440 

THE annual general meeting of the Society of 
Chemical Industry will be held at Cambridge on 
June 21-23. Dr. E. F. Armstrong will deliver his 
presidential address on the first day of the meeting. 
On June 22, the Society’s medal will be presented to 
Dr. C. C. Carpenter, and later in the same day Dr. 
F. W. Aston will deliver an address on “ Isotopes.” 
During the early part of the same week, it will be 
remembered, the International Union of Pure and 
Applied Chemistry is also meeting at Cambridge. 
Ar the annual general meeting of the Chemical 
Society, held on March 22, Sir James Walker, the 
retiring president, delivered his presidential address 
entitled ‘‘Symbols and Formule.’’ The following 
elections were afterwards declared: Prof. W. P. 
Wynne as president ; Prof. J. F. Thorpe as treasurer ; 
new vice-presidents, Dr. J. T. Hewitt, Prof. G. T. 
Morgan, Sir William J. Pope, Prof. J. M. Thomson, 
and Sir James Walker; new members of council, 
Dr. E. F. Armstrong, Prof. W. N. Haworth, Dr. C. K. 
Ingold, Dr. H. McCombie, Dr. G. W. Monier-Williams, 
and Dr. J. Reilly. 
In Great Britain the period of Summer Time will 
begin this year at 2 A.M., G.M.T., on Sunday, April 
22, and will continue until 2 a.m., G.M.T., on Sunday, 
September 16. In Belgium, Summer Time begins 
after midnight on March 31. The Paris correspondent 
of the Times states that, in order to meet the opposition 
to Summer Time from representatives of agriculture 
in the Chamber of Deputies, the French Government 
has decided to substitute for it the time of Strasbourg, 
which is about thirty-five minutes in advance of 
Greenwich time. 
Wirth reference to the letter published in NAtuRrE 
of February 17, p. 222, describing a remarkable 
mirage observed at Cape Wrath on December 5, 
1922, a letter has been received from Mr. Albert 
Tarn of Thornton Heath, who describes a somewhat 
similar occurrence at Oban in August 1885. Mr. 
Tarn states that he was sleeping in a bedroom at 
the back of a house adjoining the Waverley Hotel, 
so that the room faced inland. During the course 
of the night he awoke, and on looking out of the 
window saw what appeared to be a view of Oban 
Bay with the moon shining on the water. The 
date is not given, and no observations are available 
to decide whether the circumstances resembled those 
at Cape Wrath. 
THE report of the National Museum of Wales 
for 1921-22 announces the completion of the western 
section of the new building and of the western portion 
of the entrance-hall. A fumigating chamber has 
been installed to rid specimens of insects and other 
pests. Among the many interesting accessions we 
note a beaker of early Bronze Age type from 
Glamorganshire, which contained the remains of a 
child’s skull showing symptoms of rickets, the 
earliest recorded instance of this disease in Great 
Britain or perhaps in the world. Several thousand 
specimens of fossil plants most carefully collected 
from the successive beds in the Coal Measures of 
NO. 2787, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 



[Marcil 31, 1923 
Gilfach Coch and Clydach Vale by Mr. David Davies, 
and the basis of his recent paper before the Geological 
Society, have been presented by him and will be 
preserved in cabinets given for the purpose by local 
bodies interested in the coal industry. 
Tue Australian National Research Council has 
commenced the publication at Sydney of a quarterly 
journal under the editorship of Dr. A. B. Walkom, 
which is to give short abstracts of papers written by 
Australian scientific workers—even when they appear 
in periodicals not published in Australia. The price 
of the journal is 4s. per annum. The first four 
numbers of the journal have already appeared, and 
extend to 32 pages. The abstracts are arranged in 
sections according to the branches of science repre- 
sented on the Research Council, and the 245 which 
constitute the first year’s total are distributed among 
the sections as follows: agriculture 70, botany 31, 
chemistry 14, engineering I, geography 1, geology 18, 
mathematics 1, mining and metallurgy o, pathology 
13, physics 1, physiology 4, veterinary science 3, 
zoology 88. Cross references are given so that an 
abstract of interest in a section other than that in 
which it appears can readily be found. The distri- 
bution of the abstracts among the sections is interest- 
ing as evidence of the extent to which science is being 
brought to bear on the special problems which a 
developing colony presents to its Government. 
Mr. J. Rei Morr is publishing through Mr. W. E. 
Harrison, the Ancient House, Ipswich, under the 
title of ‘‘ The Great Flint Implements of Cromer, 
Norfolk,’’ an account of his discoveries in 1921 of a 
large and*remarkable series of flint implements and 
flakes, to which attention has already been directed 
in the columns of NATURE. The forthcoming volume 
will contain a number of illustrations by E. T. Ling- 
wood. 
WE have received from Messrs. Watson and Sons 
Parker Street, Kingsway, Bulletin 50.S., containing 
descriptions of some new X-ray accessories. A new 
mercury interrupter with a rotary rectifier designed 
for continuous work under heavy loads is illustrated, 
also an automatic time-switch for exposures ranging 
from one-sixteenth of a second to thirty seconds. The 
extensive use of X-rays for therapeutic purposes has 
led to great improvements in the design of suitable 
stands which serve the double purpose of holding the 
X-ray tube and allowing it to be manipulated at any 
angle. The new stand illustrated here has some good 
constructional features, and the tube itself is almost 
completely enclosed by protective material which has 
an absorption equivalent of 3 mm. of lead. This 
protective shield is provided with an arrangement 
which permits of forced air cooling during the working 
of the tube. 
THE 1922 Year-Book of the Franklin Institute, 
Philadelphia, contains some interesting facts from the 
history of the Institute. It was organised in 1824 
for ‘‘ the discovery of physical and natural laws and 
their application to increase the well-being and com- 
fort of mankind,” and duly installed in its own house 
