FEBRUARY ITI, 1904] 
NATURE 
343 
that Q and P are at every moment of time uniquely 
connected when w<v. Any value given to ¢ fixes a corre- 
sponding value t, for Q, and its position as well. This 
formula (8) is a very curious way of representing E, and 
physically very unnatural. But the form of the first part 
is such that it leads easily to the radiational formula above 
given. Reject the second part of E in (8), because it varies 
as R-*. Then carry out d?/dt*, and reject the R-* part 
again. There is left 
p= #Q (F = ikR,), 
4nrR 
Lastly, put R=r—s; then R=—s; and if s/r is very 
small, R=—sr,. So we come to the formula (1) above, as 
required. I hope this will be satisfactory. If not, there 
are lots of other much more complicated ways of doing the 
work. OLIVER HEAVISIDE. 
January 28. 
(9) 
Corrections in Nomenclature: Orang Outang ; Ca’ing 
Whale. 
KinpiLy allow me a line or two in Nature to point out 
that Orang outang is not the correct designation for the 
large anthropoid of Borneo and Sumatra, although it has 
now obtained, perhaps, what may seem a prescriptive right 
in our language. Nevertheless, it is as well to be accurate 
as not. Orang utan (or outan, if preferred), the correct 
Malay name for this ape, signifies (as is well known) 
Orang, man, and utan, forest, i.e. the forest man, in contra- 
distinction to the Orang dusun, or village (civilised) man. 
Orang utang (or outang) is nonsense. Utang means debt, 
something owing. The correction has been made often 
before, but the occurrence of the erroneous combination in 
the latest abstract of the Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society and in a recent zoological work induces me to 
venture, in the interest of accuracy and of those who 
understand the Malay language, again to direct attention 
to the proper spelling. 
In a previous issue of Nature (March, 1901) you Isindly 
afforded me space to point out the erroneous use also of 
““ca’ing”’ for ‘‘ ca’in,’’ as the Anglicised (or Scotticised) 
appellation for Globiocephalus melas. My friend Sir H. H. 
Johnston, I observe, in his recent elegant work on 
British mammals uses “ ca’ing whale.’’ I hope he will 
accept this small correction for his second edition. 
.Ca’in is, of course, really equivalent to ‘‘call in.’ 
“Call”? in the Scottish vernacular=ca’=drive: the 
“drive in’’ whale. Here the use of ‘ ca’ing ’’=calling 
would be inappropriate, as the whale does not “‘ call,’’ 
either in the sense of ‘‘ bellow ’’ or “ drive.’’ If, however, 
it be argued that ‘‘ ca’ing ’’ does stand for “‘ calling,’’ the 
essential word “‘ in’’ is omitted, and ought to be supplied. 
The pilot whale is the species, which in the islands to the 
north of Scotland so frequently occurs in large *‘ schools,”’ 
when it is invariably ‘‘ driven in ’’ for capture on the shore 
by a surrounding fleet of boats. Henry O. Forses. 
Museums, Liverpool, January 30. 
Strange Winter Scenes connected with Lough Neagh. 
At the close of the long frost in February, 1895, strange 
phenomena occurred in connection with Lough Neagh, in 
the north of Ireland, the largest lake in the United King- 
dom, and one of the larger ones of Europe, covering as it 
does an area of upwards of 150 square miles. The lake 
had been frozen over for a fortnight, and thousands of 
peor had indulged in skating on ice almost as smooth as 
glass. 
On February 22, the last day but one of the skating, 
though unknown to the multitudes gathered near Antrim, 
the ice in the central portion of the bay broke up, but left 
intact a sheet of about a third of a mile wide along the 
south-eastern shore. At a point about six miles from 
Antrim, this unbroken shore portion was at intervals of a 
few yards for a mile and upwards raised into little tunnels 
or bridges, from beneath which pieces of ice, large and 
small, along with some boulder stones of considerable size, 
were shot on to the land, eventually forming a ridge varying 
in height from two to fourteen feet, and perhaps twenty 
feet broad at the base. The jingling and crashing heard 
NO. 1789, VOL. 69 | 
during the operation, which lasted for two days, were very 
great, and to some persons residing near most alarming. 
