AL4 TURE 



[November 4, 19:9 



du Nord ; le Bassin de la haute Wichira " {Uemoires de 

 Ir Societe phys. ct d'Hist. vat. de Geneve, vol. xxxvi., 

 fascicule i., Julv, 1909, price 20 francs). The results of 

 three expeditions, from 1904 onwards, are here reviewed, 

 and the igneous and metamorphic rocks are described in 

 ccnsiderable detail. The region lies on the west side of 

 the Urals and north of Solikamsk, where numerous 

 streams unite, flowing from a broad basin, to form the 

 Vishera River, which in turn flows into the Kama, and 

 thus into the Volga system. The plateaus, covered with 

 stones and showing few good rock-exposures, represent a 

 mass uplifted during the Hercynian earth-movements, and 

 subjected to prolonged denudation. Interesting terrace- 

 structures, preserved only among the hard quartzitic 

 ranges, point to ancient epochs of erosion under conditions 

 different from those of the present day. Successive 

 terraces rising above one another, and apparently inde- 

 pendent of tectonic structure, offer a problem which Prof. 

 Duparc is compelled to leave at present unexplained. They 

 certainlv suggest, in the numerous sketches given, relics 

 of abnormally large terraces of marine erosion rather 

 than uplifted peneplains. Among the petrographic descrip- 

 tions we note that a highly pleochroic amphibole, associated 

 with magnetite, occurs in one of the ore-materials ; the 

 authors believe this to be a new species, and have else- 

 where given it the name of " Tschernich^wite." Its 

 characters are as yet incompletely determined ; if we may 

 judge from those here given, its weak birefringence seems 

 to ally it to riebeckite, while its axial plane is in an 

 unusual position for an amphibole, and its pleochroism is 

 near that of glaucophane. The iron mines of the district 

 are carefully described, and the memoir -is well illustrated 

 by photographic views and effective drawings of broad 

 landscapes. 



In the Reliquary for October Mr, T. Sheppard, curator 

 of the Municipal Museum, Hull, records the discovery at 

 Malton, in Yorkshire, of two interesting bronze statuettes, 

 one, the more primitive of the two, representing Hercules 

 bearing the skin of the N'emean lion, the other Venus. 

 They probably belong to the third century a.d., and may 

 have been lost or buried at the time the Roman legion- 

 aries were withdrawn from Britain. 



The Meteorological Chart of the Xorth .Atlantic Ocean 

 for November, issued by the Meteorological Committee, 

 contains an account of a West India hurricane experi- 

 enced by the ship Barranca (Captain \V. Long) in August 

 last. -At noon on August 15 she was in 24° 42' N., 

 57° i' W. , with a falling barometer and strong easterly 

 breeze. .At 4 p.m. the barometer failed to respond to the 

 diurnal range, which showed that a storm was not far 

 distant. On the morning of .August 16 the ship met the 

 full force of the hurricane, and at 2h. p.m. the sea was 

 " like a boiling cauldron." Next day the east wind veered 

 to south-west, and the ship's position at noon was 

 22° 43' N., 61° 44' W., having apparently drifted some 

 100 miles to the north, out of her south-west course, in 

 two days. Owing to careful navigation, in accordance with 

 the rules laid down in the " Barometer Manual " issued 

 by the Meteorological Oflfice, the only damage sustained 

 by the ship was a severe straining. 



In the Rcndiconti della R. Accadcmia dci Lincei (vol. 

 xviii., 1909) Dr. F. Eredia publishes an interesting pre- 

 liminary note on the frequency of wind-direction in central 

 Italy. The discussion shows clearly the different effects 

 of the two slopes which divide the country from the 

 Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Seas. Winds from N.-E. prevail 

 along the -Adriatic slope in summer and along the 

 KG. 2088, VOL. 82] 



Tyrrhenian slope in winter, and winds from S.W.-N.W. 

 predominate in winter along the Adriatic slope and in 

 summer along the Tyrrhenian slope ; thus, while one direc- 

 tion has its maximum of frequency on one slope, it has 

 its minimum along the other. The author endeavours to 

 explain these facts and to compare them with the theo- 

 retical laws of the circulation of the atmosphere. 



A VALUABLE Series of articles on life in the various 

 colonies and other countries in which many of our young 

 electrical engineers obtain posts has appeared in the 

 Electrical Review during the last two months. .Although 

 intended, in the first instance, for electrical engineers, they 

 will prove of great value to all who have thoughts of 

 taking up appointments abroad, as they are in every case 

 by men with practical experience of the countries about 

 which they write. Each article deals with the climate of 

 the country, the cost of living, the salaries, and the 

 ultimate prospects of those taking up posts open to 

 Europeans. 



The vacuum vessel introduced by Dewar has proved of 

 such value as a means of improving the thermal insula- 

 tion of bodies that it is no surprise to find it introduced 

 into calorimetry. At the suggestion of Prof. Nernst, of 

 the University of Berlin, Dr. H. Schottky has carried 

 out a series of measurements with a modified form of 

 Favre and Silbermann calorimeter, in which the mercury 

 was replaced by pentane and the bulb of the calorimeter 

 surrounded by a vacuum vessel. The instrument looks 

 liki' .1 Bunsen ice calorimeter using pentane instead of ice, 

 and having a vacuum vessel around its bulb. It has 

 proved a great improvement on its predecessors, and is 

 considered by Dr. Schottky to be extremely accurate. A 

 full description appeared in the Physikalischc Zeitschrift 

 for September 15. 



We have received separate copies of a number of papers 

 which have been written by the staff of the Physikalisch- 

 technische Reichsanstalt, and have appeared in the 

 Annalen der Physik and other periodicals during the past 

 few months. Two of them deal with optical subjects, and 

 are of special interest. In the first place, it has been 

 found by Drs. E. Gehrcke and G. Leithauser that it is 

 possible to convert a celluloid copy of a diffraction grating, 

 such as have been made by Thorpe, of Manchester, for 

 some time, into a reflecting grating by dusting it with 

 kathode particles in a vacuum. The process gives gratings 

 which are almost as good as the original. Further, Dr. 

 L. Janicke has been investigating the properties of the 

 spectral lines of the metallic elements by the high dis- 

 persion obtainable with the Lummer-Gehrcke plate spectro- 

 scope, and gives the wave-lengths of the sharp lines of 

 the spectra of fourteen elements, which were used as the 

 anodes of arcs burning in vacuo. 



At a recent meeting of the Association of Municipal and 

 County Engineers a paper was read on the " G.B." tram- 

 way system and its results in Lincoln by Mr. S. Clegg, 

 the city electrical engineer. The author stated that during 

 the first twelve months a total of seventy-one live studs 

 was recorded, these being mostly owing to defects in details 

 in the original construction. The old type of cable had 

 been completely replaced in 190S, and the average at 

 present is about three live studs per month. Mr. Clegg 

 considers that there is less danger to the public from shock 

 and personal injury with the " G.B." system than with 

 the overhead system. Studs which had become alive at 

 Lincoln had always been located as soon as they occurred 

 without danger to anvone. 



