174 



NA TURE 



[February 19, 190; 



A new drug laboratory has, says the British Medical 

 Journal, recently been established in the Chemical Bureau 

 at Washington, with the object of investigating adulter- 

 ations, testing drugs and establishing uniformity in the 

 standard of medical substances for future State and national 

 legislation. The American Pharmaceutical Association has 

 passed resolutions approving of the new bureau. 



The Glamorgan Sea Fisheries Committee, having decided 

 to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations re- 

 specting the pollution of Mumbles oysters, deputed Prof. 

 Herdman to make the necessary investigations, and his re- 

 port has now been published. Samples of the oysters and of 

 the water were subjected to careful bacteriological investi- 

 gation by Dr. .Griffith, under Prof. Herdman's direction, and 

 the final conclusion arrived at was that the shore, the water 

 and the oysters all gave evidence of being polluted with 

 sewage. Of the oysters, some were much more polluted 

 than others. 



At the meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 

 February 10, Mr. David Carnegie read a paper on the 

 manufacture and efficiency of armour-piercing projectiles. 

 The modern projectile is, he pointed out, composed of steel 

 containing carbon, associated with one or more of the follow- 

 ing metals : — nickel, chromium, manganese and molyb- 

 denum. Typical proportions per cent, of elements other 

 than iron in shells which are air-hardened are : — carbon 

 o'8o, silicon 02, sulphur 004, phosphorus o'04, manganese 

 012, nickel 2'oo and chromium 200. In present-day 

 methods of hardening, three mediums are used, viz. water, 

 oil and air, and the choice of the method used is determined 

 by the composition of the material to be hardened. Carbon 

 steels are generally hardened in water, or partly in water 

 and partly in oil ; nickel steels in water, in oil, or in air 

 under pressure ; and steels having self-hardening properties 

 by simply heating and allowing to cool in air. 



The passage in Mr. Swinburne's presidential address to 

 the Institution of Electrical Engineers in which he criti- 

 cised the prevailing notions of the meaning and definition of 

 the term " entropy " has given rise to an animated corre- 

 spondence on the subject in the columns of the electrical and 

 engineering papers, particularly in those of the Electrician. 

 No apology is needed for directing the attention of readers 

 of Nature to a controversy in which such distinguished men 

 as Lord Kelvin, Sir Oliver Lodge, Prof. Poincare and Prof. 

 Planck have taken part, as well as the original disputants 

 — Mr. Swinburne and Prof. Perry. The discussion does not 

 seem to be ended yet, but we trust that when it is concluded 

 Mr. Swinburne will not allow it to remain scattered in the 

 columns of various journals, but will, as he himself has led 

 us to hope, collect and republish the letters and articles. 

 The collected statements of the views of so many authorities 

 would be of great assistance to all students trying to grasp 

 the full import of the second law of thermodynamics. 



The paper on high temperature electrochemistry read by 

 Messrs. R. S. Hutton and J. E. Petavel before the Man- 

 chester Section of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 

 last November contains a most interesting and suggestive 

 account of electric furnace work. The paper is divided 

 into two parts, the first of which deals with the equipment 

 of an experimental electrometallurgical laboratory. A de- 

 scription of the apparatus available at Owens College is 

 given ; the authors are certainly to be congratulated on 

 having the opportunity of working, in a laboratory so well 

 equipped as this. Amongst other special apparatus may be 

 noted a furnace capable of working with currents up to 



NO. 1738, VOL. 67] 



1000 amperes under pressures up to 200 atmospheres. '1 his 

 furnace, which has been provided out of funds from the 

 Government Grant Committee of the Royal Society, is in- 

 tended to be used for research on the effect of gaseous 

 pressure on high temperature chemical reactions. The 

 second part of the paper consists of notes on technical pro : 

 cesses, and in it the authors direct attention to the more 

 important features of the various electric furnace processes 

 in commercial operation at the present time. 



Modern tendencies in the utilisation of power formed 

 the subject of the address given by Prof. J. J. Flather to 

 the Engineering and Mechanical Science Section of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 

 the first part of the address the question of the distribution 

 ol power in workshops is considered, and the author deals 

 at some length with the relative merits of electricity, com- 

 pressed air and hydraulic pressure under various conditions. 

 In the latter part of the paper Prof. Flather deals with 

 some of the. larger questions of power generation and trans- 

 mission. He points out that the competition between oil, 

 gas and steam engines, and steam turbines is likely to lead 

 to the further development and perfecting of each for the 

 purposes for which it is specially suitable. The paper con- 

 tains some interesting data showing what has already 

 been accomplished in the way of generating power by large 

 gas engines and steam turbines. 



The November issue of the Proceedings of the Phila- 

 delphia Academy contains an important paper, by Mr. 

 W. H. Dall, on the American representatives of the bivalve 

 group, Carditaceae. 



In the February number of the Irish Naturalist Prof. G. 

 Wilson gives additional information with regard to the 

 proposed marine laboratory for Ulster, to which allusion 

 was made in the January issue of that journal. All con- 

 cerned are agreed as to the need of such an institution, 

 especially in connection with the Irish sea-fisheries, and 

 the one difficulty in the way is the acquisition of the neces- 

 sary funds. 



A notable addition to the British (Natural History) 

 Museum is a fine specimen — skin and skeleton — of the great 

 Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), presented by 

 H.H. the Maharajah of Kuch-Behar. The mounted skin 

 is placed for the present in the entrance hall. 



Our German contemporary, Naturwissenschaftliclie 

 Wochenschrift, contains an illustrated article, by Dr. M. 

 von Linden, on Eimer's theory of the evolution of colour- 

 markings in animals. On this theory, it will be remem- 

 bered, longitudinal striping is regarded as the first stage; 

 from this spots are developed by a breaking-up process, and 

 these again may coalesce to form vertical stripes. 



Some weeks ago we noticed an article, by Prof. C. H. 

 Eigenmann, on the development of American eels, in which 

 attention was called to the practice of giving separate 

 specific names to the larval " leptocephali." We have just 

 received two papers on the life-history of American eels, 

 issued in 1901 by the U.S. Fish and Fishery Commission, 

 one by Mr. Eigenmann and the other by Messrs. Eigenmann 

 and Kennedy. In the second of these it is confessed that 

 the practice of naming leptocephali is an anachronism, 

 although it is considered permissible in cases where the 

 adult form cannot be identified. 



Dr. Camillo Bosco contributes to the Atti dei Lincei, 

 xi. 12, a study of the cranium of a beaver of the Quaternary 

 period, found in the gravels of Maspino, near Arezzo, and 



