September 6, igobj 



NA TURE 



477 



The society regrets that owing to unavoidable hindrances 

 many undertakings had to be abandoned. About six pages 

 are devoted to the exploration conducted by Mr. \. V. 

 Zhuravsky of the Holshuzcnielsky tundra, starting from the 

 Petshora, and incUiding the river Adzva, the Vashutkin 

 lakes, and the \Ai\k. ridge. Sanioyed natives assisted as 

 guides. As a result, some important local points were 

 made clear, collections of flora and water fauna, molluscs, 

 and spiders were made, besides a herbarium, map of the 

 lakes and rivers, photographs, meteorological report, and 

 statistics of the native population — which is in danger of 

 dying out — were collected. In the Proceedings of the 

 society, vol. xli., part iii., 1905, Mr. .•\. Rudneff contributes 

 a preliminary report of this expedition, with illustrations. 

 This region has only been traversed twice previously, by 

 Mr. William Gourdon, of Hull (1(114-1615), who left a 

 diary, and by Herr .X. Schrenk (1837), author of an account 

 of travel in north-eastern European Russia. Mr. A. V. 

 Zhuravsky's letter to the secretary, in which he relates his 

 activities and mentions the establishment of a zoological 

 station at Ustzilnia, appears in vol. xli., part iv. 



.Mr. A. A. Makarenko made an ethnographical expedition 

 to the Yenesei government, and collected songs and in- 

 formation on local medicine. Other important explorations 

 in Turkestan and the southern steppes are reported. Con- 

 densed reports of the ethnographical and other sections, 

 financial statements, publications issued and received, and 

 miscellaneous notes complete the volume. 



The Russians have accumulated a vast amount of 

 material with regard to the customs and literature of the 

 Turks and Tartars, the results of researches in fields prac- 

 tically inaccessible to Western scholars. 



" The Story of Yedigei and Toktamysh," edited by Prof. 

 P. M. Melioransky, consists of a preface, glossary, and 

 nearly forty pages of Kirghiz text (in Arabic characters) 

 of an old tradition concerning some of the leading members 

 of the famous Golden Horde, tewp. later fourteenth and 

 earlier fifteenth century. Khan Toktamysh, after the defeat 

 of the Khan Mamai at Kulikovo-polie by the Grand Duke 

 Dmitri Donskoi, in the following year attacked and .burned 

 Moscow. Yedigei was a specially distinguished emir under 

 Toktamysh, and, according to the story, was the son of 

 a holy man, Hodzha .-\met, and a mysterious, aqueous 

 being with a goat's feet and a transparent body, upon whom 

 her husband does not gaze when she removes a garment 

 for fear she should wish to leave him. Timour or Tamer- 

 lane, styled in the story Sa ' Temiru, revered the memory 

 of the Hodzha and protected his son. From being a 

 follower of Toktamysh, Yedigei induces Timour to make 

 war on him, and is credited with a similar judgment to that 

 of Solomon in a parallel case of maternal controversy. 



The tradition exists among the Nogai, Kirghiz, and 

 Siberian Tartars in varied form. We are not in a position 

 to criticise the text of the poem, and the learned editor 

 hints at a vast wealth of Tartar tradition still to be 

 collected and arranged for publication. 



THE XFATTEUCCI MEDAL. 

 npHE Italian Society of Sciences known as the Society 

 of the Forty has awarded the Matteucci medal for 

 1906 to Sir James Dewar in recognition of his scientific 

 work. In presenting the report upon the award, the com- 

 mittee of the society, consisting of Profs. P. Blascrna, 

 A. Righi, and A. Roiti, referred to Sir James Dewar's 

 researches in the following terms : — 



James Dewar, born in 1842 at Kincardine-on-Forth in 

 Scotland, completed his studies and took the first steps 

 in his professorial career in the University of Edinburgh ; 

 in 1873 he was appointed professor of natural philo- 

 sophy at Cambridge, from which post he was promoted 

 Fullerian professor in the Royal Institution in London, 

 where he is likewise director of the laboratory founded in 

 memory of Davy and Faraday. 



