December 19, 1901] 



NA TURE 



159 



England was to compete with other nations in the markets of 

 the world, it was necessary that we should not only foster all our 

 resources, but should also endeavour to see that our merchants 

 and manufacturers were placed in as favourable a position to do 

 so as were those of other nations. President Roosevelt had 

 shown how fully he appreciated the fact that the supremacy of a 

 nation, or, rather, its. position in national life, would in future 

 depend upon its commercial success. It would be a great ad- 

 vantage to the producer if he could be placed in possession of 

 information relating to the progress of other lands. This had 

 been recognised by the President of the United States, and they 

 could not help hoping that our own Government would have no 

 hesitation in following his example and promptly establishing a 

 Ministry of Commerce and Manufacture to watch over those 

 all-important branches of our national life. 



The Gottingen Academy of Sciences has decided to establish 

 and maintain at its own expense, during the period of the special 

 international magnetic work, a magnetic observatory near Apia, 

 in the Samoan Islands. The observatory, says Science, will be 

 equipped for observations in terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric 

 electricity, meteorology and seismology. This observatory will 

 be nearly magnetically south of the Honolulu observatory, and 

 about the same distance south of the magnetic equator as the 

 latter is north of it. The two observatories will likewise use 

 practically the same instruments and methods, so that interesting 

 and valuable contributions may be expected from them. Mr. 

 A. Nippoldt, of the Potsdam Observatory, will be in charge of 

 the Samoan Observatory. 



Mr. H. N. Ridley, Director of the Botanic Gardens, 

 Singapore, delivered a lecture at the Imperial Institute on 

 Monday entitled "The Economic Resources of the Straits 

 Settlements and the Malay Peninsula." He remarked that the 

 forests, which originally covered the whole peninsula, contain 

 many valuable products, such as timbers, wood-oil, benzoin, 

 gutta-percha and rattans. Owing to the felling of trees by the 

 Malays, gutta-percha, so indispensable for electric work, has 

 been nearly exterminated. Fortunately, however, the product 

 can now be extracted from the leaves and twigs without injury 

 to the trees, which are being planted by the Government. A 

 very large area of the Federated States is under coffee, 

 but on account of the present glut of the market and 

 the consequent low prices, most of the planters are adding 

 Para-rubber to their estates — a tree which thrives marvel- 

 lously well and produces a very satisfactory amount of 

 rubber of the first quality. India-rubber from the Ficits 

 elaslica also promises well, but although it is being planted, 

 its product is less highly valued. Accounts were given 

 of the cultivation and preparation of sago — one acre of the 

 sago palm gives as much nourishment as 163 acres of wheat — 

 tapioca, gambir, mangrove-cutch, pepper, nutmegs, cloves, 

 indigo and pineapples. The greater part of the preserved pines 

 of commerce come from Singapore, where the price of the 

 fruit varies from a farthing to a penny each, and the lecturer 

 remembered a time when they had been as cheap as sixteen a 

 penny. The mineral resources of the colony include gold and 

 tin, the latter being found in great abundance. 



During the past week this country has been visited by 

 disastrous storms, which have caused more interruption to 

 railway and telegraphic communication than has occurred for 

 many years — although in few cases only has the force of a strong 

 gale been reached ; the principal damage appears to have been 

 due to the amount and weight of the snowfall. The daily 

 weather reports published by the Meteorological Office show 

 that on the morning of Wednesday, the 1 1 th inst. , the barometer 

 was rising generally and that there were no signsof any material 

 change in the weather beyond the fact tha shallow cyclonic 

 NO. 1677, VOL. 65] 



areas of a "secondary" character were apparently moving 

 southwards over the northern districts and were likely to 

 occasion snow showers in most parts of the kingdom. But the 

 chart for the next morning showed that a deep cyclonic disturb- 

 ance had reached our south-west coasts from the Atlantic and 

 was moving in an easterly direction. By Friday morning (13th) 

 communications with many of the northern and north-western 

 stations were completely interrupted. The progress of the 

 storm was rather slow, and the unusual course taken, to the 

 south instead of the north of our islands, brought cold easterly 

 and northerly winds and very heavy snowfall in the north and 

 rainfall in the south. The fall measured at Yarmouth for the 

 twenty-four hours ending 8 a.m. on Friday amounted to two 

 and a half inches (or about the average amount for the month). 

 The loss at sea has not been great, owing, presumably, to timely 

 notice issued to the eastern districts. 



Sir Christopher Furness, M.P., whohas recently returned 

 from a business journey through Canada, appears to have been 

 very considerably impressed with the enormous strides that are 

 being made in the development of water-power for manufac- 

 turing purposes in that country. On Lake Superior, which is 

 400 miles long and 160 miles wide, the Lake Superior Power 

 Company, about five or six years ago, commenced operations 

 by constructing a canal from the lake of sufficient capacity to 

 work turbines of 20,000 h.p. This power is used for making 

 pulp for paper from spruce fir, and an area of 8,000,000 acres of 

 forest has been obtained for supplying the wood by grant from 

 the Dominion Government and by purchase. The .Ugona Iron 

 and Steel Works have also been established : besides the nickel 

 ore which is being worked, a large find of iron, said to be 

 practically limitless, has been located. Large Bessemer steel 

 works for the manufacture of steel rails, capable of turning out 

 1000 tons of steel rails a day, are expected to be in operation 

 at the beginning of the new year. In these works electricity 

 has been almost entirely adopted for applying the power to 

 the machinery. Further works for developing 40,000 h.p. are 

 in progress and expected to be completed in about a year and 

 a half. 



The equations of rational dynamics required for the solution 

 of physical problems involve only one independent variable, 

 namely the time. Dr. Leo Konigsberger, of Heidelberg, has 

 communicated to the Berlin Sitzungsberichte a paper dealing 

 with the extension of the Lagrangian equations to systems 

 involving any number of independent variables, in which 

 the kinetic potential is of the most general possible form. In the 

 present paper Dr. Konigsberger treats in detail the case of two 

 independent variables, where the kinetic potential involves only 

 differential coefficients of the first order. The author thus 

 formulates a dynamics of two-dimensional, or »-dimensional, 

 time, analogous to the geometry of )2-dimensionaI space. 

 Among the most interesting results are those dealing with the 

 conditions under which the principle of conservation of energy 

 holds for two or more independent variables. In the case of 

 two variables it appears that a certain condition must be satisfied 

 in order that an infinite number of integrals of the Lagrangian 

 equations of motion may exist which satisfy the principle of 

 energy, but it is no longer the case that all integrals satisfy the 

 principle in question. A special case is that in which there is 

 only one dependent variable ; here the equation of energy is 

 always an integral of the equations of motion. 



Geology and meteorology formed the subject of a brief 

 article in Nature for November 14. Since then an important 

 essay has been issued on the distribution of vertebrate animals 

 in India, Ceylon, and Burma, by Dr. W. T. Bianford (Phil. 

 Trans. 1901), who finds that certain peculiarities in the Indian 



