internal friction " and the time of re- 

 laxation. 



