472 



NA TURE 



[March 15, 1906 



abnormal rainfall was caused by increased evaporation 

 taking place in the tropics, and connect this, and the 

 cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions which took 

 place during the year, with the increased solar activity. 



Messrs. Lander and Smith, of Canterbury, have sent 

 us their catalogue of new meteorological instruments. 

 Mr. Lander has given much attention to the problem of 

 providing satisfactory 

 self-recording instru- 

 ments at popular 

 pi 11 e and has devised 

 new forms of appar- 

 atus for registering 

 wind-force and direc- 

 tion, rainfall, sunshine, 

 air pressure, tempera- 

 ture, and humidity. 

 The advantages of 

 using instruments 



which will give a con- 

 t i n u o u s record are 

 obvious ; the desider- 

 atum is, of course, that 

 they shall give trust- 

 worthy records. The 

 anemometer appears to 

 be a modification of the 

 well known Dines 's 

 pressure tube anemo- 

 meter, with the addi- 

 tion of an arrangement 

 for recording upon a 

 separate paper the 

 direction of the wind 

 as well as its force. 

 The sunshine recorder 

 is of the photographic 

 type, but, unlike other 

 photographic recorders, 

 it makes use of a clock 

 for controlling the 

 admission of the light, 

 so that the record is 

 loi mean time instead 

 of for local apparent 

 timi' as in all other 

 forms. As an example 

 of the efficient working 

 of the different appa- 

 ratus, Mr. Lander has 

 sent us some reduced 

 curves, here repro- 

 dui ed, of the sharp and 

 sudden thunderstorm of 

 February 8. The y 



clearly show an abrupt drop in the maximum force of the 

 wind from about forty miles an hour to almost a calm, 

 and an equally sudden shift in direction from W.S.W. to 

 \.\\. rhe barometer, which had been falling steadily all 

 day, rose abruptly a tenth of an inch, with a simultaneous 

 drop of 12° in temperature and a fall of rain (or snow) of 

 about a quarter of an inch in a few minutes. During the 

 storm no less than six windmills were struck by lightning 

 near Canterbury, where the records were obtained. 



Under the title of " An American Laboratory for Ex- 

 perimental Phonetics in Germany," Major H. vom Hagen 

 describes the experiments carried out with the aid of the 



Fig. i — Reduced copies of records frc 

 self-recording instruments, February [ 



NO. 1898, VOL. Jl\ 



Carnegie Institution by Prof. E. \Y. Scripture, first in 



Munich and later on in Berlin. The paper is illustrated 

 by tracings of phonographic records, and is published in. 

 Prometheus. 



In the Bulletin of the French Physical Society, No. 235, 

 it is stated that M. Ernest Bichat, who died towards the 

 end of last year, was the author of a number of papers on 

 magnetic rotatory polarisation in gases, and in conjunction 

 with M. Blondlot on oscillating discharges, on Kerr's 

 phenomenon, and on tin- cylindrical absolute electrometer. 

 He was dean of the faculty of science at Nancy. 



A portrait of Prof. Georg Cantor, of Halle, is published 

 in the January number of the American Journal 0] Mathe- 

 matics. Cantor's researches on the theory of multitudes 

 and the continuum earned for him the Royal Society's 

 Sylvester medal in 1904, and, speaking of this theory, Dr. 

 I'itlard Bullock writes : — " Herr Georg Cantor is looked 

 upon as the discoverer and creator, and in rare cases has 

 a discovery been attributed to one man alone with more 

 readiness." We extract this quotation from a thesis on 

 "The Tower of the Continuum." In this thesis Dr. 

 Pittard Bullock gives a proof that the power of the con- 

 tinuum is the lowest but one, or, in other words, that 

 there is no multitude the power of which is lower than that 

 11I the continuum but greater than that of a dinumerablc- 

 multitude. 



Two papers on the vibrations and stresses in shafting 

 have recently appeared. One, forming the fourth of the 

 technical series of the Drapers' Company Research 

 Memoirs, is based on a paper written by Prof. Karl 

 Pearson in 1885, and deals with torsional vibrations treated 

 by Saint Venant's methods ; it is illustrated by a large 

 number of lithographed diagrams. The other is a reprint 

 from the Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers of a joint paper by Dr. Chree, F.R.S., 

 Captain II. R. Sankey, and Mr. W. E. VV. Millington, 

 dealing in the main with the dangers arising from 

 synchronism between the periods of free vibration of the 

 loaded shaft and the periods of fluctuation of the force or 

 torque applied to it. In a large class of practical appli- 

 cations we have to deal with shafts carrying such loads 

 as flywheels, where the kinetic energy of the shaft itself 

 can be neglected, for purposes of rough calculation, ir> 

 comparison with that of the loads. 



In a paper on the future of statistics, published in the 

 Statistical Journal (lxviii., 4), Mr. J. G. Mandello directs 

 attention, among other matters, to the need of organisation 

 in the publication of statistics. The paper deals, in a 

 large measure, with the tendency to chaos resulting from 

 the ever increasing production of printed literature on 

 statistics. It is becoming more and more difficult as time 

 goes on for a busy man to obtain the information which he 

 requires as to the actual state of knowledge in any branch 

 of statistical science, and the mere consulting of voluminous 

 masses of literature more often than not fails to give the 

 inquirer the information which he requires, and, indeed, 

 is not unlikely to end in the re-publication of work already 

 done. Mr. Mandello's remedy is to limit the output of 

 printed matter, and to devote the money thus saved to 

 the establishment of central bureaux where papers of a 

 highly specialised character could be conserved, in type- 

 written form, for the use of future inquirers, a staff of 

 officials being appointed for the purpose of giving the 

 necessary assistance. A plan of this kind is already 

 working in connection with the Geological Survey of 

 Belgium. Instead of printing maps, which soon become 



