NoVE-\ BER I I, 1909] 



.VA TURE 



45 



Rcid, the American Ambassador, when Prof. Osier dehvered 

 a masterly address on the progress of tropical medicine 

 and the benefits resulting therefrom. Prof. Osier urged the 

 great need there is for further extension in research on 

 diseases of the tropics. 



Considerable activity is being manifested in the attempt 

 to cope with the plague of sleeping sickness in Africa. 

 The Sleeping Sickness Bureau, under the direction of Dr. 

 Bagshawe, has issued its tenth Bulletin, containing a 

 summary of researches on trypanosome diseases, their 

 pathology and treatment ; also a progress report on the 

 Uganda sleeping sickness camps from December, 1906, to 

 November, igoS, compiled by Dr. Hodges, the principal 

 medical ofTicer, Uganda. The welcome statements are 

 made that sleeping sickness is greatly on the decrease in 

 Buganda kingdom, and that the drug atoxyl at least pro- 

 longs life, and in exceptional cases is curative. A biblio- 

 graphy of trypanosomiasis and tsetse-flies, embracing papers 

 published prior to April, 1909, and compiled by Major 

 ('. A. Thimm, «f the Sleeping Sickness Bureau, is in the 

 press. 



In Symons's Meteorological Magazine for October, Mr. 

 C. Harding gives an interesting note, with diagram, of 

 the summer weather (April-September) e.xperienced in 

 I-ondon and the suburbs during the last fifty years, pre- 

 pared from the records of the Greenwich Observatory. 

 The average number of warm days, on which a tempera- 

 ture of 70° and above was reached, was seventy-four ; the 

 greatest number of warm days was 127, in 1865. The last 

 ten years, with the exception of 1906, have been cool. 

 The average rainfall for the summer season is-i2-29 inches 

 — an amount which was exceeded this year by i-8o inches. 



.\ NEW barograph for recording minute and rapid oscil- 

 lations of atmospheric pressure, invented by Mr. T. 

 Shida, is described in the Proceedings of the Tokio Physical 

 Society for .April last. By a simple plan an aneroid 

 barometer is made to record photographically ; for the 

 purpose of magnification, Kelvin's bifilar method is applied 

 directly to a Bourdon tube, as used by Darwin and 

 others. To protect the instrument, the whole system is 

 enclosed in an air-tight case, with the exception of a small 

 window provided with a lens for photographic registra- 

 tion. The case and tube have each a short piece of 

 metal tube with stop-cocks communicating with the atmo- 

 sphere. Specimens of the records are appended to the 

 paper; the period of oscillation at Tokio was generally 

 about six seconds, vibrations with the period of twelve 

 seconds being most conspicuous. The author thinks that 

 such observations may eventually explain the true cause 

 ol the pulsation of the ground. 



.•\ COPY of " Studies in Practical Topography," by Mr. 

 H. T. Crook, published by the Manchester Tactical 

 Society, has reached us. Mr. Crook vigorously criticises 

 the prepared sheets issued for some recent military 

 examinations in a chapter entitled "The Land of (d)i," 

 and gives three interesting topographical studies on Ruthin 

 and the Clwydian range, Ilkley Skipton and the Pennines, 

 and the Kibble Valley. 



.An excellent example of detailed geographical study of 

 a small area appears in a paper, published in the Mitteil- 

 uiigen of the Vienna Geographical Society (vol. Hi., 

 No. g), on the town of Graz. The author, Dr. G. A. 

 I.ukas, discusses the position, soil, water supply, climate, 

 lliira and fauna, and population of Graz and its neigh- 

 bourhood with much detail, and the paper is accompanied 

 NO. 2089, VOL. 82] 



by a geological map by Dr. Franz Heritsch. Specially 

 interesting is the examination of the relation of local and 

 outside conditions, and of the historical events which 

 finally gave Graz the predominance over the equally well- 

 situated Wildon. 



A NEW series of calculating tables, by Dr. J. Peters, is 

 announced (Berlin : Georg Reimer). The tables are to 

 contain the products of all numbers of four figures by the 

 numbers i to 100, so to multiply together two numbers 

 of four figuies it is only necessary to take two partial 

 products from the tables and add them together, i.e. the 

 multiplication is performed in two lines, which are written 

 down from the tables. 



A PROJECT for the formation of a museum of aerial 

 navigation has been started under the auspices of the 

 authorities of the Frankfurt Exhibition, the Frankfurt 

 -Aeronautical Society, the Physical Society, and other bodies 

 in Frankfurt. It is pointed out that aerial navigation has 

 a small past and a great future, and that the recent 

 exhibition affords an excellent nucleus for a collection 

 which can never be complete unless it is founded in the 

 early days of the subject. 



In view of the exaggerated importance attached to aero- 

 plane record-breaking feats by the unscientific public, it is 

 somewhat of a relief to turn to Mr. Gerald Biss's criticisms 

 in the Standard of October 26. Great stress is laid on 

 the power of individuality as a factor in present-day flights, 

 it being pointed out that it was Mr. Latham's individuality 

 which made his wonderful flight of the previous Friday 

 possible. In a paragraph headed " When Aviation is 

 Farcical," Mr. Biss says: — "The truth of the matter is, 

 in a nutshell, that the progress of aviation has been greatly 

 overwritten by ignorant enthusiasts and is still in the days 

 of its earliest infancy. After the present boom, which 

 will, I am sure, be far more short-lived than either the 

 cycle or the motor boom, it will behove designers to sit 

 down and work out the questions of automatic stability, 

 vertical rising, compactness to the point of the practical, 

 security against sudden dropping, and so on. . . ." 



The view generally held that in the liquefaction of gases 

 in the Linde or Hampson apparatus the cooling is due to 

 the Joule-Kelvin effect has been attacked by Pictet in a 

 series of articles which have appeared in the technical Press 

 during the last half-dozen years. He has put forward an 

 expression for the cooling which makes it depend on the 

 work the gas does in overcoming the pressure in front of 

 the expansion valve, and implies that it increases with 

 increase of initial temperature and is almost independent 

 of the fall of pressure. Messrs. W. P. Bradley and C. F. 

 Hale, of the Wesleyan University of Connecticut, have 

 made an extensive series of experiments on the cooling of 

 the air in a liquefying apparatus in widely differing circum- 

 stances of pressure and temperature, and have found that 

 the facts are qualitatively in agreement with the original 

 theory, although there are quantitative differences to be 

 explained, while they are diametrically opposed to the 

 Pictet theory. The memoir is contained in the September 

 number of the Physical Review. 



In a paper entitled " The Elastic Breakdown of Non- 

 ferrous Metals," read at the recent Manchester meeting of 

 the Institute of Metals, Prof. C. .A. Smith, of the East 

 Loridon College, describes the special strain-measuring 

 appliance called the sphingometer, devised and used by him 

 for the tension, compression, and torsion strips. There 

 were five conditions which the instrument was rjquired to 



