108 
MapaMeE Curie’s opening lecture to the students attend- 
ing the course in general physics at the Sorbonne on 
November 5, on the subject of ‘‘ Les Théories modernes 
relatives A 1’Electricité et A la Matiére,’’ has been pub- 
lished in full in the issues of the Revue scientifique for 
November 17 and 24. 
Dr. E. Symes-THompson, Gresham professor of medicine, 
and an authority on pulmonary diseases, died on Saturday, 
November 24, at the age of sixty-nine. 
Str RicHarp Farrant, who died on November 20, at 
seventy-one years of age, was treasurer of University 
College, London, which owes much to his business capacity. 
It was largely due to him that the fund was started to 
raise 200,0001. to provide for the necessary buildings and 
financial arrangements required for the incorporation of 
the college and the University of London, and his exer- 
tions in connection with the scheme will not readily be 
forgotten. 
Tue New Zealand International Exhibition was opened 
on November 1. The exhibits are valued at three-quarters 
of a million sterling, and two-thirds of this value represents 
industrial exhibits. The exhibition is the largest that has 
ever been held south of the equator. 
THE winter meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science is to be held this year in New 
York City. The first general session will be opened at 
Columbia University on the morning of December 27. The 
president of the meeting will be Dr. W. H. Welch. The 
sectional meetings will begin in the afternoon of the same 
day, and in the evening Dr. C. M. Woodward, the re- 
tiring president, will deliver his address. The meetings 
will be continued on December 28 and 29, and if necessary 
on December 31. 
Visitors to the old Swedish cathedral and university 
town of Lund will find no little interest in the compara- 
tively recent collections at the ethnographical museum 
illustrating many phases of rural life. Old peasant houses 
have been taken down, brought from considerable dis- 
tances, and set up at Lund, among the buildings being 
an old church and an inn. Models of interiors of houses 
with costumed figures of inmates give an excellent idea 
of rustic conditions, reminding one, though on a smaller 
scale, of the Cecho-Slavonic museum in the Kinsky park 
at Prague. No catalogue of the collections has yet been 
issued. 
It is pleasing to note, from the current issue of its 
Bulletin, that the useful Société d’Encouragement, which 
is now in the 1o5th year of its existence, is in a satis- 
factory financial condition. After several years of deficit, 
the accounts for 1905 show a substantial excess of income 
over expenditure. The Bulletin contains useful summaries 
of recent progress in chemistry and mechanics, and affords 
clear evidence of the admirable work that is done by the 
society towards the development of the French national 
industries. 
Tue Home Secretary received at the Home Office on 
November 22 a deputation of members of the Royal Com- 
mission on Coal Supplies, who asked that the records and 
estimates which they have prepared at great cost to the 
country should be kept up by the Geological Survey to 
prevent their labours from being almost abortive. Lord 
Allerton believes that the whole of the information re- 
quired could be had at a cost of 10001. or 15001. a year. 
Mr. Gladstone, while replying in sympathetic terms, pointed 
out that the Home Office is not properly equipped for 
NO. 1935, VOL. 75] 
NALORLE 
[NovemMBER 29, 1906 
cooperating with the work suggested, and he is afraid 
there may be difficulty in obtaining monthly returns. Lord 
Allerton, however, thinks that the difficulty is exagger- 
ated, because, as chairman of a railway company, he has 
found that monthly returns can be obtained without in- 
crease of staff and without having to pay overtime. 
IN connection with the fourth International Fishery 
Congress which is to meet in the City of Washington 
during September, 1908, a number of competitive awards 
has been arranged for the most important investigations, 
discoveries, or inventions during 1906, 1907, and 1908, 
relative to fisheries, agriculture, ichthyology, fish path- 
ology, and related subjects. The awards will be in the 
form of sums of money varying in amount from 12I. to 
sol. The competition is open to any person, association, 
or company. Papers may be written in English, French, 
German, or Italian. The congress reserves the right to 
publish, prior to their publication elsewhere, any papers 
submitted in competition, whether such papers receive 
rewards or not. The awards will be announced at a 
session of the congress. All communications should be 
addressed to Mr. Hugh M. Smith, general secretary, United 
States Bureau of Fisheries, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. 
At the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on 
November 16 Mr. Thomas Clarkson read an interesting 
paper on steam as a motive power for public-service 
vehicles. The advantages of steam for public-service work 
were summarised as follows :—the employment of a safe 
and cheap fuel; freedom from noise and vibration; absence 
of smell; and absence of change-speed gears, electric igni- 
tion, and friction clutch. The maintenance cost of an 
engine that has been in regular public service on single- 
deck omnibuses for three years in Devonshire in 1905 was 
6-23 pence per mile for total operating expenses, 1-5 pence 
per mile for tyres, and 1-16 pence per mile for depreci- 
ation. Much has been done towards obviating mechanical 
stops and breakdowns during the past two years, and the 
steam omnibus of to-day is shown by Mr. Clarkson to be 
a very satisfactory and trustworthy machine. 
In the first article of the fourth number of the Journal 
of Economic Biology (vol. i.) Prof. A. Nalepa, of Vienna, 
describes two ‘‘ eriophyids ’’ (Acari) from Fiji. The first, 
Eriophyes hibisci, forms galls on a species of Hibiscus, of 
which the second, Oxypleurites bisetus, is also a denizen. 
In the second article Mr. G. H. Carpenter records the 
occurrence of larva of the chrysomelid beetle Psylliodes 
chrysocephala on cabbage-plants at Limerick. Much 
damage was done to the cabbages on which the larve 
fed, but the author is of opinion that the occurrence is an 
unusual one, and that the normal food-plant of the species 
is different. The third article is devoted to an account, by 
Mr. R. Newstead, of the life-history of the fly Stomoxys 
calcitrans, the larve of which are found in stables, cow- 
sheds, &c. 
In vol. xvii. of L’Anthropologie appears an illustrated 
paper, by the late Mr. E. Piette, on evidence for the domestic- 
ation or partial domestication of the horse (and possibly a 
wild ass) during the Reindeer epoch. This evidence consists 
of a number of sculptured and incised heads of horses in- 
vested with halters or head-stalls. Some of these head- 
stalls, as shown in the figure of a head from the cave of 
St. Michel d’Arudy, are of a very complex nature, consist- 
ing not only of several strands of rope, but of a piece of 
buck’s horn or bone under the lower jaw. The evidence 
seems to be conclusive as to the domestication of the horse 
