42 



NA TURE 



[May II, 1905 



office, where precise knowledge of local peculiarities is 

 lacliing. " Those acquainted with Australian meteorology 

 will appreciate the importance of disseminating a know- 

 ledge of this valuable factor in Australian welfare. In 

 many countries the absence of public interest in the science 

 of the weather is due to its omission from all school in- 

 struction, and we in Great Britain are suffering from the 

 same neglect. 



The current number of the Fortnightly Revieu' contains 

 an article by Major B. Baden-Powell, president of the 

 Aeronautical Society, entitled " Air-ships and M. Santos 

 Dumont." Major Baden-Powell supplements and criticises 

 a contribution by M. Santos Dumont to an earlier number 

 of the same review on air-ships. He also points out some 

 of the advantages to be gained by flying machines not 

 dependent on a light gas to lift them, and directs attention 

 to a few of the drawbacks inherent in the large gas-bag. 

 The attainment of human flight, he contends, apparently 

 presents no insuperable difficulties. " All that is wanted, 

 so far as I can see, is a few thousand pounds and a clever 

 and energetic inventor, and there is no reason why a 

 machine could not be constructed within a year or two 

 capable of rising and carrying a man in safety for. at all 

 events, a short trip through the air." 



The water jet affords a most convenient method of 

 applying the power carried by high-pressure water, whether 

 for driving wheels, such as are generally known as Pelton 

 wheels, for conveying the water itself into burning build- 

 ings, or for the destructive process of breaking down a 

 mountain side, as practised in hydraulic mining. All this 

 is especially the case in mountainous country where water 

 supply with almost unlimited head is available. As it is 

 not always necessary that the jet should work at full 

 power, regulation becomes necessary. Merely reducing the 

 flow of water by throttling elsewhere than at the jet 

 would be ruinously wasteful, for half the flow would 

 carry one-quarter the power, and a driven wheel 

 would no longer run at the proper speed. The regu- 

 lating nozzle described in a thesis entitled " An In- 

 vestigation of the Doble Needle Regulating Nozzle," bv 

 H. C. Crowell and G. C. D. Lenth (printed by permission 

 of the Civil Engineering Department of the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, Boston, and Tangential Water 

 Wheels, Abner Doble Company), contains a spindle-shaped 

 concentric needle which may be advanced so as to reduce 

 the area of the orifice or withdrawn so as to enlarge it, 

 but the form of the annular passage-way is always such 

 as to lead the water to converge along easy stream lines, 

 until a circular jet of corresponding size is the result. 

 In this way a range of 10 to i in the area of the jet may 

 be attained, while the full head is always available. Very 

 beautiful photographs are given showing the jets like clear 

 glass rods instead of the familiar opaque and spray-clothed 

 stream of water. Efficiencies from 964 to 99.3 for the 

 energy of the jet are found, which correspond to 98-2 to 

 99 7 for the velocity. 



In vol. vi. of the Transactions of the American Electro- 

 chemical Society, which has just been published, Messrs. 

 .\. G. Betts and E. F. Kern publish a paper on the " lead 

 voltameter." Two years ago Mr. Betts found that lead 

 could be deposited in a non-crystalline and dense form from 

 solutions of lead fluosilicate to which had been added a 

 small quantity of gelatin. The Canadian Smelting Com- 

 pany now manufactures more than twenty tons a day of 

 refined lead from solutions of lead silicofiuoride. Until 

 Mr. Betts discovered this process it had not been found 

 possible to refine lead electrolytically. By using the above 

 NO. 1854, VOL. 72] 



solution the authors have constructed a voltameter which 

 is — according to their published results — more accurate 

 than the copper coulombmeter, and does not fall far behind 

 the silver instrument. A glass beaker is used as the 

 electrolysing cell, and a kathode of thin lead sheet is hung 

 between two anodes of the same metal. The calculated 

 value of the electro-equivalent of lead is 103-46. In this 

 instrument, in which the electrolyte was 8-5 per cent. 

 PbSiFs, 25 per cent. H^SiFj, and a small quantity of 

 gelatin, the numbers found in six experiments ranged from 

 103.39 t° 103 49- Among other papers of interest in the 

 same journal we note the electrolysis of fused salts, by 

 Dr. Lorenz ;' the electrical extraction of nitrogen from the 

 air, by Mr. J. S. Edstrom ; electrolysis and catalysis, by 

 Dr. W. Ostwald. 



The latest number of the Journal of the Russian Physical 

 and Chemical Society (1904, No. 9) contains the conclusion 

 of an interesting study, by B. N. Menshutkin, on 

 Lomon6soff as a natural philosopher and a chemist. 

 Lomon6soff's services in the creation of the Russian 

 literary language and poetry are well known ; but the re- 

 markable work of this eighteenth century natural philo- 

 sopher, of whom his friend and correspondent, Euler, 

 always spoke with great respect, had hitherto found no 

 proper appreciation in his mother country. His ideas upon 

 the structure of matter, the atomistic theory of chemical 

 changes, the mechanical theory of heat, his kinetic theory 

 of gases, his views on the liquid and the solid state, and 

 his theory of atmospheric electricity, which, he said, is 

 always present in the atmosphere, and originates from the 

 changes in the thermal potential of ascending and descend- 

 ing air currents — all these theories being based upon 

 molecular movements within the bodies — were expressed in 

 terms almost identical with those which are used now. 

 "It is," he wrote, " the inner, unseen motions of the 

 corpuscles of which all bodies are composed which are the 

 cause of every rise of temperature in a given body. These 

 movements are rotatory. When a cold body is brought 

 into contact with a hot one, the latter communicates to 

 the former the movements of its particles, which therefore 

 are slackened in the hot body, and accelerated in the cold 

 one. The greater these rotatory movements, the greater 

 the repulsive forces, and the weaker the connection between 

 them." 



Dr. a. C. H.^ddon, F.R.S., is delivering a course of 

 lectures on Saturdays at the Horniman Museum, Forest 

 Hill, S.E., on " Magic and Primitive Religion." 



The first volume, that for 1904, has been received of a 

 series of yearly publications to be issued by the Chemical 

 Society under the title " .Annual Reports on the Progress 

 of Chemistry." The object of these reports is to present 

 an epitome of the principal definite steps in advance which 

 have been accomplished in the preceding year. The first 

 volume contains articles on general and physical chemistrv, 

 by Prof. James Walker, F.R.S. ; on inorganic chemistrv, 

 by Dr. P. P. Bedson ; on the aliphatic division of organic 

 chemistry, by Mr. H. J. H. Fenton, F.R.S. ; on the 

 aromatic and other cyclic divisions of organic chemistry, by 

 Prof. J. B. Cohen; on stereochemistry, bv Prof. W. I. 

 Pope, F.R.S. ; on analytical chemistry, by Mr. .A. C. 

 Chapman ; on physiological chemistry, by Prof. W. D. 

 Halliburton, F.R.S. ; on agricultural chemistry and vege- 

 table physiology, by Dr. J. A. Voelcker ; on mineralogical 

 chemistry, by Dr. A. Hutchison ; and on radio-activitv, bv 

 Mr. F. Soddy. These summaries of the chief advances in 

 various branches of chemical Science should prove of real 

 benefit to students, teachers of chemistry, and professional 

 chemists. 



