OcToBER 16, 1913] 
NATURE 
205 
posed on p. 17 of the part on Solenogastres, which 
may be an indication that others occur elsewhere in 
this invaluable worl. 
Tue report of the Meteorological Committee for the 
year ended March 31 differs from its predecessors in 
at least one important respect, viz. the omission of 
most of the usual appendices. These interesting 
documents are to be issued subsequently. The detailed 
reports of the work of the several divisions of the 
office, based to some extent upon such appendices, 
appear as heretofore. We are pleased to see that 
H.M. the King has shown his interest in the work 
by commanding that a copy of the useful daily weather 
report be regularly addressed to him. At the request 
of the Treasury, the committee is negotiating with 
the Scottish Meteorological Society with the object, 
inter alia, of securing closer cooperation with this 
body in respect of the supply of meteorological in- 
formation to the public. It is stated that the com- 
mittee has been much interested in a proposal for 
the more general use of the centimetre-gramme- 
second system of units in meteorological publications, 
and, for reasons given, they have decided to use the 
centibar or millibar instead of the inch, as far as pos- 
sible, for all barometric measurements. Specimens 
of the daily and weekly weather reports are given with 
isobars shown for centibars (100=29'52 in.), and tem- 
peratures shown on the absolute temperature scale 
{273° A.=32° F.). Another important change refers 
to the modification of the code of signals hitherto 
used for storm warnings. All classes of weather fore- 
casts issued during the year 1912 were very success- 
ful; many valuable wireless reports were received 
from H.M. ships, and a very large number from 
Atlantic liners, but only about one-twentieth of the 
latter reached the office in time to be included in 
“to-day’s’’ map in the daily weather report, although 
nearly half of them could be utilised in one of the two 
smaller map’ for ‘‘ yesterday’ shown in that report. 
On October 3, Sir Joseph Thomson formally opened 
the new works of Messrs. W. G. Pye and Co. at 
Chesterton, near Cambridge, and in the course of his 
speech gave an account of his own connection with 
the establishment of Cambridge as an instrument- 
making centre. A laboratory in which any consider- 
able amount of physical research is carried out requires 
an instrument maker of its own, and twenty-two years 
ago Sir Joseph appointed Mr. Pye to the post at the 
Cavendish laboratory. Under his management the 
laboratory workshops were greatly improved, and 
many exceedingly effective instruments turned out. In 
the meantime, a small business started by Mr. Pye 
developed and soon demanded his whole attention. 
This led to his resignation of the laboratory post 
eleven years ago. Since that time the business has 
grown so rapidly as to necessitate removal to a site 
admitting of further extensions in the future. 
In the Verhandlungen of the German Physical 
Society for September 15, Drs. Gehlhoff and 
Neumeier, of the Danzig-Langfuhr Technical School, 
give the results of their measurements of the thermal 
and electrical properties of a series of alloys of bis- 
muth and antimony at temperatures between —190° 
NO. 2294, VOL. 92] 
| 
| and 100° C. The principal results relate to the 
thermal and electrical conductivities which were deter- 
mined by a modification of the method used by Lees. 
They show that the quotient of the thermal by the 
electrical conductivity and by the absolute temperature 
is not a constant as it should be according to the 
electronic theories of conduction, by decreases by 
4o to 7o per cent. as the temperature rises from 
—190° to 100° C. The authors point out that this 
behaviour is analogous to that found by Lees for 
steel, nickel, and several alloys, and that it confirms 
the belief that the conduction of heat in many metallic 
conductors cannot be satisfactorily explained by the 
motion of free electrons. 
Hirnerto the laws of thermodynamics haye been 
applied to gases, and also to investigations of the 
radiation pressure in a black body-cavity, but little 
has been done to combine gaseous pressure and radia- 
tion pressure in a single investigation. In the 
Bulletin of the Cracow Academy for May, Mr. T. 
Bialobjeski works out the conditions of equilibrium of a 
self-gravitating spherical mass of gas when radiation 
pressure is taken into account. The solution is 
essentially mathematical, namely, a deduction of con- 
clusions from previously stated hypothesis; thus, to 
simplify matters, the author assumes the ordinary 
formule for a perfect gas and Stefan’s formula for 
radiation pressure. The investigation has an im- 
portant application to astrophysics, as it is shown 
that the equilibrium of the sun and stars may be 
affected by radiation pressure in a marked degree. 
Tue revised London County Council reinforced 
concrete regulations governing the erection of re- 
inforced concrete buildings in the London area have 
been amended by the Local Government Board, and 
have been submitted to the professional societies for 
further revision. These regulations have been the 
subject of much criticism, and additional comment on 
them is made by Mr. E. S. Andrews in The Engineer 
for October 3. Mr. Andrews points out that, to render 
the regulations reasonable and to remove some of the 
absurdities which arise in their application in some 
instances, further amendment is required, especially 
in questions of working stresses and modular ratios. 
The clauses governing these values penalise rich 
mixtures of concrete in the case of all rectangular 
beams, and also in many cases of beams of T section. 
The decrease in modular ratio suggested by the Local 
Government Board is reasonable, but the working 
stresses in the concrete do not increase for the richer 
mixtures in anything like the same ratio as obtains 
in actual experiment. Applied to columns, the regula- 
tions as to working stresses do not lead to obviously 
absurd results, but they do have the effect of dis- 
couraging the use of richer mixtures. 
Messrs. GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND Sons, Ltp., have 
in the press, and will shortly publish, * A Handbook 
of Photomicrography,” by H. Lloyd Hind and W. 
Brough Randles. The new work will contain an 
account of the modern methods employed in photo- 
micrography, with a description of the apparatus and 
processes, treated both from a microscopic and photo- 
graphic point of view. 
