November i r, 1922] 



NA TURE 



635 



Transcription of Russian Names. 



I do not wish to prolong the correspondence upon 

 this subject further than to say that in their letter 

 appearing in Nature, October 14, p. 512, Messrs. Druce 

 and Glazunov meet (in my opinion) none of the objec- 

 tions to a Czech-script transliteration of Russian 

 pointed out in my letter (Nature, July 15, p. 78), 

 but merely reiterate their views, — in which, by the 

 way, I think I could pick a number of holes were 

 space available. 



But I should prefer not being misquoted. 



I did not " ask how many English people can 

 correctly pronounce Czech letters like c " : (for, of 

 course, any one can pronounce that letter, i.e. 

 English ch). I said I wondered " how many Britons 

 would pronounce this 'c' [that is, ts] correctly " — if 

 the}' came across it suddenlv in a Czech-script 

 transliteration of Russian. The same criticism applies 

 to the quoted Russian x ( = Czech ch), which would, 

 therefore, be wrongly pronounced by the ordinary 

 Briton as ch in church instead of as ch in loch. 



As I previously pointed out, the very simple Royal 

 Geographical Society II. system already exists in 

 English ; so why not use it ? Edward Gleichen. 



Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, 

 London, S.W.7, October 20. 



Apart from the typographical objections to a 

 Czech transcription of Russian, which have been 

 pointed out bv Lord Edward Gleichen, there are 

 other difficulties in its use. Erom Prof. Brauner's 

 examples his does not appear to be a uniform letter- 

 for-letter system, at all events in the treatment of 

 Russian " soft " vowels. For example, the letter a, 

 when initial, would presumably be transcribed ja, 

 as in H3UKT., jazyk ; but if it happens to follow a, a 

 or t, the letter j is dropped in the transcription and 

 the Czech letters d, ft, t,^ are employed, vide Prof. 

 Brauner's examples Tatana, Dada. And how is 

 Russian " soft " p, which is represented in the Czech 

 language bv f, pronounced rzh (r + French j), to be 

 transcribed ? For example, is phjt. to be rendered 

 fdd, which gives the wrong pronunciation, or rjad, 

 which is not Czech ? 



Again, it is not clear how Russian e and -6 are to be 

 treated. The natural Czech transcription would be 

 e and e respectively ; but Prof. Brauner writes 

 Mendelejev, in which there are three different ways of 

 transcribing Russian e. 



The semivowel fi is apparently to be transcribed j ; 

 but ij, 17, are not the Cz_ech equivalents of iii, ufl. 

 Does Prof. Brauner write Cajkovskij ? (Incidentally, 

 the average Briton would pronounce caj like cadge.) 



Prof. Brauner would, I hope, go so far as to abandon 

 Czech for the transcription of Russian r, and would 

 let us write Vinogradov, though the true Czech would 

 be Vinohradov. 



Messrs. Druce and Glazunov maintain (Nature, 

 October 14, p. 512) that the system has the advantage 

 of being complete ; but what is the complete system ? 

 The foregoing points want clearing up. 



John H. Reynolds. 



Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, 

 London, S.W.7. October 21. 



Volcanic Shower in the N. Atlantic. 



Through the courtesy of Dr. Russell (Director) 

 and of Mr. J. W. Carruthers, of the Fisheries Labora- 

 tory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries at 

 Lowestoft, I am enabled to record a shower of volcanic 

 dust that occurred near the Faroes on Thursday, 

 October 5, soon after 5 a.m. 



The captain of the steam trawler Prince Palatine 

 reports that his mate directed his attention to what 



NO. 2767, VOL. I IO] 



looked like a sudden appearance of land on the. port 

 quarter, when the vessel was about 62 7' N. and 

 7° 43' W., Myggenaes (an islet west of Vago) being on 

 the starboard quarter. A heavy sandstorm soon 

 enveloped the vessel, lasting for the extraordinary 

 period of sixty-seven hours, during which the air 

 resembled that of a London fog, while the vessel was 

 covered with a deposit from stem to stern. Only a 

 very small sample of the material is available ; but 

 Mr. Carruthers rightly concluded that it consisted 

 of volcanic glass. With him, I note a few opaque 

 particles ; but these are in part white by reflected 

 light, while others are merely fragments of deeply 

 coloured glass. The material is a characteristic dust 

 of volcanic glass, distinctly brown, and probably 

 andesitic or basaltic. I can trace no crystals ; some 

 of the particles show twisted wisp-like forms, and the 

 majority are comminuted pumice, resulting from 

 attrition in the air of masses in which the volume of 

 vesicles exceeded that of glass. Branching forms, 

 like spicules of lithistid sponges, are thus common. 

 -Mr. Carruthers informs me that the Meteorological 

 Office record shows that the position of the fall lay 

 in a cyclonic depression, with a wind from somewhat 

 east of south, blowing at 17 miles an hour. 



The duration of the fall may possibly be due to a 

 circling round of some of the material. Its occurrence 

 seems worth recording, for comparison with dust 

 that may have fallen on other ships at the same date. 

 Some account may be forthcoming front the northern 

 isles of the Faroe group. It is most probable that 

 the source was an eruption in Iceland, the dust having 

 in that case travelled about 500 miles. The fine 

 glassy dust has no doubt become sifted out from 

 coarser matter during transit. 



Grenville A. J. Cole. 



Carrickmines, Co. Dublin, October 21. 



Orientation of Molecules in a Magnetic Field. 



About this time last year, at the suggestion of 

 Prof. A. W. Stewart, I began some work to test 

 whether or not the molecules of a substance (more 

 particularly at first of a liquid) underwent an orienta- 

 tion when placed in a magnetic field. So far the 

 results all seem to indicate that something of the 

 kind does take place. The method first adopted was 

 analogous to Laue's method of diffracting X-rays. 

 A parallel pencil of X-rays was directed through a 

 small cell containing barium iodide placed between 

 the poles of a large electro-magnet, and was then 

 received on a photographic plate. During the first 

 complete exposure no current was run through, during 

 the next current was run through, and the process 

 was repeated with a second pair of plates. In the 

 case of both pairs of plates it was found that the disc 

 which came up dark on development was greater in 

 diameter for the exposure during which the magnet 

 had been excited than for that when it had not been 

 excited. The increase was more than ten per cent, 

 of the original diameter. This effect may be analo- 

 gous to that observed when a pencil of X-rays is 

 passed through a powdered crystal. So far this 

 method has not been used in a very refined manner, 

 but it is hoped to continue with it and to improve it. 

 The results obtained by it, however, have been 

 corroborated by entirely independent methods, in 

 which the properties of X-rays were not made use of. 



The question of the nature of the orientation, in 

 addition to that of its occurrence, is still under 

 investigation here, and I hope to be able shortly to 

 make a further communication on this subject, giving 

 more detail as to both the results obtained and the 

 methods employed. .Marshall Holmes. 



The Sir Donald Currie Laboratories, 



Queen's University, Belfast, October 10. 



