478 
electron moving from one stationary state to another 
is compared to a flea, which crawls for a time and 
then hops; or to a man who, when he is insulted, 
listens quietly for a time, and then suddenly hits out. 
It is perhaps difficult for a technical reader to assess 
correctly the value of a popular article, but in this 
case a high standard appears to have been reached. 
Tue National Research Council of Japan has 
commenced the issue of journals dealing with astro- 
nomy and geophysics, chemistry, physics, geology and 
geography, botany, zoology, medical sciences and 
engineering, at intervals determined by the amount 
of matter available. The first six of the ten parts 
of the Japanese Journal of Physics for the year 1922 
have been issued and cover 48 pages of original 
contributions, including one on the band spectrum 
of mercury by Prof. Nagaoka, and 26 pages of 
abstracts of 71 papers published by Japanese workers, 
and supplied by the authors themselves. The whole 
of the Journal is in English, and this fact will lead 
to a better knowledge and appreciation of the large 
amount of research work which is now being done in 
Japan. 
Tue Australian National Research Council has 
issued a report of its annual meeting held in Sydney 
in August last. The council was formed for national 
and international purposes in January 1921 by the 
Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, 
to which body it has to submit a full report of its 
work and proceedings on the occasion of each meeting 
of the Association. At the meeting Sir David Orme 
Masson was elected president of’ the council in 
succession to Sir Edgeworth David. Resolutions 
were passed urging the need for the State endowment 
of systematic research in the Pacific islands under 
Australian control, for research work in Australia in 
respect of refrigeration, and for laboratories to carry 
out industrial investigation and research. Offers of 
co-operation with the Commonwealth Institute of 
Science and Industry in measures for furtherimg these 
objects were made, and preliminary steps taken for the 
inauguration of a publicity campaign for the purpose 
of securing that the functions, operations, and financial 
needs of the Institute may be more fully appreciated 
by the Commonwealth Government, the Legislature, 
and the public generally. The council has decided 
to ask the Australian Association to regard it as a 
fully constituted body free to conduct its own 
affairs subject to instructions from the International 
Research Council. The first issue of Australian Science 
Abstracts, published by the Australian Research 
Council as a quarterly journal of abstracts of papers 
by Australian scientific workers, appeared on August 
I, 1922. An invitation has been issued by the 
Commonwealth Government through the Research 
Council to the representatives of the Pan - Pacific 
Scientific Congress to hold the Congress in Australia 
in 1923. 
Tue Third Report of the Council of the National 
Institute of Agricultural Botany reveals satisfactory 
progress in the establishment of the work of the 
Institute upon a firm basis. The appeal for fellows 
NO. 2788, VoL. 111 | 
NATURE 
[Apri 7;-1923 


has met with a gratifying response, and special 
interest attaches to the fact that the Prince of Wales 
and the Duke of York have consented to become 
honorary fellows. In the Crop Improvement Branch 
the conditions have now been settled on which yield 
trials of cereals will be carried out, and four new 
barleys were included in the “ full trials’’ in 1922 
at four different stations. 
of 1923. Varieties of oats, wheat, grasses, and 
clovers are all under observation, and the Institute 
is collaborating with the Plant Testing and Registra- 
tion Station of the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, 
in the collection of strains of certain grasses and 
clovers, with the view of collecting information as a 
basis for a future scheme of trials and registration. 
Special research has been carried out by the official 
Seed Testing Station as to the value of ‘‘ hard seeds ”” 
in clovers, and of the “‘ broken growth ” which occurs 
in germination tests. Increases have been made in 
the fees charged for seed testing in order to reduce 
the net cost of operating the station. At the Potato 
Testing Station, Ormskirk, various trials of immunity, 
maturity, and yield have been steadily carried on, 
more than 2000 entries being received for the official 
immunity tests. Progress has been made in the work 
of the Potato Synonym Committee, and less synonym- . 
ous varieties are now being entered for the immunity 
trials. 
THE second Sorby Lecture, delivered in the autumn 
of 1921 by Prof. C. H. Desch, has recently been 
published and is entitled ‘‘ The Services of Henry 
Clifton Sorby to Metallurgy.” As Prof. Desch 
remarks, Sorby was one of those amateur lovers of 
science who have played such a remarkable part in 
the scientific history of this country. Some have 
been members of noble families, such as Robert 
Boyle in the seventeenth and Henry Cavendish in the 
eighteenth centuries. Others have been men of the 
merchant or professional classes, possessing sufficient 
means to allow them to follow the bent of their 
minds. Such were Justice Grove, William Spottis- 
woode, Edward Schunck, and, greatest of all, Charles 
Darwin. To this group belonged Sorby. Free from 
the cares of a profession, he gave himself wholly to 
science, in the effort to advance which he worked 
with extraordinary diligence throughout a long life. 
Sorby was a pioneer in many branches of science, 
but left it to others to develop his new experimental 
methods and to fill in the details of his discoveries. 
His great manipulative skill and patience led him 
to found at least two new departments of experimental 
science — microscopical petrography and metallo- 
graphy. Prof. Desch has attempted to discover in 
the. wide range of Sorby’s scientific work, some 
connecting thread among the great diversity of his 
investigations, and he finds that a prominent motive 
in his work is the desire to understand the ‘ form ”” 
of natural objects, using this word in its widest 
sense. The address deals, in the main, with that 
branch of Sorby’s work which led to the foundation 
of metallography as a science. It is based on a 
careful study of his note-books and specimens, and 
The final year’s trials ~ 
will be carried out in the same districts in the spring — 
a ee 
