540 
Tue New York correspondent of the Daily Chronicle states 
that Mr, Andrew Carnegie’s gift of 300,000l. to provide a 
building for the various engineering societies in the city 
really involves an outlay of 500,000l., for in addition to the 
amount given by Mr. Carnegie there is an investment of 
about 200,000!. for two lots which will be occupied by the 
proposed Union Home. The offer was made originally to 
the five great engineering societies of the United States :— 
American Society of Civil Engineers, Institute of Mining 
Engineers, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of 
Electrical Engineers, and the Engineers’ Club. The first 
named society has, however, not accepted the offer. 
IN a report on the German estimates for this year, Mr. 
Robertson, one of the secretaries to the British Embassy 
in Berlin, states that, in the new estimates, a sum of Sool. 
is inserted under the head ‘“‘ Furtherance of scientific, 
especially ethnological, studies in China.’’ In explanation 
it is mentioned that, as the opening of China advances, a 
more exact study of the individuality of east Asiatic nations 
is becoming a necessity. It is therefore advisable to station 
permanently in China a German scholar well acquainted 
with ethnology and the Chinese language, whose object is 
to develop intellectual relations with a little known form 
of civilisation. 
AN article upon the route of the Tibet Mission, by the 
special correspondent of the Times, contains an interesting 
record of temperatures and conditions of life at high alti- 
tudes. Th2 mission has necessitated the continued ex- 
posure of a very large number of untried men to life at 
altitudes ranging between 10,000 feet and 15,700 feet, and 
the general results are of considerable value. The lowest 
temperature yet reached on the route has been —26° F. at 
Chuggia, on the Tang-la, which was, however, only an 
encampment. Of actual nightly exposure to cold of men 
and animals Tuna probably holds the record with —17° F. 
But Phari has repeatedly reached —15° F., and Kamparab, 
nine miles distance from Phari, might—if continual registra- 
tion had been possible there—show a lower figure than 
either. The normal night minimum during January and 
February is probably —10° F. for 15,000 feet, warming to 
7° F. for 10,000 feet. Mountain sickness has been closely 
observed by the medical men accompanying the mission. 
Indigestion has been common on account of the eating of 
imperfectly cooked food. At 15,000 feet water boils at a 
temperature about 30° F. lower than at sea-level, and the 
normal amount of cooking is therefore quite inadequate. 
At 15,000 feet it is almost impossible to boil rice properly. 
Dal—the common red lentil of India—affords a curious ex- 
ample of the difficulty of cooking at high elevations. Of 
the five different kinds of dal supplied to the troops— 
Mussoor, Urad, Arhar, Moong, and Chenna—only the first 
is capable of being cooked at all at heights above 10,000 
feet. It is difficult to make the native understand these 
aberrations of gastrology, and a great deal of insufficient 
cooking has been the natural result. 
THE subdirector of the Norwegian Meteorological 
Institute, Mr. A. S. Steen, has contributed to the Proceed- 
ings of the Christiania Society of Sciences an interesting 
paper on the diurnal variation of terrestrial magnetism, and 
on the possible connection of this phenomenon with meteor- 
ology. The author points out that, so far as the accuracy 
of weather forecasts is concerned, we stand now nearly in 
the same position as we stood some twenty-five years ago; 
the distribution of atmospheric pressure and temperature 
is often quite different from what might have been ex- 
pected from the telegraphic reports of the previous day, and 
NO. 1797, VOL. 69]: 
NATURE 
[APRIL 7, 1904 
leaves the impression that there are unknown factors in 
cooperation. He considers that too little attention has been 
paid to the electrical conditions of the atmosphere, and that 
such investigations as have been carried on in this sense 
are vitiated by the observations being generally made in 
the lowest strata of the atmosphere. Prof. Schuster’s in- 
vestigations point to the probable connection of electrical 
currents in the atmosphere and the diurnal variation of the 
terrestrial magnetic elements, and Dr. von Bezold goes so 
far as to imagine a connection between the latter and certain 
meteorological phenomena. In the paper in question Mr. 
Steen has searched the hourly magnetic observations of 
eighteen stations during the polar year (1883), and has 
found a continuous calm period of forty-eight hours 
between March 18 and 20, and this period he has submitted 
to special examination. The author considers that, when 
viewed in conjunction with the researches of Schuster and 
von Bezoid, the results arrived at are so promising as to 
call for wider investigations with more ample materials 
than were at his disposal. 
In the Physikalische Zeitschrift, Dr. A. Korn describes a 
new receiver for telautography and the telegraphic trans- 
mission of half-tone process blocks. In the transmitting 
apparatus the writing or the points and lines of the half- 
tone block are formed by a non-conducting ink on a sheet 
of metal foil. This is wrapped round the surface of a 
cylinder which is rotated with uniform angular velocity. 
The electric current is transmitted by means of a metal 
pen which moves forward o-o1 inch in each revolution. 
In the receiving apparatus the cylinder is rotated with an 
angular velocity greater by 1 per cent. than in the trans- 
mitting apparatus, and at the end of each revolution it is 
made to await a synchronising signal by which it is re 
started. The impression at the receiving station is pro- 
duced on sensitised paper by a small electric lamp or 
vacuum tube, which by means of a suitable relay for Tesla 
currents is made to glow whenever the pen at the trans- 
mitting station passes over a non-conducting portion of the 
picture. The paper is illustrated by specimens of hand- 
writing transmitted by this method. 
In the Popular Science Review for March, Mr. O. Chanute 
gives a survey of progress in aérial navigation in a paper 
read by him before the American Association in December 
last. 
M. Jures Baittaup, in a recent number of the Journal de 
Physique, sums up the opinion of the Graz conference on 
the firing of cannon for the prevention of hail by the follow- 
ing statistics:—out of fifty experts eight considered the 
method efficacious, nine found the efficacy doubtful but prob- 
able, thirteen found it simply doubtful, fifteen found it 
doubtful and improbable, and five found it nil. 
AN experiment showing the production of high frequency 
currents by means of the telephone has been exhibited by 
M. Ducretet before the French Physical Society. The 
apparatus employed was the loud speaking telephone of 
MM. R. Gaillard and E. Ducretet. The microphone and 
the receiver were placed in circuit with a battery of about 
10 volts, so as to give a current of about half an ampere. 
By suitably regulating the distance between the receiver and 
microphone free oscillations were set up which could be 
maintained indefinitely, and these were increased in intensity 
by connecting the microphone and receiver with a metal 
tube. ‘ 
Tue second part of vol. Ixxvi. of the Zeitschrift fir 
wissenschaftliche Zoologie contains two articles of a highly 
technical nature, the one, by Mr. F. Schwangart, on the 
