12 NATURE 
to the aard-wolf (p. 15) as a solely South African 
animal. More serious is the repetition of the error 
that blue foxes are the summer representatives of white 
foxes (p. 19), both being, as a matter of fact, in the 
winter coat. In our notice of the first two parts, we 
directed attention to a discrepancy between the lettering 
‘of some of the coloured plates and their descriptions ; 
the same thing occurs in the plate of the polar bear 
facing p. 20, the animal being called Ursus arctos in 
the one place and U. maritimus in the other. Finally 
(p. 172), Euelephas is not the generic name for the 
Indian elephant, while there is no sort of justification 
for alluding to the polecat (p. 289) as Putorius 
ermineus, and the weasel (p. 290) as Mustela vulgaris, 
both animals belonging to the same genus, whether 
this be called by the one name or the other. 
As samples of the better class of illustrations in this 
volume, we reproduce the figures of the cocoa-nut 
crab (Fig. 1) and of the ‘‘ Gila monster,’’ or Arizona 
poisonous lizard (Fig. 2). R. LE: 
NOTES. 
Tue American Academy of Arts and Sciences has, says 
Science, elected Dr. Joseph Larmor, F.R.S., as foreign 
honorary member in succession to the late Sir G. G. Stokes. 
Tue eighty-fifth session of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers was opened on Tuesday, when Sir William White, 
the new president, delivered an inaugural address of great 
importance, in which he discussed the main lines of recent 
advance in ship construction, the present conditions of 
British shipping and ship-construction, and warship build- 
ing since 1860. 
Ir is announced by the Electrician that this year it is 
proposed to award the Nobel physics prize to Signor 
Marconi, the chemistry prize to Prof. Arrhenius, and the 
medicine prize to Prof. Finsen. Each prize is worth about 
Soool. 
Tue United States National Academy of Sciences will 
hold its autumn meeting in Chicago, beginning on 
November 17. 
WE regret to learn of the death on September 24 of Mr. 
J. A. Brown, aged seventy-two. He was an enthusiastic 
collector of flint implements, and author of a work entitled 
“* Palaolithic Man in N.W. Middlesex ’’ (1887). 
A ReuTER telegram from Stockholm states that Baron 
E. Nordenskjold has arranged to make a zoological and 
anthropological expedition to the frontiers of Peru and 
Bolivia. The expedition will start at the end of December 
or the beginning of January. 
REFERRING to the suggested existence of radium in the 
sun, a correspondent points out that not a single line in 
the ultra-violet spectrum of radium described by Sir William 
Crookes (Proceedings Roy. Soc., vol. Ixxii., No. 482) 
coincides exactly with a solar line. ‘‘ The strongest radium 
line in Sir William’s list is 3814-661, which is very near the 
solar line 3814.671 assigned to iron and carbon, but is not 
coincident with it.’ 
Tue Terra Nova and the Morning, the vessels which are 
to go to the relief of the Antarctic expedition on board the 
Discovery, have arrived at Hobart. The two vessels will 
leave together in the first week of December. The Swedish 
ship Frithiof, which is going to the relief of Dr. Nordens- 
kjold’s Antarctic Expedition, arrived at Buenos Ayres on 
October 30. 
NO. 1775, VOL. 69 | 
[NOVEMBER 5, 1903 
At the end of last session it was decided to hold the meet- 
ings of the Physical Society alternately in the afternoons 
and evenings, and to change the place of meeting from the 
Chemical Society to the Royal College of Science, where 
the facilities for experimental demonstration are very com- 
plete. The first evening meeting will be held on Friday, 
November 13, at 8 p.m., when Sir Oliver Lodge will de- 
scribe and illustrate by experiments (1) means for electrify- 
ing the atmosphere on a large scale, and (2) an arrange- 
ment for driving mercury pumps. 
Tue Paris correspondent of the Times states that the 
Sanitary Conference has at present under its consideration 
a project for the creation of an international sanitary 
bureau for the collection of information respecting infectious 
diseases, such as plague, cholera, and yellow fever, and 
also for the harmonious working of those sanitary regu- 
lations in the East which have so greatly contributed 
within the last five years to the preservation of public health 
as well as to the benefit of trade by the suppression of the 
old quarantine system. The international sanitary bureau 
would have its headquarters in Paris. 
Captain J. M. James, of Tokio, sends the following table 
showing the dates on which the first fall of snow took place 
on the summit of Fuji-Yama, the height of which in 1884 
was 12,425 feet +25 feet :—1884, October 6, light; 1885, 
September 27, light; 1886, October 7, light; 1887, October 
2, heavy fall; 1888, October 1, heavy fall; 1889, September 
25, heavy fall; 1890, October 4, light; 1891, October 12, 
heavy fall; 1892, September 25, light; 1893, October 7, 
heavy fall; 1894, September 22, light; 1895, October 3, 
light; 1896, September 21, light; 1897, October 5, light; 
1898, September 26, heavy fall; 1899, September 16, heavy 
fall; 1900, September 25, heavy fall; 1901, September 25, 
heavy fall; 1902, September 19, heavy fall; 1903, September 
27, heavy fall. 
At the recent meeting of the German Association at 
Cassel, Prof. Penck, of Vienna, was to have given an 
address on geological time, but illness prevented him from 
doing so, and his place was taken at the last moment by 
Prof. Conwentz, of Berlin. The writer of the article upon 
the meeting, in Nature of October 15 (p. 586), was un- 
aware that any change had been made, and the titles he 
gave of addresses for delivery on September 22 were those 
announced in the programme. Prof. Conwentz has now 
sent us a report of his address, which dealt with the pre- 
servation of remarkable natural objects, especially of rare 
living plants and animals. He pointed to the destruction 
of orchids in Thuringen, the extermination of rare thistles 
on the German coasts, the cleansing of brooks from aquatic 
vegetation, and the destruction of large trees, and argued 
that, both for scientific and zsthetic reasons, districts should 
be set aside where the natural features of the country should 
be preserved, while care should be taken not to destroy 
needlessly objects of interest to natural history. 
In a letter to Nature of August 6, Messrs. Hutchins, of 
Cape Town, referred to the ‘‘ Research on the Eucalypts 
Especially in Regard to their Essential Oils ’’ by Messrs. 
R. T. Baker and H. G. Smith, reviewed in Nature for 
April 2 (vol. Ixvii. p. 524). The authors of this memoir 
have sent us a long letter of reply, in the course of which 
they say that the remarks upon their work are likely to 
lead to the idea that it has been confined to the chemistry 
of Eucalyptus oils almost entirely, and that new species have 
been named and a new classification for the Eucalypts 
formulated without sufficient warrant. They proceed to 
point out that their results are not those of the chemist 
