468 



NATURE 



[Februaky 1 8, 1909 



S. A. Barrett. The fibre;; used, except the bark of the red- 

 bud, are drawn from the roots of plants and trees such as 

 the sedge, carex, and pine. For the foundation material 

 the slender stems of the willow are almost exclusively 

 employed, while for the purposes of decoration the use of 

 feathers and beads is one of its most characteristic features. 

 In technique three different methods are in vogue, coiling, 

 twisting, and wicker-work, of each of which there are 

 numerous varieties. The complexity of the patterns, based 

 on simple geometrical elements such as the line, triangle, 

 rectangle, and rhomboid, is remarkable. To these 

 elaborate patterns, each provided with a descriptive title 

 founded upon some real or fancied likeness to some object 

 bearing the same name, this tribe does not, as is the case 

 with many of their neighbours, attach any religious or 

 svmbolic meaning. The numerous drawings accompanying 

 this monograph entitle it to rank as an authoritative 

 manual of this interesting form of artistic handicraft. 



Dr. Hergesell, president of the International Com- 

 mission for Scientific Aeronautics, has sent us a preliminary 

 statement of the participation of the various countries in 

 the work of investigating the upper air, from January to 

 the beginning of July, igo8. Ascents were made in the 

 early part of each of those months, with more or less 

 regularity, from thirty-three stations, including two in the 

 United States and one in Egypt, by means of kites, 

 manned, captive, unmanned (registering), and pilot 

 balloons. The latter do not carry instruments, but observa- 

 tions of wind direction at various altitudes are made by 

 watching the balloons with theodolites. The registering 

 balloons at many of the stations reached altitudes exceed- 

 ing 18,000 metres ; at Pyrton Hill (Oxfordshire) altitudes 

 of 19,000 metres, and at Uccle several exceeding 20,000 

 metres, were attained. In compliance with a decision of 

 the meeting of the commission held at Milan in 1906, an 

 extended series of ascents took place, for the second time, 

 at the end of July, 1908. The full results will be pub- 

 lished later ; a preliminary notice of some of them was 

 given in our issue of December 31, 1908. 



We have received the Journal of the Meteorological 

 Society of Japan for the months August to November, 

 1908 ; abstracts of most of the papers are given in English. 

 The following seem to us to be of especial interest :— 

 (i) Observation of Givre in Hokkaido, by Mr. J. Yamada, 

 in the August number. This is one of the term.s left to 

 the International Meteorological Committee to define in a 

 precise manner. In the present paper it relates to the 

 phenomenon sometimes called " rime," and which the 

 author explains is formed after fog of some duration, and 

 most frequently with temperatures below —10° C. (2) The 

 relation of barometric pressure to the pulsation of the 

 earth, by Mr. N. Shimono, in the September number. 

 The seismograph at Osaka showed that the oscillations 

 became more frequent as barometric depressions approached, 

 and decreased as they passed away. No relation was found 

 between the wind and the pulsatory oscillation. We regret 

 to note the death of the president of the society, Vice- 

 Admiral Viscount T. Enonioto, which occurred in October 

 last. 



An interesting table showing the efficiency of various 

 kinds of furnaces is given by Mr. J. W. Hall in a paper 

 appearing in the Proceedings of the Birmingham Metal- 

 lurgical Society for 1907-8. The difference shown 

 between different types of furnaces is very marked. The 

 highest efficiency in ordinary work is attained by an 

 English blast-furnace making pig iron, in which 81-7 per 

 cent, of the total heat given by the fuel is utilised and 



NO. 2051, VOL. 79] 



only 183 per cent, wasted. No less than 65-3 per cent, 

 of the total heat, however, escapes from the furnace, but 

 most of this is recovered outside in various ways. In a 

 puddling furnace not fitted to a boiler, 91 per cent, of the 

 heat is wasted, but the most wasteful furnace of all is the 

 common coke crucible furnace employed in melting steel, 

 in which 1.43 per cent, of the heat is used in the furnace 

 and 9857 per cent, wasted. Other papers printed in full 

 in the Proceedings deal with the selection and testing of 

 foundry irons, the sampling of pig iron, and the micro- 

 structure of a cartridge case. 



An important paper on heat-flow and temperature-distri- 

 bution in the gas engine was read by Prof. B. Hopkinson 

 at the Institution of Civil Engineers on February 2. The 

 author first investigates the probable heat-flow and tempera- 

 ture-distribution and gradients over the cylinder walls, deal- 

 ing specially with those parts which are not water-jacketed, 

 and then describes some experiments made on a 40 B.H.P. 

 Crossley gas engine in his laboratory at the University of 

 Cambridge. The temperatures at different parts of the 

 piston, which was uncooled, and also of the exhaust and 

 inlet valves, were measured by thermocouples. Under 

 normal working conditions these temperatures were found 

 to be in excess of the jacket-water temperature by 370° C. 

 at the centre of the piston, 400° C. in the exhaust valve, 

 and 250° C. in the inlet valve. It is very unlikely, as 

 shown by Prof. Hopkinson 's calculations, that the tempera- 

 ture of the inner side of water-cooled walls ever rises above 

 quite a moderate value. There may be a temperature 

 gradient in the piston face from centre to edge of 180° C, 

 producing inequality of expansion which may give hoop 

 stresses amounting to several tons per square inch. The 

 author gives an interesting investigation of this problem. 

 Experiments were made in order to ascertain the effects 

 on the temperature-distribution of changing the strength 

 of mixture, time of ignition, and degree of compression. 

 An itnportant set of experiments was also made on the 

 phenomena of pre-ignition produced by overheating of part 

 of the metal surface. A long iron bolt was introduced 

 having a thermocouple at its end. The end of this bolt 

 was heated from the explosions, when it was found that 

 pre-ignition would not occur so long as the bolt tempera- 

 ture did not exceed 700° C. If the temperature exceeded 

 730° C. pre-ignitions occurred so frequently as to pull the 

 engine up. It was found that the line of division between 

 the conditions under which safe and continuous running 

 was possible and those under which the engine was bound 

 to pull up was very narrow, and can be represented by 

 an increase in the gas charge of only i per cent. 



We have received from the -Soci^ti fran^aise de Physique 

 a circular directing attention to the advantages offered by 

 the society to its members, who already number more than 

 fifteen hundred. The subscription for rnembers in this 

 country is only ten francs, and for this a member receives 

 the fortnightly abstracts of communications made to the 

 society, and the quarterly bulletin containing the complete 

 papers. By paying three francs extra a member may have 

 the Journal de Physique instead of the bulletin, and as the 

 journal contains both the communications rnade to the 

 society and abstracts of communications made to many 

 other French, British, and German societies, this is a very 

 inexpensive way of being kept up to date in matters 

 physical. There are other advant.ages of membership which 

 may be learnt from the secretary of the society, 44 rue de 

 Rennes, Paris. 



The only means of measuring very small gas pressures 

 below one-thousandth of a millimetre of mercury has up 



