278 NATURE 
Bureaus of twenty-six States and of five societies, and 
is therefore truly international. The International 
Catalogue has four regulations for the abbreviation 
of titles: (a) the abbreviated title must be intelligible 
without a key; (b) in the abbreviated title the words, 
whether entire or abbreviated, must follow each other 
in the same order as in the original title; (c) titles 
of proceedings, reports, or scientific periodicals in 
general which are edited or published by learned 
societies, academies, etc., must, however, begin with 
the name.of the place where the society resides; (d) 
in the case of other periodicals the name of the town 
where they are edited follows the abbreviated title. 
The regulations of the Consilium Bibliographicum 
contain the first two rules of the International Cata- 
logue, but the names of towns are used only when 
necessary to avoid confusion. It would be a great 
convenience to readers of chemical works if a uniform 
system could be adopted, and it is to be hoped that 
Guye’s suggestions will be carried out. 
Engineering for May 8 gives particulars of the 
arrangements made at the Royal Air-craft Factory, 
Farnborough, for the aeroplane engine competition 
instituted by the British Government, and now pro- 
ceeding. The engines are to be of British manu- 
facture throughout (magneto excepted), and in view 
of the successful performances of British aeroplanes 
fitted with foreign engines, it is satisfactory to note 
that there has been a good entry, and that a large 
number of engines has actually been delivered for 
test. The test-house has been arranged with six test- 
beds and friction brakes, each contained in a separate 
cubicle, and supplied with a wind current of sixty 
miles an hour. The brakes are the latest pattern of 
Heenan and Froude’s water dynamometer. The War 
Office proposes to publish a report at the conclusion 
of the trials. 
Tue new Cunard linerAquitania was towed success- 
fully from the Clydebank yard of Messrs. John Brown 
and Co., Ltd., to Greenock on Sunday, May io. 
After her trial trips this week,’ she will proceed to 
Liverpool to be prepared for her maiden voyage to 
New York on May 30. Engineering for May 8 con- 
tains an illustrated article dealing with the propelling 
machinery of this ship. There are twenty-one 
cylindrical double-ended boilers, each having eight 
furnaces. The turbine machinery driving the four 
propeller shafts has been arranged to work on the 
triple system. The high-pressure ahead _ turbine, 
which, along with a high-pressure astern turbine, 
occupies a separate compartment on the port-wing 
turbine-room, receives boiler steam direct, which is 
passed in turn to the intermediate-pressure turbine, 
occupying, along with a high-pressure astern turbine, 
a similar compartment on the starboard wing. Two 
low-pressure ahead turbines on the two inner shafts 
recéive their steam from the intermediate-pressure 
turbine. Some idea of the enormous size of these 
turbines may be obtained from the diameter of 
15 ft. 4 in. over the tips of the blades of the low- 
pressure turbine. The combined weight of the low- 
pressure ahead and astern turbines on one shaft is 
445 tons. 
NO, 2324, VOL. 93] 
[May 14, 1914 
OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 
A REGISTERING MICROPHOTOMETER.—In 1912 Dr P. 
Paul Koch described a registering microphotometer 
designed by himself; the apparatus records photo- 
graphically the varying intensities of a series of objects 
such as the lines in a spectrum or a set of interference 
rings and show their distance apart. The principle 
involved is to move the negative to be measured 
slowly in front of an opening through which a beam 
of light from a constant source is passed, and the 
resulting changes in the intensity of this light are 
recorded on a moving photographic plate. Dr. Koch 
now describes (Contributions from the Mount Wilson 
Solar Observatory, No. 77) an application of this in- 
strument to the study of certain types of laboratory 
spectra, and displays in diagrams the resulting curves 
obtained. Thus, there are types of curves for furnace 
lines for different temperatures, for lines displaced by 
pressure, reversed lines, tube-arc lines, etc. While the 
observations described are stated to be only preliminary 
and very limited in scope, they are sufficient to indicate 
the usefulness of the instrument in those branches of 
spectroscopy in which it is desired to investigate quan- 
titatively measures of line-intensity and structure. 
VARIABLE STAR OBSERVATIONS.—NoO. iii. of the Publi- 
cations of the Vassar College Observatory contains a 
most useful series of variable star observations made 
during the period 1901 to 1912, totalling in all 4797 
observations. In the publication two points in par- 
ticular have been aimed at, namely, first to reduce all 
magnitudes to a uniform standard, that of the Har- 
vard photometry; and secondly, to give the original 
observations with the exact identification of the com- 
panion stars, in order that they may be reduced to 
any other desired photometric scale. In the intro- 
ductory remarks, written by the present director, 
| Caroline E. Furness, a detailed account is given of 
the instruments used, methods of observation em- 
ployed, etc. Table I., which occupies the~ greater 
portion of the publication, gives the details of th: 
observation of each variable; Table II. deals with some 
photometric observations; Table III. gives the magni- 
tude on the Harvard photometric scale for every tenth 
grade of the Hagen, while the observed maxima and 
minima are compared with the ephemeris in Table IV. 
ENHANCED MANGANESE LINES AND a ANDROMED.— 
The spectrum of a Andromedz displays peculiarities 
which have rendered it difficult to couple it up with 
other stars in stellar classifications. Both the Har- 
vard and the South Kensington classifications have 
indicated this star as an anomaly. The lines which 
are responsible for this peculiarity have now been run 
to earth by Mr. F. E. Baxandall, and he finds that 
in the main they are due to a form of manganese 
known as proto-manganese (Monthly Notices R.A.S., 
vol. 74, No. iii., p. 250). In his paper, Mr. Baxandall 
publishes three independent sets of measures of the 
stellar lines, and he states that while there is no proto 
manganese line which does not agree in position— 
within the limits of error in measurement—with an a 
Andromedz line, this long succession of close agree- 
ments leaves little or no doubt that the two sets are 
identical. Attention is directed to the interesting fact 
that while in « Cygni and a Canis Majoris the 
enhanced lines of iron, chromium, and titanium are 
strongly shown, and the proto-manganese lines are 
| comparatively weak or lacking, on the other hand, in 
a Andromedz the case is the opposite. It will thus 
be seen that important criteria are being accumulated 
to help in the task of stellar classification, a former 
prominent case of another proto-substance being that 
of chromium in the spectrum of e Ursz Majoris shown 
, at South Kensington. 
