538 



NA TURE 



[September 28, 1905 



An electrical exhibition on a large scale was opened at 

 Olympia, Kensington, on September 25 by the Lord Mayor 

 of London. The exhibition is under the auspices of the 

 National Electrical Manufacturers' Association (Incor- 

 porated), and is intended to demonstrate the powers and 

 uses of electricity in domestic, manufacturing, and com- 

 mercial directions. Among the special exhibitors are the 

 General Post Office and the Marconi Company. The 

 Institution of Electrical Engineers is taking an interest in 

 the exhibition on the educational side; and a series of 

 popular scientific lectures and demonstrations has been 

 arranged upon wireless telegraphy, electric motor develop- 

 ments, domestic lighting, telegraphy, telephones, and other 

 subjects. 



In Nature of July 13 (p. 244) there appeared a letter 

 by Mr. Rotch, director of the Blue Hill Meteorological 

 Observatory, U.S.A., describing the Franco-American 

 expedition for the exploration of the atmosphere in the 

 tropics which was sailing on M. Teisserenc de Bort's 

 steam yacht Olaria. During a two months' cruise, the 

 scientific members of the expedition, Messrs. Maurice, of 

 Trappes Observatory, and Clayton, of Blue Hill, executed 

 thirty-two soundings with balloons and kites, and made 

 observations on two tropical peaks, all between latitudes 

 9° and 37° N. and longitudes 16° and 31° W. A 

 southerly or south-westerly return trade was found at a 

 height of about two miles in the tropics and an easterly 

 wind in the equatorial regions, confirming the generally 

 accepted theory of atmospheric circulation. While the 

 detailed observations are to be published in a special 

 volume by Messrs. Teisserenc de Bort and Rotch, the 

 general results of the investigation will, it is hoped, be 

 embodied in an article which will appear in the columns 

 of Nature. 



The first congress of the International Surgical Society 

 was held from September 18-22 at the Palais dcs 

 Academies in Brussels under the patronage of King 

 Leopold. A correspondent of the Times says that more 

 than two hundred delegates attended, representing the 

 following countries :— Great Britain, France, Germany, 

 Austria-Hungary, the United States, Belgium, Holland! 

 Switzerland, Japan, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden! 

 Norway, Italy, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Rumania! 

 Servia, and Egypt. The subjects discussed were of a purely 

 technical order, and papers were read on the latest develop- 

 ment of surgical science. An interesting feature of the 

 congress was an exhibition of the latest surgical appliances. 

 The delegates received a cordial welcome from the Govern- 

 ment and municipal authorities and from their local 

 colleagues. The last meeting of the congress was held on 

 Saturday, September 23. During the session a congratu- 

 latory telegram was sent in the name of the society lo 

 Lord Lister on the great progress of surgery directly 

 resultmg from his antiseptic discoveries. It was resolved 

 that the second congress should also be -held in Brussels 

 in 1908. Prof. V. Czerny, professor of surgery in the 

 University of Heidelberg, was appointed president, and 

 the various national committees were also nominated. 



The Victorian Naturalist announces the death of Mr. 

 H. T. Tisdall, formerly president of the Field Naturalists' 

 Club of Victoria, and an active botanical teacher and 

 investigator. In September, 18S3, he contributed his first 

 paper to the club, the title being " A Botanical E.xcursion 

 >n North Gippsland." Having to a great extent exhausted 

 \he phanerogams of the district, he was induced by Baron 

 von Mueller to turn his attention to the cryptogams, with 

 NO. 1874, VOL. 72] 



the result that he became an authority on fungi, and at 

 the meeting of the club in February, 1885, contributed a 

 paper entitled " The Fungi of Mt. Baw Baw," in which 

 he described some twelve species of the genus Agaricus. 

 In November of the same year he contributed a further 

 paper on the fungi of North Gippsland, in which he made 

 some important remarks regarding the fungus then known 

 as Mylilta aiistralis, " Native Bre.-id." During the interval 

 of nearly twenty-one years between his first and last papers, 

 he contributed numerous papers to the meetings of the 

 club, all relating more or less to botany, either as bear- 

 ing on a particular branch or descriptive of trips or 

 excursions in search of specimens. In addition to his 

 knowledge of Victorian phanerogamic and cryptogamic 

 plants, Mr. Tisdall was, at the time of his death, an 

 authority on marine algae. He contributed an article on 

 the flora of Walhalla to the mining department's report 

 on that goldfield (1902), as also some useful papers to the 

 meetings of the Australasian Association for the .Advance- 

 ment of Science, which included a list of the marine alg?e 

 of Victoria. 



In I' Anthropologic (xvi.. No. 3) M. Boule gives a more 

 detailed account of the machine-made eoliths referred to 

 in his paper in the Coinptcs rendus, translated in Nature 

 of August 31 (p. 438). From the descriptions and illus- 

 trations, it appears that among the specimens collected 



by M. Boule in a few minutes from the great pile of 

 refuse flints are all the forms regarded as characteristic 

 of eoliths. In particular, we find the bulb of percussion 

 present in more than one example ; one of these, shown 

 in Fig. I, is rem.irkable for what would, in an artificial 



flint, be called " beauty of work " on one of the edges 

 (Fig. 2); others, of which Fig. 3 is a good example, show 

 the notch, which, like the bulb of percussion, is commonly 

 regarded as a criterion of human workmanship. From 

 the researches of M. Boule, it seems that the eolith should 



