January i6, 190S] 



NA TURE 



■0/ 



wrote : — " I am sorry this Experiment is totally noglectod 

 In Enjjland where mechanic Genius is so strong. . . . 

 Your Philosophy seems to be too bashful. . . . This 

 E.xpcrience is by no means a trifling one. It may be 

 attended with important Consequences that no one can 

 fiircsee." 



The most noteworthy article in the Journal o( the 

 Franklin Institute for December, 1907, is that by Prof. 

 J. \Y. Richards reviewing the progress made in the electro- 

 thermic production of iron and steel. There is also a 

 paper by Mr. E. .S. Cole describing the pitometcr, an 

 ingenious instrument for measuring the leakage of water 

 itt mains. 



The current issue of the Central, the organ of the 

 Central Technical College Old Students' Association, con- 

 tains as a frontispiece an e.\ceHent portrait of Prof. \V. E. 

 Dalby. There is also an article by Prof. H. E. Armstrong 

 on the nature of chemical change, in which he reviews the 

 ixcellent research work accomplished by the chemical 

 (ii parlment of the college since 1885. 



.\t a meeting of the .Association of Engineers in Charge 

 held in London on December 11, 1907, Mr. L. Gaster read 

 a paper on the province of the illuminating engineer, in 

 which he directed attention to the waste which is going 

 on in the conversion of energy into light, and to the 

 utilisation of the illuminants so as to produce the best 

 illumination. He suggested a method for reducing the 

 existing waste, and indicated some of the important 

 probli-ms with which ihi- illuminating engineer has to 

 deal. 



^. BATCH of publications received from the Department 

 of Mines of Queensland affords striking evidence of the 

 (xcellent work that is being done by the Geological Survey 

 in investigating the mineral resources of the colony. Mr. 

 B. Dunstan (Publication No. 207) describes some copper, 

 gold, and bismuth mines in the Burnett district, west of 

 Maryborough. Mr. I.. C. Ball (No. 208) gives a careful 

 report on the Norton gold field, where gold was discovered 

 in 1871, the total vield since then having ainounted to 

 it),tt3o ounces. The reefs have hitherto been worked for 

 their gold and silver contents, and the returns would, but 

 for the complex sulphides in the ore, have given a profit. 

 If .1 suitable method of treating these sulphides were 

 adopted, many reefs hitherto neglected would probably be 

 opened up. Mr. VV. E. Cameron (No. 209) describes some 

 goldfields of the Cape York Peninsula. The same author 

 (No. 210) gives an exhaustive account, illustrated by a map 

 and fourteen admirable plates, of the .\nnan River tinfield, 

 Cooktown district. He shows that rich alluvial tin occurs 

 at nimierous points over an area twelve miles long by 

 eight miles broad. Recently, hydraulicing the face with 

 water under pressure has been adopted, and an attempt 

 has been made to deal with the deposits by machinery by 

 dredging the alluvial flats. Mr. B. Dunstan (No. 211) 

 describes the Stanhills tinfields near Croydon, where recent 

 operations have revealed ore of exceptionally rich quality, 

 and the field has become very active. The tin is found in 

 lodes and in alluvial deposits, and the area of the field 

 amounts to about too square miles. Mr. B. Dunstan also 

 publishes a further report (No. 212) on some Croydon gold- 

 mines, with special reference to Bennion's reef and to the 

 Highland Mary reef. Publication No. 213 is a map, on 

 a scale of six miles to the inch, of the copper-mining 

 district of Cloncurry, compiled by Mr. L. C. Ball. 



To the Bulletin of the .American Mathematical Society, 

 xiii., 10, Prof. Cleveland .Abbe contributes a short note 

 on the possibility of studying the movements of the atmo- 



sphere by laboratory experiments with projections of a 

 globe. It being necessary to use flat models, the con- 

 ditions are necessarily different from those on our earth, 

 and the author discusses the projections of the sphere best 

 suited for taking account of different effects. 



The Transactions of the American Mathematical Socictv 

 (viii., 4) contain a paper by Prof. A. G. Greenhill, I'.R.S., 

 on the elliptic integral in electromagnetic theorv. The in- 

 vestigation was undertaken during the lifetime of the late 

 Principal X'iriamu Jones, P'.R.S., in connection with the 

 calculation of the mutual attraction of two coaxal 

 helices employed in the ampere balance designed bv Prin- 

 cipal Viriamu Jones and Prof. Ayrton. The object is to 

 exhibit the third complete elliptic integral in the form most 

 suitable for computation. 



In the Revue generate des Scioiccs (November 30, 1907) 

 M. Th. Reinach publishes, with an introduction by Prof. 

 Painlev^, a translation of the manuscript of Archimedes 

 discovered in 1899 by Papadopoulos Kerameus on a 

 palimpsest parchment. This manuscript soon attracted the 

 attention of Profs. H. Schoene and Heiberg, and the latter 

 visited Constantinople in 1906 to study the precious docu- 

 ment. It consists of four parts, some containing works 

 already known, and the present article deals with the fourth, 

 namely, the treatise on method (Ephodos), which Is dedi- 

 cated to Eratosthenes. It deals with the quadrature of a 

 parabola, and with the volumes and centres of gravity 

 of spheres, ellipsoids, paraboloids and hyperboloids of 

 revolution, and the " method of exhaustion " adopted by 

 .Archimedes distinctiv anticipates its modern equivalent of 

 integration. A further interesting feature of the problem 

 is Archimedes' use of the principle of the lever in com- 

 paring different solids of revolution by a kind of method 

 of balancing the elements of one against the corresponding 

 elements of the other. 



In the Verliandliingcii dcr dcKtschfii physihalisclun 

 GcscUschaft for November 30, 1907, Drs. C Behn and 

 H. Geiger give 1-63 as the result of their determination 

 of the ratio of the specific heats of helium at constant 

 pressure and at constant volume respectively. Their 

 method is a modification of Kundt's. The tube containing 

 the gas is sealed at both ends, and is clamped in the 

 middle. Its frequency for longitudinal oscillations is 

 adjusted by attaching metal discs to the ends with sealing" 

 wax, until the lycopodium within is set in motion by the 

 resonance of the gas. One end of the helium tube pro- 

 jects in the usual way into a second tube containing air, 

 and produces dust figures in the air from which the fre- 

 quency of the oscillation is calculated. 



Part vii. of vol. xxi. of the Journal of the College of 

 .Science of the University of Tokyo consists of an account 

 of the work done by Messrs. K. Honda and T. Terada on 

 the reciprocal relations of stress and magnetisation in a 

 number of irons and steels. The specimens, in the form 

 of wires, were magnetised under tension in a vertical 

 magnetising coil, and the induction was measured 

 ballistically both . with change of stress at constant field 

 and with change of field at constant stress. The result is 

 a verification of the theories of Prof. J. J. Thomson and 

 others so far as the principal effects are concerned, but 

 hysteresis effects appear to make it impossible to test 

 experimentally the correctness of the terms of the second 

 order. In which the theories differ from each other. 



.A MEMOIR by Miss E. M. Elderton, Galtan research 

 scholar in national eugenics of the University of London, 

 assisted by Prof. Karl Pearson, on the resemblance between^ 

 first cousins, has been issued by Messrs. Dulau and Co, 

 The memoir gives the results of two series of invcstiga 



NO. 1QQ4. VOL. 77] 



