564 



NA TURE 



[Oct. 13, 188 1 



All the proceedings of the Congress have been con- 

 ducted in French, and it was a novel sensation to most of 

 us to see our English friends mount the tribune and 

 deliver their sentiments in French ; a still more novel 

 sensation to those who for the first time ventured upon 

 such an undertaking themselves. You first rise in your 

 place and say, Je deinandc la parole, at the same time 

 holding up your hand to catch the eye of the president. 

 On his replying, Vojcs avez la parole, you walk from your 

 place to the tribune, which is a raised platform in front 

 of the audience, and there, with the eyes of the assembled 

 savans of Europe fi.\ed upon you, you must carry out 

 your rash undertaking, with all your imperfections on 

 your head. It is like the sensation of diving for the first 

 time into deep water, where you must swim or drown. 



In these international gatherings very wide deviations 

 from the correct standards of grammar and pronunciation 

 are indulgently tolerated, and the English have certainly 

 not appeared to disadvantage as compared with the 

 Germans ; though it has been by no means a rare occur- 

 rence to see a speaker of either of these nations in sore 

 straits for want of a word. There is one great advan- 

 tage in conducting a Congress in a foreign tongue, and 

 that is that the difficulty of the situation puts a wholesome 

 check upon any tendency to verbiage on the part of 

 a speaker ; he is glad to express his meaning in 

 the simplest manner that he can, and to desist as 

 soon as his laborious task is accomplished ; but this 

 advantage is to some extent lost where, as on the 

 present occasion, the language is the native tongue of 

 half the members of the Co.igress. Some of the later 

 sittings were decidedly dull and unprofitable, being mainly 

 occupied with proli.x dissertations of no general interest. 

 1^e.Salle dcsSi'ances, with its draped walls and high canvas 

 roof, is very stifling to the voice, and much of what was 

 said was insufficiently heard by the bulk of the audience. 

 The official reports of the proceedings were taken not 

 by shorthand writers, but by young men skilled in science, 

 who wrote abstracts of the speeches in longhand during 

 their delivery; and it must be acknowledged that they 

 did their work e.xceedingly well. The report thus taken 

 of each meeting was printed and laid before the members 

 at the ne.xt meeting, to be adopted before proceeding to 

 any other business. It is called \S\c proees verbal, and is 

 treated like the minutes of an English meeting, but it is 

 much fuller than our minutes usually are. 



So much of these reports as relates to the discussions 

 on units has been reprinted in ^^^cRi'vKe Scientifiqiie, No. 13. 

 We have not observed reprints of any other discussions 

 of the Congress. 



The jury are now hard at work. They have divided 

 themselves into si.x groups, which are subdivided into 

 fourteen classes according to the first fourteen classes of 

 the catalogue ; and some of the more important of these 

 classes have been still further subdivided ; the total num- 

 ber of jurors being about 150, one-half of whom are 

 French. By the help of this division of labour the 

 official inspections of the e.xhibits have been, we believe, 

 completed ; but some days will be devoted to carrying 

 out a series of experimental tests, which have already 

 been commenced ; and it is probable that some valuable 

 data relative to electric lights and the machines which 

 furnish their electricity will remain as one definite result 

 of the present Exhibition. 



In connection with these experiments a good story is 

 told respecting resistance-coils. An eminent firm sent off 

 several patterns of resistance-boxes to the Exhibition, 

 but being out of one of their favourite types, they sup- 

 plied its place by an empty box having exactly the out- 

 ward appearance of the genuine article. As ill-luck 

 would have it, the jury selected this particular box as 

 being precisely what they wanted to assist them in their 

 experiments, and asked for the loan of it. The repre- 

 sentative on the spot, being ignorant of the sham, and 



appreciating the compliment paid to his house, lent the 

 box with the utmost alacrity. The result can be better 

 imagined than described. Application was then made to 

 another eminent firm for a box which occupied a con- 

 spicuous position in their case of exhibits ; and this also 

 turned out to Ije a dummy, but the joke was not carried 

 so far thi.s time, as the representative in charge at once 

 declared the fact. 



{To be continued.) 



NOTES 



The sub:.criptions received for the RoUeston Memorial Fund 

 up to the present date amount to about 530/. It is hoped that 

 this sun may shortly be considerably augmented, especially by 

 subscriptions expected to be received from Oxford at the beginning 

 of the present lerni. All promoters of the movement are re- 

 que-sted to make its existence knoAi'n to others likely to interest 

 themselves in the matter. The treasurer is Mr. E. Chapman, of 

 Frewen Hall, Oxford. A general meeting w ill shortly be held 

 to determine finally the form which the memorial shall take. 



Soon after the death of the late Prof. Rolleston, F.R.S., the 

 delegates of the Univer^ity Museum at Oxford, acting with the 

 advice of Prof. W. H. Flower, F.R.S., requested Mr. Robertson 

 and Mr. Hatchett Jackson of the Anatomical Department to set 

 in order the collection of Crania in the Museum illustrating the 

 various races of mankind. The compilation of the Catalogue 

 has just been completed by Mr. Hatchett Jackson, and the 

 specimens arranged in the ca?es by him and Mr. Robertson. 

 The collation of the Catalogue and the numbering of the speci- 

 mens will shortly be carried oat by the latter gentleman. ^ he 

 method of arrangement is that adopted by Prof, Flower in the 

 recently-issued Part I. of the Osteological Catalogue of Verte- 

 brated Animals in the Mustum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 Students will consequently be enabled to compare with ease the 

 Oxford ccillecuon with the collection in the Ilunterian Museum. 

 The numbers at Oxford range from I to 1053 approximately — a 

 rather larger total than the corresponding section in Prof. Flower's 

 Catalogue. The Oxford coUectijn is peculiarly rich in English 

 specimens of a date prior to the Conquest. There is a unique 

 series of Crania from various Long Barrows ; and from the Round 

 Barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds, obtained by Canon Greenwell 

 in bis excavations and presented by him to the University, together 

 with other specimens chiefly from cist burials of the late Bronze 

 period. The Roman and Roman-British number 180 ; the 

 Anglo-Saxon 96. The races of Ancient Egypt, of India with 

 Ceylon, of New Zealand, the American Continent, and the 

 various regions of Australia are well represented. There are five 

 Tasmanian, seven Andamanese crania, and fine specimens of 

 Zulus and Bushmen. There are besides large stores with which 

 at pre-ent it has been found impossible to deal. And in the Cata- 

 logue as it stands are not included various skeletons and two sets of 

 life-hke casts — one set, replicas of those obtained in the voyage 

 of the Astrolabe and presented many years ago to Dr. Acland, 

 then Lee's Reader of Anatomy at Christ Church, by Prof. Milne- 

 Edwards the elder ; the other set, purchased in 1869, and repre- 

 senting various aboriginal tribes of Australia. It may be added 

 that during the present Long Vacation, Miss Cracroft, niece of 

 the late Lady Franklin, has presented to the Anatomical Depart- 

 ment fourteen portraits of Tasmanian aborigines, authenticated 

 with the names of the individuals, their ages, and the districts 

 whence they came, and admirably executed in water colour by 

 Bocb. 



At a public meeting of the University College (London) Che- 

 mical and Physical Society, to be held on Friday, October 2t, 

 at 7 p.m.. Prof. Alex. W. Williamson, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 

 will deliver an address on " An Error in the Conmionly-accepted 

 Theory of Chemistry." 



