September 28, 191 1] 



NATURE 



423 



>unt for it, coupled with the fact that the keel, which 

 originally ran the length of the vessel between the two 

 gondolas, had been removed in order to lighten her. 



I'm Aeronautical Society of Great Britain at a special 

 ral meeting held on Monday, September 25, passed 

 resolutions repealing its old constitution, under which it has 

 been governed for forty-five years past, and substituting a 

 new one, which provides for the creation of a technical 

 side in addition to the lay or members' side. Fellowships 

 and associate fellowships are to be granted to those re- 

 spectively of considerable eminence and of an acknow- 

 ledged position in the science of aeronautics, and special 

 encouragement is to be given to students, for whom there 

 is a separate grade. The growth of aeronautical engineer- 

 ing as a profession is the chief cause for this change, 

 which, it is hoped, will give a much needed fillip to aero- 

 nautical industry, besides protecting and fostering its 

 interests. The new council was also elected at the meet- 

 ing, and is composed of the following :— A. E. Berriman, 

 Griffith Brewer, Captain A. D. Carden, T. W. K. Clarke, 

 B. G. Cooper, J. W. Dunne, J. Dunville, J. H. Ledeboer, 

 Captain E. M. Maitland, F. K. McClean, Lord Montagu 

 of Beaulieu, A. Ogilvie, M. O 'Gorman, F. Handley Page, 

 Colonel H. E. Rawson, and Colonel F. S. Stone. 



News has been received at the Royal Geographical 

 Society that the International Geographical Congress, 

 which was to have been held at Rome next month, has 

 been postponed until the spring of 1912. 



The Secretary of State for the Colonies has appointed 

 Sir Ronald Ross, K.C.B., F.R.S.. professor of tropical 

 medicine in the University of Liverpool, to be a member 

 of the Advisory Medical and Sanitary Committee for 

 Tropical Africa, in succession to the late Sir Rubert 

 t .R.S. 



Mr. A. P. Trotter informs us that his name has been 

 attached to the Report of the British Association Committee 

 on Practical Standards for Electrical Measurements with- 

 out his authority, and doubtless as the result of a mistake. 

 But it compels him to state that he withdrew from the 

 committee in July, 1910, because he strongly disagreed 

 with some of its resolutions and with the mode in which 

 the business was conducted. 



Circumstances have arisen which have led to the 

 abandonment of the arrangements made to hold the 

 autumn meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute in Turin. 

 The meeting will be held, therefore, at the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers, Great George Street, Westminster, on 

 October 5. Among the papers which have been submitted. 

 a selection of which will be read and discussed, may be 

 mentioned : — Reports on the iron-ore resources of Italy : 

 (a) Sardinia, by Ing. L. Testa, (fc) Brembana Valley, by 

 Cav. G. Calvi, (c) central Italy, by Ing. A. Ciampi, 

 (d) southern Italy and the island dependencies, by Prof. 

 G. la Valle ; on the mechanical influence of carbon on 

 alloys of iron and manganese, by Prof. J. O. Arnold and 

 Mr. F. K. Knowles, of Sheffield ; on the autogenous weld- 

 ing of metals, by Dr. Francesco Carnevali, of Turin ; on 

 the application of electric energy to the manufacture of 

 iron and steel in Italy, by Cav. Ing. Remo Catani, of 

 Rome ; on the present state of the metallurgical industry 

 of Italy, by Signor Comm. Luigi Dompe' and Cav. Fran- 

 cesco Saverio Pucci, of Milan. Papers will be submitted 

 also by Mr. E. Adamson, of Sheffield; Mr. L. L. Fermor, 

 of Calcutta ; Prof. Federico Giolitti, of Turin ; Prof. F. 

 Giolitti and Dr. Francesco Carnevali, of Turin ; M. L. 

 Grenet, of Argenteuil, France ; and M. V. A. Kroll, of 

 Luxembourg. 



NO. 218/, VOL. 87] 



Dr. C. H. Wind, professor of theoretical physics at 

 Utrecht University, died on August 7, after a long ill- 

 ness, at the age of forty-three. Prof. E. v. Everdingen r 

 director of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute 

 at de Bilt, sends us the following particulars of Dr. 

 Wind's career and scientific work : — Cornells Harm Wind 

 was born at Groningen, and studied physics and mathe- 

 matics there and at Leyden and Berlin (1886-95), an< J 

 physical chemistry with van 't Hoff at Amsterdam (1895). 

 lie was then appointed lector in theoretical physics and 

 physical chemistry at Groningen. In 1902 the Govern- 

 ment, desiring to encourage the application of theoretical 

 physics to the solution of meteorological problems, 

 appointed Wind as director of the Meteorological Institute 

 at de Bilt. As such he reorganised the practical work, 

 devised schemes for extensions in terrestrial magnetism, 

 seismology, and kite work, and introduced many improve- 

 ments in the regular publications. In 1004, however, when 

 the time for theoretical work had scarcely arrived, he 

 was called upon to take the chair of theoretical physics at 

 Utrecht, and accepted the invitation, not without much 

 hesitation. Wind's theoretical work of the Groningen 

 period promised a brilliant career. His work on magneto- 

 optics led him to predict an analogue to Kerr's pheno- 

 menon, afterwards verified by Zeeman. Haga and Wind's 

 experimental researches on diffraction of Rontgen rays 

 induced him to investigate the explanation of diffraction 

 phenomena generally. Other researches consider Gibbs's 

 rule, the kinetic theory of gases, and the second law 

 of thermodynamics. Also one part of Bosscha's text-book 

 of physics was written by him in this period. Unhappily, 

 .it Utrecht his health began to give way and prevented 

 I further development in this direction. Nevertheless, he 

 j continued to show great interest in geophysical problems 

 as a member of the board of visitors of the Institute for 

 Marine Investigations, afterwards also of that of the 

 rological Institute. Those who met him at the meet- 

 ings of the Permanent International Council for the 

 Investigation of the Sea will remember his activity in 

 organising the hydrographical work. His many friends 

 and colleagues who remember his' keen interest in their 

 affairs and work whenever they asked his advice know 

 that, though his life was too short, it was not in 

 vain. 



In his pamphlet, " The Stone Age and Lake Lothing " 

 (Norwich : Norfolk News Co., Ltd.), Mr. J. Chambers 

 says : — " My intention was to write a brief notice of the 

 flint implements I found lately when excavating in the 

 bed of Lake Lothing, at Lowestoft." Beyond a few re- 

 marks on various methods of identifying stone implements, 

 the author's intention has not been carried out. His 

 remarks on the history of the lake are interesting, but he 

 leaves the very subjects on which he has some valuable 

 first-hand information to dabble in place-name speculations, 

 the value of which may be estimated by his list of 

 " acknowledged authorities." 



In the September issue of Man Messrs. W. L. H. Duck- 

 worth and L. R. Shore describe a collection of crania 

 derived from the peat deposits, which are now deposited 

 in the Cambridge University Museum. While, as regards 

 the mammalian fauna, the type from the peat deposits is 

 certainly distinctive, there is great diversity in the cranial 

 forms. Two of these crania tend to intrude among those 

 of the prehistoric age ; but this association is with examples 

 the Palaeolithic origin of which is not universally accepted. 

 It seems at the same time certain that this collection con- 

 tains examples somewhat unusual when judged by the three 

 standard tests — the calvarial height index, the bregmatic 



