644 



NATURE 



[October 24, 1907 



Teisserenc de Bort, of Paris, in recognition of the services 

 which he has rendered to the science of meteorology. The 

 medal was established in memory of the late George James 

 Symons, F.R.S., the founder of the British Rainfall 

 Organisation, and is awarded biennially. The presentation 

 will take place at the annual general meeting of the 

 society on January 15, igo8. 



At the sixth annual meeting of the Northern Scientific 

 Club, held at Newcastle on October 17, Sir \V. H. White 

 was elected president, and gave an address upon the 

 application of the gyroscope for steadying ships. He 

 showed a working model of Dr. Schlick's apparatus, 

 which, he said, when applied to cross-Channel boats and 

 coasting passenger steamers, would so prevent the rolling 

 of these vessels as to allow persons troubled with sea- 

 sickness to travel on the sea in comfort. 



A MESSAGE was received in New York on October 9 

 from Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the explorer. It was dated 

 August 26, from Etah, and ran as follows : — " I have hit 

 upon a new route to the North Pole, and will stay to 

 try it. By way of Buchanan Bay and Ellesmere Land, 

 and northward through Nansen Strait over the Polar Sea, 

 seems to me to be a very good route. There will be 

 g^me to the eighty-second degree, and here are natives and 

 dogs for the task." Dr. Cook's expedition is provisioned 

 for two years, and is wintering thirty miles further north 

 than Commander Peary did two years ago. 



The experts of the U.S. Forestry .Service, after a fort- 

 night's work on the ground principally affected, are still 

 in the dark as to the origin of the blight that has attacked 

 the white pine of New England during the summer. \X 

 Brunswick, Maine, it is feared that the beautiful Bowdoin 

 pines, of which Hawthorne and I^ongfellow wrote, will 

 soon be a thing of the past. The blighted trees are 

 recognised by the fact that the tips of the needles of this 

 year's growth have turned a peculiar reddish-brown colour, 

 so that the trees look as though they had been scorched. 

 The national Government has established several sample 

 plots, not only at Brunswick, but also at Peterboro, New 

 Hampshire, where a scientific study of the problem is to 

 be carried on. 



The Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand, 

 is making arrangements for an expedition to some southern 

 islands included in the colony's boundaries. The expedi- 

 tion will be under the leadership of the Hon. R. McNab, 

 Minister of Lands and Minister for Agriculture, who is 

 interested in the history of the islands, and has written 

 an interesting work dealing with the old sealing and 

 whaling days in the islands and the southern part of the 

 mainland. The expedition will be under the auspices of 

 the Government, and will be taken to the islands in one 

 of the Government's steamers. It will leave New Zealand 

 about the end of November or the beginning of December, 

 and will visit the Auckland Islands and Campbell Islands. 

 About twenty New Zealand men of science will take part 

 in the undertaking. They will be divided into two parties, 

 one going to each group. Work will be done in regard to 

 terrestrial magnetism, zoology, geology, and botany, and 

 reports will be prepared dealing with the results of the 

 investigations. 



The jubilee of the East Kent Scientific Society was 

 celebrated on October 16 by a conversazione held at the 

 Simon Langton School, Canterbury. Biological, chemical, 

 and physical exhibits were on view, and several interest- 

 ing demonstrations were provided. The society numbers 

 eighty-six members. 



NO. 1982 VOL. 76] 



Reuter's correspondent at St. Petersburg states that 

 reports have reached there of an earthquake in Central 

 Asia. On October 21, between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., a 

 strong but gradually diminishing shock of earthquake was 

 recorded at Katta-kurgan. Other advices state that an 

 undulatory earthquake occurred on October 2 1 at Samar- 

 kand, lasting from 8.45 to 10.30, and causing cracks in 

 many buildings. The dome of one mosque and the minaret 

 of another collapsed. 



We learn from the Agricultural News of the West 

 Indies that Mr. W. R. Buttenshaw died suddenly in 

 Calcutta on September 9, at thirty years of age. Mr. 

 Buttenshaw, who was a graduate of the University of 

 Aberdeen, entered the service of the Imperial Department 

 of Agriculture for the West Indies as lecturer in agri- 

 cultural science at Jamaica in 1899, and was appointed 

 scientific assistant in charge of publications at the head 

 office at Barbados in 1903. He left Barbados in May last 

 to take up an appointment as botanist in the Indian 

 .'\gricultural Service. 



Cardiff is now to have a seismograph. Mainly through 

 the instrumentality of Principal E. H. Griffiths, F.R.S., 

 the local Naturalists' Society took the matter up, and 

 approached the City Council with the offer of a seismo- 

 graph and several other instruments to complete the set 

 belonging to the corporation if only the latter would suit- 

 ably house and maintain the same. The city fathers, 

 after some demur on the score of economy, have now 

 unanimously agreed to the proposal. An excellent site 

 has been found for the seismograph on Penylan Hill 

 alongside the public observatory, where will also be in- 

 stalled all the instruments necessary for a complete meteor- 

 ological outfit. This announcement was made amidst 

 applause at the annual meeting of the naturalists on 

 Thursday evening, October 17, by the retiring president, 

 Prof. Haycraft. 



The Harveian oration was delivered by Dr. F. Taylor 

 at the Royal College of Physicians on October 18. In 

 the. course of his address. Dr. Taylor remarked that 

 Harvey's injunction to search and study out the secrets 

 of nature by way of experiment should be addressed to 

 the lay public, not, indeed, that they may experiment 

 themselves, but that they may promote and forward such 

 experimentation, or at least not hinder and obstruct it. 

 Consideration of the value of e.xperiment and research leads 

 to the reflection how enormous has been the progress, on 

 the one hand, made in medicine in the last few years, and 

 how large, on the other, is our ignorance of natural pheno- 

 mena in relation to disease and its treatment or control. 

 Dr. Taylor referred to the work of Prof. E. Starling, to 

 whom the Baly medal for the present year has been 

 awarded, on the chemical relations of the functions of the 

 body, as being particularly in accordance with the spirit of 

 Harvey. Two advances which have had important results 

 are the improvements in surgical practice which, initiated 

 by Lord Lister, have led to the present theory and practice 

 of asepsis in surgery, and the advances on the thera- 

 peutical side which are intimately connected with the 

 subject of prevention and immunity, and the treatment of 

 disease by antitoxins and the later opsonic methods. The 

 field for research is enormous, the necessity for research 

 patent, and even if the number of workers who can con- 

 duct research on the highest lines is limited, whether on 

 social, financial, or moral considerations, there can be no 

 doubt that the medical profession as a body will continue 

 actively Id support the maxim contained in Harvey's in- 

 junction to search out the secrets of nature by experiment. 



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