Marcu 26, 1914] 
NATURE 
gI 
years. At Greenwich there have: in all only been 
eight years with the March rainfall more than 3 in. 
since 1815. Rain has fallen every day in the month 
to March 23, with the exception of March 1 and 2, 
and on March 8 and g the aggregate rainfall was 
I-43 in., whilst the average for the whole month is 
1-46 in. At Camden Square the total rain for the 
month to March 23 is 4:12 in., which is 0-43 in. more 
than in any previous March during the last fifty-five 
years. On March 22 the shade temperature at Green- 
wich was 29°, which is as cold as any previous read- 
ing since January 25, and the terrestrial radiation 
temperature on March 22 was 18°, which is lower than 
any grass temperature since January 24. The Green- 
wich records for the sixty years 1850-1909 show that 
frost has occurred in thirty-one years on March 22, so 
that the chances are in favour of frost on that day, 
whilst on March 20 frost has only occurred in twelve 
vears, which gives the chance of 5 to 1 against frost. 
A COMPLIMENTARY banquet was given by members 
of the medical profession to Surgeon-General Gorgas, 
sanitary officer of the Panama Canal Commission, on 
Monday, March 23. Sir Thomas Barlow (president 
of the Royal College of Physicians) occupied the chair, 
and the company included many distinguished repre- 
sentatives of medical science. Earlier in the day 
Surgeon-General Gorgas delivered a lecture before the 
Royal Society of Medicine on his sanitary work in 
Panama. In the course of his lecture he said that 
one-third of the canal zone is low and marshy, and 
had the reputation for four hundred years of being 
one of the most unhealthy regions in the world. — It 
is probable that more white men have died there from 
tropical diseases than at any other place: within the 
tropics. The French began work on the canal in 
1880, the Americans in 1904. During the intervening 
twenty-four years it had been discovered that malaria 
and yellow fever are transmitted from one human 
being to another by the mosquito—malaria by the 
anopheles, and yellow fever by the stegomyia. These 
discoveries enabled health conditions at Panama _ to 
be controlled. Had the Americans known no more 
about these two diseases in 1904 than did the French 
in 1880, he did not believe that they could have done 
any better.—The degree of Doctor of Science, honoris 
causa, was conferred upon Surgeon-General Gorgas 
at a special Convocation of the University of Oxford 
on Tuesday, March 24. 
On Wednesday, March 18, a portrait of Sir William 
Ramsay, painted by Mr. Mark Milbanke, was pre- 
sented to the University of London, University Col- 
lege, on behalf of a committee of subscribers, consist- 
ing mainly of former colleagues and past students, 
by Prof. J. Norman Collie. Prof. Collie directed 
attention to the scientific achievements of Sir William 
Ramsay. While an assistant in Glasgow, Sir William 
Ramsay, together with Prof. Dobbie, discovered the 
fact that a certain number of acids obtained by oxida- 
tion of compounds obtained from bone oil and coal 
tar were identical with the products obtained by oxida- 
tion of the alkaloids. After that, when he was pro- 
fessor at University College, Bristol, he brought out 
NOMeg17, VOL..93| 
a very large amount of extremely interesting work in 
physical chemistry. On coming to London and Uni- 
versity College, his first great discovery, made in 
conjunction with Lord Rayleigh, was that of argon; 
and this was followed soon afterwards by the isolation 
of helium from clevite. Following un these two dis- 
coveries, Sir William Ramsay, after five years’ hard 
work with Prof. Travers, succeeded in finally 
obtaining from the atmosphere three more elements 
—neon, krypton, and xenon. After this, Sir William 
Ramsay investigated the emanation that comes off 
from the element radium. This he obtained in the 
pure condition above mercury, and noticed that it 
gradually decomposed and that helium resulted. The 
portrait was accepted by the Vice-Chancellor of the 
University (Dr. W. P. Herringham) and by the chair- 
man of the managing subcommittee of University 
College (Dr. J. Bourne Benson). A replica of the 
portrait was presented to Lady Ramsay, on behalf of 
the subscribers, by the Provost of the college in token 
of the esteem and affection in which Sir William and 
Lady Ramsay are held at University College. The 
gift was briefly acknowledged by Lady Ramsay and 
Sir William Ramsay. 
In the Times of March 17 E. Naville gives a further 
account of his remarkable discoveries at Abydos. He 
has found a great rectangular reservoir, which is 
shown to belong to the period of the temple of the 
Sphinx, when building with enormous stones without 
ornament came into fashion. This he believes to be the 
oldest stone monument, in the architectural sense, in 
Egypt. Some of the pyramids may be older, but, 
except for the inner chambers, they are without archi- 
tectural plan. This reservoir was used for the storage 
of water in high Nile; and it is a remarkable fact that 
the beginning in architecture is neither a temple nor 
a tomb, but a gigantic water-work, showing that even 
in this early period the people had carefully observed 
the laws of the rise and fall of the Nile, and of the 
processes of. irfiltration. 
In the National Geographic Magazine for February 
Mr. W. J. Showalter contributes an interesting article, 
illustrated by a fine series of photographs, showing 
how the opening of the Panama Canal has been 
delayed by the earth slides, particularly in what is 
known as the Culebra Cut. It was only with the 
deepening of the canal bed in 1910 that these obstacles 
became really formidable; in all some thirty million 
cubic. yards of material have been removed. Mr. 
Showalter describes the geological conditions of the 
area, with eleven groups of bedded rock and six of 
igneous formations, the result of volcanic action and 
uplifting of marine strata. The engineers now intend 
to check erosion in the Culebra Cut by covering the 
banks with vegetation, and the ships of the future 
will pass between banks of tropic green, except at 
those places where the living rock defies the efforts of 
the forester. 
In his presidential address to the Society for 
Psychical Research (pubushed in the current number 
of the society’s Proceedings), Prof. Henri Bergson 
asked. ‘‘ what would have happened if modern science, 
