=—, - a 
als - 
—_* - 
Marcu 3, 1923] 
NATURE 
289 

and Ashmole—the link with the founder of the Society 
should not be forgotten; the monogram of Charles 
Il.—‘C, II.’’—is carved over the fine balcony window 
in the middle of the front of the building. 
It is on account of these various associations with 
British science and the early days of the Royal Society 
that a petition has been laid before the Hebdomadal 
Council of Oxford, requesting that the vacant rooms 
in the old Museum may be once more used for the 
purposes of natural science for which they were built. 
R. T. GuNTHER. 
- 
Magdalen College, Oxford. 

Tesla Spectra of Complex Compounds. 
In Nature of January 27, p. 115, a very interesting 
letter appeared by J. K. Marsh and A. W. Stewart 
on “ Tesla Spectra and the Fraunhofer Effect in 
Complex Compounds.” 
More than a year ago I began an investigation 
of the band spectra of benzene vapour under the 
action of high-frequency discharges. Both the 
absorption and emission spectra were examined. 
Other more complicated substances were also tried 
in a state of vapour. 
Upon varying the capacity, and more especially 
the self-induction, as well as altering the vapour 
pressure between wide limits, emission bands can 
very clearly be seen. Each substance has a character- 
istic spacing of the emission bands; they appear in 
a perfectly definite order. Nitrogen is a very good 
example of this. 
In the case of benzene, I photographed a whole 
series of emission bands which lie very close to its 
absorption and fluorescence bands. I referred briefly 
to this in my article on “‘ Spectres d’absorption et 
de fluorescence du benzene”’ (Journal de Physique et 
le Radium, Juin, 1922, p. 210). 
J. &. Marsh and A. W. Stewart express the wish 
to reserve for themselves the further examination of 
Tesla spectra. I should only like to say here that we 
have been working for a long time on similar ground, 
but one thing is certain, that we have been working 
from entirely different points of view. Our principal 
object is to work out the structure, size and shape 
_ of the molecules from their band spectra. 
Our investigations, and those of Messrs. Marsh and 
Stewart, should therefore be of mutual advantage 
one to the other. 
The subject is so vast that the more it is investi- 
mek the sooner will the question of the band spectra 
solved. VicToR HENRI. 
Institute of Physical Chemistry, 
University of Zirich, 
February 2. 

WHEN our letter to NaturRE of January 27 was 
written, we were under the impression that we were 
the only workers in this field, as the researches of 
Wiedemann, Eberts, and de Hemptinne in 1897 and 
earlier years had led to no results in the particular 
region which we were investigating. Prof. Henri 
_has courteously sent us a private communication as 
well as the above letter, and has forwarded also a 
_ copy of the paper which he mentions. In this paper 
occurs the following sentence : ‘‘ Nous avons entrepris 
une série de recherches pour étudier la fluorescence 
et la luminescence de la vapeur de benzéne sous 
différentes conditions, en particulier sous l’influence 
de décharges électriques diverses.’’ As was natural 
in the case of a long paper, this sentence was not 
reproduced in the abstract which appeared in the 
Chemical Society’s Journal; and as we had no 
access to the Journal de Physique et le Radium itself, 
we were quite unaware that any one was working 
NO. 2783, VOL. 111] 
in the field. Thus our work and the unpublished 
results of Prof. Henri are entirely independent of 
each other; and we are anxious that the mere 
accident of our having been first in actual publication 
of detailed results should not in any way deprive 
Prof. Henri of his full share in the credit of the 
discovery and investigation of these new spectra. 
As Prof. Henri says in his letter, the subject is 
being approached along two separate lines, as we 
are mainly interested in the relation between the 
chemical constitution of substances and the spectra 
produced by them, whereas he is working back from 
the spectra as a basis to the machinery which pro- 
duces the spectra within the molecules and is in- 
vestigating also the variations produced by different 
electric wave-lengths—a subject which we have no 
intention of entering upon now, since it is in his hands. 
Our lines of research therefore supplement each other ; 
and we cordially agree with Prof. Henri that there 
is more than enough room for both our laboratories 
to work in this interesting new field. We should 
like to express our appreciation of the courtesy which 
Prof. Henri has shown in this matter. 
J. K. Marsa, 
A. W. STEWART. 
The Sir Donald Currie Laboratories, 
The Queen’s University of Belfast, 
February 8. 

Calendar Reform. 
Durinc the 16th century Pope Gregory XIII. 
effected a very necessary rectification of the Julian 
Calendar, which was not, however, legally adopted 
in England till 1752. The effect of the correction 
was to bring forward the dates of the solstices from 
about the tenth to the twenty-first of June and 
December; but the climatic significance of this 
astronomical dislocation in the calendar was not 
serious, and the calendar months retained the same 
distinctive seasonal characters as heretofore. As, 
therefore, the present calendar is the same in essentials 
as that instituted by Julius and Augustus Cesar some 
2000 years ago, it must have come as a surprise, pos- 
sibly a shock, to many readers of NATURE (December 2, 
Pp. 747) to learn that we may shortly be asked to suffer 
all the inconvenience and confusion of a catastrophic 
alteration in the calendar on grounds which seem 
altogether trivial. In the first place, the calendar 
months now in use have by long association become 
enshrined in literature as the very impersonation 
of definite stages in the seasonal progression and 
retrogression of natural phenomena, and it would 
be sheer vandalism to break this association, and 
renounce our literary heritage, without far graver 
practical cause than can possibly be shown. 
In the second place, every calendar system must 
be framed with reference to the four natural land- 
marks of the year, namely, the solstices and equinoxes, 
and it is eminently desirable that the two solstices, 
and the two equinoxes, which stand opposite one 
another in the natural year, should not be assigned 
dates which are unsymmetrically disposed to one 
another. In the proposed system of 13 months, 
the solstices would stand 6} months or time-units 
apart, instead of a whole number as in the present 
system, and no month would be located diametrically 
opposite another as at present, viz. December to June, 
March to September, and so on, along the earth’s orbit 
round the sun. This arrangement would offend the 
artistic sense of any one with a vivid appreciation 
of the fact that our fundamental division of time, 
the year, is not an arbitrary unit but one based on 
a grand cycle of Nature. 
£2 
