November 7, 1918] 



NATURE 



193 



iiinual report of the Department of Fisheries 

 igal and Bihar and officially limited 



to .1 maximum of eight pages. Mr. Southwell, thi 

 ..f Fisheries, gives a shorl summar) of the 

 work of bis department, a lisl of papers relating to 

 marine and fresh-water liiulo^v published elsewhere, 

 and a general account of the fishing industrj so far 

 as it comes within his cognisance. 



oi the Dove Marine Laboratory 

 at Cullercoats deals with marine biological investiga- 

 tions carried on along the same general lines as in 



The report on the routine examination 



of samples of local herrings sting in that it 



- i ed fishing on the East 

 1915 the hei ring shoals were i harai - 

 lominance of fish of four years of 

 age (thai is, herrings with three winter rings on the 

 scales), bul in 1916 and mi; the North-East English 

 ontained a majority of five-year-olds. Spawn- 

 ing apparently occurred at the end of August and the 

 beginning of September. Other papers in Prof. 

 deal with the growth rates and numbers 

 es i 11 Crustacea and with plankton ami general 

 faunistii research. Prof. Meek's paper on the growth 

 of Crustacea is noteworthy .1- an attempt to clear up 

 much that is confusing with regard to this matter. 



I m Fish Trades Gazette of October 26 contains 

 an interesting article on "Fisheries Reconstruc- 

 tion in Germany," in which the author sum- 

 marises a memorandum prepared by the Economic 



Union of the German Deep-sea Fisheries. A 

 great deal is being done in the sphere of 

 technical and scientific research. At Munich "there 

 1 founded a great research institute for the 

 study of the chemistry of food- a direct result of the 

 difficulties from the war — with, in the meantime, a 

 temporary home in the University. It is meant to 



serve the interests of the whole Empire, and will be 



richly endowed. A sum of from 3,000,000 to 



4,000,000 marks (150,000/. to 200,000!.) has been set 



aside for building and equipment, and the annual 



endowment will be between IOO,000 and 200,000 marks 



to io.oooi.). The director is Prof. Dr. Theodor 



Paull. . . • In the section dealing with fish it is intended 



to make researches on the chemical composition and 



litj of fish of every species, fresh and pre- 



Si rved ; on the influence of cold and other agents on 



rvation and transport; on various methods 



of preparing fish for the tabl< ; and on the so-called 



' fish-poison,' or poisoning by bad fish." 



Now that ferro-concrete shipbuilding seems to have 

 come to stay, it is interesting to note that, according 

 to Hansa for September 14, no composition i- neces- 

 sary to protect ships' hulls from attack by sea-water. 

 This opinion is expressed as the result of several 

 observations on ferro-concrete structures in German 

 harbours. 



A 1 m torn has been started in Sweden, according to 

 blad for August 30, for extracting oil 



from alum schist. Large quantities of this schist are 

 found in the Lamina Nerika district, yielding benzine 

 and crude oils. The latter can bi used for oil-engines 

 or converted into paraffin and lubricating oils. The 

 can treat 30,000 tons of schisf per annum, 

 giving 1200 tons of oil. The supply of schisf in 

 llj inexhaustible, and other similar 

 factories will shortly be started. 



Watbr is decomposed by electric current at the 

 rate of 03354 grm. per ampere per hour. The pro- 

 ducts are 0416 litre of hydrogen and 020S litre of 

 Oiygen from the quantity of water named. If, when 



NO. 2558, VOL. I02] 



suitable arrangements for setting up hydraulic pres- 

 sure have been made, a current be passed through 

 the water, decomposition will take place, and the 

 gases generated will produce pressure of any desired 

 intensity. According to the Chemiker-Zeitung (Sep- 

 tember 4), it is possible to produce pressures as high 

 as [860 atmospheres in this wav. 



I\ an article in the May and July issues of the 

 New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology Mr. 



M. A. Eliott describes the growth of the frozen-meat 

 industry of New Zealand, and maintains that the 

 demands on it will be still further increased after the 

 war. At the present time about six million sheep and 

 lambs and a quarter of a million cattle are exported 

 per annum, a fleet of fifty properly insulated steamers 

 equipped with refrigerating machinery, and making 

 two and a half journeys per annum, being engaged 

 in the trade. Cold stores have recently been erected 

 in the Colony capable of holding one year's export. 

 The Home Government is alive to the importance of 

 a food supply such as this, and has appointed a Food 

 Investigation Board to deal with the problems arising 

 out of the preservation, storage, and transport of 

 food materials. 



Prof. J. T. Luxdbye, in a paper read recently 

 before the Danish Society of Engineers, gave an 

 account of the various units of light used in European 

 countries, and the intensity of light required for satis- 

 factory illumination under various conditions. A 

 simple method is given (Ingenifren, August 28) for 

 obtaining the intensity of light by measuring the dis- 

 tance at which letters of known size can be read with 

 different lights. Up to a certain point this distance 

 increases very rapidly with the intensity of light, but 

 when the intensity exceeds a certain limit the increase 

 in distance is small. A pair of smoked glasses, which 

 intercept a known quantity of light, and a decimal rule 

 are the only apparatus required. The luminous inten- 

 sity is found bv measuring the distance at which 

 a given specimen of print can be seen through smoked 

 glasses, and then measuring the distance at which it 

 can be seen without them. The ratio between these 

 two operations forms a measure of the luminous 

 intensity. 



Prof. Kammerlingh Onnes has recently succeeded 

 in demonstrating the possibility of the existence of 

 permanent electric currents without the action of an 

 e.m.f. The resistance of conductors vanishes very 

 suddenly below certain critical temperatures, and a 

 conductor brought to the non-conducting state can 

 carry currents up to a critical value, above which the 

 resistance suddenly reappears. The super-conducting 

 state is not attainable when the conductor is exposed 

 to a magnetic field above a critical value. Tests are 

 described (Schweizerische Elektrotechnische Zeil- 

 schrift, August 31) in which a current was induced 

 in a lead spiral in its super-conducting state, and con- 

 tinued to flow with a decrease of only 1 per cent, per 

 hour. 



It is common knowledge that the general methods 

 of running boiler plants are not efficient. A 

 deal of attention has been given recently in the 

 technical Press to the scientific control of steam-raising 

 plants, and the first of a series of articles by Mi 

 Brow ulie, Compston, and Royse on exact data on 

 the running of steam-boiler plants appears in 

 Engineering for November 1. During the past ten 

 years the authors have tested 250 typical steam-boiler 

 plants, comprising 1000 boilers. The presi nt article 

 deals with the efficiency of the economiser. This 

 appliance generally consists of rows of vertical cast- 



