3/6 



NA TURE 



[Februarv 1 6, 1899 



I 



the installalion and equipment are in accordance with the most 

 advanced ideas. Every facility for research is provided. The 

 stables, kennels, and other quarters for animals are built around 

 a vast garden, and all the arrangements show careful regard for 

 the health and comfort of the animals. A special department in 

 the new Institute will be devoted to the preparation of thera- 

 peutic serums of different kinds, tuberculin, <.S:c. At the congress 

 on tuberculosis, held in Paris last summer. Prof. Denys gave an 

 account of a new tuberculin which he had used with considerable 

 success ; he proposes to continue his work in this field, and is 

 hopeful of success. 



The consent of the Privy Council has been obtained for 

 the regulations as to the keeping, dispensing, and selling 

 of poisons adopted by the Pharmaceutical Society on 

 January II. By the adoption of these regulations, it becomes 

 unlawful for any person who is not a pharmaceutical chemist, or 

 a chemist and druggist within the meaning of the Pharmacy Act, 

 to retail, dispense, or compound poisons for the public. Bottles 

 or boxes, or other vessels containing poisons, have all to be 

 labelled, and have some distinctive mark to call attention to the 

 dangerous character of the contents. Also in the keeping of 

 poisons, each poison must be kept on one or other of the follow- 

 ing systems, viz. : (a) In a bottle or vessel tied over, capped, 

 locked, or otherwise secured in a manner difl'erent from that in 

 which bottles or vessels containing ordinary articles are secured 

 ia the same warehouse, shop, or dispensary ; or (h) in a bottle 

 or vessel rendered distinguishable by touch from the bottles or 

 vessels in which ordinary articles are kept in the same ware- 

 house, shop, or dispensary ; or {1 ) in a bottle, vessel, bo.s, or 

 package kept in a room or cupboard set apart for dangerous 

 articles. Similar precautions have to be taken as regards the 

 bottles or boxes in which poisons are sold or dispensed. 



A CORRESPONDENT has Called our attention to a statement 

 which has appeared in various newspapers as to a peculiar 

 characteristic of Mr. tjladstone's eyes. There is no doubt that 

 Mr. Gladstone had striking and powerful eyes, but, according to 

 the statement referred to, he also possessed nictitating mem- 

 branes, which he occasionally used to paralyse his opponents in 

 argument. We have asked the opinion of a distinguished 

 authority upon the story, and he expresses the conviction that 

 it is "all nonsense." He adds: "The nictitating membrane 

 b not present, either in human eyes or in those of apes, except 

 as a rudimentary cruscentic fold at the inner corner, too small to 

 cover the eye ; and the muscles which, in birds and some inam- 

 malia, cause the membrane to advance, are wholly wanting in 

 men and apes. In birds the whole mechanism is very elaborate : 

 in mammalia it is comparatively simple. If Mr. Gladstone 

 possessed a nictitating membrane, and a power of moving it, he 

 must have thrown back behind the hypothetical " missing link " 

 ancestry of the human race. Moreover, the nictitating mem- 

 brane, when present, as may be seen in five minutes in any fowl- 

 house, does not cover the eye during waking life, and is not 

 transparent. It is only drawn across the surface momentarily, 

 from time to time, as a means of cleansing it. Mr. Nettleship, 

 who operated on Mr. Gladstone for cataract, would, of course, 

 be able to speak positively as to the suggested malformation." 



From the beginning of this month the weather over these 

 islands has been of a very abnormal character, the shade 

 temperature culminating in a maximum of about 67° in the 

 neighbourhood of London on the loth inst. — a reading which 

 was about 5° higher than any shade temperature in February 

 during at least the last sixty years. In connection with this 

 abnormal temperature a series of gales has swept the country 

 from end to end, in such rapid sequence that the seas have 

 been lashed into fury on most of our coasts, and much damage 

 NO. 1529, VOL. 59] 



has been caused by floods in various localities. The rainfall 

 has also been very considerable, especially in the northern and 

 western parts of the country. 



At the Royal Geographical Society on Monday, Prof. 

 Norman Collie, F. R. S. , gave an account of twi) journeys taker> 

 during 1897 and 1898 through that part of the Canadian 

 Rockies that lies between the Kicking Horse Pass on the south 

 and the source of the Athabasca River on the north. The most 

 interesting problem connected with the first journey which 

 presented itself to Prof. Collie and his party was whether a 

 lofty mountain seen from the slopes of .Mount Frcshfield, from 

 which it lay distant about thirty miles in a north-westerly 

 direction, might be Mount Brown or Mount Hooker, which 

 were supposed to be 16,000 feet and 15,000 feel high re- 

 spectively. For nearly seventy years these peaks had been 

 shown in maps as the highest points in the Rocky Mountains, 

 but it appears that they are not so distinguished. The 

 peak climbed l)y Douglas, and said to be 17,080 feet 

 high, turns out to be more probably the Mount Brown of 

 Prof. Coleman, having a height of 9000 feet. Prof. Collie's 

 journeys lead him to the conclusion that there is only one 

 Athabasca Pass, and on each side of its summit may be found 

 a peak — Mount Brown, 9000 feet high, on the north — the 

 higher of the two— and Mount Hooker on the south. Between 

 them lies a small tarn, 20 feet in diameter — the Committee's 

 Punch-bowl. The peaks to the south, amongst which the 

 party wandered last August, were new, and they probably 

 constituted the highest point of the Canadian Rocky Mountain 

 system. 



The new form of electric lamp, invented by Prof. Walter 

 Nernst, of the University of Giittingen, and briefly described in 

 these columns several weeks ago (p. 132), was exhibited and 

 explained by Mr. James Swinburne at the .Society of Arts on 

 Wednesday in last week. The part of the lamp which emits the 

 light consists a of a little rod of highly refractory material, mainly 

 thoria, supported between two platinum electrodes. Such a sub- 

 stance at ordinary temperatures is a non-conductor of electricity, 

 but when heated it becomes an electrolyte, and it is upon this 

 difference that the action of the lamp depends. When the 

 lamp is required for use, it is first gently heated — with the 

 smaller sizes an ordinary match suffices — until it begins to con- 

 duct ; the current then jiasses and further heals the rod until it 

 attains a temperature of intense incandescence and gives out 

 a brilliant white light. In some circumstances this method of 

 starting the lamp might not be regarded as a very great incon- 

 venience ; in others it certainly would. Prof. Neinst has, 

 therefore, designed an automatic lamp, lighted simply by 

 turning a switch, in which the requiied healing of the rod is 

 elTected by means of a ])latinum resistance arranged close to it, 

 which is automatically cut out as soon as the rod becomes hot 

 enough to conduct. The life of the rods used, running al an 

 efficiency of '\ of a candle-power per watt, including the 

 resistance, is more than 500 hours in gcwd specimens. The 

 lamp works equally well on alternating and direct currents, 

 and does not need to be enclosed in a v.acuum. 



Workmen who work in compressed air are sometimes the 

 victims of a peculiar malady which has been designated caisson 

 disease or compressed air disease. Dr. Thomas Oliver has 

 made observations of several cases of this kind of illness, and he 

 comes to the conclusion that the symptoms are best explained 

 by the theory that the malady is due to incre.ised solution, 

 by the blood, of the gases met with in the compressed air, and 

 the liberation of these gases during decompression. The increased 

 solution of the gases is, of course, due to the greater pressure 

 upon the person of the caisson worker. 



