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NA rURE 



I^AuGUST 9, 1906 



The annual meeting of the American Rontgen Ray 

 Society will take place at Niagara Falls, New York, on 

 August 29, 30, and 31. 



An electrical manufacturers' exhibition is to be held 

 at Bristol in November and December next. The object 

 of the exhibition will be to afford to manufacturers an 

 opportunity of bringing the latest improvements in their 

 various specialities before the notice of electrical con- 

 tractors and the public generally, and to demonstrate 

 clearly the advantages of electricity for lighting, heating, 

 and motor power purposes. 



k DISASTROUS fire broke out in the buildings of the Milan 

 Exhibition on Friday last, causing the destruction of the 

 Italian and Hungarian decorative art sections and of a 

 pavilion of the Italian architecture section. The damage 

 is estimated at 160,000/. 



The recently issued annual Blue-book respecting the 

 British Museum records a large falling off in the number of 

 visits paid to the Bloomsbury Museum in 1905. In recent 

 years the numbers have been steadily increasing, and in 

 1904 they reached the large total of 954,441. There has 

 now been a reaction, with a loss of upwards of 140,000, 

 the number for the year being 813,659. The visits paid 

 to the Natural History Museum show, on the other hand, 

 a considerable improvement ; thus the total number of 

 visitors last year was 566,313, an increase of 95,756 over 

 the total in 1904 and of nearly 80,000 over that of any 

 previous year. The number of visits recorded as having 

 been made on Sunday afternoons was 70,084, as against 

 60,909 in 1904. The average daily attendance for all open 

 days during the year was 1560-09 ; for weekdays only, 

 1600-73 ; 3nd for Sunday afternoons, 1322-34. The total 

 number of visits paid during the year to the department 

 of zoology by students and other persons requiring assist- 

 ance and information amounted to 11,811, as compared 

 with 11,824 '■'' 1904 and 11,627 in 1903. 



As a result of the passage of the Bill allowing the 

 production and utilisation of alcohol in .-America for in- 

 dustrial purposes, without the internal revenue tax, the 

 U.S. Department of .'\griculture has decided to publish a 

 bulletin, from January i next, when this law is to take 

 pffect, placing before the public a collection of the best 

 obtainable data on the use of alcohol in small engines. 

 For this purpose Prof. Charles E. Lucke has been retained 

 by the department as expert to conduct a protracted series 

 of investigations in the laboratories of Coluinbia Uni- 

 versity. The bulletin, says the Scientific American, will 

 contain all available information of the work done on the 

 subject both at home and abroad. It is hoped that all those 

 interested in this question will forward to Prof. Lucke at 

 Columbia University any information of which they may 

 be in possession, or inform him of the location of existing 

 data. Possessors of patents covering inventions bearing 

 upon the subject are invited to provide Prof. Lucke with 

 copies of the same, and if possible to submit their 

 apparatus intended for the utilisation of alcohol, such as 

 vaporisers, carburetters, or complete engines. These will 

 be tested in the most thorough manner, and the experi- 

 ments will be conducted without any expense whatever to 

 the public, save those entailed for the transportation of the 

 apparatus. The reports of the tests will be published in 

 the bulletin. 



The Electrician stales that an ordinance has been pub- 

 lished constituting wireless telegraphy in the Sudan a 

 Government monopoly by providing that no person shall 

 NO. I919. VOL. 74] 



instal or make use of any apparatus for wireless tele- 

 graphy, or transmit or receive messages by means of any 

 such apparatus within the Sudan except the Department 

 of Telegraphs or a duly authorised officer or official of 

 the Sudan Government, unless such person is in possession 

 of a special licence in writing from the Governor-General. 



At the meeting of the Harvard College Chapter at 

 Cambridge (Mass.) on June 28, the oration was delivered 

 by Prof. E. C. Pickering, director of the college observ- 

 atory. From the Boston Evening Transcript we learn 

 that Prof. Pickering took as his subject " The Aims of an 

 Astronomer," and dealt with it in vigorous style, pleading 

 eloquently for the internationalisation of funds and aims. 

 After describing the evolution of the individual astronomer 

 from the time when his main object is to earn a living to 

 the period when he arrives at the truer and broader aim 

 of increasing the world's store of knowledge. Prof. Picker- 

 ing outlined his international plan whereby the present 

 overlapping of work and interests would be eliminated and 

 the science of astronomy infinitely benefited. For instance, 

 he suggests that rich men wishing to subsidise astronomical 

 research should exercise as much discretion as they do 

 in the businesses from which they derive their riches in 

 order to place their gifts where the greatest need and the 

 greatest facilities exist. This would entail an international 

 advisory board to administer properly the accumulated fund 

 without regard to nationality or personal interest. By such 

 proceedings the young and ardent astronomer, the suitably 

 situated observatory, and the men with ideas could be 

 granted the financial help which they now so often lack, 

 and with the assistance of which the progress of astro- 

 nomical research could be greatly promoted. 



The acoustical properties of buildings form the subject 

 of two papers, one by Mr. Wallace C. Sabine in the 

 Proceedings of iho .American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 

 xlii., 2 (June), and the other by M. Marage in the Comptes 

 rcndits bearing the date April 9. Mr. Sabine states 

 that the absorbing power of a room, its furniture and 

 cushions, and of the clothing of the audience, are all 

 capable of numerical determination, and that the time of 

 reverberation of a given sound is also a calculable 

 quantity. An important feature of the paper consisted in 

 a series of e.\periments undertaken to determine the 

 reverberation best suited to piano music. M. Marage 's 

 paper deals with the corresponding conditions with regard 

 to speech. There appears to be a unanimous consensus 

 of musical opinion that a reverberation of about i-i seconds 

 is calculated to secure the best effect with a piano, while 

 for speech M. Marage fixes the coefficient at from 0-5 

 second to i second for all parts of the room and all vowels. 

 A second part of Mr. Sabine's paper — which, by the way, 

 is a sequel to a previous one published in 1900 — deals with 

 the effect of pitch on reverberation. It is to be wished 

 that attention were more commonly given to the study of 

 acoustical effect ; then we might get rid of the boxed-in 

 piano, covered with highly absorbing draperies and jangling 

 ornaments, of the conventional drawing-room. The sounds 

 which this instrument is able to emit under the violent 

 treatment commonly applied to its keyboard arc a mere 

 travesty of music. 



The difficult problems in statistical mechanics associated 

 with the kinetic theory of gases form the subject of a 

 paper of thirty-five pages in the Journal dc Physique for 

 June, by Prof. H. Poincar^. The paper is largely a dis- 

 cussion of points suggested by the late Prof. Willard 

 Gibbs. For simplification the author considers the case 



