59Q 



NA TURE 



[April 23, 1903 



Transatlantic wireless telegraphy, the service of telegrams 

 to the Times by Marconigraph from America is temporarily- 

 interrupted. The company state that the disablement of the 

 apparatus is purely of a mechanical nature, and that the 

 necessary repairs will shortly be completed." 



A Reuter message from Rome states that the Marquis 

 Luigi di Solari has submitted to Mr. Marconi, on behalf 

 of the Italian Government, a convention for the establish- 

 ment on the coast and on the islands off the Italian coast 

 of a system of twelve Marconi radio-telegraph stations of 

 an average range of 300 kilometres. Some of these stations 

 are to be complete before the end of the present year, and 

 the others within the first half of 1904. Two of these 

 twelve stations will be those already established at Punta 

 di Vela and Montemario, which will, however, be 

 strengthened. These will be exclusively reserved for 

 military use ; others, to be used for both military and com- 

 mercial purposes, will be established at Capo di Leuca, near 

 Gaeta, at Elba, and at Asinara. 



Prof. Fleming, in a long letter to the Times of April 14, 

 describes in detail the experiments on syntony which he 

 recently carried out at Poldhu. The letter does not embody 

 much more information than was given in Prof. Fleming's 

 Society of Arts lectures, which we have already summarised 

 (p. 518). That Prof. Fleming himself was thoroughly satis- 

 fied with the results may be gathered from the following 

 paragraph: — "This experiment," he writes, "which was 

 very carefully carried out with all precautions necessary to 

 prevent collusion between the assistants concerned, and to 

 secure that the conditions were such as will exist in practice, 

 appears to me to afford a complete demonstration of the 

 truth of Mr. Marconi's statement that the waves sent out 

 from his power stations do not, and will not, interfere with 

 the reception of messages from his apparatus as placed on 

 board ship." It is very satisfactory to have this assurance, 

 but even without it one could not help feeling that the 

 Marconi Co. would not have pushed ahead so fast with the 

 Transatlantic signalling if by so doing they were ruining 

 the intermarine communication which they have established. 



We are informed that it is the American Geographical 

 Society, and not the U.S. National Geographic Society, 

 which has awarded the Cullum medal to the Duke of the 

 Abruzzi for his ascent of Mount St. Elias and his Arctic 

 explorations. 



Reuter's Athens correspondent has announced that the 

 Italian Archaeological Mission has discovered, near Hera- 

 kleion, in Crete, on the site of ancient Phaestos, a mag- 

 nificent palace and various objects of exceptional interest 

 analogous to those found at Knossos. 



M. Lippmann is to succeed M. Poincart as president of 

 the French Astronomical Society next May. M. Janssen 

 has been elected president d'honneur. The Society's prize 

 has been awarded to M. Charlois for the discovery of a 

 large number of minor planets, and the Jannsen prize to 

 M. Giacobini for the discovery of seven comets. 



The International Conference on Deep-sea Investigation 

 was opened at Wiesbaden on April 16, under the presidency 

 of the Prince of Monaco, representatives of geography being 

 present from England, Germany, France, Norway and 

 Sweden. The committee appointed by the Geographical 

 Congress which met in i8qq -resented a report on questions 

 connected with oceanic research at great depths. 



In a letter addressed to Sir Alfred Jones by the expedi- 

 tion sent by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to 

 investigate the newly-discovered parasite of human trypano- 



NO. 174/, VOL. 67] 



somiasis, it is stated that a number of natives had been 

 examined, but that the parasite had not been found in any. 

 In two horses, however, a trypanosome was found, and it 

 is stated that another horse had been infected with the 

 human trypanosome. In a common species of horse fly that 

 had fed on this last horse, numerous trypanosomes were 

 found in the stomach. The letter was sent from McCarthy 

 Island, 150 miles in the interior of Gambia. 



We learn from the Times that Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson, 

 F.R.S., has now- returned from his tour in India and 

 Ceylon, in which countries he has been studying the 

 aetiology of leprosy. Dr. Hutchinson has always held that 

 leprosy is connected in some way with the eating of fish, 

 and it was to test the truth of this hypothesis that he has 

 made this tour, and, shortly before, one to South Africa. 

 Dr. Hutchinson, as the result of his inquiries, believes that 

 only in a very small minority of cases of leprosy can a fish 

 diet be excluded. Its great prevalence is almost always in 

 pr near a fishing district. Dr. Hutchinson's general con- 

 clusion is that, as regards leprosy in India, there are no 

 facts which controvert or render untenable the fish hypo- 

 thesis, and that there are some which afford to it a support 

 which he considers to be unassailable. 



News has been received at Berlin, from Australia, of the 

 German Antarctic expedition under Dr. Erich von Dry- 

 galski, which left for the South Polar regions in 1901. The 

 steamer Stassfurt, of the German Australian Steamship 

 Company, reached Sydney on April 17 with four members 

 of the expedition, who were landed at Kerguelen Island 

 from the expedition ship Gauss for the purpose of making 

 a year's magnetic and meteorological observations, which 

 were necessary for the main expedition in order to confirm 

 the observations taken further south. One of the observing 

 party, Dr. Enzensperger, died of beri beri on the island on 

 February 2, and Dr. Werth, geologist, who is among those 

 landed from the Stassfurt, was also taken seriously ill. He 

 is now better, but will be detained in hospital. The remain- 

 ing three explorers are well. 



Dr. Hans Reusch describes in Saturen for March the 

 only known natural fountain in Norway, locally known as 

 Bubbelen. It lies in a remote and little-known valley, 

 Bognelvdal, 10 kilometres south of Sopnaes, at the head 

 of Langfjord, a branch of Altenfjord, Lapland, 70 N. 22 

 E. It is formed by a stream which itself is fed by the over- 

 flow of a river, and has flowed underground through the 

 limestone for three kilometres. The fountain rises from a 

 basin six metres deep in a column of water which varies in 

 size according to the season, and flows away as a stream, 

 which even in dry weather is seven metres broad and two 

 metres deep. 



The Naples Academy of Physical and Mathemaiii.il 

 Sciences offers a prize of 1000 lire to the author of the best 

 memoir on the theory of the invariants of the ternary 

 biquadratic form, preferably in connection with the con- 

 ditions for splitting into lower form. The papers may be 

 written in Italian, Latin, or French, and must be sent in 

 on or before June 30, 1904. In addition prizes are offered 

 in connection with the legacy of Prof. Luigi Sementini, 

 who in 1847 left a sum of 150 ducats per annum " to dis- 

 tribute it as a prize for three memoirs on applied chemistry 

 which they shall judge the best, or to award it as a prize 

 to the author of one single memoir containing great utility, 

 or finally to give it as a life pension to the author of a 

 classical discovery useful to sick mankind." Competitors 

 for this prize are invited to send in their applications, 

 accompanied by manuscript or printed papers, not later 

 than December 31, 1903. 



