October 24, 1907J 



NA TURE 



645 



From Tuesday to Saturday of this week boys of all 

 ages have a delightful opportunity of seeing well-made 

 models of engines, boats, electrical and other devices, and 

 tools used in making them, at the Royal Horticultural 

 Hall. Besides seeing the models at rest or at work, they 

 are able to attend lectures on some of those attractive 

 features in mechanics, physics, or chemistry that made the 

 Polytechnic such a favourite resort in the old days. The 

 Model Engineer is to be congratulated on the success of 

 its first exhibition, or at any rate on what ought to be a 

 success, the only misfortune being that, as the younger 

 boys are at school now and the older boys are at work, 

 many who would have attended with delight are perforce 

 out of reach. Our interest in an exhibition such as this 

 is more with its educational aspect than in general with 

 the exhibits themselves. A boy with a mechanical or 

 scientific turn obtains exactly the kind of encouragement 

 which is wanted ; his vague ideas as to making something, 

 however fantastic (before the days of bicycles he generally 

 hankered after making a velocipede), are corrected by 

 seeing pleasing things that will really work of every kind 

 of difficulty, from the simplest to the most elaborate, and, 

 what is more important, he learns precision and how to 

 read a drawing, for the instructions given at the exhibi- 

 tion and in the Model Engineer are accompanied by proper 

 scale elevations and sections that would do credit to an 

 engineer's office. The boy of the present day has a great 

 advantage over his predecessor owing to the great develop- 

 ment and moderate price of small precision tools. These 

 are to be seen in their usual variety ; but it is a little sad 

 to notice under the same roof beautiful small precision 

 lathes, with hollow mandrels and draw-in chucks, hailing 

 often from Germany, and old-fashioned designs of cheap 

 lathes with short and solid mandrels. Of course money 

 is the difficulty, and the boy is tempted by the greater 

 capacity of the gap lathe. Perhaps as an educational 

 instrument it has its value. Among the pleasing subjects 

 of lectures is the gyroscope, but, judging from the 

 syllabus, the lecturer has missed the opportunity which 

 the now popular " diabolo " would have given him if his 

 de.xterity is equal to his knowledge of demonstrating the 

 laws of precession. We can only repeat our regret that 

 such a treat should not have been arranged for the 

 holidays. 



The Times of October 15 contains a further communi- 

 cation from Dr. Stein announcing the results of his work 

 in north-western China during the last few months. 

 Leaving the Lop-nor region, where, at Miran, he had 

 made discoveries proving that in the second century a.d. 

 the Indian kingdom in Turkestan, of which he had 

 previously found such important remains at Niya, between 

 Khotan and Cherchen, extended eastwards almost to the 

 borders of China, Dr. Stein proceeded along the ancient 

 trade-route across the desert of Gobi towards the oasis of 

 Sha-chau, still, as of old, the westernmost outpost of 

 Chinese population and speech. This route has been 

 avoided in modern times until now, on account of its 

 difficulties. Dr. Sven Hedin did not essay it, and it had 

 not been crossed for many years until, not long ago, two 

 British officers from India performed the journey. Their 

 feat was chronicled in the Journal of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, but is not mentioned by Dr. Stein in 

 his letter. The discoverer has found a very interesting 

 relic of ancient Chinese authority in this region in the 

 shape of a previously unknown " great wall " of defence, 

 erected in the early days of Chinese conquest by the Han 

 emperor Wu-ti, at the close of the second century B.C. 

 Dr. Stein traced its course for 140 miles, and found many 



KO. 1982, VOL. 76J 



interesting remains of its original builders and later garri- 

 sons in the shape of Chinese records on wood, chiefly 

 referring to matters of military administration, besides 

 numberless miscellaneous antiques, which had been per- 

 fectly preserved by the dry climate and soil. Buddhist 

 antiquities of a thousand years later have also been found 

 on sites to the south of this wall, and with these researches 

 Dr. Stein is still occupied. 



An informal conference of representatives of museums, 

 with members of the Museums' Association and other 

 persons interested, was held at Salford, on October 18, by 

 the invitation of the Museums and Libraries Committee of 

 the Salford Corporation, who entertained the visitors. 

 The meeting was well attended, the museums of Liver- 

 pool, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Leicester, Bolton, Chester, 

 and Warrington being represented among others. The 

 afternoon was spent in the inspection of the Peel Park 

 Museum and the recently opened natural history branch 

 at Buile Hill Park, and Mr. B. H. Mullen, curator, after- 

 wards gave a brief account of the recent extensive changes 

 and developments carried out in the Salford museums. 

 Mr. G. A. Dunlop, Warrington Museum, in a paper on 

 the preparation of botanical specimens for exhibition, de- 

 scribed in detail processes of drying flowering plants in 

 silver-sand and boxwood sawdust, exhibiting samples of 

 successful results with the latter medium, in which leaves 

 and delicate floral structures were perfectly preserved. 

 The forms were practically permanent ; the colour of speci- 

 mens exposed to the light might be expected to last about 

 two years. An effective dry method of preserving succu- 

 lent plants was, however, siill a desideratum. Mr. H. 

 Murray, Manchester Museum, followed with notes on wet 

 methods of preserving plants for exhibition. Mr. E. E. 

 Lowe, Leicester Museum, read a paper entitled " What 

 should be the Curator's Ideal?" in which he offered 

 evidence of the need for an all-embracing scheme or 

 classification, as of an ideal museum, which should cover 

 the whole field of museum work, and from which curators 

 might select, and by which they might verify and co- 

 ordinate their work in such sections of the whole as they 

 might severally find it practicable to include in their pro- 

 grammes. Mr. Lowe submitted an outline of some por- 

 tions of such a scheme, and was encouraged to proceed 

 with the project. 



The first meeting of the new session of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society will be held on November :i, when 

 Mr. Mackintosh Bell, director-general of the New Zealand 

 Survey, will give a paper on the Great Douglas Glacier 

 and its neighbourhood. Arrangements have also been 

 made for papers by Dr. Hunter Workman, on the explor- 

 ation of the Nun-Kun mountain group, in the Himalayas, 

 and its glaciers ; Dr. Vaughan Cornish, on the Jamaica 

 earthquake; Mr. A. H. Harrison, on his search for an 

 .\rctic continent; and Dr. Tempest ;\nderson, on his visit 

 to the volcanoes of Guatemala and St. Vincent. Among 

 other papers provisionally arranged are the following : — the 

 Due d 'Orleans, on his exploration in and around Novaya 

 Zemlya ; the Count de Lesdain, on his journey from 

 Peking to Darjiling through Central Asia and Tibet; 

 Mr. Laurence Gomme, on the story of London maps ; 

 Dr. T. G. Longstaff, on the Trisul district of the Hima- 

 layas ; Mr. A. W. Paul, on Bhutan ; Dr. W. S. Bruce, on 

 his recent expedition to Prince Charles Foreland, Spits- 

 bergen ; and Dr. Johnston Lavis, on the influence of 

 volcanic action on some features of the earth's crust. A 

 series of lectures on the geographical conditions which 

 affect the development of the British Empire is being 