Ice has often been seen piled up along the shore at certain 
points, five or six feet high, but this has been shore ice 
thrown up by waves, whereas the ridge referred to was not 
shore ice, that, as stated, remaining unbroken for a third 
of a mile out. 
I met with only one person who had witnessed a similar 
scene to the one described. She had resided near the lake 
all her life, and remembered the long frost of 1814-15, when 
the lake was frozen over and a great ice ridge was thrown 
up. On both occasions a person could walk along the road 
near the lake and yet not see it, in consequence of the 
intervening ridge. Where did the ice forming this ridge 
come from? And what was the force employed to convey 
it to, and shoot it on to the shore? 
At a spot on the same south-eastern shore of Antrim Bay, 
about midway between that previously mentioned and 
Antrim, a similar scene in one respect, but on a greatly re- 
duced scale, was witnessed. A man when passing along a 
lonely, wooded part of the road, at a considerable distance 
from the lake, heard great hissing and fizzing, in a jerky, 
intermittent manner. On making his way through the 
underwood to the place from whence the sounds proceeded, 
he was astonished to see a large stone, estimated to be 
several hundredsweight, being ejected from beneath the 
raised ice, and at the same time large quantities of water 
squirted from the apertures near it. Immediately the pro- 
pelling force ceased, the stone fell back and the squirting 
stopped. It was somewhat risky to venture near, but 
three persons did so to see if they could withstand the pro- 
pelling force of the water giant, but they found the effort 
ineffectual, and got drenched for their pains. Through 
some obstruction, or the stone being too heavy, it was not 
ejected from the lake. 
It would be interesting to know the causes of these pheno- 
mena, and also whether they have been observed in con- 
nection with lakes elsewhere. 
If further information is desired by any reader interested 
in this matter, I shall be happy to give it if able. 
The Manse, Antrim, January 26. W. S. SMITH. 
The a Rays of Radium. 
In Mr. Soddy’s article on radio-activity in your issue of 
January 28, he remarks as peculiar the fact that the a rays 
possess the ‘‘ property of being more difficult to deviate for 
any given strength of field the greater the distance of air 
traversed.’’ Surely if these rays consist of positively charged 
material particles, their velocity must diminish in propor- 
tion to the distance of air traversed, and hence their 
magnetic effect, and consequently their deviability, must 
diminish also. 
I have unfortunately missed Prof. Rutherford’s proof as 
to the probable difference in speed with which the a particles 
from the successive disintegrations are shot off. Could Mr. 
Soddy supply the reference, as there seems no obvious reason 
why this should be so? J. TL. NANceE. 
Bromsgrove School, Worcestershire, February 2. 
Ir is true, as Mr. Nance points out, that the velocity of 
the a rays may be expected to diminish in proportion to the 
distance of air traversed, and it follows, therefore, that the 
magnetic deviability should correspondingly increase, for 
the displacement experienced by the particle in unit time by 
a constant magnetic force from the position it would occupy 
if no force were acting is constant. With diminishing 
velocity the displacement in unit distance, and therefore the 
angular deviation, must increase. 
The complexity of the a rays of radium was referred to 
by Prof. Rutherford in his paper in the Phil. Mag. for 
February, 1903, in a footnote to p. 184. Only 25 per cent. 
of the a rays come from the radium, the remainder origin- 
ating from its successive disintegration products, viz. the 
gaseous emanation and the matter causing the excited 
activity. As these three types of matter have no resemblance 
whatever in their material nature, it would be a remarkable 
coincidence if the @ particles expelled in their several dis- 
integrations happened to possess the same momentum in 
each case. This is the condition necessary for the a rays 
of radium to be deviated as a homogeneous pencil in a 
magnetic field. FREDERICK SODDY. 
