438 
NATURE 
[Marcu 31, 1923 
Current Topics and Events. 
THE Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies was dis- 
solved by a resolution passed at a meeting of the 
Board held at the Royal Society on March 22. The 
Royal Society took the initiative in the formation of 
the Board in 1916; and when a few months ago the 
council decided that the society no longer desired 
to remain in this federation, whether under the 
original constitution, or the new one proposed, there 
was little hope for the continued vitality of a body so 
sharply truncated. The chief scientific and technical 
societies—about sixty in all—in the British Isles 
were represented on the Board, and the special com- 
mittees appointed from time to time have produced 
a number of notable reports. Among such com- 
mittees may be mentioned those on the water power 
of the British Empire, glue and other adhesives, 
national instruction in technical optics, timber for 
aeroplane construction, and the application of 
science to agriculture. A couple of years ago the 
Board appointed a committee to arrange for the pub- 
lication of a world-list of scientific serials, with indica- 
tions of libraries in the chief centres of Great Britain 
where such periodicals could be consulted. It is 
gratifying to know that the interests of the Board in 
the list, towards the publication of which the Carnegie 
United Kingdom Trust made a grant of rooo/., have 
been vested in three trustees, so that notwithstanding 
the dissolution of the Board the issue of the list is 
assured. For this provision thanks are due largely 
to Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell. In its early years the 
Board owed much to Sir Joseph Thomson, who, as 
president of the Royal Society, was president also of 
it. Sir Arthur Schuster and Sir Herbert Jackson 
were associated with the Board throughout its exist- 
ence, and did invaluable work for it, while the de- 
voted service rendered by the Secretary, Prof. W. W. 
Watts, created a sense of indebtedness which can 
never be adequately expressed. It is impossible not 
to regret that a federation of such early promise 
should have had so short a life. 
Sir FreDERICK Mort, pathologist to the mental 
hospitals of the London County Council for twenty- 
seven years, and director of the Council’s pathological 
laboratory, is retiring from the service at the end of 
this month. By his own researches and by stimulat- 
ing and encouraging the spirit of investigation in 
others, he has brilliantly discharged the difficult task 
of establishing the tradition that it is the business of 
the authority having control over asylums for the 
insane, not only to see to the security and comfort of the 
inmates, but also to secure that progressive work on 
the nature and causes of mental diseases shall be 
directed towards their prevention and cure. His 
demonstration that general paralysis of the insane is 
in fact a late manifestation of syphilis in the nervous 
system is perhaps the most conspicuous piece of his 
personal work among patients and in the laboratory, 
and it has entirely altered our conception of the 
disease. The Archives of Neurology and other jour- 
nals show the quantity of good work which came 
NO,42787, VOL. 114 
from the laboratory at Claybury—the more remark- © 
able when we remember that Sir Frederick was also 
a busy general physician attached to Charing Cross 
Hospital. Two of the plans in which he was much 
interested have now matured in the moving of the 
central laboratory to a more accessible site in London, 
and in the establishment of the Maudsley Hospital at 
Denmark Hill for the study of the early stages of 
mental derangement. The solid foundation which 
he has laid should do much to secure success for the 
new arrangements. 
AmonG the important centenaries of scientific 
interest this year is that of the birth of Sir William 
Siemens, who was born in Lenthe, Hanover, on April 
4, 1823, and died in this country on November 19, 
1883. Siemens took up his residence in England in 
1844, and from 1859 was a naturalised Englishman. 
It would be difficult to measure the value of his 
services to our industries, for he was one of the fore- 
most electrical engineers of his day, while as a metal- 
lurgist his name is connected with the introduction 
of the regenerative furnace and the manufacture of 
open-hearth steel. His scientific knowledge was no 
less noteworthy than his inventive ingenuity, while 
above all he was a man of affairs. The first president 
of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, he also served 
as president of the Mechanical Engineers and of the 
Iron and Steel Institute. It was in his address to the 
latter body that he threw out the pregnant suggestion 
of utilising some of the power of the Niagara Falls 
and transmitting it long distances by electric con- 
ductors. In much of his work he was associated with 
his brothers Werner, Carl, and Friedrich. In the 
issue of NaTuRE for November 29, 1883, Lord Kelvin 
gave an account of Siemens’s scientific career and 
work as a contribution to our series of Scientific 
Worthies. 
On April 7 occurs the centenary of the death of 
the French physicist Jacques Alexandré Cesar 
Charles, the pioneer of scientific ballooning. Born 
in 1746, Charles began life as a clerk in the Ministry 
of Finance. He devoted his leisure to scientific 
pursuits and he became known as a lecturer and 
experimenter. In 1783, a few months after the 
brothers Montgolfier had made their first experiments 
with the hot-air balloon, Charles conceived the idea 
of filling a balloon with hydrogen. His first im- 
portant demonstration was made in December 1, 
1783, when Charles and his companion, Francis 
Robert, rose from the gardens of the Tuileries to a 
height of gooo feet. Charles made his hydrogen by 
the action of iron on sulphuric acid. To him is due 
the invention of the valve, the car, the use of ballast, 
and the employment of rubber for rendering the 
silken envelope gas-tight. He was also the first to 
use the barometer in a balloon. Very great interest 
was excited by the work of Montgolfier and Charles, 
and Lavoisier was instructed by the Paris Academy 
of Sciences to draw up a report as to the value of © 
the discovery. Charles was admitted to the Academy 