\A'e shall not pause to enumerate all the contributions 

 which he rendered to the knowledge of aromatic com- 

 pounds, nor the other important investigations in chemistry 

 1 Sa, it is explained, is a form of the word Tsar (Ca;5ar). 



NO. 1923, VOL. 74] 



by which he initiated his scientific career. But we cannot 

 omit to point out the work which he carried out from 

 1878 to 1890, for the most part in conjunction with Prof. 

 I i. D. Liveing, of Cambridge, which work undoubtedly forms 

 part of the finest that has yet been produced in the field 

 of spectrometry. This work is set out in about fifty short 

 notices free from all preconceived ideas and admirable in 

 their experimental genius, enriched with data meriting the 

 highest attention and universally accepted, and fertile in 

 their theoretic bearing and scope. Dewar and Liveing 

 were the first to investigate the phenomena of inversion in 

 many elements; afterwards Ihey studied the influence of 

 temperature on the spectra of the same elements, and the 

 way in which these spectra were modified by the presence 

 of other elements. Extremely interesting are their re- 

 searches regarding the various spectra of carbon and its 

 compounds, and in relation to the phenomena of synthesis 

 manifested in the electric arc. They, moreover, furnished 

 the first exact determinations of the ultra-violet spectral 

 region, assigning with the utmost care the wave-lengths 

 for a fair number of elements. 



Various other problems made evident Dewar's extra- 

 ordinary experimental ability, and his world-wide fame 

 was secured by the problem, more than any other, of 

 obtaining extremely low temperatures, to which he has 

 indefatigably and courageously devoted himself for more 

 than twenty years, with the satisfaction of seeing his 

 labours crowned by the liquefaction and solidification of 

 hydrogen, which allowed him to study the chemical and 

 physical properties of gases formerly held to be irreducible, 

 when they have changed their state of aggregation. 



Having ingeniously contrived means for rendering in- 

 considerable the losses by evaporation of these new and 

 highly volatile liquids, and thus for preserving them for 

 a length of time in large quantities, he turned this to able 

 account in order to investigate the very varied phenomena 

 which took place at their boiling temperatures, low in 

 themselves, and still further lowered by expansion. 



Most extensive is the field covered by Dewar in his 

 studies of this kind : variations of density and cohesion, 

 chemical and photographic actions, phosphorescence and 

 radio-activity, optical properties, thermoelectricity, electric 

 conductivity and inductivity, and magnetic susceptibility. 

 It would take too long to enumerate here the important 

 and partly unexpected results obtained by him. and indeed 

 it is superfluous, as they are present in the minds of all. 

 Let us rather restrict ourselves to accompanying the 

 Matteucci medal, which we award him, by the wish that 

 from the 13°, which he has already reached, he may descend 

 still further downwards towards absolute zero, and succeed 

 in liquefying even helium. 



PRACTICAL METEOROLOGY. 

 'T'HE Meteorological Committee has issued its first report, 

 for the year ended March 31, 1906. In compliance 

 with the desire expressed by H.M. Treasury, the work of 

 the office proceeds generally on the lines hitherto followed, 

 and the committee record " their appreciation of the 

 services rendered in the administration of the office by 

 Sir R. Strachey, the chairman of the council for twenty- 

 two years," and by other members. An important addition 

 has been made by participation in the investigation of the 

 upper air by means of kites. It is also proposed, if prac- 

 ticable, to make use of unmanned balloons, and to render 

 the service more effective by cooperating with the repre- 

 sentatives of other bodies concerned in the work. .Among 

 some of the useful researches initiated or completed during 

 the past year may be mentioned (i) the study of the 

 trajectories of air in travelling storms, embodied in an 

 official publication entitled " The Life-history of Surface 

 .'\ir Currents": (2) re-determination of the velocity equi- 

 valents of the Beaufort scale of wind force ; (3) connection 

 between the yield of wheat in eastern England and the 

 rainfall of the previous autumn ; and (4) possible relation- 

 ship between exceptional strength of the south-east trade 

 wind at St. Helena and exceptional rainfall in England. 

 Reference to these investigalions has already been made 

 in our columns. We note that the payment hitherto made 

 to Dr. Buchan, as inspector of stations in Scotland, is to 



