548 



NATURE 



[January i6, 19 13 



America. The exhibition consists of a series of moving 

 pictures, the sequence of which, to relieve the eyes of 

 the audience, is periodically interrupted by a show of 

 ordinary sli.des, the whole depicting various incidents 

 and adventures that happened during the trip. The 

 best and most interesting pictures were taken behind 

 an artificial screen at a water-hole, which was visited 

 by elephants, giraffes, zebras, oryxes, baboons, and 

 other species, the scene being enlivened by a fight 

 between two rhinoceroses and by the sensational death 

 of one of them, which charged the photographer in a 

 disconcerting manner. The main object of the ex- 

 pedition was, however, to trap and photograph, not 

 to kill. One of the scenes depicting the struggles of 

 a trapped hysena is perhaps needlessly prolonged, not 

 to say painful, and the attempt of the expositor to 

 rob the creature of the well-deserved sympathy of the 

 audience by abusing him as a scavenger and body- 

 snatcher will appeal only to the childish-minded, and 

 it will, of course, be well known to English sports- 

 men that the idea of hunting lions with dogs, which 

 is claimed as a novel feature of the trip, was regularly 

 practised more than half a century ago by that 

 intrepid sportsman Gordon Gumming. 



John Napiek of Merchiston made the first public 

 announcement of his invention of logarithms in 1614, 

 and an English translation of his work was issued 

 two years later, that is, one year before his 

 death. Announcement having been made of a pro- 

 posal to celebrate the tercentenary of Napier's dis- 

 covery next year, it may be of interest to state the 

 position of the matter. The Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh has invited the cooperation of other scientific 

 and educational bodies in arranging for this celebra- 

 tion, and the great majority of these institutions and 

 corporations have nominated representatives upon the 

 general committee, which will be convened at an 

 early date to consider the whole question. Among 

 the bodies which were invited by the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh to cooperate were the Edinburgh Town 

 Council, the universities and technical colleges of 

 .Scotland, the Faculty of Actuaries, the Merchant 

 Gompany, the Heriot Trust, the Edinburgh Committee 

 for the Training of Teachers, the Chamber of Com- 

 merce, Merchiston Castle School, and the like. The 

 only societies outside Scotland which were asked to 

 send representatives to the general committee were 

 the Royal Society of London and the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society, these being respectively included be- 

 cause of their national importance as the highest 

 representatives of science in our country and of that 

 particular science of astronomy which was the first 

 to benefit by Napier's great invention. We under- 

 stand that nothing has yet been decided as to the 

 character of the celebration ; a congress of calculators 

 and an exhibition of all kinds of aids to calculation 

 in the form of tables or instruments have been men- 

 tioned; but no scheme can be definitely adopted until 

 the genera! committee has met. 



We are informed that Vittorio Emanuele III., King 

 of Italy, has consented to the use of the prefix 

 " Roval " bv the Italian Geographical Society. 

 XO. 2255, VOL. 90] 



Sir Rickman Godlee, president of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, will deliver the Hunterian oration in the 

 theatre of the college on Friday, February 14, at 

 four o'clock. 



The death is announced, at eighty years of age, 

 of Dr. W. H. Dickinson, past-president of the Royal 

 Medical and Chirurgical Society and of the Patho- 

 logical Society, and at different times Croonian, Lum- 

 leian, and Harveian lecturer, as well as censor, of 

 the Royal College of Physicians. 



The Geological Society of' London will this year 

 award its medals and funds as follows : — Wollaston 

 medal. Rev. Osmond Fisher; Murchison medal, Mr. 

 G. Barrow ; Lyell fund, Mr. S. S. Buckman ; Bigsby 

 medal. Sir Thomas Henry Holland, K.C.I.E., 

 F.R.S.; Wollaston fund, Mr. W. W. King; Murchison 

 fund, Mr. E. E. L. Dixon ; Lyell fund, Mr. Llewellyn 

 Treacher; Barlow-Jameson fund, Mr. J. B. Scrivenor 

 and Mr. Bernard Smith. 



Prof. Guido Cora informs us that the fall of a 

 house in Rome on January 8 was clearly registered 

 at the Collegio Romano Observatory by an 

 Agamennone seismograph at 4.26 a.m. The first earth 

 movement came from the north-east, corresponding to 

 the position of the Via del Tritone, where the fall 

 occurred, by which fifteen people were killed, and 

 afterwards the groimd continued to vibrate for twenty 

 minutes. 



Lieut. Filchner, the leader of the German Ant- 

 arctic expedition, returned from the south to Buenos 

 Aires on January 7. He has apparently crossed an 

 ice-belt of great width (1200 nautical miles), and dis- 

 covered, last February, a new land in 76° 35' S., 

 30° W., extending to 78° or 79° S., to which the name 

 of King Luitpold has been given. Its boundaries and 

 extent are by no means clearly defined in reports to 

 hand. Lieut. Filchner declares himself satisfied with 

 the results, but the expedition has returned earlier 

 than was expected, and he expresses the hope that 

 work will be carried on. There is later to hand ■ 

 a report of dissension between the members of the 

 nautical and scientific staffs of the expedition, which, 

 it is to be hoped, may not have prejudiced the work. 



German geographers and their colleagues elsewhere 

 are concerned over rumours of disaster to the German 

 expedition in Spitsbergen. The ship has been aban- 

 doned in the north at Treurenberg Bay, and though 

 it may be salved in the summer, it is by no means 

 certain that the crew and staff, or some of their 

 members, are not lost or in extremity, for the leader, 

 Lieut. Schroder-Stranz, was away on a sledging 

 journey from which he had not returned. Captain 

 Ritschel, with infinite difficulty and much suffering, 

 has made his way to Advent Bay, and a relief expedi- 

 tion has been organised. The original party was not 

 apparently prepared to winter in the field. 



Captain Einar Mikkelsen's account of his expedi- 

 tion to north-east Greenland, presented at the meeting 

 of the Royal Geographical Society on January 13, 

 sounded like a chapter of accidents successfully over- 

 come. At the very first, in the summer of 1909, he 



