40 



NA TUBE 



[Mav 9, 190 



I 



:.— G« 



Tme importance of a closer alliance between science and 

 industry was again strongly emphasised by Sir Alfred Jones 

 nt Liverpool on April 8, when, at his invitation, a number 

 of prominent men of science and commerce met at a 

 luncheon given in honour of Mr. Herbert Wright, the 

 author of a valuable work on the rubber industry. Mr. 

 Wright gave a brief account of the progress and methods 

 of rubber cultivation in the British Empire, quoting, as an 

 example of the benefits accruing from the adoption of scien- 

 tific methods, the enormous advances made by the industry 

 in the Indo-Malayan area during the past decade. Ceylon 

 alone, in a few years' time, may be expected to produce 

 some 5000 to 7000 tons of rubber annually, and our other 

 possessions in the East are developing similarly. 



In the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 

 (vol. xii., pp. 267-288) Dr. R. W. Ells gives some useful 

 notes on the mineral fuel supply of 

 Canada. He shows that in the western 

 half of the Dominion the supplies of 

 mineral fuel are practically in- 

 exhaustible. The analyses of these 

 coals show that their quality is greatly 

 superior to that of those now mined in 

 the Pacific States of the American 

 Union. 



The Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and 

 Shipbuilders in Scotland (vol. I., part vi.) contain a sug- 

 gestive paper by Mr. R. Royds on the most economical 

 mean effective pressure for steam engines. He appends 

 a bibliography of papers dealing with 

 the steam-engine problem, all of 

 which are based upon direct experi- 

 mental evidence. These should be 

 studied by all concerned with the 

 generation of motive power. 



The demolition of the Great Wheel 

 at Earl's Court, which for twelve 

 years has formed so conspicuous a 

 feature in the London landscape, is 

 now completed. The work, which is 

 described in detail in Engineering of 

 .April 26, has been one requiring the 

 exercise of much ingenuity in the 

 devising of safe methods of procedure. 

 The wheel was a pin-jointed struc- 

 ture 300 feet in diameter, weighing, 

 with the cars in position, 1000 tons, 

 whilst the two standards on which il 

 was mounted weighed 400 tons mor,^. 

 The whole structure was demolishe i 

 in less than six months, which, con 

 sidering that every rivet had to be 

 sawn through, as every nut was con-- 

 pletely set in rust, reflects ifreat 

 credit on all concerned. 



The address delivered by the presi- 

 dent, Mr. T. Hurry Riches, to the In- 

 stitution of Mechanical Engineers on 

 April 25 forms a valuable work of reference on rolling 

 stock and the machinery used in railway engineering, its 

 value being enhanced by the seventy-six illustrations 

 accompanying it depicting the locomotives and rolling stock 

 of the railways of Great Britain at the present time. It 

 is evident from these illustrations that modern require- 

 ments are gradually bringing the locomotives on the rail- 

 waj's more and more into accord with one another when 

 the work to be done is similar. 



An interesting set of models, showing the development 

 of the rack-rail locomotive from Blenkinsop to Abt, has 

 lately been placed on view in the mechanical engineering 

 collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The 

 models, which are described in detail in the Engineer of 

 .April 26, comprise Blenkinsop's original model of the 

 Middleton colliery locomotive of 1812, and models, made at 

 the museum to a scale of i to 16, of the Fell centre rail 

 engine of 1867 for the line over the .Mont Cenis, of 

 Riggenbach's system of a ladder-rack midway between the 

 running rails (1874), and of Abt's improved form of rack 

 (1882). The three models are admirably adapted for the 

 use of engineering students, and throw much light on a 

 somewhat comple.x subject. 



The new island in ihe Bay of Bengal, referred to in 

 .Admiral Field's letter in Nature of February 28, is the 



: Bay of Bengal from the 



subject of a detailed account, by Lieut. E. J. Headlam, 

 R.I.M., in the April number of the Geographical Journal. 

 By the courtesy of the editor we are permitted to reproduce 

 one of the illustrations, which gives a good idea of the 



rhoto.\ 



t Earthquake 



Holwny. 



NO 1958, VOL. 76J 



general appearance of this mud-bank. An illustration to 

 some notes on the San Francisco earthquake, by Jacques 

 W. Redway, in the same number, gives a very good idea 

 of the ploughed land along one of the faults, where this 

 shows at the surface as a belt of shearing instead of as 

 a simple fracture. 



In a letter to N.^tuke of February 14 (p. 368) Mr. 

 Charles G. Barkia described experiments which indicated 

 that nickel must have an atomic weight of about 61-3 



