554 
Tue official programme of the fourteenth International 
Medical Congress, to be held at Madrid from April 23 to April 
30 next, has now been issued. The congress will be divided 
into the following sections :—Anatomy (including anthropology, 
comparative anatomy, embryology, descriptive anatomy, normal 
histology and teratology), physiology, general pathology, thera- 
peutics, pathology, nervous diseases, children’s diseases, derma- 
tology and syphilis, general surgery, ophthalmology, oto-rhino- 
laryngology, obstetrics and gynzecology, military-naval medicine 
and hygiene, hygiene and epidemiology, and forensic medicine 
and toxicology. 
Av the annual meeting of the Indian Association for the 
Cultivation of Science, held in Calcutta last month, it was 
decided to found a medal, to be known as the Temple medal, to 
perpetuate the memory of the late Sir Richard Temple for the 
invaluable services he rendered in the establishment of the 
Association. 
A couRSE of four lectures is to be given at Gresham College, 
Basinghall Street, by Dr. E. Symes Thompson on ‘ Food.” 
The lectures will be delivered on October 7, 8, 9 and 10 
at 6 o’clock ; no charge is made for admission. 
IN connection with the Universal Exposition which is to take 
place at St. Louis, Mo., U.S.A., in 1904, there is to be an 
aéronautical competition and exhibition, the rules and regula- 
tions governing which have just reached us. From them we 
learn that the sum of one hundred thousand dollars is offered as 
a grand prize, and that fifty thousand dollars are to be appro- 
priated for minor and subsidiary prizes for competition between 
airships, balloons, air-ship motors, kites, &c. Information 
concerning the competitions is obtainable from the Chief of 
the Department of Transportation Exhibits, Louisiana Purchase 
Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.A. 
ACCORDING to the Amerzcan Electrician, a commission was 
recently appointed by the New York State Legislature for the 
purpose of determining the advisability of establishing a State 
electrical laboratory to provide independent authoritative infor- 
mation on questions of electrical science and official standardis- 
ation of electrical measuring instruments, apparatus and standards. 
The commission is to report to the Legislature at the opening of 
its session in 1903, and if in its judgment the establishment of a 
laboratory is necessary, detailed plans and specifications for the 
construction and equipment of such a laboratory are to be pre- 
pared and submitted in connection with the commission’s 
report. 
ACCORDING to the Berlin correspondent of the Zzsmes, the 
German Government is afraid that the policy pursued by the 
Marconi Company, and the arrangements concluded between it 
and Lloyds, threaten an absolute monopoly which would be 
objectionable for both commercial and political reasons. 
Germany has therefore invited England, France, Russia, Italy, 
Austria-Mungary and the United States to make arrangements 
for a meeting of delegates to prepare a programme for an inter- 
national conference to consider the subject. It is said that this 
suggestion has been favourably received by the States addressed, 
and that, as soon as a programme has been arranged, the co- 
operation of all maritime States will be sought in drawing up 
an international convention to settle the conditions under which 
the establishment of stations for wireless telegraphy shall be 
allowed. The £éectrician suggests that the conference should 
take place at the International Telegraphic Conference to be 
held in London next year. It is to be hoped that the conference 
will be held soon and will be successful. We have already 
pointed out in these columns the growing necessity for some 
consolidation of the competing systems. . 
NO. 1718, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 2, 1902 
A NOVEL table, designed by Prof. E. C. Pickering, has been 
placed in the north building of the Harvard College Observ- 
atory. It is in two revolving sections, and takes the place of 
six separate tables which have hitherto been in use. In the 
upper section of the table, the annals of the observatory, magni- 
fying glasses and reference books are kept, and the lower 
section is used for the storing of letters and files. 
ACCORDING to the Aéronantical World, a new American 
periodical, Prof. Graham Bell has nearly completed his flying 
machine. It is being constructed under Prof. Bell’s personal 
supervision, and is stated to be radically different from M. 
Santos-Dumont’s machine. The machine will, it is reported, 
be 20 feet in length and composed of twenty-five distinct parts, 
and the principle of the kite will be utilised to a considerable 
extent. 
THE Avhkenaewm learns that steps are being taken by the 
Department of Prisons, New South Wales, to establish a new 
system of criminal identification on the lines of the combined 
Bertillon and Francis Galton methods, modified to suit local 
conditions. A comprehensive criminal register is now in course 
of compilation, and already the anthropometrical measurements 
of a large number of prisoners have been taken, together with 
finger impressions and other distinguishing records. The work 
has been entrusted to Mr. M‘Cauley, Deputy Controller and 
Inspector of Prisons, who has recently personally investigated 
the systems of identification pursued in the prisons of France 
and of the United Kingdom. 
WRITING from Yokohama on August 24, Captain H. J. Snow 
says :—‘‘I have never known such a cool summer since 1869. 
Constant rain has been the rule in this part of the country, and 
I think it has been similar all over Japan. Floods everywhere. 
The neighbourhood of the Philippines has sent us along a string 
of storms of small area, not one of which has come along the 
Pacific side of Japan. They have all either gone through the 
Korean Straits or across the south-western part of Japan and the 
Japan Sea. They have followed each other so often that the 
whole weather of the country has been kept in an unsettled 
state. Winds from north to east have prevailed nearly all the 
summer so far. We certainly have not had six days of southerly 
winds all told. The thermometer has ranged between 62° and 
75 F. nearly all the time. On four or five days only it reached 
84° to 86°.” 
THE eruption of Mont Pelée appears to have been heard as 
far away as Maracaibo, Venezuela, a distance of about 830 
miles. Ina report abstracted in the last number of the J/onthly 
Weather Mr. E. H. Plumacher, United States 
Consul at Maracaibo, writes :—‘‘ On the morning of the great 
calamity that has fallen upon the island of Martinique, strong 
rumbling sounds were heard here, as well as in the other parts 
of this State. At many places during the day before the cata- 
strophe, noises of heavy cannonading were heard at La Ceiba, 
Cabimas, Perija and Quisiro, At Sinamaica the people thought 
that a great battle with heavy artillery was in progress near 
Maracaibo. . . . Early in the morning of the catastrophe, I 
found that my servant had saddled my horse ; when I asked 
him if somebody was sick and needed a doctor, he answered 
that he thought I needed my horse to go to the city, as a big 
battle must be going on, judging from the sounds of the heavy 
firing of guns. Observing the same sounds, I knew at once 
that it could not be heavy artillery, for if all of the cannons of 
Venezuela were fired together, they could not produce such 
sounds. It was not like cannonading with heavy siege guns ; 
it was neither thunder nor the strange, unpleasant subterranean 
sounds of convulsions of the earth; it was as if immense 
explosives were fired high up in the clouds. ... Last night 
Review, 
