Ferruary I1, 1904] 
NAT Of 349 
ACCORDING to the Physikalische Zeitschrift, Prof. Curie 
has declined the Cross of the Legion of Honour on the 
ground of the important part played by his wife in the dis- 
covery of radium. 
IraLt1aN chemists propose to commemorate the seventieth 
birthday of Prof. Ugo Schiff, of Florence, who has worked 
for forty years in Italy. Dr. Guido Bargioni, 111 Via 
Aretina, Florence, has been entrusted with the arrange- 
ments. 
AT a meeting of the French Physical Society on January 
15 the following officers were elected :—vice-president, Prof. 
H. Dufet ; vice-secretary, Prof. Langevin ; ordinary members 
of council (elected for three years), Madame Curie, M. 
Hamy, Dr. Marage, M. Perrin; non-resident members, Prof. 
(Rome), M. Maurin (Rennes), Prof. 
(Bucharest), Prof. Tissot (Brest). M. d’Arsonval occupies 
the presidential chair in succession to M. C.-M. Gariel. 
Blaserna Miculescu 
Tue Municipal Council of Paris has adopted a proposal 
of M. Bussat for the foundation of a laboratory of applied 
physiology. M. Bussat has himself sketched out a scheme 
of the work which should be undertaken in such a labor- 
atory, relating to the alimentary foodstuffs, 
muscular work, intoxication, &c., and he suggests that the 
value of 
director should give publicity to the work of the laboratory 
by means of courses of lectures addressed to the pupils of 
the professional and normal schools of Paris. 
REFERRING to a suggestion made by “* R. F. M.”’ in last 
week’s NATURE (p. 318), in the course of a letter on scientific 
uses of the kinematograph, Mrs. D. H. Scott sends us a 
copy of her paper ‘‘ On the Movements of the Flowers of 
Sparmannia africana, and their Demonstration by Means 
of the Kinematograph,’’ published in the Annals of Botany 
The paper was noticed in our issue of 
“ec 
of September, 1903. 
November 26, 1903 (vol. Ixix. p. go). 
WE have received a copy—presumably a corrected printer’s 
proof—of a pamphlet in which Mr. W. H. Parkes proposes 
to deal with the ‘‘ Cause of Gravitation and the Mechanism 
of the Universe.’’ A sufficient indication of the character 
of the paper is afforded by the two opening sentences, which | 
we here reproduce :—‘* Anything that is moved into an egg- 
shaped curve or path by external force thereby becomes 
attractive. This, I believe, is the cause of the universal 
force called gravitation, and I think it should be proved by 
experiments which I am not in a position to carry out.’’ 
In the course of a paper on the land and fresh-water 
molluscs of Mexico, published in the Proceedings of the 
Philadelphia Academy for December, 1903, Mr. H. A. 
Pilsbry records from that area the remarkable slug-like 
snail, Metostracon mima, first described from Michoacan in 
vol. iv. of the Proceedings of the Malacological Society of 
London. 
WE have received a copy of a ‘‘ Guide to the Horniman 
Museum and Library,’’ London Road, Forest Hill, issued 
by the London County Council. The manner in which this 
little book is drawn up strikes us as being admirably suited 
to the purpose for which it is intended, and in general the 
information appears trustworthy. 
ever, the statement that the duck-mole alone of the mono- 
tremes has a marsupial pouch, which is obviously an error, 
since the structure in question attains its fullest develop- 
On p. 31 we note, how- 
ment in the echidna, and should be described as a mammary 
pouch. 
NO. 1789, VOL. 69 | 
We have received from Mr. W. M. Brewer a paper on 
the rock-slide at Frank, Alberta Territory, Canada (Trans. 
Inst. Mining Eng., 1903). This 
enormous landslip or rock-slide occurred on April 29, 1903, 
overwhelming the coal-mining town of Frank, which was 
situated the of Turtle Prior to the 
catastrophe, that mountain reached an altitude of 
3500 feet above the neighbouring Old Man or Crow’s Nest 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
at base Mountain. 
about 
river valley. Subsequently it was found that the summit 
had been lowered by about 1ooo feet, and that from sixty 
to eighty million tons of rock must have been precipitated. 
One immense mass, estimated at fifteen thousand tons, was 
moved to a distance of two miles (see Fig. 1).. Indeed, the 
débris was scattered over an area of nearly two square 
miles. The base of Turtle Mountain consists of Cretaceous 
shales and sandstones, in which a 1o0-foot seam of coal has 
of the 
The plane 
ation between the two series is a thrust-fault 
contorted and 
Above, the limestone rose in a precipitous face overlcoking 
mountain is 
of 
along which 
been extensively worked. ‘The mass 
formed of Carboniferous limestone. separ- 
the limestone-beds are highly shattered. 
the town of Frank, and it presented a threatening appear- 
ance before the rock-slide took place. It seems evident that 
the stability of the mountain had been weakened by the 
Fic. 1.—View of Boulder weighing 15,000 tons. 
mining operations at its base. For the past two or three 
years about 200 tons of coal per day have been worked out, 
s) that the area was honeycombed with tunnels, while the 
main level is reported to have been driven for nearly 5000 
feet parallel to the stratification of the rocks. Thus the 
towering mass of limestone, which is traversed by many 
joint-planes, was weakened, and a vast portion of the 
summit that had for ages been subject to the weathering 
influence of heavy snowfalls, frosts and rains, suddenly gave 
way and caused the disaster. 
A tuirp edition of Mr. W. T. 
the Young ’’ has been published by Messrs. Sampson Low, 
and Co., Ltd. 
Lynn’s ‘‘ Astronomy for 
Marston 
AND A. CuurcuItt have published a third 
Morphology 
Messrs. J. 
edition of ‘‘ A Manual of Botany,’’ vol. i., 
and Anatomy, by Prof. J. Reynolds Green, F.R.S. 
We have received from M. G, E. C. 
a copy of de 1|’Observatoire 
Gad, of Copenhagen, 
“ Annales Magnétique de 
| Copenhague,’’ edited by Herr Adam Paulsen, the director 
of the Meteorological Institute of Denmark. The pubh- 
cation contains the hourly values of the magnetic elements 
for the years 1899 and 1go00. 
