!24 



NATURE 



[May i, 1913 



According to the April number of Museum News, 

 ihe Brooklyn Museum has installed an antarctic ex- 

 hibition. On the walls of the alcove in which it is 

 displayed are hung a map of the south polar region 

 and prints illustrative of antarctic life. Among the 

 specimens are a group of king-penguins, a young 

 sea-elephant, various petrels (including the miscalled 

 Cape pigeon), an albatross, and a black-footed 

 penguin. 



From the report for 1912 we learn that the Zoo- 

 logical Society has had, on the whole, a successful 

 and prosperous year, the number of fellows being the 

 highest on record, while, despite the enhanced cost of 

 provisions, the income shows a healthy excess over 

 normal expenditure. During the year the president 

 and council have directed their attention to the sub- 

 ject of zoological nomenclature, and have expressed 

 the opinion that " an absolutely invariable application 

 of the rule of priority ... is not to the advantage of 

 zoological science, and that they would welcome a 

 modification of it, as, for instance, by the establish- 

 ment of an authoritative fiat list of reserved names." 

 The compilation of such a list formed, we believe, a 

 part of the deliberations at the recent Zoological Con- 

 gress at Monaco. Reference is made to the loss of 

 the valuable services of the society's librarian, Mr. 

 F. H. Waterhouse, who retired on a well-earned pen- 

 sion after forty years' work. 



The annual report of the Norwich Castle Museum 

 for 1912 records a decrease in the number of visitors on 

 the previous year, due to the disastrous floods following 

 on the unprecedented rainstorm in Norfolk on August 

 26 last, when the city of Norwich was practically 

 isolated from the rest of the country. The success of 

 the attempt to stimulate public interest, benefit the 

 studious, and give point and purpose to the collec- 

 tions has again been evidenced by the large and 

 appreciative audiences at the lantern lectures and 

 demonstrations given at the museum under the 

 auspices of the Norwich Museum Association. The 

 subjects of lectures during the year 1912, to which a 

 limited number of the general public were admitted 

 free, were : — Food fishes, Prof. Garstang ; poultry, 

 Mr. Edward Brown ; old-time methods of lighting, 

 Mr. L. G. Bolingbroke ; artistic glasswork, Mr. R. F. 

 Martin ; winged insects and their larvae, Prof. F. V. 

 Theobald; wild flowers and photography, Mr. H. E. 

 Corke; and African big-game, Miss Cara G. Buxton. 

 During the summer months a weekly exhibit of 

 living specimens illustrative of nature-study was car- 

 ried out by members of the association. A pleasing 

 feature of the year is the interest evinced in the 

 museum collections by the pupils from the council 

 schools, 151 visits being arranged by the organiser 

 of elementary education and 4789 pupils recorded. 



Vol. xxxii. of the Observations made at the Royal 

 Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Bata- 

 via refers to the year 1909. The preface, however, 

 by the director, Dr. W. van Bemmelen, brings the 

 history of the observatory down to 1912. It mentions 

 the recent establishment of several mountain meteoro- 

 logical stations. Upper air and seismological observa- 

 NO. 2270, VOL. 91] 



tions have recently received considerable attention at 

 Batavia, but are dealt with in different publications. 

 The present volume comprises meteorology and terres- 

 trial magnetism. Like previous volumes of the 

 series, it contains numerous tables of meteorological 

 data for the year. On p. 1 10 there is a summary of mean 

 values based on from twenty-one to forty-six years. 

 The annual variation of rainfall is unusually regular 

 and marked, the monthly amount varying from 38 mm. 

 in August to 332 mm. in January. As befits a station 

 only 6° 11' south of the equator, the annual variation 

 of temperature is exceedingly small, the mean tem- 

 peratures of the warmest and coldest months differing 

 by only 1-04° C. 



For some years magnetographs have been run at 

 Buitenzorg, an electrically undisturbed station some 

 twenty-five miles south of Batavia. There are two 

 sets, one by Adie and a recent set by Topfer and 

 Schultze. Both sets record vertical force, but while 

 the Adie set records as usual declination and hori- 

 zontal force, the other set records the N.-S. and 

 E.-W. components, and hourly values are given of 

 these components in vol. xxxii. of the Observations 

 made at the Royal Magnetical and Meteorological 

 Observatory at Batavia. Declination at Buiten- 

 zorg is less than i°, so that the diurnal variation of 

 the horizontal force and its N.-S. component are 

 almost identical, and the same is true of declination 

 and the E.-W. component when the former is expressed 

 in terms of force. Thus the departure from the 

 ordinary procedure is more apparent than real. The 

 introduction states that the magnetic character 

 data for individual days are based entirely on the 

 horizontal force, as being much the most disturbed 

 element. The effects of magnetic storms are very 

 readily traced in curves at the end of the volume 

 showing the variation from day to day throughout 

 the entire year in the absolute values of the several 

 elements. 



The Verhandlungen of the German Physical Society 

 for March 30 contains a communication made to the 

 society on March 14 by Dr. E. Griineisen, on the 

 effects of temperature and pressure on the electrical 

 resistivities of pure metals. He finds on examination 

 of the results for the resistivities of copper, silver, 

 platinum, gold, and lead down to very low tempera- 

 tures that for each of them the resistivity varies as 

 the product of the absolute temperature and the atomic 

 heat at constant volume. Assuming Wien's law that 

 the number of impacts between electrons in the metal 

 and metal atoms is proportional to the square of the 

 amplitude of oscillation of the atoms, he deduces that 

 the resistivity of a metal at constant temperature 

 should decrease as the pressure is increased, at a 

 rate which is of the same order as that found experi- 

 mentally by Williams, Beckmann and others. Alloys 

 the resistivities of which can be calculated correctly 

 by the law of mixtures from the resistivities of their 

 constituents follow the same law. 



In the course of his address as president of the 

 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Sir H. F. 

 Donaldson referred, among other matters, to the 







