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NATURE 
[May 9, 1912 
liament. 
tion may usefully be directed is the reckoning of hours 
from one to twenty-four in order to avoid the desig- 
nations of a.m. and p.m. The Nord and Est Rail- 
way Companies of France have just introduced this 
twenty-four hour system for their clocks and time- 
tables, and the Orient express is now timed to leave 
the Paris Gare de l’Est at 19h. 13m. instead of 7.13 
p.m. as heretofore, while on the station clocks the 
figures from 13 to 24 have been inscribed on the face 
within the outer circle of the existing hour figures. 
It would be a decided advantage if the 24-hour method 
of describing time were adopted in Great Britain. 
At the meeting of the Institution of Electrical 
Engineers on May 16, a marble bust of the late Lord 
Kelvin will be presented to the institution on behalf 
of Lady Kelvin. 
Tue governing body of the Imperial College of 
Science and Technology has appointed Mr. W. 
Frecheville to be professor of mining in the Royal 
School of Mines, in succession to Prof. S. Herbert 
Cox, who is about to retire. 
Mr. Watter E. ArcHER, C.B., who, as assistant 
secretary, has been in charge of the Fisheries Division 
of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries since its 
establishment in October, 1903, has been compelled to 
retire from the public service owing to ill-health. His 
retirement took effect on May 1. 
WE are informed by Dr. Shaw, director of the 
Meteorological Office, that the superintendent of the 
observatory at Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, reports 
that the seismographs at the observatory recorded a 
violent earthquake on May 6, at 7 p.m. The position 
of the epicentre is 63° N. latitude, 21° W. longitude, 
which indicates a place in the Atlantic not far from 
Iceland, to the south-west of the island. 
Mr. H. C. K. Prummer has been elected by the Board 
of Trinity College, Dublin, to be Royal Astronomer 
in Ireland, in succession to Dr. E. T. Whittaker, who 
was recently elected professor of mathematics at Edin- 
burgh University. Mr. Plummer is the son of Mr. 
W. E. Plummer, director of the Liverpool Observa- 
tory, and has been second assistant to Prof. H. H. 
Turner at the Oxford University Observatory since 
Igol. 
On Tuesday next, May 14, Prof. W. Bateson will 
begin a course of two lectures at the Royal Institu- 
tion on “The Study of Genetics,’ and on Thursday, 
May 16, Prof. H. T. Barnes will deliver the first of 
two lectures on ‘‘The Physical and Economic Aspects 
of Ice. Formation in Canada.’ The Friday evening 
discourse on May 17 will be delivered by Mr. W: 
Duddell on ‘‘ High-frequency Currents,’’ and on May 
24 by Mr. A. D. Hall on “* Recent Advances in Agricul- 
tural Science—the Fertility of the Soil.” 
THE services of the official guide to the collections 
at the British Museum, Bloomsbury, have been so 
highly appreciated that a similar officer has been ap- 
pointed, experimentally, at the Natural History 
Museum, South Kensington. Mr. J. H. Leonard has 
been selected for the position, and he will probably 
NO. 2219, VOL. 89] 
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A more promising subject to which atten- | take up his duties before Whitsuntide. The guide 
will make two tours of the museum daily, each tour 
lasting an hour. Provision will also be made for 
special tours, and for these, special application will 
have to be made. : 
Ar the annual general meeting of the Institution 
of Civil Engineers held on April 30, the following 
were elected president and vice-presidents :—Presi- 
dent, Mr. Robert Elliott-Cooper; vice-presidents, Mr. 
A. G. Lyster, Mr. B. H. Blyth, Mr. J. Strain, and 
Mr. G. Robert Jebb. The council of the institution 
has made the following awards for papers read during 
the session t1g11-1912:—Telford gold medals to 
Messrs. E. and W. Mansergh; a George Stephenson 
gold medal to Mr. R. T. Smith; a Watt gold medal 
to Mr. A. H. Roberts; Telford premiums to Messrs. 
J. Goodman, A. B. McDonald, G. M. Taylor, D. C. 
Leitch, W. C. Easton, and D. H. Morton; and the 
Manby premium to Mr. S. H. Ellis. 
In the report of the council of the Chemical Society 
presented at the annual general meeting on March 28, 
and published in the last number of the Proceedings, 
it is stated that in the opinion of counsel any person 
using the letters ‘‘F.C.S.” without authority and for 
the purpose of wrongfully assuming the status of a 
fellow of the Chemical Society, can be restrained by 
injunction from so doing. Mention is made that 
the Becquerel memorial lecture is to be delivered 
by Sir Oliver Lodge in the place of Prof. Rutherford. 
In connection with the publication of the Journal it is 
stated that the cost is about 5200]. a year, which 
represents about five-sevenths of the society’s income. 
The congratulations of the council have been offered 
to Mr. E. Riley, who has completed sixty years 
of fellowship, and to Major C. E. Beadnell, R.A., 
Mr. H. O. Huskisson, and Mr. F. Norrington, who, 
during 1911, attained their jubilee as fellows. 
FURTHER particulars have been received of the 
arrangements in connection with the International 
Congress of Applied Chemistry, to be held in Wash- 
ington and New York next September, to which 
reference has been made on previous occasions. It 
is stated that 573 papers have now been definitely 
promised to the respective sections. Five general 
lectures have been arranged: Mr. George T. Beilby, 
F.R.S., of Glasgow, on ‘“‘Some Physical Aspects of 
Molecular Aggregation in Solids’’; Prof. Gabriel 
Bertrand, of Paris; ‘‘Des réles des infiniment petites 
chimiques en chimie biologique”’; Prof. Carl Duis- 
berg, of Eberfeld, ‘‘The Latest Achievements and 
Problems of the Chemical Industry’; Prof. Giacomo 
Ciamician, of Bologna, ‘‘La foto chimica dell’ 
avvenire”’; and Prof. Ira Remsen, of Baltimore, 
‘*Priestkey in America.” 
Mr. W. J. L Assorr contributes to the July-Decem- 
ber issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological 
Institute a useful article on the classification of the 
prehistoric British stone industries. He points out 
the danger of assuming that the evolution of culture 
has progressed along a line of unbroken chronological 
sequence, and he shows that the evidence derived from 
our river deposits must be accepted with the qualifica- 
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