NovEMBER 12, 1903] 
NATURE 35 
mosquitoes called Anopheles ; thirdly, that these kinds of 
mosquitoes breed principally in shallow and stagnant 
terrestrial waters. Four years have elapsed since these 
facts were established, and a vast mass of information has 
been accumulated regarding the actual working of the pre- 
ventive measures which have been based upon them. Major 
Ross described the State measures for the repression of 
malaria that have already led to successful results in Sierra 
Leone, Havana, Lagos, Ismailia, the German colonies, 
Hong Kong, and other places. It has been proposed that 
permanent sanitary commissioners should be appointed for 
some of the colonies, but Major Ross said that Mr. 
Chamberlain has suggested to him an alternative scheme, 
namely, that several learned societies should periodically 
be asked to send out special commissioners for the purpose 
of examining and reporting upon the sanitary affairs of 
specified tropical Crown colonies, and that such reports, 
after editing by the societies referred to, might then be sub- 
mitted to Government for consideration. Commissioners 
of this kind would cost less, and, not being servants of 
Government, would be able to give entirely unprejudiced 
opinions. 
A DEMONSTRATION was given last week at the works of 
Messrs. Johnson and Phillips of a new electrical process 
for the preparation of peat-fuel. The process aims at 
extracting the large percentage of water in peat, partly 
by mechanical and partly by electrical means; the freshly 
cut peat is packed into rotating cylinders, and whilst fans 
beat out part of the moisture, a strong current of electricity 
is passed through the mass which heats it and thereby helps 
the extraction of the water. It is claimed that a first-class 
fuel can be produced in this way, but no particulars as to 
the cost of production, or results of tests of the fuel by 
competent engineers, are given in the pamphlet describing 
the invention. 
Tur Nagri Sabha established in Benares has, we learn 
from the Pioneer Mail, interested itself in making additions 
to the Hindi literature, but the difficulty of translating 
English scientific works, on account of the absence of suit- 
able Hindi equivalents for the English technical terms, has 
been an obstacle in the way of authors. The Sabha, there- 
fore, resolved to remove this difficulty by compiling, with 
expert aid an authoritative dictionary of scientific words 
and phrases met with in the English scientific works, and 
separate glossaries were ready last year and circulated for 
criticism among men of science in India. In order finally 
to approve and pass the tentative lists, the Sabha appointed 
a committee from among its members, and invited the 
various local Indian Governments to nominate represent- 
atives. Criticisms have been received from men of science 
in various parts of India. 
THE medical officer of health for the City of London 
states in his last report that a case of enteric fever has 
been notified from Paddington as having in all probability 
been caused by mussels sold in Billingsgate Market. The 
mussels were found to have been obtained from a dealer 
at Leigh-on-Sea, and in consequence samples of mussels 
and cockles from the same source were submitted to Dr. 
Klein for bacteriological examination. Dr. Klein reported 
that both the cockles and the mussels were polluted with 
sewage, some of them to a dangerous extent, and that the 
cooking of the molluscs had been very imperfectly carried 
out. This state of affairs having been brought to the 
notice of the Fishmongers’ Company, the sale of cockles 
from Leigh has been prohibited in the London markets. 
Some months ago the Leigh cockles were found to be 
NO. 1776, VOL. 69] 
polluted, and warnings were issued and directions given for 
a minimum period of boiling to be adopted, which seem to 
have been disregarded. 
A very interesting lecture, entitled ‘* Allerlei Methoden, 
das Wetter zu prophezeien,’’ delivered by Prof. J. M- 
Pernter, director of the Austrian Weather Service, before 
the Society for the Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge, 
Vienna, has recently been published by that Society. As 
the title suggests, the author deals with all kinds of methods 
employed for weather prediction from the earliest to the 
present time. After doing full justice to the usefulness of 
local weather signs, such as the appearance and movements 
of clouds, the formation of caps on hills, the colour of morn- 
ing and evening skies and the like, often successfully in- 
terpreted by agriculturists and others, he gives particular 
attention to a priori theories based on cycles, the phases of 
the moon, and the motions of planets, and points out their 
general untrustworthiness, and the great difference between 
such theories and the empirical inductive methods adopted 
by the meteorological central offices. By these latter means 
only can any advance be made. With the knowledge which 
at present exists, however, he holds out little hope of being 
able to forecast the weather for more than one day in 
advance. To improve upon the results now obtained, the 
author points out that a more minute investigation is re- 
quired (1) of each point of every form of distribution of 
barometric pressure; (2) of the rate and direction of travel 
of each depression over Europe ; (3) of the manner in which 
a certain type merges into another form; and (4) of the 
change in the weather caused by the various modifications 
of each form of barometric distribution. By a careful study 
of such details the author thinks that the percentage 
of total successes of the forecasts may be gradually raised. 
In the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, Prof. R. W. Wood discusses the anomalous dis- 
persion, absorption, and surface colour of nitroso-dimethyl- 
aniline. This substance is interesting as filling the gap 
that exists between the aniline dyes and ordinary trans- 
parent substances. 
M. Cu. Féry describes in the Journal de Physique a con- 
venient method for determining the constants of lenses. It 
depends on the principle that if a ray falls on a lens in a 
direction parallel to the axis, and at a distance d from it, it 
will undergo an angular displacement a, the tangent of 
which is d/f, where f is the focal length, and by observing 
a, f can be found. Moreover, by calculating the values of 
f corresponding to different values of d, the aberration can 
be calculated. 
Many attempts have been made to give purely dynamical 
proofs both of Maxwell’s law and of the second law of 
thermodynamics, but nearly every one of these deductions 
has, on closer examination, been found to involve some 
assumption or other, and not to be a result of mathematical 
reasoning alone. In two recent communications to the 
Philosophical Magazine (August and October) Mr. S. H. 
Burbury discusses the late Prof. Willard Gibbs’s treatise 
on statistical mechanics and Mr. J. H. Jeans’s theory of 
gases, and his criticisms go to show that these investi- 
gations form no exceptions to the rule. 
Tue Scientific American for October 10 contains two 
papers of interest in connection with the problem of 
‘aviation.’ -M. Emile Guarini describes some experi- 
ments by Prof. Bertelli for studying the action of air 
currents on curved surfaces such as may be taken to re- 
present birds’ wings, and a new aéroplane machine, con- 
