April 15, 1909J 



NA TURE 



209 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Faraday Society, March 30. — A new electrical harden- 

 ing furnace : E. Sabersky and E. Adier. The furnace 

 consists of a fireclay crucible containing a bath of metallic 

 salts. By means of an electric current these salts are 

 melted and kept at any desired temperature up to 1400° C. 

 An alternating current of a voltage not exceeding 70 is 

 employed. The process consists in heating the steel to a 

 temperature above the transition line and then rapidly 

 cooling it down. The cost of operating this electrical 

 furnace is lower than that of gas-fired mutHe or bath 

 furnaces. — The relation between composition and conduc- 

 tivity in solutions of meia- and or(/!o-phosphoric acids : 

 Dr. E. B. R. Prideaux. The results of simultaneous 

 determinations of amounts of HPO, and H,POj and of 

 the electrical conductivity show that the conductivity of 

 the changing solution decreases at first slowly and then 

 more rapidly, and then more slowly again. — The electro- 

 analysis of mercury compounds with a gold kathode : Dr. 

 F. MoUwo Perkin. The results obtained were always 

 slightly too high, from 0-5 per cent, to i per cent. This 

 was at first attributed to occluded hydrogen, but this 

 was finally not considered to be the cause, and no good 

 explanation could be found. With silver kathodes similar 

 results were obtained. Two new quartz vessels for de- 

 positing mercury on a mercury kathode were also de- 

 scribed. It is considered that for mercury determinations 

 a mercury kathode with rotating anode should be 

 employed. 



Royal Astronomical Society, Apiil 7. — Prof. H. H. 

 Turner, F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair. — Description 

 of a Chinese planisphere ; E. B. Knobel. This plani- 

 sphere had been exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition 

 as " a bronze compass," believed to be Japanese. It was 

 undoubtedly Chinese. The stars are shown by raised 

 dots, linked together in groups, forming the Chinese 

 asterisms, each of which consists of one or more stars. 

 These asterisms do not represent areas of the heavens like 

 our constellations, with which they have no relation. The 

 Chinese "siou," or lunar mansions, were explained and 

 described. — The 60-inch reflecting telescope of the Mount 

 Wilson Observatory, California : Dr. G. W. Ritchey. 

 The mirror was successfully cast in France, and figured 

 and polished at Pasadena, in the observatory workshops, 

 where the Cassegrain mounting was also constructed. 

 Details of the whole work were given and illustrated by 

 lantern-slides. The great difficulties connected with the 

 transport of the mirror and mounting to the summit of 

 Mount Wilson were overcome, and the telescope is now 

 mounted in a so-feet dome erected for it. Dr. Ritchey is 

 now on a visit to Europe arranging for the casting of 

 the disc for a still larger reflector, 100 inches in 

 diameter, which has presented considerable difficulties. — 

 Photographs of comet Morehouse : S. S. Hough. These 

 have been taken at the Cape after the comet's perihelion 

 passage, and show that the remarkable changes of form 

 exhibited by the comet from September to November have 

 continued after its perihelion passage. — Astronomy in 

 Australia : W. E. Cooke. An account was given of the 

 conditions for astronomical research, and the difficulties 

 experienced in maintaining the efficiency of the public 

 observatories. — Photographs of Jupiter taken at the 

 opposition of iqoS-g : J. H. Reynolds. — The number of 

 faint stars with large proper motions, and further note 

 on the position of the sun's axis of rotation : H. H. 

 Turner. — The orbit of the eighth satellite of Jupiter t 

 A. C. D. Crommelin. The orbit, as determined by 

 Messrs. Cowell, Crommelin, and Davidson, was in good 

 agreement with the observed positions of the satellite, but 

 must at present be considered as provisional, and did 

 not form a closed curve. 



M.ANCHESTER. 



Literar/ and Philosophical Socif-tv. Marrh 2;!. — Prnf. 

