746 



NA TURE 



[December 2, 1922 



telephone calls in daily use in America show that, 

 from an engineering point of view, the scheme presents 

 few difficulties. Thus the New York-San Francisco 

 call (3000 miles) is equivalent to communication 

 between London and Baghdad ; the Key West 

 (Florida) and Los Angeles call via New York and 

 San Francisco is equivalent to a London-Delhi 

 communication. English engineers all welcome the 

 conference, as they have good hopes of arriving at a 

 satisfactory international agreement. 



The Quarterly Summary of the Royal Botanic 

 Society, Regent's Park, for October contains a list 

 of some of the recent interesting accessions to the 

 gardens, and a short account of the experimental 

 work in genetics being carried out there. Another 

 item of interest is an account of the Indian Mahwa 

 tree, Bassia latifolia, a member of the Sapotacea?, 

 the flowers of which have the remarkable property 

 of showing no deterioration even after being stored 

 for a year or two in England, nor are they attacked 

 by moulds. They contain quantities of sugar and 

 have been suggested as a source of alcohol, but then- 

 peculiar preservative powers have apparently not 

 been investigated. 



A noteworthy departure was taken at the meeting 

 of the Royal Institute of British Architects on Nov- 

 ember 20, when a paper on " Illuminating Engineer- 

 ing in Relation to the Architect" was read by Mr. 

 L. M. Tye. A vote of thanks to the lecturer was 

 proposed by Sir John Herbert Parsons, president of 

 the Illuminating Engineering Society, who referred to 

 the good results that had followed from the co- 

 operation of the medical profession and the lighting 

 expert in dealing with the effects of light on the eye, 

 and expressed the conviction that similar benefit 

 would be derived from the concerted efforts of archi- 

 tects and illuminating engineers. Mr. L. Gaster 

 suggested that courses of instruction on artificial 

 lighting should be included in the curriculum of 

 architectural students, and Mr. Paul Waterhouse, who 

 presided, received these suggestions with sympathy. 

 There is no doubt that the lighting of many public 

 buildings, schools, etc., would gain by closer co- 

 operation of this description, and the Illuminating 

 Engineering Society should do good public service by 

 its efforts to enlist this new ally in its campaign for 

 more scientific methods of lighting. 



The opening meeting of the session of the Illuminat- 

 ing Engineering Society took place on November 14, 

 when Mr. L. Gaster read the usual report of progress 

 during the vacation. An event of outstanding 

 importance has been the third Report of the Home 

 Office Departmental Committee on Lighting in 

 Factories and Workshops. Mr. Gaster directed 

 attention to an important " access of light and air " 

 judgment in Bradford, which illustrated the import- 

 ance now attached to scientific measurements of 

 daylight illumination in such cases. It was mentioned 

 that a commission on illuminating engineering has 

 now been formed by the Central Electrotechnical 

 Council in Russia. In accordance with custom, 

 there were a series of exhibits illustrating develop- 



NO. 2770, VOL. I IO] 



ments in lighting. A new and simple illumination 

 photometer was exhibited by Capt. Stroud, and an 

 improved form of inspection lamp for use in hospitals 

 by Mr. Hobson. Mr. S. O. Pearson demonstrated 

 an interesting " blinking " phenomenon when neon 

 lamps are shunted by a condenser on direct-current 

 circuits, and Capt. W. J. Liberty presented some 

 photographs showing the artificial lighting arrange- 

 ments at the new Port of London building. Some 

 novel forms of illuminated signs, based on total 

 internal reflection in a sheet of plate glass, were 

 exhibited by Mr. E. T. Ruthven Murray. 



At the Royal Academy, on November 22, Prof. 

 A. P. Laurie, in a lecture on " The Preservation from 

 Decay of Stone on Buildings," dealt with the general 

 causes of stone decay. He showed by experiments 

 the distinctions to be made between limestone, sand- 

 stone with a calcite cement, and sandstone with a 

 silica cement, and described the different methods 

 necessary to make complete laboratory tests with a 

 suggested preservative, and illustrated by photographs 

 some of the difficult problems which have to be faced. 

 Prof. Laurie described a new preparation recently 

 discovered by him, which deposits hydrated silica as 

 a cement between the particles of the stone, and he 

 stated that, while not solving the problem of the 

 preservation of limestones, he hoped that it would 

 prove successful in the preservation of sandstones. 

 He further suggested that the Royal Institute of 

 British Architects might find it worth while to experi- 

 ment with this new preservative. 



The annual Progress Report of the Geological 

 Survey of Western Australia for the year 192 1 

 contains a useful summary of economic minerals 

 known to exist in that State. Among these are, 

 in the first place, gold, then copper ores, lead ores, 

 tin ores, iron ores, and manganese ores, together 

 with a number of rarer minerals such as wolfram, 

 scheelite, stibnite, barytes, monazite, tantalite, 

 glauconite, salt, gypsum, etc. ; coal of different 

 geological ages is known, although only permo- 

 carboniferous coal has been worked to any extent. 



Some papers of much interest to marine biologists 

 are contained in the recently issued number of the 

 Journal of the Marine Biological Association (vol. xii. 

 No. 4, October 1922). Mr. R. S. Clark gives descrip- 

 tions, illustrated by beautiful photographs, of the 

 egg capsules and young of various species of rays 

 and skates. This work was badly wanted. Miss 

 Lebour and Mr. Andrew Scott write on the food 

 organisms of young edible fishes, and Miss Lebour 

 and Mr. R. Elmhirst make a very useful contribution 

 to parasitology in the form of an account of the life- 

 history of Parorchis acanthus, a trematode inhabit- 

 ing the herring gull. 



In further reference to the obituary notice of Dr. 

 Alexander Graham Bell in Nature of August 12, 

 p. 225, Mr. F. De Land, of the Hubbard Memorial 

 Hall, Washington, writes, giving us quotations from 

 English papers of 1877, of telephone transmission over 

 distances greater than 100 miles. He also gives a 

 quotation from our own columns (November 15, 1877, 



