302 
NAROKE 
[JANUARY 24, 1907 
In the case of the former, the age estimate is made by 
counting the annual rings of growth in the ear-bone or 
otolith, whereas in the latter the scales are employed for 
the same purpose. Enlarged photographs of these struc- 
tures in the two species are exhibited. 
Tue Colonial Office has just issued a report of the 
advisory committee of the Tropical Diseases Research 
Fund for 1906. This committee was constituted in July, 
1904, and consists of Sir T. Barlow, Sir M. Foster, Sir 
P. Manson, Sir R. Moor, Surgeon-General Bransfoot, and 
Messrs. Holderness, Lucas, and Read, with Sir West 
Ridgeway as chairman. The revenue of the fund for 1906 
amounted to 3000l., and was made up of contributions 
the Government of India, 
Rhodes trustees, and various colonial Governments. The 
expenditure consisted of a grant of 5ool. to the Liverpool 
School Tropical Medicine, of the London 
School, of 7501. to the University of London, and of s5ool. 
to the Roval Society. 
work done during 1906. 
from Imperial Government, 
of 1o0o0l. 10 
The report includes summaries of 
Mr. 
of the London School, has investigated the life-history of 
the guinea-worm, the 
of a disease widely disseminated in tropical Africa. 
embryo, after leaving the human body, develops 
larve, which the body of a fresh-water 
crustacean of the genus Cyclops. The larva do not spon- 
taneously the Cyclops, but if the crustacean be 
treated with o-2 per cent. hydrochloric acid it dies, and 
This 
suggests that man is infected by swallowing water con- 
taining infected Cyclops, and by feeding monkeys with 
infected Cyclops guinea-worm infection was produced. Dr. 
species of spirochaete of the 
mouse, and summaries of investigations on the value of 
Leiper, the helminthologist 
Dracunculus cause 
The 
into 
medinensis, or 
enter small 
leave 
the larvz are awakened into activity and escape. 
Wenyon describes a new 
arsenical preparations in sleeping sickness and on other 
subjects are also given. 
No. 9 of the Kew Bulletin, completing the volume for 
the past year, contains a list of marine algz from Corea, 
by Mr. A. D. Cotton, and a decade of new orchids named 
by Mr. W. E. Rolfe. Mr. W. B. Hemsley communicates 
a note on a new fruit from Uruguay, about the size and 
shape of a very small apple, having an agreeable taste 
and said to possess remarkable digestive properties. The 
plant belongs to the Sapotaceze, and receives the name of 
Pouteria suavis. Short notices of the dye substance known 
as barwood, now referred to Pterocarpus Soyauxii, and 
varieties of the Chinese drug, ‘‘ huan-ch’i,’’ furnished by 
species of Astragalus, are contributed by Mr. J. M. Hillier 
and Mr. E. H. Wilson. 
A PAPER on the planting of high moorlands appears in 
the Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural 
Society, vol. xx., part i., wherein the writer, Sir John 
Stirling-Maxwell, advocates a Belgian system of utilising 
the turfs cut out from the drains as mounds in which to 
plant out seedlings. A variety of Pinus montana, grown 
largely in the Pyrenees, is mentioned as a tree that is 
likely to grow well on high moorland. Dr. R. S. 
MacDougall contributes an entomological article on the 
life-history of the large larch sawfly, Nematus erichsoni, and 
Mr. E. S. Grant describes a method of trapping the pine 
weevil, Hylobius abietis. A useful set of measurements 
indicating the increase during fourteen years of a larch 
crop growing at Murthly, Perthshire, is given by Mr. A. 
Murray, and a table for the amount of creosote absorbed 
by various timbers is furnished by Mr. W. B. Havelock. 
NO. 1943, VOL. 75 | 
In the Journal de Physique for December, 1906, M. U. 
Schoop describes experiments for determining the lines of 
flow in electrolytes and the distribution of currents. in 
accumulators. The method consists in using an analyser 
formed of two electrodes of spongy platinum placed close 
together and connected with a galvanometer; when the 
electrodes coincide in direction with the equipotential lines 
no deviation is shown. In this way the lines of the field 
are capable of being plotted, and a further experimental 
method enables the intensity of the current to be found 
at different points. 
Ir has been shown Lord Rayleigh that there are 
certain cases in which an oscillation can be maintained 
or intensified by a periodic force of double its frequency, 
as, for example, a stretched string excited by a longitudinal 
force of half the period of lateral vibration. In the 
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, 148 (1906), Mr. Andrew 
Stephenson extends this result by discussing cases in which 
the ratio of the frequencies, instead of being 2, is one 
of the numbers 1, 3, 3, 3, &c., i.e. a fraction having 2 as 
by 
its numerator. 
In the Manchester Memoirs, 1. (1906), 8, Mr. R. F. 
Gwyther discusses the range of Stokes’s progressive waves 
of finite amplitude. By studying the paths of the fluid 
particles, the author that the class of wave in 
question is capable of indefinite propagation with uniform 
velocity; moreover, the motions of the particles can be 
determined, within a certain range, to any required degree 
of accuracy by means of series. There is a limit to the 
height of the waves when their profile shows a finite 
angle at the crest, and this “ highest wave ’’ is the same 
as that investigated by Mitchell in 1893. 
shows 
Tue interest taken by American mathematicians in what 
is done in other countries is well illustrated by Prof. Virgil 
Snyder’s short article on the mathematical tripos of 1906 
in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society for 
December, 1906. The article contains an outline of the 
general characteristics of the various parts of the tripos 
and the number and subject-matter of the papers in each 
part. It is illustrated by specimens of the papers re- 
printed by permission, one in applied mathematics from 
the first four days, one in pure mathematics from the 
higher part of part i., and one on divisions ii.-iv. from 
part ii. Reference is made to the fact that in part i. the 
ss generally have only a very distant connection 
with the bookwork. 
riders ”’ 
Tur ‘‘ Notes in Mathematics,’’ edited by Prof. Morley, 
form a pleasing addition to the dry details of class-lists 
and time-tables published in the Johns Hopkins University 
Circular, 1906, No. 9. The notes in question deal with 
the linear relations among the minors of symmetric 
determinants, by Dr. A. B. Coble; the use of a special 
type of rational curve (the De Jonquiéres curve) for the 
illustration of binary syzygies, by Mr. A. E. Landry; 
curves with a directrix, by Mr. Clyde S. Atchison; and 
a note on the determination of multiple points of rational 
algebraic curves, by Mr. H. Ivah Thomsen. These notes 
bear testimony to Prof. Morley’s activity in organising 
university research, more especially seeing that the 
American Journal of Mathematics is also issued under his 
editorship by the Johns Hopkins Press. 
A RECORD has been set up in Bendigo for the greatest 
depth at which gold has been found, gold ore having been’ 
struck in driving a cross-cut at 4254 feet at the Victoria 
quartz mine. The record find in depth previously was held 
by the New Chum mine, at 4226 feet. : 
