October 5, 191 1] 



NATURE 



469 



the research to the end ; extreme care in observation and 

 strict attention to detail ; careful recording of observations, 

 which should be done at the earliest possible moment ; 

 thorough belief in the importance of the particular research, 

 amounting even to enthusiasm ; conscientiousness. 



Many of these desirable qualities will at once commend 



, themselves to you ; they need no more than enumeration. 

 But you may wonder why I have set down others of them. 

 For instance, what has conscientiousness to do with re- 

 search any more than it has to do with any other of the 

 affairs of life? Do I mean that an investigator should be 

 honest and not appropriate or use unfairly the work of 

 other investigators? Oh, no! I assume such honesty as 

 this in every investigator. The conscientiousness of which 

 I speak is of the worker to himself and his own work. 

 In this way. A worker has been engaged in a research 

 during many months. He has made many experiments and 

 observations, and they have all gone to prove the correct- 

 ness of the result at which he has arrived. But there is 

 still one experiment which it would be well to try. He 

 tries it, and curiously it does not turn out quite right. 

 He puts two and two together and they do not make four. 



1 And everyone agrees with " The Professor in the Case " 

 that two and two do make four, " not some times, but all 

 the time." Now is the moment when his conscientiousness 

 should come into play. The temptation is overwhelming to 

 explain the failure by some fault in technique, and to set 

 the result of that experiment on one side rather than to 

 repeat it again and again as he ought certainly to have 

 done. Had he done so it would again have failed, and he 

 would have learned in the end, not that two and two do 

 not make four, but that one of his twos was not a two, 

 and he would have avoided publishing that result 'of his 

 research which was afterwards discovered to be incorrect 

 by a more careful and conscientious worker. It must 

 always be bor-ne in mind that the mischief of a faulty 

 result does not end with that research, but may be the 

 starting point of a long series of equally faulty results. 



GEOGRAPHY AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 

 T N his presidential address Colonel Close, the recently 

 appointed Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, 

 raised again the oft-debated question, " What is geo- 

 graphy?" His contention that geography, apart from 

 cartography, cannot be treated as a science in itself, but 

 must serve as a common meeting-place and popularising 

 medium for various other sciences, will certainly not be 

 accepted by modern geographers without considerable 

 modification and amplification. 



Prof. Herbertson exhibited and explained a new series 

 of thermal maps which he has constructed to show the 

 actual mean temperatures prevailing over the globe 

 instead of the temperatures reduced to sea-level, as indi- 

 cated on the ordinary meteorological maps. Among other 

 papers on cartography were two by Mr. A. R. Hinks, one 

 dealing with the use of colour on contour maps, and the 

 other with the most suitable projections for atlas maps. 

 Captain Henrici discussed the present state of our know- 

 ledge — not altogether satisfactory — of the mean sea-level 

 round our coasts, and arrived at the conclusion that there 

 is no evidence, from the observations made, to justify the 

 belief that mean sea-level is not constant around the 

 British Isles. Captain Henrici also contributed a note on 

 the height of Ruwenzori as determined by him from 

 observations made by Captain Jack. His result is 

 16,801-3+5.3 fee'- 



Among the papers on physical geography, two of the 

 most interesting were contributed by Prof. J. W. Gregory 

 and Prof. O. Pettersson. The former showed that while 

 waterfalls have generally been regarded as destructive, they 

 may in certain circumstances be constructive and act as 

 agents of deposition instead of denudation. In support of 

 this he instanced certain w-aterfalls in Dalmatia, Bosnia, 

 and Herzegovina. In the former country, for example, the 

 Kerka Falls are due to a barrier of calcareous tufa which 

 the Kerka River has built across its valley. Prof. 

 Pettersson discussed the deep-water movements in the 

 Sk.-igprrak, and showed that they occurred when the earth 



NO. 2 1 88, VOL. 87] 



is in perihelion. His theory is that these waves are in- 

 fluenced by the phases of the moon, but still more by its 

 declination and distance from the earth. He also showed 

 that since 1753 the herring fishery on the coasts of Sweden 

 has been most prolific in years of maximum declination 

 and least prolific in years of minimum declination, a 

 result which he attributes to the influence of the move- 

 ments in the deep water. Captain Rawling gave an 

 account of the British expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 

 and showed some excellent views of the Nassau Range 

 with its precipitous front more than eighty miles in length 

 and from 8000 to 10,500 feet in sheer height. 



The work of the section was concluded by an interest- 

 ing discussion on aeronautical maps. M. Lallemand de- 

 scribed the resolutions recently adopted at his suggestion 

 by the Permanent Committee for Aerial Navigation of the 

 Public Works Department of the French Government on 

 the production of an international air-map, and the 

 establishment of marks required by aviators and aero- 

 nauts. Captain Lyons followed with certain general sug- 

 gestions for the construction of aeronautical maps, and in 

 the subsequent discussion several officers of the air 

 battalion and others took part. A full report of this 

 discussion is to be published in The Geographical 

 Journal. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 



XHE meeting of the Mechanical Science Section of the 

 -*■ British Association at Portsmouth, under the presi- 

 dency of so distinguished a naval architect as Prof. Harvard 

 Biles, was naturally the occasion for a very interesting 

 programme of papers relating to many branches of marine 

 engineering work ranging over a wide field of applied 

 science, and dealing with some of the most important 

 developments which are now engaging the attention of 

 engineers and men of science in this branch of engineering 

 activity. 



The programme contained important papers on the roll- 

 ing of ships, by the president, the gyro-compass, electrical 

 steering and propulsion of ships, and the developments of 

 wireless telegraphy, especially in its relation to naval 

 problems ; while in the purely mechanical section the 

 advances in methods of generating motive power were 

 dealt with in a series of related papers on internal-combus- 

 tion engines and the superheated steam engine. Not only 

 had the members who attended this section an opportunity 

 of hearing these papers and the very interesting discussions 

 to which they gave rise, but all the sections took the oppor- 

 tunity so kindly afforded them by Admiral Sir A. W. 

 Moore of witnessing, from a battleship which carried them 

 into the Solent, a combined attack by numerous torpedo- 

 boats and submarine vessels with as near an approach to 

 the conditions of naval warfare as practicable. 



The interest which all members of the association take 

 in the practical applications of scientific discovery to naval 

 matters was manifested by the close attention to the 

 wonderful evolutions and diving performances of the attack- 

 ing vessels, while the swift and silent attack of the torpe- 

 does, invariably marked by the final dull thud of impact 

 as each one found its mark, gave a thrill of the possibili- 

 ties of actual warfare not easily forgotten. 



Although the proceedings of the section were so largely 

 devoted to naval matters, other subjects of importance also 

 claimed the attention of the members, like the non-stop 

 train, the peculiar corrugations produced on rails by the 

 long-continued passage of trains ; while subjects of more 

 general interest were afforded by papers on smoke abate- 

 ment, and the possibilities of the manufacture of nitrogen 

 products in this country by electiic power, a question of 

 great importance in connection with agriculture and the 

 manufacture of explosives. 



The discussion between Sections A and G on aerial flight 

 at the Monday's meeting attracted a very large gathering, 

 and has been dealt with in a separate article (September 28, 



p. «q)- . . 



We now turn to a more detailed examination of the 

 papers in their order, and the discussions to which they 

 gave rise. The president's address, on the rolling of ships, 



