60 
There is little doubt, also, that once it is reconciled 
to the inevitable, the Marconi Company will realise 
the very substantial benefits it will obtain, both finan- 
cially and otherwise. It is clear that the free and 
rapid growth of any one system will now tend to the 
development of all; it is clear, too, that the advan- 
tageous positions obtained by the Marconi Company 
on the coasts of the greatest shipping nation of the 
world will confer on it an inestimable advantage, of 
which it would surely have been deprived had a 
monopoly been allowed. It has been several times 
pointed out in Nature that State control—and inter- 
-national control—of wireless telegraphy is a neces- 
sity, a fact recognised by all nations, and that this 
control could not be the control of a privately owned 
monopoly. 
In reference to this clause—the only one of first 
importance—it should be mentioned that certain 
Powers, amongst them Great Britain, reserve the 
right to exempt certain stations from its operation on 
condition that they provide adequate substitutes for 
the closed stations. 
One other proposal of great importance was that 
brought forward by the United States, that there 
should be the same obligation for compulsory inter+ 
communication between ship and ship, and a sup- 
plementary agreement to this effect was signed by 
all the Powers except Great Britain, Japan, Italy, 
Mexico, and Persia. In view of the onerous nature 
of this obligation on shipowners in the present state 
of the art, we are inclined to think that the time 
is not yet ripe for its adoption, though doubtless it 
will be adopted by all the Powers at some future 
conference, and in the meantime individual ships have 
everything to gain and nothing to lose by carrying 
out its object whenever possible. 
The convention also provides for priority of all mes- 
sages of distress and answers thereto, for equitable 
division and regulation of charges, and for the estab- 
lishment of an international bureau for the. trans- 
action of administrative work, publication of informa- 
tion, and so forth, but none of the twenty-three other 
articles deserves special comment. It may be added, 
though this naturally goes almost without saying, that 
the convention imposes no restrictions on the naval or 
military uses of wireless telegraphy. These never 
were and never could be a subject for international 
settlement. The various States are pledged to ratify 
the provisions as quickly as possible, and it is hoped 
the convention will become operative on July 1, 1908. 
Between now and then, we shall probably hear and 
read a good deal more about it in Parliament and in 
the Press, and it is to be hoped that those who write 
on the subject to the daily Press will make some 
attempt to understand the technicalities and to study 
the provisions of the convention. 
Mavrice SOLOMON. 
NOTES. 
Tue honours conferred by the King on the occasion of 
his sixty-fifth birthday appear to be mainly for political 
services, and there is little recognition of the claims of 
science. Mr. John Tweedy, president of the Royal College 
of Physicians, has received the honour of knighthood ; 
Colonel R. C. Hellard, director-general. of. the Ordnance 
Survey, and Mr. F. G. Ogilvie, principal assistant secre- 
tary (Technology and Higher Education in Science and 
Art) Board of Education, have been appointed Companions 
of the Order of the Bath; Colonel D. A. Johnston, 
formerly director-general of the Ordnance Survey, has been 
appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint 
Michael and Saint George; Prof. R. W. Boyce, F.R.S., 
NO. 1933, VOL. 75 | 
NATURE 
| NovEMBER 15, 1906 
has received the honour of knighthood; and Dr. J. M. 
Lang, Vice-Chancellor and principal of the University of 
Aberdeen, has been appointed a Commander of the Royal 
Victorian Order. 
A STATEMENT has recently obtained currency that the 
French people themselves, after a hundred years’ use of 
the metric system, cannot claim that it has been adopted 
throughout France, and a free translation of a circular 
issued to chambers of commerce in France by the French — 
Minister of Commerce has been employed to support the 
statement. The Decimal Association in this country 
recently addressed a letter to the French Minister of Com- 
merce with a view to determine what justification existed 
for the statement referred to. The Minister’s reply makes 
it clear that the circular is directed only against the use 
of old names in certain trades, and that the English trans- 
lation misinterprets its meaning and conveys a _ wholly 
wrong impression. It is satisfactory to find, in view of © 
such endeavours to retard the acceptance of the metric 
system by this country, that it has recently been adopted’ 
in the works of Messrs. Joseph Crosfield and Sons, Ltd.,. 
and steadily grows in popularity. 
Unper the chairmanship of Mr. Lawrence Hardy, M.P..,. 
a large and representative conference of fruit growers 
from the fruit-growing counties of England was held at 
the South-Eastern Agricultural College, Wye, on 
Papers contributed on planting of 
trees, strawberries, American blight, and fungus 
In the latter paper reference was made to the 
American gooseberry mildew, the appearance of which in 
England has been noted by the college mycologist (Mr. ~ 
Salmon), and a resolution calling upon the Board of Agri- 
culture to take immediate steps to prevent further import- 
ation of gooseberry bushes and to destroy infected stocks 
in this country was unanimously passed. The disease 
appeared in Ireland in 1900, and has made most extensive 
tavages in that country, and serious alarm is felt by 
growers that a similar result may ensue in England unless 
drastic measures are immediately taken. 
November 7. 
fruit 
diseases. 
were 
Suocks of earthquake were felt at Akureiri, Iceland, at 
10.20 p.m. on November 8, followed by more shocks of 
less violence between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on November 9. 
Pror. W. Wien, professor of physics in the University 
of Wiirzburg, has become chief editor of the Annalen der 
Physik (Leipzig: J. A. Barth) in succession to the late 
Prof. Drude. 
Tue Bradshaw lecture of the Royal College of Surgeons 
will be delivered by Mr. Edmund Owen on Wednesday, 
December 12, upon the subject of ‘* Cancer; its Treatment 
by Modern Methods.”’ 
A CuristMas course of lectures, adapted to a juvenile 
auditory, will be delivered at the Royal Institution by Mr. 
W. Duddell, on ‘‘ Signalling to a Distance; from Primitive 
Man to Radiotelegraphy ’’ (experimentally illustrated). 
The lectures will commence on December 27. 
Ir is proposed, on the occasion of the retirement of 
Major Craigie, C.B., from the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries, to entertain him at a complimentary dinner on 
Wednesday, December 12, in recognition of his services 
to the interests of agriculture and the furtherance of statis- 
tical knowledge. 
Tue balloon Milano, of 1000 cubic metres capacity, which 
started from the exhibition grounds at Milan on Sunday 
morning, November 11, descended at Aix-les-Bains at 
