528 



NATURE 



[October 19, 191 1 



tion on August 23 in about latitude 24° and longitude 

 67 30'. Its course was far north of the normal path of 

 tropical disturbances at this season of the year, and its 

 influence was not felt at any stations in the West Indies ; 

 the first signs of its approach were felt at the land stations 

 that suffered most, viz. Charleston and Savannah, on the 

 morning of August 27, and warnings of its approach were 

 fortunately sent by the Central Bureau to both those 

 stations and to shipping at various ports, thus minimising 

 the danger so far as possible. The centre of the hurri- 

 cane reached the coast near Savannah at 8h. a.m. of 

 August 28, passed through eastern Georgia, recurved over 

 North Carolina to E.N.E., and passed to sea off the New 

 Jersey coast. Immense damage was wrought, both to 

 houses and shipping, the velocity of the wind at places 

 exceeding 100 miles an hour (factor 3?). Prof. Moore re- 

 marks that, had wireless reports been at hand, it would 

 have been possible to give warning of the approach of 

 the storm several days previously ; but this would not 

 have saved the hundreds of houses unroofed, the destruc- 

 tion of telegraph wires, and the like. 



As stated in Nature of September 28 (p. 417), at the 

 Turin meeting of the International Electrochemical Com- 

 mission the committee on international symbols agreed 

 provisionally to the proposals made at the Brussels meet- 

 ing. These were to represent mass, length, and time by 

 Mm, U, and Tf ; electric current, electromotive force, and 

 resistance by I, E, and R; quantity of electricity by Qq ; 

 magnetic field and induction by H and B ; inductance by 

 L ; the last three symbols to be printed in special type not 

 yet settled. The maximum value of any quantity to be 

 indicated by the subscript in. 



The Vcrhandlungen of the German Physical Society for 

 September 15 contains a paper by Dr. A. R. Meyer, of the 

 University of Greifswald, on the change of the electrical 

 resistivity of pure iron from o° to 1000° C. The iron is 

 in the form of a wire, and is enclosed in an evacuated 

 glass bulb. Its resistance is measured by the fall of 

 potential down the central portion of it, due to the passage 

 of the heating current. Its temperature is measured 

 thermoelectrically by means of a fine platinum platinum- 

 rhodium junction in contact with it, or by means of a 

 radiation pyrometer For each of three specimens of iron 

 the resistance increases more rapidly with temperature as 

 the temperature rises until 700° C. is reached. Above this 

 temperature the rate of increase is smaller and more nearly 

 uniform. Up to 700 C. the watts spent in the wire, the 

 current through it, the electromotive force at its ends, and 

 its resistance are all proportional to powers of the absolute 

 temperature. 



The September issue of the Journal of the Chemical 

 Society contains obituary notices of Profs. Beilstein, 

 Erlenmeyer, Fittig, Landolt, and Menschutkin. In addi- 

 tion to the biographic and scientific narrative, an admir- 

 able series of portraits is given. In the case of Prof. 

 Beilstein, the notice is signed by Prof. Otto N. Witt. 



The forty-second volume of the Sitzungsberichte of the 



I'livsikalisch-medizinischen Sozietat in Erlangen has 



1 cently come to hand. In addition to five papers by Prof. 



E. Wiedemann on the history of science, the volume 



includes chemical papers on the halogenaurates of ethylene- 



and propylene-diammonium, by A. Gutbier and C. J. 



rmaier on the copper salts of ferro- and ferri-cyanic 



and by D. Hovermann on the atomic weight of 



iridium. The values deduced for this atomic weight by 



tit methods from the analysis of the salt 



NO. 2190, VOL. 87] 



K,lrCl 6 , were 192-942, 192-881, 192-956, and 193-116, whilst 

 the analysis of the salt (NH 4 ) 2 IrCl, gave the value 193-403. 



The Scientific American of September 16 is devoted 

 specially to industrial chemistry. It contains articles on 

 " How Electricity is Aiding the Chemist," by Prof. W. 11. 

 Walker, of Massachusetts; on "Artificial Rubber," by- 

 Prof. Ira Remsen ; on "Testing before Buying," by Dr. 

 C. F. McKenna ; on "Catalysis," by A. J. Lotka ; on 

 "The Industrial Chemist," by Prof. R. K. Duncan; and 

 on " The Technically Trained Foreman," by Dr. Allen 

 Rogers. The magazine is attractively produced, and con- 

 tains a number of interesting and unfamiliar illustrations, 

 but suffers from the disagreeable characteristic of American 

 journalism whereby each article is interrupted at the con- 

 clusion of its first or second page and continued in frag- 

 ments amongst the advertisements. 



Dealing with the destruction of the Austin dam, Penn- 

 sylvania, The Engineer for October 13 states that, shortly 

 before the actual disaster, the condition of the structure 

 had aroused fears among the residents of the towns below, 

 and that these, being expressed, had the effect of inducing 

 the owners to undertake certain minor protective measures. 

 It is questionable whether anything short of complete 

 reconstruction could have saved the dam. Owing to the 

 upward overturning pressures caused by leakages below the 

 foundations, the alignment of the upper edge had last 

 summer already become a slight arc. That this was the 

 real cause of the disaster is the opinion of the engineer 

 who designed the dam, and reported on the defects 

 discovered in January, 1910. He and another engineer 

 reported the dam to be safe, notwithstanding these defects, 

 but made certain recommendations for the repair and 

 reinforcement of the structure. These, however, he was 

 not engaged to supervise, and he has no knowledge that 

 they were ever carried out. That Austin will be rebuilt, or 

 the lumber industry of the district survive the calamity, 

 seem improbable. The local timber supply was rapidly 

 nearing exhaustion, and at the best could have held out 

 but five years longer. To these circumstances, perhaps, in 

 some degree, may be attributed the comparatively few and 

 ineffectual measures taken to safeguard public interests. 



Engineering for October 13 contains an account of the 

 demolition of the Bridlington railway bridge on the North- 

 Eastern Railway, an operation which was carried out by 

 the Ammonal Explosives, Ltd., of London. The bridge 

 was composed of five arches, each arch having a span of 

 18 feet, with a width of 37J feet. The arches were built 

 of four courses of hard ringing bricks set in cement, form- 

 ing a hard, tenacious mass of masonry requiring to be 

 pulverised completely and instantaneously. To facilitate 

 the operation, the surface of the bridge had been stripped, 

 leaving simply the crowns of the arches and the buttresses 

 to be blown down. As the bridge was separated from the 

 station and buildings by only about 8 or 10 feet, the crowns 

 of the arches only were blown down at the first operation. 

 The total quantity of ammonal No. 5 explosive used was 

 39-5 lb., distributed in 139 holes. A feature of the opera- 

 tion rendering it more than usually interesting was the 

 employment, for the first time in England, of an entirely 

 new kind of detonating fuse, called Bickford's tolueni 

 or " Cordeau " detonant. With this fuse, detonators in 

 each cartridge are dispensed with. The fuse may be either 

 laid alongside or simply inserted into each cartridge, and 

 one detonator, attached to the firing end of the fuse, alone 

 is necessary to cause the instantaneous detonation of the 

 whole mined structure. The whole operation was con- 

 ducted in a most successful manner. 



