November i i 



)22] 



NA TURE 



64 5 



of roads, the reduction due to tramway services was 

 mentioned — a five minutes' service reduces the 

 carrying capacity by 50 per cent., and a two minutes' 

 service by 80 per cent. The country cannot afford 

 tramways, and their comparatively early disappear- 

 ance is certain. In reference to standardisation, 

 Col. Smith urged that standards once decided upon 

 should be used, and condemned the conception that 

 a design would lose individuality by the adoption of 

 standardised parts. Again, automobile engineers 

 should not consider liquid fuel as the only fuel 

 available. In many countries charcoal is available 

 at prices which make it equivalent to petrol at a few 

 pence per gallon. There is a need for a steam vehicle 

 suitable for such fuel, and of a lighter type than 

 those generally seen. 



The Journal of Pomology is to be made, in effect, 

 the official organ of the horticultural research stations 

 in England, and with this change the name of the 

 journal will become the Journal of Pomology and 

 Horticultural Science. Its scope will be widened 



and it will be under the control of a publication 

 committee consisting of Prof. B. T. P. Barker, Horti- 

 cultural Research Station, Long Ashton, Bristol ; 

 Prof. R. H. Bitten, Horticultural Research Station, 

 Cambridge ; Mr. E. A. Bunyard, .Maidstone (Editor) ; 

 Mr. H. E, Dale, Ministry of Agriculture ; Mr. R. G. 



1 l.i i Ion, Horticultural Research Station, East Mailing, 

 Kent ; and Mr. H. V. Taylor, Ministry of Agriculture. 

 The research stations at East Mailing, Long Ashton, 

 and Cambridge have assumed financial responsibility, 

 It is anticipated that four numbers of the journal 

 will be issued annually, the first of which will be 

 ready this month. 



A very comprehensive catalogue of works dealing 

 with chemistry in all its branches has just been 

 published by Messrs. Wheldon and Wesley, Ltd., 



2 Arthur Street, New Oxford Street, W.C.2. Nearly 

 3000 publications (many of them rare) are listed 

 under some 44 headings. Being carefully classified 

 according to subjects the list should certainly be 

 seen by readers of Nature interested in chemistry. 



Our Astronomical Column. 



Large -Meteor of October 17. — Mr. W. F. 

 Denning writes : " This remarkable meteor was 

 observed at Bristol, and also bv Mr. W. Tidmarsh at 

 Exeter at 11.46 p.m. on October 17. The radiant 

 point was at 152 +39 . The luminous flight of the 

 object was unusually long, and extended from over 

 Stafford to a point in the English Channel about 30 

 miles south of Plymouth. The radiant point being 

 near the horizon, the course through the atmosphere 

 was almost parallel with the earth's surface. Its 

 height declined from 71 to 62 miles, the path being 

 about 225 miles long and the velocity 37 miles per 

 second. 



" This meteor was very similar in many respects 

 to brilliant meteors which appeared on October 15, 

 1902, and October 22, 1919. Their radiant points 

 were at 150° +43 and 156 +39° respectively. The 

 comet of 1739 has a radiant point at 157° +39 on 

 October 22, and may well have supplied the three 

 bright meteors referred to above." 



Variable Stars. — Owing to the completeness of 

 the data of variable stars of long period which are being 

 sent in to Mr. Leon Campbell by his host of energetic 

 observers, the Harvard College Observatory Bulletin, 

 No. 776, announces that it is possible to estimate the 

 approximate magnitudes of most of these stars for 

 any given date several weeks ahead. It is therefore 

 proposed to make the predictions one month in advance 

 and to publish them bi-monthly. This arrangement 

 is very satisfactory, because those who do not possess 

 large instruments will be able to observe some stars 

 when they are brighter than a certain magnitude, and 

 will know when to commence the observations. 

 Again, many of these stars are most interesting 

 spectroscopically, and they can be followed when it 

 is known that the}- are bright enough for the particular 

 instrument the observer possesses. In this publica- 

 tion the variables are published in groups according 

 as they become brighter than a certain magnitude 

 after a certain date. Thus the date chosen here is 

 November 1, 1922, and the variables are grouped as 

 follows : those that will be brighter than magnitude 

 8-o ; those that will be between 8-o and io-o ; 10 and 

 12 ; 12 and 14 ; and fainter than magnitude 14. 



NO. 2767, VOL. 1 io] 



The Distance of the Cepheid Variables. - 

 Prof. Kapteyn and Mr. van Rhijn examined the 

 proper motions of the galactic Cepheids of short 

 period, and concluded that their distances were only 

 about one-seventh of those given by the formula of 

 Prof. Harlow Shapley, employed in Prof. Shapley's 

 researches on the distances of the Globular Clusters. 

 He replies to their paper in Circular 237 of Harvard 

 College Observatory, giving reason to believe that the 

 stars in question have unusually high linear velocity, 

 which would affect the parallax derived from the 

 proper motions. He shows that their apparent drift 

 is not directed away from the solar apex, indicating 

 that they have independent velocity. In several 

 cases the spectroscope has confirmed this, the veloci- 

 ties 50, 51, 193, 74, 49 km. /sec. being found in five 

 cases. Shapley then quotes the recent work at the 

 Sproul Observatory, where the parallaxes of the 

 Cepheids have been trigonometrically examined, the 

 results confirming the spectroscopic parallaxes. 

 These stars are concluded to belong to the stream of 

 high-velocity stars, found by Adams, Joy, and Strom- 

 berg at Mt. Wilson to have a space velocity of some 

 200 km. /sec. Since this is comparable with the 

 average line-of-sight velocity of globular clusters, 

 it is conjectured that the galactic Cepheids may 

 originally have been members of the same cluster, 

 and be merely travellers passing through the solar 

 cluster. 



The spectroscopic parallaxes agree closely, star-for- 

 star, with those based on the period-luminosity 

 curve, which strengthens the case for the adoption 

 of the latter. 



Nova Scorpii 1922. — This object was discovered 

 at Arequipa by Miss Cannon. On July 1 it was 

 invisible and less than magnitude 12-5. On July 11, 

 12, and 17 its magnitude was 10-5, io-o, and 9-9 

 respectively, the latter being the maximum ; on 

 August 2 it had fallen to 10-2, and on August 21 

 (Harvard) to 11-4. The spectrum is of the Nova 

 type ; bright bands were probably absent on July 

 12, but certainly present on July 25. Search on 

 plates made in former years shows no star as bright 

 as magnitude 15 in the position. 



