June 2, 1904] 



NA TURE 



107 



NOTES. 



The annual visitation of the Royal Observatory, Green- 

 -\vich, will be held on Saturday next, June 4. 



The following have been elected honorary and foreign 

 members of the Chemical Society : — Prof. A. H. Becquerel, 

 Prof. C. A. L. de Bruyn, Prof. F. W. Clarke, Madame 

 Curie, Prof. C. T. Liebermann and Prof. E. W. Morley. 



A DEPL-T.-iTiON from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society 

 will wait upon the York City Council on June 6 with the 

 object of asking the corporation to issue an invitation to 

 the British Association to make York the meeting place in 

 1906. 



The death is announced of M. Charles Soret, formerly 

 rector of the University of Geneva, and a member of council 

 of the French Physical Society. 



The Lombardy Rendiconti announces the death of Prof. 

 Amato .Amati, one of the most energetic educationists in 

 Italy, and the author of works on Dante and on geography. 



The death is announced of M. E. D. del Castillo, who 

 prepared a flora of the French islands of Polynesia and de- 

 scribed a portion of the plants brought from Madagascar 

 by .M. ."Vlfred Grandidier. 



At a meeting of the General Medical Council on Tuesday, 

 the following resolution was passed : — " That the president 

 (with the chairman of the Pharmacopoeia Committee) be 

 requested to inform the Lord President of the Privy Council 

 that in the opinion of the council it is desirable that after 

 a suflicient period, to be fixed by law, the metric system 

 of weights and measures should become the one legal system 

 for the preparation and dispensing of drugs and medicines ; 

 that the council would view with favour the passing into 

 law of a Bill such as that now before Parliament entitled 

 the ' Weights and Measures (Metric System) Bill ' ; and 

 that in that event the council would be prepared to take 

 all necessary steps to give effect to the law by making the 

 proper modifications in the ' British Pharmacopoeia.' " 



.•\ Reuter message from Wellington, New Zealand, re- 

 ports that the King has sent the following telegram to 

 Captain Scott, leader of the National .\ntarctic Expedi- 

 tion : — " I have read with interest your report, which Sir 

 Clements Markham sent me. I congratulate you and your 

 gallant crew on your splendid achievements, and wish the 

 Discovery a safe journey home. I hope to see you on your 

 return to England." 



In a letter to the secretary of the Scottish .Antarctic Ex- 

 pedition, says the Times, Mr. W. S. Bruce, the leader of 

 the expedition, remarks : — " We have reached the south- 

 eastern extremity of the Weddell Sea, discovering there a 

 great barrier of ice, part of the Antarctic Continent. We 

 have gone 215 miles further south than last year, and 180 

 further than Ross in this part of the Antarctic regions. 

 ^^'e got beset here in 74° S., 23° W., and were frozen in for 

 a week, from the 7th to the 12th of March. When we got 

 out by chance I thought it wisest not to proceed further in 

 trying to get south and west, but to continue our programme 

 to the north-east. We have sounded in depths up to 2900 

 fathoms and trawled in depths of 2660 fathoms (where Ross 

 marks 4000 fathoms, no bottom)." 



A Reuter message from Rome reports that the Marconi 

 wireless telegraph stations at Bari and Antivari (Monte- 

 negro) have now been erected for some time, and are in 

 regular working order. The high power station at Coltano 

 (Pisa), near the Royal farm of San Rossore, will be the 



NO. 1805, VOL. 70] 



largest in the world, and will be built entirely of stone. 

 It will be readv in August or September, after which the 

 engines and other apparatus will be installed, so that it 

 may begin working not later than the beginning of 1905. 

 The Coltano station will be able to communicate with Great 

 Britain, Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands, as 

 well as with all vessels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, 

 the Red Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. 



The eighty-seventh annual meeting of the Soci^te 

 helv^ticfue des Sciences naturelles will be held at Winterhour 

 from July 30 to August 2. The business of the association 

 will be transacted in seven sections as follows : — mineralogy 

 and geology, botany, zoology, chemistry, physics and 

 mathematics, medicine, and civil engineering. The annual 

 meetings of the Swiss societies of geology, botany, zoology, 

 chemistry and of the Soci^t^ zurichoise de Physique will be 

 held at Winterhour at the same time. The president of the 

 association will be Prof. J. Weber, the vice-president Prof. 

 E. Liidin, and the secretary M. E. Zwingli, to whom all 

 communications should be addressed at Geiselweidstrasse, 

 Winterhour. 



In recent numbers of Nature (March 24 and .\pril 21) 

 Prof. Nagaoka and Prof. Franklin have described methods 

 for demonstrating the change of length of iron wire by 

 magnetisation. Prof. J. C. McLennan, University of 

 Toronto, writes to say that a simple and satisfactory method 

 of e.xhibiting this phenomenon is described in the Physical 

 Review, vol. iv.. No. 35, July, 1898, and consists in the use 

 of an optical lever attached to the test specimen. 



Mr. T. Terad.\ writes to us from the College of Science, 

 Tokyo, to direct attention to an optical illusion observed 

 when lycopodium powder strewn on the surface of water 

 is made to gyrate by a jet of air. After the whirling powder 

 has been fixedly regarded for some time, and the eyes are 

 directed to an adjoining table, the surface of the table 

 appears to move in a direction contrary to that of the 

 lycopodium. 



Dr. D. P.\cini sends us from Rome an account of careful 

 experiments made by him with the object of observing the 

 effects of )?-rays described by M. Blondlot and other investi- 

 gators. Though his observations were made under very 

 favourable conditions, he was unable to detect any increase 

 of luminosity of a phosphorescent screen caused by unknown 

 ravs from strained or tempered steel, an .Auer lamp, a 

 Nernst lamp, sound vibrations, or a magnetic field, though 

 various French observers have affirmed that in each of these 

 cases n-rays are emitted which produce an effect upon the 

 screen. 



In the course of an interview reported in the Wcstiiiiiister 

 Gazette of Friday last, Lord Kelvin is reported to have 

 expressed himself as being decidedly of the opinion that 

 the source of energy of the heat emitted by radium is not 

 in the element itself. He remarked : — " It seems to me 

 absolutely certain that if emission of heat at the rate of 

 90 calories per gram per hour found by Curie at ordinary 

 temperature, or even at the lower rate of 38 found by Dewar 

 and Curie from a specimen of radium at the temperature 

 of liquid oxygen, can go on month after month, energy 

 must somehow be supplied from without." 



A paper on crystalline glazes and their application to the 

 decoration of pottery, read before the Society of Arts by 

 Mr. William Burton, and printed in the current number 

 (May 27) of the Journal of the society, is a noteworthy con- 

 tribution both to the science and the art of pottery. By 

 applving scientific knowledge and method to the production 



