40 



NA TURE 



[May io, 1906 



The general report of the Geological Survey of India 

 for the year 1905, published by Mr. T. H. Holland, F.R.S., 

 in the Records of the Geological Survey of India (vol. 

 xxxiii., part ii.), is a document of permanent value. An 

 enormous amount of valuable information on palaeontology, 

 petrology, physical geology, seismology, and economic 

 geology has been got together, and the programme of work 

 arranged for the current season indicates that results of 

 more than ordinary interest are likely to be obtained. The 

 investigation of the manganese ore deposits has now been 

 completed, the deposits of chief importance consisting of 

 braunite, psilomelane, and pyrolusite associated with and 

 derived from manganese-bearing silicates occurring as 

 bands and lenticles in the Archrean schists and gneisses. 

 In the same issue of the Records, Mr. T. D. La Touche 

 and Mr. R. R. Simpson describe the Lashio coalfield in the 

 northern Shan States, and Mr. R. R. Simpson describes 

 the Namma, Man-sang, and Man-se-le coalfields, also in 

 the northern Shan States. In the case of Lashio the 

 results are not encouraging. The coal is lignitic with a 

 large proportion of moisture and more than 9 per cent, of 

 ash. The Namma coal, or rather lignite, is distinctly 

 superior to that of any other field in the northern Shan 

 States ; but in its raw state it would be a distinctly poor 

 fuel, unfit for locomotive use, and would be mined under 

 the usual difficulties due to soft including rocks. 



The Meteorological Service of the Netherlands, the 

 central office of which is at De Bilt, a suburb of Utrecht, 

 was recently re-organised, and has commenced the issue 

 of a neat octavo publication entitled Mededeclingen 

 en Vcrhandelingen, containing memoirs on meteorological 

 and allied subjects. The articles will be written in Dutch 

 and French, or in French, English, or German according 

 to the nature of the contributions or the wish of the 

 authors. There are separate branches at Amsterdam and 

 Rotterdam ; these act as agencies for maritime purposes, and 

 issue local weather forecasts, while the branch at Amster- 

 dam deals exclusively with storm warnings. Among the 

 various useful publications of the Netherlands Institute 

 we may specially mention (i) the daily weather report; 

 (2) the monthly weather review, containing the results of 

 twelve representative stations ; and (3) the annals, which 

 have been issued in various forms for fifty-five years ; 

 they now contain (i) the results of the observations made 

 in Holland, and at Paramaribo (Surinam), and (2) observ- 

 ations of terrestrial magnetism. The institute has from 

 time to time published valuable works on marine meteor- 

 ology, and is at present engaged on a meteorological atlas 

 of the Indian seas and other useful investigations. 



In vol. i., part iv., of " Beitrage zur Physik der freien 

 Atmosphare," Prof. H. Hergesell gives an interesting 

 account of the exploration of the upper air over the Atlantic 

 Ocean north of the Tropic of Cancer, from the Prince of 

 Monaco's yacht in the year 1905. The observations were 

 made under Prof. Hergesell 's superintendence by means of 

 tandem sounding-balloons, between 26° and 38° N. lat., and 

 10° and 42° W. long., and therefore partly in the true 

 region of the trade winds; the chief object was to deter- 

 mine whether the results obtained in the previous year by 

 means of kite experiments between Gibraltar and the 

 Canaries, along the African coast, would be found in the 

 open ocean, beyond the influence of the continent and 

 islands, and at much greater altitudes. The observations 

 of temperature and humidity completely confirmed those 

 obtained in 1904, and further showed that up to altitudes 

 of 12,000 metres and more, winds with northerly com- 

 ponents prevailed, and that the anti-trade wind supposed 

 NO. 1906, VOL. 74"] 



to exist in the adopted theory of atmospheric circulation 

 was not found in those latitudes over the free ocean.- 

 Southerly winds were only observed on one day at altitudes 

 of 2000 metres and upwards in lat. 25° 58' N., the most 

 southerly point reached, t)ut the next day, in lat. 26° 41' N., 

 the northerly current had again set in. These results differ 

 somewhat from those given by Clayton and Maurice, acting 

 for Mr. Rotch and M. Teisserenc de Bort respectively, in 

 the same latitudes, as they found southerly winds in the 

 upper strata of air. It will be interesting to determine by 

 further experiments whether this difference really exists, 

 and whether in the observations near the Canaries especially 

 it was possibly due to the proximity of the African coast. 



A NEW apparatus for determining the mechanical equi- 

 valent of heat or thermal capacity of water is described by 

 Prof. H. Rubens in the Verhandlungen der deiitschen 

 physikalischen Gescllschaft, viii., 5 (1906). In it the work, 

 is supplied by turning a cylinder 60 cm. long through 180° 

 and allowing a weight to descend in oil, and the arrange- 

 ments for the calorimetric determinations obviate the dis- 

 advantages of Grimsehl's apparatus. 



Reform of higher education in France forms the subject 

 of a paper in the Revue generalc des Sciences (xvii., 4) 

 by Prof. A. Turpain. It would appear that the French 

 statutes relating to the appointment of university pro- 

 fessors are unsuited to the present times and operate to 

 the detriment of the provincial universities, and, more- 

 over, the new programme of the Ecole Normale tends to 

 draw students from the provinces to Paris. 



A note in the Revue genirale des Sciences (xvii., 4) 

 directs attention to a method of exploding mines by means 

 of acoustic waves. The method is based on the property 

 that when a disc, free to turn about its diameter, is 

 placed in the interior of a cylindrical resonator and the 

 fundamental note sounded, the disc will place itself in a 

 plane perpendicular to the cylinder. By causing the turn- 

 ing disc to complete an electric circuit a mine can be ex- 

 ploded by means of a signal given by a syren on a war- 

 ship, tuned to the same note as the resonator. The de- 

 scription is taken from the Technische Rundschau. 



In a note contributed to the Atti dei Lincei, xv., 6, Dr. 

 G. A. Blanc communicates some further results regarding 

 the radio-active substance discovered by him in the thermal 

 springs of EchaiUon and Salins Moutiers, in Savoy, and 

 of which an account was given at the congress of radiology 

 at Li^ge last year. The experiments show the presence 

 of hydrates in which the radio-activity at first increases 

 instead of continually decreasing, thus reproducing the 

 phenomena associated with thorium hydrate rather than 

 those attributed to the element thorium X ; but the radio- 

 activity of the present element is far greater than that of 

 ordinary morium hydrate. In the same journal Messrs. 

 R. Nasini and M. G. Levi give a preliminary note on the 

 radio-activity of the spring at Fiuggi, near Anticoli. 



The o rays emitted by Prof. Marckwald's radio-tellurium 

 are shown by Mr. H. Greinacher in No. 7 of the 

 Physikalische Zeitschrift to be capable of causing a marked 

 fluorescence in glass, and a similar but smaller effect in 

 mica and quartz. The observation is of interest inasmuch 

 as the o rays of radio-tellurium have also been shown to 

 possess the property of causing air to fluoresce. 



Prof. Nernst and Mr. H. von Wartenberg describe in 

 the Verhandlungen of the German Physical Society a new 

 determination of the melting points of platinum and 

 palladium. The method used was an optical one employ- 

 ing a Wanner pyrometer which was specially calibrated 



