492 



NATURE 



[October 12, 191 1 



sociation, and his memoir on the vapour density of 

 chloral hydrate gave rise to a memorable controversy 

 on the value of volumetric considerations in the deter- 

 mination of equivalents. In conjunction with Haute- 

 feuille he followed Debray in elucidating the laws 

 governing' dissociation, the recognition of the funda- 

 mental phenomena of which we owe to Deville. In 

 this connection we may cite the memoirs on the con- 

 ditions determining the absorption of hydrogen by 

 palladium, potassium, and sodium, the dissociation of 

 the sesquichloride of silicon, and the transformations 

 of cvanogen into paracyanogen, and of cyanic acid 

 into cyanuric acid. With Deville he studied the 

 porositv of metals at high temperatures, and with 

 Hautefeuille the solubility of gases in metals. 



Troost was a frequent contributor to metallurgical 

 chemistry, and made important contributions to our 

 knowledge of the parts played by silicon and man- 

 ganese in determining the physical properties of the 

 various forms of commercial iron. His treatise of 

 chemistry, which originated out of his connection with 

 the Sorbonne, has gone through innumerable editions, 

 and for many years past has been a standard text-book 

 to successive generations of pupils. 



Troost, in spite of his advanced years, enjoyed 

 excellent health up to a short time before his death. 

 He preserved his faculties practically unimpaired, and 

 was active and industrious to the last on the numerous 

 commissions in which he took part, and more par- 

 ticularly on the Commission des Inventions at the 

 Ministry of War, of which he had been president for 

 some years past. 



NOTES. 



We notice with regret the announcement of the death, on 

 October 7, of Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, F.R.S., consult- 

 ing physician to the London Hospital, at seventy-six vears 

 of age. 



The Decimal Association announces that a weights and 

 measures law, rendering the use of the metric system 

 compulsory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, will come into force 

 on September 1, 1912. 



The Harveian oration will be delivered by Dr. C. 

 Theodore Williams at the Royal College of Physicians of 

 London on Wednesday next, October 18. 



Recent progress in model or small-power engineering, 

 both as a hobby and as a useful factor in technical educa- 

 tion, will be demonstrated at the Model Engineer Exhibi- 

 tion — the third of its kind — to be held at the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Hall, Westminster, on October 13-21. 



We notice with regret that the death is announced, on 

 September 25, in his sixty-eighth year, of Prof. Auguste 

 Michel-Levy, the distinguished geologist and member of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences. 



The Terra Nova of Captain Scott's British Antarctic 

 Expedition returned safeh to Lyttelton, N.Z., on October 7. 

 Lieut. Filchner, the leader of the German South Polar 

 Expedition, left Buenos Aires a few days ago for the 

 Antarctic in the Deutschland. It is announced from 

 Sydney that the fund for Dr. Mawson's Antarctic Expedi- 

 tion now amounts to 43,000!. 



Dr. J. H. H. Teall, F.R.S., director of H.M. Geo 

 logical Survey, will take the chair at the first of the 

 Selborne lectures of the season, to be held on Monday, 

 October 16. The subject will be " The Evolution of 

 Scenery," and the lecturer Mr. F. W. Rudler. 



Dr. W. E. Adeney, of Dublin, who has devoted par- 

 ticular attention to questions of sewage pollution, has been 

 NO. 2189, VOL. 87] 



invited by the Metropolitan Sewage Commission of New 

 York to advise it in reference to the over-pollution of the 

 waters of the harbour of that city. Dr. Adeney served as 

 a member of the recent " Whisky Commission." 



Dr. Wilhelm Dilthey, whose death is announced at the 

 advanced age of seventy-seven, was professor of philosophy 

 at the University of Berlin until 1905, when he resigned 

 owing to ill-health. He held his chair as successor to 

 Lotze, and had previously been professor of philosophy in 

 Basel, Kiel, and Breslau. Although, perhaps, best known 

 for his " Leben Schleiermachers," which brought him into 

 notice in 1870; he published a number of other essays and 

 books, some of which are of considerable philosophical 

 importance. 



In connection with the Exhibition of British Fishi 

 &c, at Manchester, which was opened on Saturday, 

 October 7, by his Excellency the Greek Minister, the Hull 

 Museums Committee has an extensive exhibit of old 

 whaling appliances, paintings, models, &c, of the old 

 whaling ships. Mr. T. Sheppard, the curator, has issued 

 an illustrated guide to the collection (32 pages, one penny) 

 which is a useful account of the various weapons and 

 tools used by the old Hull whalers. It is interesting to 

 learn that both the present enormous fishing and oil indus- 

 tries at Hull have developed from the whaling trade. 



The fifty-seventh report of the Postmaster-General on the 

 Post Office, which has just been issued as a Blue-book 

 (Cd. 5868), records that the number of radio-telegrams dealt 

 with showed a satisfactory increase, the outward messages 

 to ships reaching a total of 5640, as compared with 3266 

 in 1909-10, and inward messages from ships 34,161, as 

 compared with 27,727, the total increase being 8808, or 

 2S-4 per cent. During the year 97 licences, covering 107 

 land stations, were granted under the Wireless Telegraphy 

 Act, and, with one exception, these were for experimental 

 purposes. Connected with this subject, we notice the 

 announcement in The Morning Post that the wireless tele- 

 graph station at Spitsbergen is now completed and ready 

 for use. The machinery is working satisfactorily, and 

 messages are received at Spitsbergen from Poldhu, in Corn- 

 wall, and communication is being established with the 

 station at Ingo, in the north of Norway. 



Coal is said to have been discovered on the estate of Sir 

 Harry Verney, Bart., at Calvert, in Buckinghamshire, with- 

 in fifty miles of London. It appears that exploratory work 

 has been carried on intermittently for several years at this 

 locality, and that a boring, which was sunk six years ago 

 in quest of wa*er, encountered coal-gas under pressure of 

 about 60 lb. per square inch at a depth of 470 feet. Two* 

 bore-holes are now being sunk, and it is announced that one 

 of them, after passing through an outburst of gas, reached 

 coal at a depth of only 530 feet from the surface. Should' 

 this announcement be confirmed, it will justify the belief 

 of those who hold that concealed coalfields may exist at 

 workable depths between the Midland fields and those of 

 Bristol and Somerset. So far back as 1877 a famous 

 boring at Burford, in Oxfordshire, struck Coal-measures 

 at a depth of 1184 feet, beneath a cover of Jurassic and 

 Triassic rocks. At Batsford, in Gloucestershire, Coal- 

 measures have likewise been found beneath Secondary 

 strata. 



At the monthly meeting of the Pharmaceutical Societyi 1 

 held on October 4, the president. Mr. C. B. Allen, handed] 

 the Hanbury gold medal and a cheque for 50Z. to M. I 

 Eugene Leger, of Paris. The Hanbury gold medal isj 

 competed for every two years, and the winner receives also] 



