January i i, 1906] 



NA TURE 



25 1 



photographically by means of a beam of light reflected 

 from a mirror attached to the magnet. With rise of 

 temperature the magnetic moment diminishes 

 slightly, whilst the rigidity of the quartz increases, 

 both causes tending to diminish the angle of torsion 

 and so simulating a fall in H. Measurements made 

 on one of the magnetographs prior to its despatch 

 from England showed a temperature coefficient of 

 approximately 67 for i° C. (17=1x10— 5 C.G.S.); 

 but the values obtained in India with different magnet 

 systems and suspensions are mostly about 12-57 for 

 i"° C. There is, however (see footnote p. 13), no 

 neci ssary contradiction between these results. The 

 untwisting caused by a given rise of temperature 

 varies as the total angle of torsion, and this varies 

 as the local value of H. But H in India is nearlj 

 twice as large as in England. Thus the movement 

 of the magnet due to the change of rigidity in the 

 fibre caused by a rise of i° is nearly twice as big in 

 India as in England. The memoir discusses the 

 temperature experiments made in India, and the diffi- 

 culties arising from imperfect temperature control, 

 defects in quartz fibres or in the method of fixing 

 them, and from other causes. The observational data 

 an recorded, and exhibited in the curves, with a detail 

 which is unusual in a printed volume. The values 

 found for the temperature coefficients in India are 

 five times larger than those applicable in England 

 to some magnetographs of older types with metal 

 suspensions. Even in magnetic chambers under 

 refined temperature control, a small temperature co- 

 efficient has advantages which can be fully appre- 

 ciated only bv those experienced in the reduction of 

 magnetic data. Thus the results of the present 

 memoir, though of limited general interest, deserve 

 iIm attention of instrument makers. 



NOTES. 

 We regret to see the announcement that Prof. C. J. 

 Joly, F.R.S., Royal Astronomer of Ireland, died on 

 January 4 after a long illness. He was only forty-one 

 years ol age 



A Bill which provides for the adoption of the weights 

 .in-! measures of the metric system in all departments of 

 iln- Government of the United States on July 1, 1908, has 

 ;■ ed into Congress. 



A Central News message from New York states that by 

 the will of the late Mr. Yerkes the Yerkes Observatory, 

 tgo, is given the sum of 20,000/. 



Arrangements are being made for the celebration of the 

 twenty-first anniversary of the foundation of the Royal 

 Geographical Society of Australia, Queensland. It is pro- 

 posed at the end of the current session, in the last 

 June, to carry out some appropriate form of com- 

 uive ceremonial to mark the close of the first 

 twenty-one years of activity of the society. 



On Tuesday next, January 16, Prof. E. H. Parker will 

 deliver the first of a course of three lectures at the Royal 

 Institution on impressions of travel in China and the Far 

 East. The Friday evening discourse on January 19 will 

 be di livered by Prof. J. J. Thomson, the subject being 

 some applications of the theory of electric discharge to 

 spectroscopy. On February 2 the discourse will be de- 

 livered by Prof. S. P. Thompson on the electric production 

 ol nitrates from the atmosphere. 



As tlie signature " II. Weir" occurs so frequently to 

 the illustrations of "Wood's Natural History," which was 

 the pi pular zoological work of a generation ago, a refer- 



NO. 1889, VOL. 73] 



ence to the death of Mr. Harrison Weir, the well known 

 animal artist, claims a place in our columns. Mr. Weir, 

 who was born at Lewes in 1824, died at his residence at 

 Appledore, Kent, on January 3, at the close of a long 

 period of retirement. Although his portraits of wild 

 animals can scarcely be compared with those of Wolf, they 

 are in most cases — except when drawn from menagerie 

 specimens in poor condition — true to nature and display 

 considerable spirit. Mr. Weir's special forte was, how- 

 ever, the portraiture of domesticated poultry, and his work 

 " Our Poultry " has a permanent value as an authentic- 

 record of the characteristics of the different breeds at the 

 time it was written. As a judge of poultry and pigeons the 

 deceased artist had a high reputation. 



The first expedition sent out to West Africa by the Liver- 

 pool Institute of Commercial Research in the Tropics left 

 England on January 6. The members, who are conducted 

 by Lord Mountmorres, director of the institute, are : — Mr. 

 Kenneth Fisher, chemist ; Mr. L. Farmer, botanist ; Dr. 

 Slater Jackson, entomologist ; and Mr. Coates, com- 

 mercial adviser. The expedition is proceeding to Dakar, 

 Bathurst, Konakri, and, if possible, to the Cameroons. 

 Being only an experimental expedition, the stay on the 

 west coast will not be of very long duration ; in fact, Lord 

 Mountmorres is to return in time to visit the exhibition 

 of rubber at Ceylon in April. But should the results prove 

 satisfactory there is every probability that the institute 

 will dispatch a second expedition to spend a long period 

 in Africa. One of the chief objects of the expedition will 

 be an inquiry into the cultivation of rubber — how to 

 improve the quality of West African rubber in order to 

 bring it up to the same standard as the similar rubber 

 from other colonies, and how to protect and increase the 

 present supply. An effort will also be made to discover 

 new sources of oils, and to find means of increasing the 

 supplv by making use of present waste. As regards the 

 study of the prospects of West Africa becoming a fibre- 

 producing country, this branch of the work will include 

 investigation regarding the establishment of hemp, cotton, 

 jute, and ramie growing, and also of new fibres. 



We have received a copy of the report of the Albany 

 Museum for 1904, in which substantial progress is re- 

 corded on all sides. It is satisfactory to learn that the 

 proposed cooperation between the museum and the Rhodes 

 University College promises to be of advantage to both 

 institutions. Dr. Schonland, the director of the museum, 

 has already been appointed professor ol botany in the 

 college. 



Much interest attaches to a paper by Mr. Pilgrim in 

 part iii. of the Records of the Geological Survey of India 

 for 1905, in which the author describes an elephant skull 

 from the alluvium of the Godaveri valley. This skull 

 belongs to Elephus 11, 1111,1, liens, of Falconer and Cautley, 

 but {he author brings forward evidence which in his 

 opinion proves the identity of that form with the European 

 E. antiqiiiis. 



Our knowledge of the land and fresh-water molluscs of 

 Formosa and Japan has been greatly extended by the 

 work of Japanese collectors, the results of which are de- 

 scribed by Messrs. Pilsbry and Hirase in the October, 

 1005, issue of the Proceedings of the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Sciences. The collections from Formosa 

 were made in Taiwan, and chiefly consist of land-shells : 

 but although no labour or expense were spared, the number 

 of specimens procured was not so large as anticipated. 

 Nevertheless, out of a total of seventy-one species, twenty- 



