
RCH 3, 1923] 
_ Mayor-Generat Sir Writram B. LEISHMAN has 
been appointed Director-General, Army Medical Ser- 
vice, in succession to Lieut.-General Sir T. H. J. C. 
Goodwin. 
Tue degree of doctor of laws honoris causa has 
_been conferred on Sir Frederic Kenyon, director and 
principal librarian of the British Museum since 1909, 
_ by Princeton University, New Jersey. 
_ Art the Bristol Museum, according to the report 
for the year ending September 30, 1922, Mr. F. G. 
-Pearcey has built up in an exhibition case the repre- 
‘sentation of a living coral reef. ‘A collection of 
typical reef corals has been covered with a thin 
_ gelatine layer, coloured as true to the living coral as 
possible, and arranged in natural fashion upon a 
modelled sea-floor, together with crustacea, mollusca, 
sea-urchins, and fishes.” It sounds simple, but needs 
in the artist that knowledge of actual reef conditions 
which Mr. Pearcey possesses, thanks to bis voyages in 
the Challenger and other exploring ships. 
Amonc the books to be published during the spring 
and summer this year by the Clarendon Press and 






ParTIAL EcLipsE OF THE Moon.—A partial eclipse 
of the moon will occur during the morning hours of 
March 3, and may be well observed if the atmosphere 
proves favourable. The moon will enter the denser 
shadow of the earth at 2" 28™ a.m., the middle of 
the eclipse will be at 3% 32™ a.m., and our satellite 
will emerge from the shadow at 4 36™ a.m. The 
fainter shade or penumbra will also involve the moon 
between 1 13™ a.m. and 5 51™ a.m. The northern 
or upper region of the disc will be obscured, and if 
we regard the whole surface as equal to I-o the 
proportion eclipsed will amount to 0-38, or nearly 
two-fifths. This eclipse is a return of that of February 
19, 1905, when the magnitude was about three-tenths. 
The cycle of recurrences in eclipses is equal to 
18 years and 11 days and was discovered by the 
Chaldzans, who named it the Saros. It enabled the 
ancients to foretell the return of these phenomena 
with tolerable accuracy. 
Ly 
_ THE ATMOSPHERE OF VENUS.—Mention has been 
‘made in this column (May 6, 1922, p. 592) of the result 
obtained by Prof. St. John and Mr. G. B. Nicholson, 
at Mt. Wilson, demonstrating the absence of the lines of 
water-vapour and oxygen in the spectrum of Venus, 
A paper by them in Asvrophys. Journ., December 
‘1922, gives full details of the investigation, with 
_ beautiful reprints of the spectra, which are arranged 
_to make the Doppler displacement of the solar lines 
: in the spectrum of Venus clearly visible, while it is 
_absent for the water-vapour band, showing its telluric 
origin. It is stated that the spectra confirm Prof. 
Slipher’s result that fifteen days seem to be an 
inferior limit for the period of rotation of Venus. 
A review is given of former results. Vogel, 
-Scheiner, and Arrhenius all concluded that water- 
“vapour is present on Venus from the apparent 
strengthening of its spectral bands; but obviously 
the use of the Doppler principle with a high dispersion 
is far more decisive. It is concluded that the quantity 
of oxygen in the atmosphere of Venus can scarcely 
exceed a thousandth of that in our own, or it would 
_have been detected. 
The authors quote the suggestion of Arrhenius 
NO. 2783, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
; of Law, F. 
301 

the Oxford University Press are: Vol. 5 of the trans- 
lation of Suess’s “‘ The Face of the Earth,” being the 
index of subjects and of persons and places; ‘‘ The 
British Coal-mining Industry during the War,” Sir 
R. A. S. Redmayne, comprising chapters on the pre- 
control period—1915-16, the period of government 
control—1917-18, de-control—r919-21, general sur- 
vey of the coal-mining industry of the United 
Kingdom during the period 1914-21 and appendixes ; 
“The Legacy of Rome,” edited by C. Bailey, with 
the following contributions : Religion and Philosophy, 
C. Bailey, Family and Social Life, H. Last, Literature, 
J. W. Mackail, Language, H. Bradley, The Science 
de Zulueta, The Conception of Empire, 
E. Barker, Roman Architecture and Art, G. MeN. 
Rushforth, Science, Dr. C. Singer, Administration, 
H. Stuart-Jones, Communications and Commerce, 
G. H. Stevenson, Agriculture, W. E. Heitland, 
and Engineering, G. Giovannoni; ‘“ Makers of 
Science,’ I. B. Hart, in which an attempt is made to 
present a survey of the broader movements in the 
history of the physical and mathematical sciences 
from Greek days to the present time. 
Our Astronomical Column. 
that the oxygen in our atmosphere may have resulted 
from plant life, so that if Venus had no organisms 
on it oxygen would not be present in its atmosphere. 
Proceeding to speculate on the conditions on the 
planet, they consider that the slow rotation would 
be likely to cause violent air circulation, owing to 
the great difference of temperature between the day 
and night hemispheres. It is supposed that the 
rotation, though slow, is not so slow as to put one 
hemisphere in perpetual night. The absence of water 
would make the ground very dusty, and high winds 
would raise dense clouds of it. It is suggested that 
this is the nature of the Venus clouds. According 
to Prof. Russell their albedo is less than that of 
our clouds. It is suggested that direct photographs 
through violet and infra-red filters, as used by Prof. 
R. W. Wood on Jupiter and Saturn, would give 
information about these clouds, and might even 
reveal the surface below in regions where they were 
thin. 
Tue Raprat Motions oF Stars OF TyPE N.— 
This type (Secchi’s Type IV.) consists of red stars 
with carbon bands. Lick Observatory Bulletin No. 
342 contains a study of the velocities of twenty-five 
of these stars in the line of sight by J. H. Moore. 
Twenty-three of these stars have well- determined 
proper motions, and a correlation of these with the 
radial velocities enables the mean parallax of the 
group to be determined. Three different methods of 
treating the data give the closely accordant values of 
the latter 0:0032”, 0-0028”, 0-0031”. The mean ap- 
parent magnitude of these stars at maximum is 6:1, 
which implies a mean absolute magnitude of -1°'5, 
in good agreement with the value -1-3 found by 
Luplau-Janssen and Haarh from the proper motions 
alone. This gives confidence in the result. 
It appears that these stars are giants, in an early 
stage of their career as stars. Till the Giant and 
Dwarf Theory obtained currency, the red variable 
stars were generally looked on as expiring suns, and 
compared to a candle flickering in its socket before 
extinction, but this new research combines with 
many others to show that this view is incorrect. 
