254 



NATURE 



[August 24, 191 1 



his university training in geology and palaeontology both in 

 New Zealand and at Oxford, but for the last five years or 

 so his work has been mainly in the direction of petrology. 

 The New Zealand Geological Survey possesses more than 

 one hundred thousand fossils from various horizons, but 

 little appears to have been done hitherto to describe them 

 or to make them available for study. It is hoped that now 

 the survey has appointed a palaeontologist on its staff the 

 specimens will be properly described and arranged. 



At the 1909 meeting of the International Mathematical 

 Congress, held at Rome, the subject of mathematical 

 teaching was brought forward, and upon the initiative of 

 Prof. D. E. Smith, U.S.A., it was decided to form an 

 International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics, 

 this commission to report to the next triennial meeting of 

 the congress, which will be held at Cambridge (England) 

 in 19 12. The commission will meet at Milan on 

 September 1S-20 of this year to take stock of the work 

 done so far. As regards the United Kingdom, the work of 

 collecting and issuing reports has been taken up by the 

 Board of Education, which has appointed as delegates Sir 

 George Greenhill, Prof. E. W. Hobson, and Mr. C. 

 Godfrey. A number of reports have already been issued 

 (Wyman, price 3d. each), and when the international 

 series is complete it will form the most valuable 

 collection of material at present available for the use of 

 teachers of mathematics. The central committee consists 

 of Prof. F. Klein (Gottingen), Sir G. Greenhill (London), 

 and M. H. Fehr (Geneva). 



It is announced in Science that the Nantucket Maria 

 Mitchell Association offers an astronomical fellowship of 

 200/. lo a woman, for the year beginning- June 15, 1912. 

 The year will be divided into two periods. June 15 to 

 December 15 will be spent on Nantucket, where the obser- 

 vatory is equipped with a five-inch Alvan Clark telescope, 

 and this period will be occupied in observation, research, or 

 study, and in lectures or instruction. February 1 to June 15, 

 1913, will be spent at one of the larger observatories, and 

 the time occupied in original research and studv. Every 

 fourth year the fellowship will be available during the entire 

 year for study at one of the larger observatories in Europe 

 or America. The fellowship will be awarded annually, but 

 in order that the work at Nantucket may be combined ad- 

 vantageously with the work at the selected observatory, the 

 preference will be given to the same candidate for three 

 successive years. A competitive examination will not be 

 held. The candidate must present evidence of qualifications, 

 giving an account of previous educational opportunities and 

 training, and of plans for future work, as well as examples 

 of work already accomplished. Application for the year 

 beginning June 15, 1912, should be made, before March 1, 

 1912, 10 Mrs. Charles S. Hinchman, 3635 Chestnut Street, 

 Philadelphia, Pa., from whom full particulars can be 

 obtained. 



The long drought has been brought to a termination, and 

 the excessive temperature which has continued with such 

 persistence over England has given place to more normal 

 conditions. The anticyclone which has so long been 

 centred over our islands and their immediate neighbour- 

 hood has given way to shallow cyclonic disturbances which 

 have arrived over us from the Atlantic. At Greenwich 

 there was no rain from August 2 to August 18, and the 

 aggregate fall from July 1 to August 18 was 0-32 inch, 

 which fell on four days. Copious rains have, however, 

 now fallen over London, and on three successive evenings, 

 August 19, 20, and 21, sharp thunderstorms were ex- 

 perienced. On August 22 the highest temperature in 

 NO. 2l82, VOL. 8/] 



London was 68°, which is the lowest maximum reading 

 since July 2, a period of more than seven weeks. The 

 disturbances which occasioned the recent thunderstorms 

 over England were moving away to the eastward of our 

 islands, and an anticyclone, centred in the Atlantic, was 

 extending to our area. This change in the general con- 

 ditions is likely to occasion a return of the fine weather 

 with a gradual increase of temperature, although it is 

 improbable that the temperature will be so high as that 

 recently experienced. The summary of the weather for 

 the week ending August 19 issued by the Meteorological 

 Office shows that the mean temperature for the period was 

 from 6° to 7 in excess of the normal over the entire 

 kingdom, except in the north and east of Scotland and in 

 the north-east of England ; the excess of temperature, how- 

 ever, was not so great as in the preceding week. 



Mr. D. E. Hutchins, Chief Conservator of Forests, 

 British East Africa, after ten yeats* -forest service in India, 

 twenty-three in South Africa, and tour in Equatorial Africa, 

 has now retired on pension. It fell to his lot both in 

 South Africa and in Equatorial Africa to demarcate and 

 arrest the further destruction of large areas of the beautiful 

 extra-tropical forest that extends with but little change 

 from the extreme south of Africa along the eastern high- 

 lands to the equator. As the latitude decreases the alti- 

 tude increases. The forest that occurs at sea-level in 

 the Knysna district of the Cape, at 3000, 4000, and 5000 

 feet in Natal and the Transvaal, is seen at an elevation of 

 7000 to 10,000 feet under the equator. The distribution of 

 this forest is governed by the topography and rainfall of 

 the highlands. There are wide gaps in its extension along 

 the highlands. As one goes north, it changes somewhat in 

 species, though but little in character. It is seen at its 

 best on the equatorial highlands in what is now British 

 and German East Africa. Here the trees grow with 

 greater vigour than in the south, and the forest is enriched 

 by the addition of a very valuable timber, the pencil cedar 

 of Abyssinia (Juniperus procera). The preservation of this 

 forest is of national importance to Africa, especially to 

 extra-tropical Africa, the White Man's heritage; for it is 

 a forest resembling that of the Nilgiri Shola forest of 

 India, a forest with a dense couvert and slow-growing — 

 the ideal water-holding forest. As a fact, it is a forest 

 from which streams of water flow on every side, perennial 

 streams that feed the rivers when they are most wanted. 

 The future of this forest is assured in South Africa, the 

 bad forestry of Natal having happily come to an end with 

 Union. The Germans are preserving it carefully in 

 German East Africa, no forest of this class having been 

 alienated since 1900. But in British East Africa there 

 hangs out a danger signal ! The Colonial Office will have 

 to see that its forest policy there is duly upheld. There 

 is a danger that settlement, so right and necessary, in a 

 new country may be pushed too far, to the ruin of the 

 most valuable public assets of the country — its water and 

 timber. Settlement is obviously the first requisite ; but 

 settlement must not be allowed to touch an acre of high- 

 land forest in a country where the forest area is only 

 i\ per cent, of the total area, and that is the position in 

 British East Africa. 



A srEClAL " tuberculosis " number of the Bulletin of the 

 Johns Hopkins Hospital has been issued (vol. xxii., No. 

 245). The principal article is on stereoscopic X-ray 

 examination of the chest, with special reference to the 

 diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis, by Drs. Dunham, 

 Boardman, and Wolmnn. It is illustrated with three nxcel- 

 lent stereoscopic views of the condition present in three 

 1 .-is' - c.l pulmonary tuberculosis. 