 A. Schuster, F.R.S., in the chair. — The moving force of 

 terrestrial and celestial bodies in relation to the attraction 

 of gravitation : Dr. H. Wilde. Reference was briefly 

 made bv the author to the historic controversy which 

 e.\ercl^ed the minds of distinguished men of science and 

 learning for more than two centuries as to whether the 



NO. 2059, ■^OL. 80] 



force of a bodv in motion by the free action of gravity is 

 simply as the velocity, according to Descartes and Newton, 

 or as the square of the velocity in agreement with Leibnitz 

 and proved experimentally by Smeaton, WoUaston, Ewart, 

 Dalton, Joule, and others ; but no attempts have been 

 made to extend the results of these experiments to the 

 motions of celestial bodies. The author has demonstrated 

 that the moving force, and the attraction of gravitation, are 

 alike inversely proportional to the square of the distance, 

 and are correlated equally in amount to maintain and 

 retain the moon and other celestial bodies in their orbits 

 during their revolutions round their primaries. — The action 

 of hydrogen on sodium : A. Holt, jun. Some experiments 

 were described on the action of hydrogen on sodium which, 

 when considered with the work of Moissan and of Troost 

 and Hautefeuille, point to the conclusion that the 

 hydride Na,H described by these latter authors should 

 probably be regarded as a solid solution of the hydride 

 NaH in sodium, and not as a definite compound. — Differ- 

 ences in the decay of the radium emanation : Prof. E. 

 Rutherford and Y. Tuomikoski. 

 Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, April 5. — M. Bouchard in the 

 chair. — Observations on Lepidosirobus Brownii : R. 

 Zeiller. The specimen, a detailed study of which is given 

 in the present paper, was collected at Cabrieres by M. 

 I'.Abbe Th^ron. — Remarks by M. Carpentier on a set of 

 standards of length, presented by M. Johansson. These 

 standards are in the form of parallelepipeds, two faces of 

 which are rigorously plane and parallel, and the distance 

 between these two faces is known to 1/ 100,000th of its 

 value. Any length between i mm. and 200 mm. can be 

 built up, the error being less than i micron. A smaller 

 set of standards have an accuracy of o-i micron. These 

 standards are manufactured on the commercial scale, and 

 represent a surprising advance on any test-pieces hitherto 

 obtainable. — A new general method for the preparation of 

 the alcoholic amines : Paul Sabatier and A. Mailhe. In 

 a previous paper the authors have described the catalytic 

 decomposition of alcohols by certain oxides, such as 

 alumina, thoria, and the blue oxide of tungsten. If, in 

 this experiment, the alcohol vapour is replaced by a mix- 

 ture of dry ammonia and alcohol vapour, no ethylenes are 

 produced, but the action which predominates is the forma- 

 tion of the amine. Details are given of the method, 

 which is extremely simple, the reaction product contain- 

 ing unchanged alcohol, ammonia, primary amine, 

 secondary amine, and a little tertiary amine. — M. Wiesner 

 was elected a correspondant in the section of botany in 

 the place of the late M. Clos.— Contact transformations : 

 S. Lattfes. — The representation of the solutions of a linear 

 equation of finite differences for large values of the 

 variable : M. Galbrun. — The radiation a^d temperature of 

 the flame of a Bunsen burner : Edmond Bauer. Two 

 methods of measuring the flame temperature, the measure- 

 ment of the ratio of emission to absorption and the reversal 

 of the D ray, gave identical results, about 1760° C, for 

 the Meker burner. The author comes to the conclusion 

 that temperature is the essential factor in the emission of 

 line spectra by flames.— The radiation of potassium salts : 

 E. Henriot. It has been shown that potassitirn salts 

 possess a distinct, although very small, radio-activity. It 

 has not yet been settled whether this radio-activity is due 

 to the presence of traces of one of the radio-active bodies 

 already known. Froin the experiments described in the 

 present paper, it would appear that this is not the case ; 

 the observed radio-activity must be either ^ due to the 

 potassium itself or to an unknown body associated with it. 



A new type of magnetic decomposition of the absorption 



bands of crvstals. The simultaneous production of systems 

 'circularly polarised in opposite senses : Jean Becquerel. 

 The line 625 MM of tysonite, at the temperature of solid 

 hydrogen, -253° C. to -250° C, gives a quadruplet 

 formed of two doublets polarised in opposite senses, ihe 

 effects observed can be explained bv the hypothesis of the 

 existence of both negative and positive electrons, and the 

 author replies to some objections raised by M. Dufour 

 concerning the theory of positive electrons.— The deter- 

 mination of the constant of Stefan's law: C. Fery. In 

 a preceding note it has been shown that in measurements 



