October 17, 1901] 



NA TUBE 



607 



1902, accompanied by a sealed envelope containing the name 

 and address of the competitor, to the Priiiidenten der 

 Industriellen Gesellschaft, MUlhausen, Alsace. 



Prizes are offered by the English Arboricultural Society 

 for the best essays on the following subjects :— The more 

 extensive cultivation of hardy flowering shrubs ; the arbori- 

 cultural management of private and public parks ; an essay on 

 any insect or group of insects injurious to forest trees ; the 

 natural regeneration of oak and beech woods ; on the manage- 

 ment of young trees, with the view of rendering them suitable 

 for planting in avenues, streets and other places ; the relative 

 durability of British-grown exotic trees ; on the growth and 

 freedom from disease in this country of larches, other than the 

 common European larch ; the financial aspect of forestry, with 

 special reference to actual cases. In addition to the foregoing, 

 Mr. H. J. Elwes, F.R.S., offers a special prize for a paper on 

 natural reproduction of trees by seed in England. The next 

 annual meeting of the Society will be held in France. 



The following gentlemen have been nominated to serve on 

 the council of the London Mathematical Society for the ensuing 

 session : — President, Dr. Hobson ; vice-presidents. Prof. W. 

 Burnside and Major MacMahon, R.A. ; treasurer. Dr. J. 

 Larmor; hon. ,sec?., R. Tucker and Prof. Love; other 

 members, J. E. Campbell, Lieut. -Colonel Cunningham, R.E., 

 Prof. Elliott, Dr. Glaisher, Prof. M. J. M. Hill, H. M. 

 Macdonald, Prof. L. J. Rogers*, A. E. Western, E. T. 

 Whittaker and A. Young*. Those marked * are new nominations. 

 The retiring rtienibersare Lord Kelvin and Mr. A. B. Kempe. 

 The annual meeting will be held at 22, Albemarle-street, W., on 

 November 14, at 5.30 o'clock. 



Experiments have recently been made in the State of 

 Connecticut for the purpose of cultivating the Sumatra tobacco 

 plant. It is stated that the experiments have been very success- 

 ful, and great interest is now being taken in the matter in 

 order to improve the quality of the Connecticut leaf, which 

 is much used as a wrapper for the better quality cigars. 



Major Ro.nald Ross informs the British Medical fottnml 

 that he has recently received a communication from a Jamaica 

 correspondent drawing his attention to the fact that mosquitoes 

 are responsive to certain sounds, such as a continuous whoop or 

 hum. Major Ross's informant states that swarms gather round 

 his head when he makes a continuous whoop. There may be, 

 however, he says, some particular note or pitch that would be 

 more attractive to them. 



At the recent meeting of the American -Association, in the 

 Section of Chemistry, Prof. J. H. Long, president of the section, 

 delivered an interesting address on the teaching of chemistry in 

 the medical schools of the United States. The first part of the 

 address was devoted to sketching historically the teaching of 

 chemistry in the American medical schools. A prominent 

 individuality in this connection was Dr. Robert Hare, whose 

 great merit apparently consisted in the ingenuity he displayed in 

 contriving experiments to illustrate simple chemical principles to 

 medical students. While Hare was prominent in Philadelphia, 

 Silliman, Gorhani and Mitchell were developing the departments 

 of medical chemistry in Vale, Harvard and Columbia. The 

 next step in the teaching of chemistry to medical students was 

 the institution of laboratory courses ; this did not take place at 

 Harvard until 1872. Subsequently to this an important question 

 arose as to the qualification of the teacher of so-called medical 

 chemistry. Since, formerly, the main use of chemistry to the 

 medical student lay in its direct application to pharmacy it was 

 held that this subject was best taught by a physician ; the growth, 

 NO. 1668, VOL. 64] 



however, of physiological chemistry, and the obvious relation of 

 chemical principles to physiology and pathology, rendered it of 

 the first importance that medical students should be well 

 grounded, not only in the properties of isolated substances as 

 heretofore, but in the actual principles of organic and inorganic 

 chemistry. A trained chemist alone was competent to teach 

 upon these lines, and hence the medical chemistry taught by the 

 physician became replaced by chemistry taught by a chemist. 

 The remainder of Prof. Long's address dealt with the far-reach- 

 ing importance of chemistry, inorganic as well as organic, to the 

 medical student, and the inadequacy of mere analytical courses, 

 into which there is apparently some danger of the teaching of 

 chemistry degenerating. He emphasises the fact, well recognised 

 in this country, that the burning problems of the physiology^ 

 the pathology and therapeutics, if not of to-day, certainly 

 of the near future, are essentially chemical, and instancing 

 the work of Bredig upon the fermentative action of colloidal 

 platinum, &c., points out that they are by no means necessarily 

 confined within the accepted limits of so-called organic chemistry. 



The Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies 

 maintains its activity in supplying the colonists with the most 

 trustworthy information bearing upon the various subsidiary 

 industries which should, with a little energy and patience, 

 bring about a great improvement in the welfare of the islands. 

 Pamphlet Series, No. 9, now being distributed, deals with 

 "Bee-Keeping in the West Indies." In Europe and America 

 there is a large and ever-increasing demand for honey and bees- 

 wax, yet the West Indian islands, with their dozens of varieties- 

 of honey-bearing flowers all round the year, may be said, with 

 the exception of Jamaica, to have thus far made no real attempt 

 to regard bee-keeping as worthy of encouragement. Mr. W. K. 

 Morrison, formerly of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, has been engaged by Dr. Morris as expert adviser to 

 the Imperial Department, and he has been touring amongst the 

 islands during the first half of the present year studying the 

 conditions and prospects of bee-keeping. The outcome of his 

 investigation is this pamphlet of 73 pages, conveying to all who 

 wish to increase their income in an easy manner simple hints 

 and suggestions as to the requirements of tropical bee-keepers. 

 Only a small capital .is required to make a good start, and the 

 profits are large so long as a sound and attractive article is 

 produced. It is indicative of the natural carelessness of the 

 colonists that it should be considered necessary to dwell uporv 

 this weakness, for in insisting that a high standard of excellence 

 is required to secure remunerative prices on the European 

 markets, it is added that " The great danger to West Indian 

 bee-keeping will probably lie in the tendency to ship abroad 

 honey or wax of an inferior quality." The pamphlet, which is 

 illustrated, is a veritable storehouse of instruction, and should 

 be the means of originating an industry which may add con- 

 siderably to the wealth of the islands. 



Prof. T. Levi Civita, writing in the Atti dei Linceiy 

 discusses the law of fluid resistance, and in particular the 

 property that this resistance varies approximately as the square 

 of the velocity, as a consequence of the properties of discon- 

 tinuous motion in a perfect fluid. The author obtains for the 

 most general case an expression for the resistance in the form of a. 

 series of even powers of the velocity, which series is convergent 

 for velocities below a certain limit, and in the cases commonly 

 occurring in practice reduces approximately to its first term, 

 giving Newton's law. 



In a recent Bulletin of the Agricultural College at Tokyo- 

 there is an investigation by Mr. Aso on the causes of the differ- 

 ence in colour between green and black tea. In making green 

 tea the leaves are steamed as soon as gathered ; in the case of 

 black tea the leaves are allowed to ferment before drying. The 



