128 
advances to meet the cost of existing schemes is stated 
to be 128,000/. only, against an estimated requirement 
of 200,000/, There may be some ground, therefore, 
for the apprehension expressed in the article as to the 
-future adequacy of the Fund. 
REFERRING to a remark made in the notice of his 
book ‘“ The Supremacy of Spirit”? in NaturRE of 
January 13, p. 45, Mr. C. A. Richardson writes to say 
that his purpose was not to attempt to deal at all 
adequately with scientific objections, but to show 
that (1) the evidence for the alleged facts is now of 
such a kind as to merit serious consideration and 
investigation by a scientific committee; (2) the 
alleged facts are in terms of his philosophical theory. 
THE January list of new books and new editions 
added to Lewis’s Medical and Scientific Circulating 
Library during October-December has just reached 
us. Although intended primarily for subscribers to 
the library, it should be of service to many others, 
being a general guide to medical and _ scientific 
works published in the past three months. : The 
list, which is classified according to subjects, is to be 
NATURE 
[JANUARY 27, 1923 
obtained free of charge from Messrs. H. K. Lewis 
and Co., Ltd., 136 Gower Street, W.C.1. 
THE spring announcement list of the Cambridge 
University Press contains particulars of many forth- 
coming books of science. Among them we notice 
“The Air and its Ways,’”’ by Sir Napier Shaw, being 
the Rede Lecture for 1921, and other papers dealing 
with the physical explanation of the atmospheric 
circulation and with the application of meteorology 
to agriculture; ‘‘ Relativity,’’ forming the second 
of the supplementary chapters to Dr. Norman R. 
Campbell’s ‘‘ Modern Electrical Theory ’’; a newly 
arranged and enlarged edition of ‘‘ The Mathematical 
Theory of Relativity,’ by Prof. A. S. Eddington ; 
the ‘‘ Collected Scientific Papers ’’ of the late Dr. J. 
Aitken, containing some thirty-seven papers on 
atmospheric dust, fogs and clouds, air temperatures, 
and other scientific subjects, added to which is a 
sketch of the life and work of the author ; and “ Glass-~ 
Making in England,’’ by the late H. J. Powell of the 
Whitefriars Glass Works, in which an account of 
glass-making in all its branches is given from the 
Roman period to the Great War. 
Our Astronomical Column. 
OcCULTATIONS OF STARS BY THE Moon.—On the 
night of January 27, the moon will pass over a number 
of the stars forming the well-known group in Taurus 
called the Hyades. The bright star Aldebaran is 
among those which will be hidden. The times of 
occurrence for four of the brighter stars will be as 
under :— 
Mag Disappears. Reappears. 
F Ben Sk hm. 
y Tauri 3°9 estoy) aor, 
0’ Tauri 4:2 8 31 roi 540) 
+15° 637 4:8 Gey 20. selOmRG 
Aldebaran Tt, oie a ee ao 
The moon will be about ro} days old at the time and 
the stars will disappear at the unillumined side, and 
reappear at the bright edge of the disc. 
The event may be witnessed with a small telescope, 
and it is possible that Aldebaran may be seen by 
acute, unaided vision nearly up to the time of its dis- 
appearance, which will occur 35 minutes after mid- 
night. The moon will be due south at 84 and will 
be 55 degrees above the horizon at the time. There 
will be four other occultations of Aldebaran during 
the next 12 months, on March 23, October 27, Novem- 
ber 24, and January 17, 1924. 
OBSERVATIONS AT WALLAL OF THE ECLIPSE OF 
SEPTEMBER 1922.—The winter number of the Chal- 
daean (vol. v., No. 17) contains an interesting account 
of the observation of the eclipse at Wallal on the west 
Australian coast by Messrs. J. Hargreaves and G. S. 
Clark-Maxwell. Their principal instrument was the 
19-ft. camera with lens of 4-in. aperture lent by 
Father Cortie, and the 8-in. coelostat lent by the 
Royal Irish Academy; these were the same instru- 
ments as were used at Sobral, Brazil, in 1919, when 
they gave a result in close accord with Einstein’s 
predictions. But in 1922 the stars were too faint to 
be photographed with a ratio of aperture to focal 
length 1/57, and the instrument was simply used as a 
coronagraph. A large number of successful exposures 
were secured with a range of 1 to 80 seconds, so that 
they should give good details both in the inner and 
outer regions. Successful plates were also secured 
with the smaller cameras ; a declinometer, to record 
magnetic variations during totality, failed owing to a 
NO. 2778, VOL. 111 | 

smoky lamp. The darkness during totality is stated 
to have been considerable, necessitating the use of 
lamps for plate-changing, etc. The extension of the 
corona on some of the plates is 4 solar diameters, 
which is quite satisfactory. 
A gale rendered re-embarkation very difficult, one 
boat sinking in the surf. None of the important 
pieces of apparatus were in it, and the articles were 
recovered. This experience shows that it would have 
been quite impossible to land the very heavy packages 
of the Christmas Island party at Wallal ; it is a slight 
mitigation of the disappointment that they suffered 
to realise that they chose the only station that was 
reasonably possible in the circumstances. 
SPECTROSCOPIC PARALLAXES OF A-TYPE STARS.— 
The earlier spectroscopic parallaxes were restricted 
to types F, G, K, M; but, as was recently noticed in 
this column, Messrs. Adams and Joy have found 
that the state of sharpness or nebulosity of certain 
metallic lines in the spectra of stars of type A forms © 
a trustworthy guide to absolute magnitude. The 
calibration of the correlation curves is effected both 
by trigonometrical parallaxes and by the group 
parallaxes of stars in moving clusters. The average 
differences of the spectroscopic and trigonometric 
parallaxes (without regard to sign) are +0-0131” 
(104 stars), spectroscopic and group  parallaxes 
+0-0077” (82 stars). The systematic differences are 
0-0000” and -o-oo014” respectively. A list is given 
(Astrophys. Journ., November 1922) of 544 spectro- 
scopic parallaxes of stars in Boss P.G.C., including 
a number of members of the Taurus, Perseus, and 
Praesepe streams. The parallax of Praesepe is given 
as 0-013”. 
A test of the values found is afforded by plotting 
parallax against proper motion. The resulting 
graph is nearly straight, showing an increase of 
proper motion from 0-000” to 0-400” as the parallax 
rises from 0-009” to 0-058”. It is found advisable 
to omit Sirius, the large parallax of which unduly 
affects the mean of its group. 
Data are still wanting for finding the parallaxes 
of stars showing the c characteristic, « Cygni being 
the leading example. Its absolute magnitude is 
estimated as —4 or -5. 

