542 



NA TURE 



[April 9, 190^ 



not easy to see how any widespread extension of telephony 

 of the sort could take place without interference, but 

 possibly the principle may be useful for private isolated 

 installations or military and field work generally. 



Sir C. Euan-Smith, who presided at the general meeting 

 of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co. last week, referred to 

 the wireless telegraph conference which it is proposed 

 should be held in Berlin. He stated that " generally speak- 

 ing, the company thought that the inauguration of a system 

 intended to be applicable to international wireless com- 

 munication all over the world, and to be adopted for use 

 by the many more or less imperfect systems of wireless 

 telegraphy in vogue, was fraught with apparently insur- 

 mountable difficulties, some of a technical, but others of a 

 business and practical character." They awaited further 

 details of the programme of the conference, however, before 

 forming any definite opinion upon it. Reference was also 

 made to the anticipated arrangement with the Post Office ; 

 since that date, according to last Saturday's St. James's 

 Gaoctte, these negotiations have resulted in a further dead- 

 lock, the Post Office having imposed conditions which the 

 Company cannot accept. Mr. Marconi also spoke at the 

 meeting at some length, referring mainly to the opposition 

 which hi* svstem has met with in the Press; experience had 

 proved, he claimed, that the difficulties, real or imaginary, 

 which had been raised had been overcome one by one, and 

 he hoped that in the near future those still outstanding would 

 likewise be surmounted. Mr. Marconi also spoke of the 

 syntony experiments made by Prof. Fleming, which he 

 hoped shortly to repeat before Lord Kelvin and Lord 

 Rayleigh. 



Prof. G. P. Merrill writes from Washington to point 

 out that in the volume entitled " The Elements of Agri- 

 cultural Geology," by Mr. P. McConnell (Crosby Lockwood 

 and Son), noticed in Nature of November 13, 1902 (p. 31), 

 his work on " Rocks, Rock-Weathering, and Soils " (1897) 

 is misquoted, and he is made responsible for statements 

 which do not appear in the book. Mr. McConnell states 

 (pp. 20-21): — "According to Merrill, the whole of the 

 original soil formation of New England has been eroded 

 off by glaciers and dumped into the Atlantic, while a new 

 lot — a mongrel horde — has been brought from the jar north 

 and laid down." Again, writing of the Huronian form- 

 ations of the Green Mountains of Vermont, he says (on p. 

 164) : — " As previously stated, an American author holds 

 that the whole of the soils originally formed in this region 

 have been swept off by glaciers and dumped into the 

 Atlantic." Prof. Merrill informs us that he does not hold 

 and never has held these opinions ; and he shows by 

 reference to the original that his words have been mis- 

 construed. 



Tin: opal mining industry of Queensland, by Mr. C. I". V. 

 Jackson, forms the subject of Report No. 177 of the 

 Geological Survey of Queensland (1902). While nearly all 

 varieties of opal are found in the western portion of the 

 country, the examples of precious opal there met with are 

 unsurpassed in quality and brilliancy. These examples are 

 found almost entirely in the Desert Sandstone Series (I pper 

 1 retaceous), which has a thickness of from 100 to 200 feet, 

 mil 50 far they have been discovered only in outlying 

 patches of the formation. The Desert Sandstone consists 

 of soft sandstones and clays with a capping of hard siliceous 

 rock, frequently converted into a porcellanite. This " [op 

 Rock " has, in places, a kind of nodular or spherical struc- 

 ture, and there has apparently been a tendency to the solution 

 and 1 ''If position of its siliceous contents. The surface is 



NO. I745, VOL. 67] 



much disintegrated. The precious opal occurs chiefly in the 

 softer beds underlying the "Top Rock," but occasionally 

 it is found in it. Common forms of opal are prevalent, but 

 the precious variety appears only here and there in patches, 

 sometimes in nodules of siliceous ironstone at all horizons, 

 at other times in the false-bedded sandstones and clays in a 

 more definite band. In places, the mineral is found scat- 

 tered over the surface, being set free by denudation, but 

 such occurrences furnish little or no evidence of precious 

 opal below. Prospecting is a hazardous business, as the 

 site for a shaft is most frequently chosen in the vicinity 

 where scattered specimens have been found at the surface. 

 The average depth of shafts is 14 feet, and the deepest is 

 about 65 feet. The great difficulty in the progress of the 

 industry is the scarcity of water, the annual output, as the 

 author observes, being dependent on the rainfall. 



A treatise by Dr. E. Mazelle, director of the Trieste 

 Observatory, on the connection between the movements of 

 the microseismic pendulum and meteorological phenomena, 

 was recently submitted to the Vienna Academy by Hofrath 

 Dr. J. Hann. The movements of the instrument exhibit a 

 decided yearly period, a maximum in winter and an almost 

 complete absence of disturbance in summer ; also a daily 

 maximum and minimum between oh. and ioh. in the 

 morning and evening respectively. When submitted to 

 harmonic analysis, the whole-day period exhibits a perfect 

 agreement of the phase epoch with that of the stormy Bora 

 at Trieste. The other relations are not so marked ; dis- 

 turbances occur with both days of high and low barometric 

 pressure, but pronounced disturbances appear to be more 

 probably connected with low pressure. With regard to the 

 possible connection of microseismic disturbances with the 

 state of the sea it was found that these have a greater ten- 

 dency to occur when the sea is rough. For further details 

 we suggest a reference to the work in question. 



Dr. T. Byard Collins, writing in the Scientific American, 

 describes some experiments on the action of birds' wings. 

 By attaching incandescent lamps to the tips of a pigeon's 

 wing, and inducing the bird to attempt to fly, the path of 

 the tip was found to be an oval curve agreeing fairly well 

 with the results described by Prof. Marey in his " Vol des 

 Oiseaux." The author considers that the only way of solving 

 the problem of flight is by beating wings — a method ex- 

 perimented on many years ago by Penaud. 



A magnetic survey of the neighbourhood of the summit 

 of the Puy de Dome has led to some interesting results, 

 which are described in this month's Journal de Physique by 

 MM. B. Brunhes and P. David. The declination was found 

 to be nearly normal along a line through the centre of the 

 tower, 15 west of north, and it varied from 10° 5' at 200 

 metres east of the tower, 80 metres lower than the summit, 

 to 19° 45' at 300 metres from the tower, 150 metres below 

 the summit. The horizontal component varied from o'i93 

 of a C.G.S. unit al 100 metres from the tower in a direction 

 15° west of north to 0225 of a C.G.S. unit at 156 metres 

 south of the tower. A diagram of the disturbing force 

 shows that it is directed towards the summit, but not quite 

 uniformly in different directions. 



In the West Indian [gricultural Ne~s>s for March 14 there 

 is a descriptive account of experiments which have been 

 commenced on the Island of St. Vincent with the view of 

 testing the possibility of starting cultivation, with certain 

 plants, on estates which are buried under from nine to ten 

 inches of volcanic ash, resulting from the severe eruptions 

 of the Soufriere in May, September and October, 1902. 

 The plants selected for the experiments are sugar-cane (five 



