03- 



NA TURE 



[February 13, 1908 



and gem-sloncs arc being developed at the prcsoiil time. 

 The discovery of the groat Tonopah gold mine in one of 

 Ihe barren mountains in the desert area of the State caused 

 Nevada to awake from the economic lethargy into which 

 she was plunged after the flooding of the Comstock mines 

 in the early 'eighties, and (he closing down of nearly every 

 mine of importance on the other mining fields through 

 the fall in the price of silver. In an interesting review 

 of the recent mining developments in Nevada, Mr. .\. 

 Selwyn-Brown, in the Engineering Magazine (vol. x.xxiv., 

 No. 4), shows that since the Comstock rush in 1850 to the 

 end of 1907 the gold and silver mines of the .State yielded 

 the enormous value of 206,670,000/. In the Journal of the 

 1-ranklin Institute (vol. clxv., No. i) Prof. O. C. S. Carter 

 .ilso deals with the mineral resources of Nevada, and 

 ili-~i-ribes the irrigation started by the Government 

 Reclamation Service. The irrigation canal, thirty-one 

 miles in length, to divert water from the Truckee River to 

 Ihe Carson River, together with 270 miles of lateral 

 ditches, is completed, and is the first irrigation project 

 carried out under tlie authority of the United States law 

 of June 17, 1902. 



In the December (1907) number of the National Geo- 

 f^raphic Maga::inc, the organ of the National Geographic 

 Society of Washingtoji, U.S.A., Mr. R. M. Brown 

 describes an experiment intended to give practical proof 

 of the curvature of the earth, carried out by him on Lake 

 Ouinsigamond, on the model of the well-known investiga- 

 tions of Mr. H. Vulc Oldham on the Bedford Level in this 

 country. The most interesting contribution is that of 

 Hon. J. Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, entitled " The 

 Modern Alchemist," in which he surveys the multiform 

 activity of his department in the introduction of new 

 varieties of cereals and other useful plants, arboriculture, 

 forestry, fisheries, and many other subjects. 



Mr. F. Sot^DV is giving a course of six free public 

 lectures at Glasgow University on " The Nature of 

 Matter." He regards them as some slight return to the 

 people of Glasgow for the help given to the University by 

 prominent citizens, especially in the equipment of the 

 department of physical chemistry with apparatus for .re- 

 search, and he believes it to be the duty of men of science 

 who receive such help to place before the public from time 

 lo time, and in a manner to be readily comprehended, the 

 principal results achieved. The first lecture, delivered on 

 January jo, dealt with radium and atomic disintegration. 



Sir Ciiarlks Ioiid has issued the meteorological 

 observations made .at the .Adelaide Observatorv and other 

 places in South Australia and the Northern Territory 

 during the year 1905. The section relating to rainfall 

 gives the monthly and yearly totals at 517 stations, and 

 compares the figures with the average for previous years 

 wherever there are at least seven years' records. The year 

 was a moderately wet one over the older established agri- 

 lultural districts, but dry over the pastoral country, the 

 interior, and the Northern Territory. From August to the 

 middle of December the weather was very cold in the 

 southern areas ; the special meteorological feature of the 

 year was the exceptionally cold spring ; February was also 

 Ihe coldest month on record. The useful experiments on 

 Ihe exposure of thermometers have been continued; Sir 

 <-harles Todd observes that, as might be expected, the 

 lliermometers In the " Stevenson " screens as a rule read 

 higher than those oh the "Greenwich "stand during the 

 night and lower during the day ; the difference depends 

 very much on the wind-force and the state of the sky. 

 An mteresting table shows the approximate mean rainfall 



NO. 1998, VOL. yy] 



for each montli and year from 1861 to igoj, and the 

 average yield of wheat per acre ; wheat-growing can be 

 successfully prosecuted only where the percentage of winter 

 rains is largely in excess of that for the summer months. 



M. L. Natanson has an article on the electromagnetic 

 theory of dispersion in gases in the April (1907) number 

 of the Bulletin de I'Acad^mie des Sciences of Cracow. 

 .\fler working out the general theory of propagation of 

 electrical disturbances in a medium composed of molecules 

 which contain electrons or " corpuscles " having their 

 own periods of oscillation, he limits his consideration to 

 gases, and assumes, the molecules to contain electrons of 

 one kind only. He finds that in the cases of hydrogen, 

 oxygen, air, and carbon monoxide, the values of the re- 

 fractive indices calculated on this assumption agree fairly 

 with the values found by experiment. In the case of 

 carbon dioxide the agreement is poor, owing probably to 

 the influence of the absorption bands in the infra-red. In 

 the case of sodium vapour the assumption of two kinds 

 of electrons fails to produce a satisfactory agreement 

 between thf or\" and experiment. 



Prof. Cohen has made valuable additions to our know- 

 ledge of the allotropic states of the elements, notably in 

 the cases of tin and antimony, and the current number of 

 the Zcitscbrift jiir physikalische Chemie (January 31) 

 contains two papers by him (in collaboration with Mr. J. 

 Olie) on the so-called amorphous antimony and bismuth. 

 These were described by Mr. F. H^rard in 1888 as result- 

 ing from the action of nitrogen upon these metals at a 

 dull red heat. The experiments now described prove con- 

 clusively that neither pure antimony nor bismuth under- 

 goes any change when heated in nitrogen which has been 

 carefully purified from oxygen and oxides of nitrogen. 

 If the nitrogen is not specially purified, however, H^rard's 

 results are reproduced, the " amorphous " antimony (or 

 bismuth) thus obtained consisting of a mixture of the metal 

 and its oxide. These allotropic modifications of the two 

 elements are therefore non-existent. 



Under the title " A propos de I'Etat civil de Jean 

 Baptiste van Helmont " the question of the correct dates 

 of the birth and death of van Helmont is discussed by 

 the Chevalier Edmond Marchal in a recent number of the 

 Bulletin of the Royal .\cademy of Belgium (1907, No. 7, 

 p. 732). The researches of M. G. Des Marez among the 

 registers of the cathedral church of Ste. Gudule, Brussels, 

 show that van Helmont was born, not in 1577, as has 

 been generally supposed hitherto, but on January 21, 1570 

 (N.S.). The date of his death is somewhat less certain, 

 being either November 16, 1635, O"" December 30, 1644 ; 

 it appears to be clear, however, that he died in Brussels 

 and not at Vilvorde, where he spent seven years of his 

 life. It is an interesting fact that the bust of van Helmont 

 at the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine does not re- 

 present Jean Baptiste van Helmont at all, but his son 

 Francois, whose likeness, appearing side by side with that 

 of his father in the first edition of the " Ortus Medicina.-," 

 was confused with it when the bust was carved in 1863. 



Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co. have published a 

 fifth edition of " The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer," 

 by Father John Gerard, S.J. The price of the book is bd. 



The publishing firm of B. G. Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin, 

 has just issued an authorised translation into German, by 

 Dr. J. Friedel, of Prof. Horace Lamb's standard work 

 on "Hydrodynamics." The second English edition was 

 reviewed in Nature of November 21, 1895 (^'o'- ''■'■• 

 p. 49), and the IhinI edition, carefully revised and largely 



