NOVEMBER 26, 1896] 
NATURE 
SI 
THE competition of horseless carriages for the prizes, amount- 
ing to 1100 guineas, offered by the Zxgineer, will take place at 
the Crystal Palace next May. The trials were to have taken 
place during the past summer, but in deference to the wishes of 
intending competitors it was postponed until next year. 
AN application of Réntgen rays to paleontology is recorded in 
the British Medical Fourna?. M. Lemoine, of Rheims, recently 
showed to the Paris Biological Society the c/chés of Rontgen 
photographs of fossils embedded in the chalk strata of Rheims. 
M. Lemoine is reported to have thus photographed a series of 
fossil birds, reptiles, and mammals. 
WE regret to announce the deaths of the following men of 
science abroad :—Dr. E. A. G. Baumann, Professor of Physi- 
ological Chemistry in the University of Freiburg; Dr. R. 
Kerry, Director of the Bacteriological Institute of the Agri- 
cultural Ministry at Vienna; Dr. Eugen Sell, Extraordinary 
Professor of Chemistry in the University of Berlin; and Dr. S. 
Cornelius, Titular Professor of Physics in the University of 
Halle. 
THE sixtieth anniversary of Prof. James Hall's public services 
to science, as State Geologist of New York, was celebrated by a 
special meeting at Buffalo, during the recent assembly of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science. A full 
report of the appreciative remarks made on that occasion by 
Prof. Joseph Le Conte, on behalf of the Geological Society of 
America, with the addresses and papers presented as tribute 
to the Nestor of paleontology and the founder of American 
Stratigraphy, appears in the issue of Sczesce for November 13. 
WE learn from the Zzes that Mr. David Robertson, a well- 
known Cumbrae naturalist, died at Millport on the 2oth inst., 
at the age of ninety. He wasa native of Glasgow, but for the last 
forty years he lived at Millport, and devoted much attention to 
the study of the natural history of the west of Scotland. In 
company with Dr. John Murray, of the C/ad/enger expedition, 
he dredged the greater part of the Firth of Clyde; and largely 
through Dr. Robertson's efforts the foundation-stone of a_per- 
manent marine station was lately laid. Two years ago the 
University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL.D. 
WE regret to announce the sudden death of Mr. Arthur 
Dowsett at his residence, Castle Hill House, Reading, on 
Friday morning, the 6th inst. Mr. Dowsett was well known 
to a large circle of friends as an enthusiastic lover of natural 
history, and he had made large and valuable collections of or- 
nithological and entomological specimens. He was one of the 
founders of the Reading Natural History Society, of which he 
acted as president from 1882 until the time of his death. He 
was scarcely ever absent from one of the Society’s indoor meet- 
ings, and had greatly endeared himself to all the members by 
his kindly genial disposition and unfailing readiness to do any- 
thing to further their aims and objects. He was a Fellow of 
the Zoological and Entomological Societies, 
In his presidential address to the Royal Statistical Society, last 
week, Mr. John Biddulph Martin counted as enemies to statis- 
tical science the laborious compilers of figures which were of no 
value when obtained, and those who aimed at minute accuracy 
in figures when it was impossible to estimate, save approximately. 
The physical investigator who expresses his results to four or five 
places of decimals when he cannot determine one cf the factors 
within a probable error of one per cent., comes in this category. 
It was through extravagances of this kind that M. Thiers defined 
statistics as the art of stating in precise terms things which one 
does not know. Dealing with the graphic method of expressing 
statistical totals by geometrical figures, accompanied in some 
NO; 1413, VOL. 55 | 
cases by the employment of colours, Mr. Martin regretted that 
the use of the method, which had sprung up automatically, had 
not been developed on any conventional lines. Were the em« 
ployment of particular graphic forms invariably applied to the 
| exposition of the same phenomena, and if this conventional 
agreement could be made international, the interpretation of 
Statistics graphically presented would be vastly facilitated. 
IN the Jlathematical Gazette for October, Mr. R. F. Muirhead 
points out that Newton’s law of impact as stated in text-books 
does not apply to cases when three or more bodies are in 
simultaneous collision, and, moreover, it appears that the 
problem is not a determinate one unless some further assumption 
ismade. Thus in the case of three spheres colliding together, 
if the collisions are not perfectly simultaneous, the final 
velocities of separation depend on the order in which the two 
first collisions take place. It would be interesting to: test this 
last result experimentally. 
SEPARATE records of the rainfall in the day and night are ot 
much greater value to medical men than a knowledge of the 
mean rainfall of each month. Mr. W. W. Wagstaffe points 
out the advisability of keeping such records separately ; and he 
gives, in the Zavcet, the results of ten years’ observations of the 
relative fall of rain in the day and night at Sevenoaks, taking 
the day to be from 10 a.m. to sunset: The mean annual 
rainfall for the day was 40 inches, and for the night 60 inches. 
An examination of his records shows that in winter the nights 
are much wetter than the days, and in spring and autumn 
they are also wetter, but the difference is less marked. In 
summer the excess of rain at night is found to be much less. 
marked than in the other seasons. 
A sHoRT time ago Mr. J. H. Hart mentioned, in the BaZete 
of miscellaneous information published at the Royal Botanic 
Gardens, Trinidad, that there was evidence of the attack of 
fungi on timber or trees previous to the destruction of the wood by 
Termitidz. He returns to the subject in the October Bz/leczz, 
wherein he states that the mycelium of a fungus could be readily 
traced in all parts of the tissue of a number of specimens 
attacked by Termites. That it is really a fungus which attacks 
the wood, the experiments at Trinidad prove conclusively, and 
that Termites follow the attack is also clearly shown. The 
only doubtful point is whether the wood ants do at any time or 
in any case attack sound timber. So far as observations at 
present go, it seems that the primary cause of the destruction of 
wood by Termites is the mycelium of some fungus. 
To the University of Illinois belongs the honour of having 
established, under the direction of Prof. S. A. Forbes, the first 
fresh-water University Biological Station in America with an 
adequate equipment. The centre of operations is a commodious 
boat, having a laboratory in which fifteen workers can be accom- 
modated. This floating laboratory was moored at Quiver Lake, 
two miles north of Havana, during the past summer. How very 
attractive this district is, both from a scenic point of view, and 
from the standpoint of the naturalist engaged in investigation, 
may be gathered from an illustrated article in Zhe Ziind of 
November 6. Quiver Lake is the home of myriads of water- 
fowl ; it abounds in vegetation, and the microscopical life of the 
water is equally abundant and varied. It seems to bea paradise 
for students of natural history ; so we are not surprised that the 
full complement of investigators occupied the boat during the 
months of June, July, and August, and made observations of 
value to biological science. 
Tue technical papers are almost unanimous in their adverse 
criticisms of the recent motor car show. Zngzneering says : ‘* To 
the thoughtful engineer, last week's saturnalia could not have 
