;i6 



NA TURE 



[January 14, 19C9 



appliances. Among others concerned in research work 

 specially affecting India who have expressed their intention 

 of being present at the congress meetings are Profs. 

 Ronald Ross, Kitasato, and Musgrave. Papers are e.\- 

 pected to be communicated by Sir Patrick Manson, Sir 

 Lauder Brunton, Prof. Osier, and others. The attendance 

 at the congress is expected to be very large. The secretary 

 of the congress is Colonel Jennings, c/o Messrs. King, 

 King and Co., Bombay. 



We regret to sec the announcement of the death of Dr. 

 D. A. Robertson, the distinguished surgeon-oculist, at 

 seventy-two years of age. Dr. Robertson was for several 

 years lecturer on ophthalmology in the University of 

 Edinburgh, and he was president of the International 

 Ophthalmological Congress in 1894. He was an ex- 

 president of the Ophthalmological Society of the United 

 Kingdom, and was president of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, Edinburgh, in 1886, president of the ophthalmo- 

 logical section of the British Medical Association in 1898, 

 and president of the Edinburgh branch of this association. 



Many geologists and other friends and fellow-workers 

 of the late Mr. Joseph Lomas will welcome the oppor- 

 tunity of subscribijig to a memorial fund which is being 

 raised for the benefit of his wife and children. As was 

 mentioned in Nature of December 24, 1908 (p. 226), Mr. 

 Lomas was killed in a railway accident in Algeria while 

 on his way to study the rocks in the desert region of 

 North Africa, this investigation being undertaken for a 

 committee of the British Association. The devotion to 

 scientific work which characterised Mr. Lomas meant the 

 sacrifice of time and moans that might otherwise have 

 been used more selfishly. It is not surprising, therefore, 

 to know that he was unable to make adequate provision 

 for his wife and children. There should be a generous 

 response to the appeal which has just been issued by a 

 committee which includes the names of many distinguished 

 men of science who knew Mr. Lomas, and of which Prof. 

 W. A. Herdman, F.R.S., is one of the hon. treasurers. 

 Subscriptions should be sent to the hon. treasurers, 

 " Lomas Memorial Fund," Education Committee, 14 Sir 

 Thomas Street, Liverpool. 



On Tuesday next, January in. Prof. Karl Pearson will 

 begin a course of two lectures at the Royal Institution on 

 " .'\Ibinism in Man"; on Thursday, January 21, Prof. 

 J. O. Arnold will commence a course of two lectures on 

 " Mysteries of Metals," and on Saturday, January 23, Sir 

 Hubert von Herkomer delivers the first of two lectures 

 on (i) "The Critical Faculty," (2) "Sight and Seeing." 

 The Friday evening discourse on January 22 will be 

 delivered by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, on " The World 

 of Life: as Visualised and Interpreted by Darwinism," 

 and on January 29 by Sir Frederick L. Nathan, on 

 " Improvements in Production and Application of Gun- 

 cotton and Nitro-glycerin." 



Since the great earthquake in Sicily and Calabria on 

 December 28, igo8, there have been a number of after- 

 shocks, and a little additional information about the dis- 

 turbance. Prof. Oddone informed a Press representative 

 on January 6 that the observatory building at Messina 

 has been damaged, but a subterranean chamber used for 

 seismic investigations has escaped harm. The Vicentini 

 seismograph registered the great earthquake up to the 

 moment of maximum intensity, and the record is con- 

 sidered to be of considerable interest in the study of the 

 earthquake. From the record it appears that the earth- 

 quake began with a very slight shock, which was re- 



NO. 2046, VOL. 79] 



peatcd. It increased in violence for ten seconds, and then 

 grew less severe for another ten seconds. After these 

 movements ten minutes passed without disturbance. .V 

 second shock of much greater intensity, and accompanied 

 by loud subterranean rumbling, followed, and was the 

 cause of the catastrophe. In the afternoon of January 7 

 several distinct shocks were felt at Reggio. Shocks con- 

 tinued during the vi'hole of the night, some of them being 

 strong ones preceded by a humming noise. On January 8 

 the entire west coast of Mexico was shaken by an earth- 

 quake. Three strong earthqualce shocks were felt at 

 Messina between 12.15 p.m. and 12.30 p.m. on January 9. 

 Reuter telegrams to New York from Seattle, Bellingham, 

 Tacoma, Vancouver, and Victoria state that an earthquake 

 shock was felt in those places at 3.44 p.m. on January 11, 

 and again during the evening. 



We learn from the Journal of the Royal Society of 

 .■\rts that Sir Thomas Wardle, who died at his residence, 

 Leeli, Staffordshire, on January 3, in his seventy-eighth 

 year, was the first business man to discover a satisfactory 

 process of dyeing the wild tiissur silk of India, and, at 

 the instance of Sir George Birdwood, he was sent out by 

 the Secretary of State for India, in 1885, to report on 

 soriciculture in Bengal. This was the first of several visits 

 to the East, and in his work, " Kashmir and its New 

 Silk Industry " (1904), Sir Thomas Wardle gave an 

 account of the manner in which, mainly through his instru- 

 mentality, the moribund industry was, after innumerable 

 difficulties, placed upon a footing of greater prosperity 

 than it had ever enjoyed before. He wrote numerous 

 monographs upon the technical aspects of sericiculture and 

 silk-weaving, and he was the honorary expert on silk of 

 the Imperial Institute, president of tljc Silk Association 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, and honorary secretary of the 

 Ladies' National Silk Association. He was a Fellow of 

 the Chemical, Geological, and Royal Statistical Societies, 

 and a member of the council of the Palseontographical 

 Society. He became a member of the Society of Arts in 

 1878. In the following year he read his first paper, on 

 the wild silks of India, principally tussur, for which he 

 received the society's silver medal. Since then he con- 

 tributed three papers, on researches on silk fibre, the 

 history and description of the growing uses of tussur silk, 

 and improvements in the design, colouring, and manu- 

 facture of British silks. 



The arrangements made by the British Meteorological 

 Office for the transmission of meteorological reports by 

 wireless telegraphy from ships at sea were referred to in 

 last week's Nature (p. 287). The annual summary of the 

 work of the U.S. Weather Bureau, recently published in 

 the Monthly Weather Review, describes what is done in 

 this direction in connection with that Bureau. The 

 essential feature of this weather service is the collection 

 by wireless telegraphy of meteorological observations from 

 vessels at sea, and the dispatch by the same means to 

 vessels at sea of weather forecasts and storm warnings 

 based upon the observations thus collected. Vessels of the 

 following lines, all equipped with Marconi apparatus, have 

 been authorised to transmit to the Bureau the record of 

 the daily Greenwich mean noon meteorological observa- 

 tions, and have been supplied with the telegraphic code, 

 forms, &c., required for that purpose : — American Line, 

 North German Lloyd, Hamburg American Line, Cunard 

 Line, White Star Line, Compagnie Generale Trans- 

 atlantique, .Allan Line, and Canadian Pacific Steamship 

 Line. The privilege has also been extended to vessels of 

 the Panama Railroad and Steamship Company and the 

 Mallory Line, equipped with the Dc Forrest systein ; also 



