126 



NATURE 



[July 2j, 191 1 



niii.i, Australia, Borneo, the west, south, and 

 south-east coasts of Africa, the Straits Settlements and 

 Australia, and off Newfoundland. Two ships of the 



Indian Marine were employed on the Marine 



Survey of India, off Burma, and the west coast of 



India. Among much work classed as miscellaneous, a 



: [ination of the magnetic variation in the 



North Sea was carried out in March by the officers of four 



, which resulted in obtaining- good values at sixty- 

 two positions. Considerable irregularity was also located 

 near the Shetland Islands, and also near the coast of the 

 British Isles. Further experiments were carried out at 

 Chatham with the Field-Cust tide-recording apparatus for 

 use at sea, and very satisfactory results were obtained. 



The Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan for 

 May contains, in addition to several articles in Japanese 

 on interesting subjects (e.g., " Fogs on the Korean Coast," 

 "Variation of Barometric Pressure in Japan," &c), 

 original articles in other languages. One of the latter is 

 on " Wireless Telegraphy in the Service of Japanese 

 Meteorology," by Mr. T. Saki. Japan is frequently visited 

 by typhoons, and the most dangerous are those which 

 originate in the Pacific. By arrangements made since 

 May, 1910, the central office at Tokio receives ordinary 

 and special codified radiograms from men-of-war and 

 vessels of the great Japanese shipping companies, from 

 distances even as far off as i8o c E. longitude (40° E. of 

 Tokio), and dispatches warning telegrams to ships at sea. 



ges will be of great value both for 

 warning purposes and for improving our knowledge of the 

 behaviour of those destructive storms. 



Ix Climatological Service of the U.S. Weather Bureau 

 (District Xo. n, California), Prof. A. G. McAdie pub- 

 lishes a paper on forecasting the supply of water for the 

 summer from the depth of snow, which is of considerable 

 interest to engineers, farmers, and others. Observations of 

 the depth of snow and of rainfall have been made since 

 1S70 at Summit, a station on the Southern Pacific Rail- 

 way, at a height- of 7017 feet, where 86 per cent, of the 

 precipitation falls as snow. The average depth of snow 

 [mean of ten seasons), the average rate of its melting, and 

 the depth for the present season, are shown by a diagram. 

 A model (shown in the paper) is also made use of for 

 comparing the actual curve of melting snow for any given 

 season with the mean curve. By means of this design and 

 the tables, the probable date of the snow's disappearance, 

 and the consequent cessation of water supply from this 

 may be determined. The author points out that 

 the wind is probably the greatest factor in reducing the 

 depth of snow, and he refers to the difficulty of determining 

 the water equivalent for given depths. The "packing" 

 process plays an important part : samples taken near the 

 top and bottom of a snow bank give ver\ different results. 



Dr. II. A. Miers, F.R.S., principal of London Univer- 

 sity, delivered <!if eighteenth Robert Boyle lecture before 

 he O ford ' nivei [unioi Scientific Societv on May 20, 



lected as bis subject the growth of a crystal. The 

 lecture has just been issued by Mr. Henry Frowde, price 

 is. net. To the elucidation oi the problem of crystallisa- 

 tion nearly tie- whole "I I - which Dr. M 



ad caft-ied on with the aid of a small but zealous band of 

 students during his tenure of the Waynflete chair of 

 mineralogy a! Oxford had ted, and his le< 



ok largely the form of a valedictory address, in 

 which he recounted the nature of those n 

 sumii! ingress made in our comprehension "f 



the constitution of crystallised matter as the result of them. 

 XO. 2i;8. VOL. 8/] 



Dr. Miers had early realised that mere idle speculation 

 was futile, and that it was of primary importance to 

 observe a crystal while actually growing, and bad di 

 for the purpo which he brought with him to 



Oxford; with it he made the interesting discovery that 

 the layer inn,. ontact with the crystal is d< 



than the liquid as a whole. In conjunction with 

 Isaac he investigated the conditions governing crysta 

 tion from a saturated solution, and at his instigation Mr. 

 Barker studied the growth of one crystallised substance on 

 another, and found that congruence of molecular structure 

 was the factor that determined parallelism of growth. Dr. 

 Miers referred to Prof. Lehmann's discovery of liquid 

 crystals, and to the theory of crystal structure put forward 

 by .Mr. Barlow and Prof. Pope, and, in conclusion, pointed 

 out that advance in a subject such as crystallisation, which 

 lay near the confines of several branches of science, de- 

 pended to no small extent upon the assistance of other 

 workers beyond the fence. 



Under the title " Men of Xote in Aeronautics," the 

 July issue of Aeronautics gives a biographic notice of Mr. 

 R. F. Macfie which should do much good in bringing home 

 to English readers the side of aviation to which little 

 attention is given in daily papers. The extracts from Mr. 

 Macfie 's diary will, indeed, be a revelation to the un- 

 initiated reader of the difficulties encountered by the early 

 pioneers of artificial flight, which include destruction of 

 aeroplanes, repeated interviews with War Office officials, 

 followed by refusal of permission to fly, delays of three 

 days at Custom houses, permission refused at Pau after 

 having previously been granted, interviews with municipal 

 authorities resulting in further refusals, loss of mai 

 transit, its recovery in a terrible state of ruin, delay in 

 sending engines, short flights, then permission withdrawn, 

 machine damaged by bad weather, then partially burnt. In 

 spite of the present popular enthusiasm, there are many 

 workers in aviation who not only do not receive the recog- 

 nition they deserve, but are, on the contrary, handicapped 

 In every kind of discouragement. 



The Circolo Matematico di Palermo is a society which 

 during the twenty-seven years that have elapsed since its 

 foundation in 1884, has gradually developed into an inter- 

 national mathematical society. It is interesting to note 

 how different nationalities were represented at the time 

 when its last report, for 1910, was drawn up. Out of a 

 total of 745 member-, we find that the countries contri- 

 buting not fewer than 10 members may be classified as 

 follows: — Italy, 275: United States, 101; Germany, in: 

 France and colonies, 54; Austro-Hungary, 49; Russia, 24; 

 Great Britain and Ireland, 17; Sweden, 16; Denmark, 13; 

 Belgium and Switzerland, each n. The membership for 

 the whole British Empire, including India, only numbers 

 2 ), the -.'inii' as foi Ru ;ia. 1 1 m • '1 si arcelj bi pointed 

 out that the large preponderance of Italian membei 

 great measure attributable to the local character of the 

 society, but leaving ihe figures for Italy out of account, 

 the remaining statistics may afford some indications of the 

 relative importance attached by different countrii 

 international movement for the advancement oi higher 

 mathematics. 



The annual report of the Royal Prussian Meteorological 

 Institute (" Bench t Lib dii l.uigkeit des kbniglich 

 Preussischen Meteorologisches Instituts, 1910 ") has been 

 issued. The administrative report shows that satisfactory 

 progress has been maintained with routine work both at 

 the institute and at the Potsdam Observatory. A number 

 of scientific papers by members of the staff or by observers 



