252 



NATURE 



[August 24, 191 1 



European States, as well as in Japan ; while in 

 Germany, with the tacit consent of the Government, 



it has been adopted by the industries concerned. In 

 eight or nine other countries the use of the metric 

 carat is permissible, but other carats an- not prohibited. 

 Early in 1908 some of the principal diamond merchants 

 in the United Kingdom were approached by the Board 

 of Trade with the view of ascertaining whether the 

 trade were prepared to adopt the metric carat. The 

 replies received were mainly unfavourable to this pro- 

 ject. It would be interesting to learn whether the fact 

 thai the metrii carat is now generally recognised 

 abroad has had any effect in modifying the views oi 

 the trade in this country on the subject. 



Tome xv. of the Travaux et Memoires of the 

 Bureau is being rapidly prepared for the press. It 

 will contain an account of the investigations by MM. 

 Benoit, Fabry, and Perot on the determination of the 

 metre in terms of wave-lengths of light, and an article 

 by Dr. Guiliaume on the recent progress of the metric 

 system. If space permits, a memoir on end measures 

 of length will also be included. 



AUSTRALIAN ZOOLOGY. 1 



IT is a somewhat humiliating reflection for British 

 zoologists that such an important and prosperous 

 part of the British Empire as the Australian Common- 

 wealth should have to depend so largely upon German 

 enterprise for the investigation of the native fauna. 

 It is, of course, true that a vast amount of good work 

 has been done by naturalists resident in Australia, and 

 by British scientific expeditions, and as regards the 

 vertebrates, we perhaps already have a fairly com- 

 plete knowledge of the Australian fauna. 



So far as the invertebrates are concerned, however, 

 the work seems to be little more than begun. The 

 Australian Museum at Sydney has published in the 

 " Records " and " Memoirs " numerous important con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of special groups, and 

 also die results of various collecting expeditions, which 

 deal with more extensive sections of the invertebrate 

 fauna. We remember also that the late Sir Frederick 

 McCoy published several volumes of a prodromus of 

 the Australian fauna, in which many invertebrates 

 were excellently figured, but the series came to an 

 untimely end. The late Mr. Bracebridge Wilson, 

 again, made extensive collections of marine inverte- 

 brates in the neighbourhood of Port Phillip, but a 

 portion only of these has ever been properly investi- 

 gated. Individual workers, whose names are well 

 known in the scientific world, have made most valu- 

 able contributions to our knowledge of special groups, 

 such as the Sponges, Hydrozoa, Polyzoa, Earthworms, 

 Land Planarians, Mollusca, Crustacea, Onychophora, 

 Insecta, and Arachnida. One might almost say, how- 

 ever, that although a good many mouthfuls have been 

 taken (especially in the plummiest parts), Australian 

 zoologists have not as yet developed a sufficiently 

 keen appetite to make any very serious combined 

 attack upon the invertebrate pudding as a who],'. 

 This is by no means altogether their fault, for it is 

 useless for men of science to devote their lives t<> 

 laborious investigations— and those of a kind which 

 brings but little credit except amongst a narrow circle 

 of specialists — if there is not sufficient financial sup- 

 port forthcoming to publish the results in 3 sati 

 tory manner, to say nothing of paying the investi- 



' " Hi.- Fauna Siidwest-Australiens. Krgebnisse der Hamburgersiidwest- 



australischen Forschungsreise ■ Herausgegeben von Prof, w 



Michaelsen und I )r. K. Hartmeyer. Band iii.. Lieferung 6-10: Lief, r., 



" Myriapoda all. S ( .: p Dr. I G. Lief. 7. 



"Serohidz und 1 [.'J. Kieffer . Lief. B, " Actiniaria," 



1 Lager; Lief. 9, " Phyllonoda 1 n 1 ', 1 Woll Liel . ["etrax- 

 1 1 hi F.. Hentschel. Pp. 147-393- (Jena : Gustav 

 Fischer, ion.) Price 18 marks. 



NO. 2l82, VOL. 87] 



gators. Even the greatesl enthusiasm is soon damped 

 lor want of appreciation. 



It is here that our German colleagues, with their 

 usual thoroughness, are again leading the way. The 

 Hamburg expedition to South-Wesl Australia in [905 

 must have reaped a rich harvest, and the results are 

 now being given to the scientific world in a series 

 of handsome and copiously illustrated volumes which 

 do great credit to authors and publishers alike, and 

 far excel any attempts which have been made for 

 many years past to deal with the Australian fauna. 

 The third volume is now in progress, and we hav< 

 before us Lieferungen vi.-x. In these parts Dr. Carl 

 Graf Attems deals with the Myriapods (excluding 

 Scolopendrida;) ; Prof. Kieffer describes the Serphida? 

 and Evaniidse; Ester Lager the Phyllopods ; and Dr. 

 Hentschel continues his account of the Tetraxonid 

 Sponges. We notice that all the illustrations in these 

 parts are text-figures, evidently reproduced by some 

 photographic process, and the results obtained appear 

 to be on the whole quite satisfactory. They are 

 doubtless comparatively inexpensive, but from the 

 artistic point of view they cannot be considered as 

 equal to good lithographic work. This is more 

 especially evident in the case of the sponge spicules. 



It is, of course, quite impossible to notice such a 

 work as this in any detail. We may say, however, 

 that the volumes will be absolutely indispensable to 

 future investigators of the Australian fauna, and we 

 venture to hope that they will serve as a stimulus to 

 the numerous British naturalists in Australia to con- 

 tinue their own excellent work in the same systematic 

 and thorough manner. 



PROF. W. SPRING. 



AS already announced, Prof. W. Spring, professor 

 of chemistry in the University of Liege, died on 

 July 17, in his sixty-third year ; by his death Belgium 

 has lost one of her foremost men of science, and 

 physical chemistry has been deprived of an eminent 

 investigator. 



From the point of view of British chemists and 

 metallurgists, the work of Spring has been to some 

 extent hidden by being published almost entirely in 

 the proceedings of the Royal Belgian Academy, so 

 that only the more striking results of his work have 

 become generally known. Thus Spring's name is prin- 

 cipally associated with his work on the effect of high 

 pressures upon chemical combination and upon the 

 welding of particles of metals and alloys. The pro- 

 gn ss of our knowledge of physical chemistry generally, 

 and that of metals particularly, has made us very 

 familiar with the idea and the phenomena of diffusion 

 in solid bodies, even at temperatures far below their 

 fusion-point, but the researches of Spring were anion,: 

 the earliest to give actual data on such phenomena. 

 Thus Spring show-ed in 1894 that carefully sur- 

 Faced pieces of copper and zinc placed in contact in 

 vacuo became welded together, and that at the inter- 

 fai 1 layer of yellow alloy was formed. It was not 

 until 1896 that the late Sir William Roberts-Austen 

 published his own classic work on the interdiffusion 

 of solid lead and gold. Spring's work on the effect 

 .-1111 in bringing about chemical reactions be- 

 tween finely-powdered bodies also tended to demon- 

 strate the molecular mobility of solids. 



Perhaps the best-known work of Spring was that 

 in which he showed whal he believed 1.1 he the forma- 

 tion of actual alloys by the action of high-pressures 

 upon mixtures oi the pure metals in powder form, 

 llis experiments wen- very striking, and showed 

 clearly trial by compressing metallic powders, solid 

 1, links of metal could be produced, and he showed 



