August ii, 1910] 



NATURE 



179 



NOTES. 



The Physical Society of London announces that the 

 Montefiore Electroteclinic Institute at Li^ge has instituted 

 a " George Montefiore Levi " prize, which will be awarded 

 every three years, the first award being in 191 1. The 

 value of the prize in ign will be 20,opo francs (Sooi.). It 

 will be awarded for the best original work presented upon 

 the scientific advance and on the progress of technical 

 applications of electricity in every field. Popular works 

 and simple compilations will be excluded. Works must be 

 in English or French. The jury will consist of ten elec- 

 trical engineers, five being Belgian and five from other 

 countries. The latest date for receipt is March 31, 191 1. 

 Kurther particulars are obtainable from the secretary, 

 Association des Ingenieurs Electriciens sortis de ITnstitut 

 Klectrotechnique Montefiore, rue Saint Giles 31, Li^ge. 



The Morning Post of August 9 gives prominence to an 

 account of e.\periments made by Mr. .Armbrecht, of Duke 

 Street, on the change of colour of sapphires and other 

 precious stones by the action of radium. The observations 

 are interesting, but the results obtained are by no means 

 new. Nearly three years ago Prof. F. Bordas read before 

 the Paris .\cademy of Sciences a series of papers in which 

 he described investigations of the effect of radium and 

 other rays upon various forms of crystallised alumina from 

 clear sapphire to brown and opaque corundum and 

 other precious stones. Colourless corundum was trans- 

 formed into topaz by the action of radium bromide ; the 

 depth of colour of natural topazes was increased, and a 

 similar effect was produced with faintly coloured rubies. 

 Short abstracts of Prof. Borda's papers will be found in 

 the seventy-seventh volume of N.ature, November, 1908, 

 to April, 1908. 



The tenth International Geographical Congress is to be 

 held in Rome during the week beginning October 15, 191 1. 

 The congress will be under the patronage of the King of 

 Italy. An organising committee of a representative 

 character is already at work under the presidency of the 

 Marquis Raffaele Cappelli, president of the Italian Geo- 

 graphical Society. Commander Giovanni Roncagli, secre- 

 tary of the Italian Geographical Society, is acting as 

 general secretary of the committee. The work of the 

 congress will be carried on in eight sections, namely : — 

 (i) mathematical geography; (2) physical geography; 

 (j) biogeography ; (4) anthropogeography and ethnography; 

 (5) economic geography; (6) chorography ; (7) historical 

 geography and history of geography ; (8) methodology and 

 didactics. 



We are glad to notice that the useful work of the 

 extension section of the Manchester Microscopical Society 

 is to be continued during the coming w^inter session. The 

 purpose of this section is to bring scientific knowledge, in 

 a popular form, before societies unable to pay large fees 

 for lectures. In some cases a small fee is charged, but 

 all money thus obtained is devoted to the expenses of the 

 section. The work of lecturing and demonstrating is 

 entirely voluntary and gratuitous on the part of the 

 members of the society. The list of lectures from which 

 secretaries of societies may choose includes some sixty-one 

 subjects and the names of seventeen lecturers. Application 

 for lectures should be made to the honorary secretary of 

 the section, Mr. R. Howarth, 90 George Street, Cheetham 

 Hill, Manchester, who will send a list of the lectures on 

 application. 



Mr. Oscar Guttmann, whose death occurred in Brussels 

 last week from injuries received in a taxi-cab collision, 

 NO. 2128, VOL. 84] 



was known both as a consulting engineer and a technical 

 chemist. He took frequent part in discussions upon 

 chemical and manufacturing topics at the meetings of the 

 Society of Chemical Industry, and contributed occasional 

 papers. The titles of some of these — e.g. " Novelties in 

 the Explosives Industry," "The Manufacture of Smoke- 

 less Powder," and "The Chemical Stability of Nitro- 

 compound Explosives "—illustrate the fact that Mr. Gutt- 

 mann was an authority upon explosives. Other contribu- 

 tions dealt with the manufacture of sulphuric and nitric 

 acids, and the author was the patentee of several devices for 

 use in this and other industrial operations. In an interest- 

 ing note upon the oldest document in the history of gun- 

 powder, Mr. Guttmann directs attention to the use of 

 this explosive as described in an illuminated MS., " De 

 Officiis Regum," contained in the library of Christ Church, 

 Oxford ; and papers upon the early phases and progress of 

 the sulphuric-acid industry also indicate that he was 

 interested in the historical aspects as well as the practice 

 of his professions. As an engineer, Mr. Guttmann had 

 been charged with the design and construction of many 

 large chemical and explosives works at home and abroad. 

 His experience in the two branches of his calling was 

 piobably unique, and well qualified him to speak, as he 

 did in an address delivered some three years ago, upon 

 " The Works Chemist as Engineer." Mr. Guttmann was 

 born in 1855, and became naturalised here in 1894. He 

 was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineiers, a 

 Fellow of the Chemical Society, a Fellow _and sometime 

 vice-president of the Institute of Chemistry, and a member 

 of the council of the Society of Chemical Industry. At 

 the time of his death he was acting as one of the British 

 jurors at the Brussels Exhibition. 



The arrangements for Section H (.Anthropology) at the 

 forthcoming meeting of the British .Association have just 

 been communicated to us. The preliminary programmes 

 of other sections were stated in N.ature of July 28. In 

 general ethnography, Mr. E. Torday will describe in 

 Section H some of the tribes encountered in his recent 

 exploration of the Congo area ; Mr. Beech will deal with 

 the Sok, of whose language he has made a special studv 

 during his residence in Africa ; Mr. A. K. Newman, of 

 Wellington, New Zealand, will discuss the origin and racial 

 aflSnities of the Maori ; and Miss Fletcher, of Washington, 

 in an important communication, will deal with certain 

 points connected with exogamy. Miss Fletcher will also 

 contribute an account of recent developments in the study 

 of anthropology in .American universities. The archaeology 

 of the Mediterranean area' will be dealt with by members 

 of the British School at Athens. Dr. T. Ashby, director 

 of the British School at Rome, will describe his excava- 

 tions at Hagiar Kim and Mnaidra in Malta, and Messrs. 

 Woodward and Ormerod a primitive site in Asia Minor. 

 Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie will give an account of his 

 excavations at Memphis, and Dr. Seligmann will describe 

 a Neolithic site in the Sudan. An important communica- 

 tion by Prof. Elliot Smith, which summarises the results 

 of ten years' work, will discuss the racial affinities of the 

 Egyptians from the earliest times. Among other archaeo- 

 logical papers may be mentioned an account of the work 

 of the Liverpool Committee for Excavation and Research 

 in Wales, by Prof. R. C. Bosanquet, and a report on 

 recent excavations at Caerwent, by Dr. Ashby ; a com- 

 munication from Mr. H. D. Acland will describe pre- 

 historic monuments in the Scilly Isles, and Mr. Alexander 

 Sutherland will give an account of the e.xploration of a 

 Broch at Watten, Caithness. Friday, September 3, will 

 be devoted to a joint meeting with Section L (Education), 



