548 



NA TURE 



[October i, 1908 



The Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal has recently 

 issued its fifth report, and deals mainly with the relative 

 merits of the various methods which are available for the 

 purification of the sewage of towns. The work contains 

 a number of appendices, and the general conclusion of the 

 commissioners on the main subject is as follows : — " We 

 are satisfied that it is practicable to purify the sewage of 

 towns to any degree required, either by land treatment 

 or. by artificial filters, and that there is no essential ditifer- 

 ence between the two processes, for in each case the 

 purification, so far as it is not mechanical, is chiefly 

 effected by means of micro-organisms. The two main 

 questions, therefore, to be considered in the case of a 

 town proposing to adopt a system of sewage purification 

 are, first, what degree of purification is required in the 

 circumstances of that town and of the river or stream into 

 which its liquid refuse is to be discharged ; and, second, 

 how the degree of purification can, in the particular case, 

 be most economically obtained. The choice of a scheme 

 must depend on a number of considerations which will be 

 discussed later, but we may here state that we know of 

 no case where the admixture of trade refuse witli the 

 sewage makes it impracticable to purify the sewage either 

 upon land or by means of artificial processes, although in 

 certain extreme cases special processes of preliminary treat- 

 ment may be necessary." 



In the Popidar Science Monthly for September, Mr. 

 N. H. Winchfll discusses the ethnology and traditions of 

 the .'\merican Indian tribes, and specially of the so-called 

 " mound-builders " of Minnesota. Modern research has 

 established the enormous antiquity of these tribes in their 

 present habitat. Thus the great variety of dialects, none 

 of which can be connected with those of Europe or Asia, 

 indicates either that the present population is the result 

 of a number of successive migrations, or, which seems 

 more probable, is the outcome of their long occupation 

 of American soil. One fact is quite certain, that . the 

 mound-builders were the ancestors of some of the existing 

 tribes. From a mass of confused legend it may be gathered 

 that the practice of mound-building was confined to two 

 stocks — the Algonquian and the Siouan — the former spread- 

 ing over the north-eastern part of the United States and 

 Canada, but with no representatives on the south-east 

 Atlantic coast, the latter mainly confined to the great plains 

 west of the Mississippi, this river apparently forming the 

 boundary line between these two stocks. Whatever may 

 be the value of Mr. Winchell's speculations regarding the 

 post-Glacial movements of these races, he seems to be right 

 as regards the sequence of tribal occupation in Minnesota. 

 It begins with that of the Algonquian stock, a small area 

 to the south-west being also held by the Ohio mound- 

 builders. These were followed by Sioux fugitives from 

 Ohio, to whom the majority of the mounds are attributed, 

 to be followed, again, by an Ojibwa Algonquian incursion 

 from the region of Lake Superior, these people dividing 

 the State with the Sioux. This was the condition of things 

 when the European appeared upon the stage. The value 

 of this contribution to American ethnology would be greater 

 if the essay had been accompanied by fuller reference to 

 the authorities upon which it is based. 



The position of meteorology at the recent meeting of the 

 British Association is again referred to in the September 

 number of Symons's Meteorological Magazine (see Nature, 

 vol. Ixxvi., p. 448). The writer states that from a meteoro- 

 logical point of view the meeting was the best since that 

 of Southport in 1903, but, despite the efforts of the 

 president of Section A (Dr. W. N. Shaw), no meeting ever 

 NO. 2031^ VOL. 78] 



showed more plainly the inferior position of meteorology 

 as compared with other observational sciences. In the sub- 

 section of cosmical physics, meteorology and astronomy 

 were mixed together in a way that was satisfactory to 

 neither, and it was sometimes impossible to know at what 

 hour the subsections would meet. The writer considers 

 that a radical reform is necessary in the constitution of 

 the association if it is to regain the high position it 

 formerly held, and that meteorology will not be properly 

 respected, or its true position understood, unless it is made 

 at least a separate subsection, with a chairman of its 

 own, and the hour of commencement of the meetings 

 definitely announced. 



We have received from M. Charles F^ry a pamphlet 

 of 100 pages describing his exhibit of scientific apparatus 

 at the Franco-British Exhibition. It is not by any means 

 a maker's catalogue, but appears to consist of a collection | 

 of reprints of the original descriptions of the apparatus 

 in the Proceedings of the Academic des Sciences, Soci^t^ 

 frangaise de Physique, &c., some of which have been 

 noticed in these columns. It will prove useful to those 

 who are concerned with the scientific as distinct from the 

 mere mechanical use of the apparatus, and it raises the 

 question whether the publication of pamphlets of this type 

 might not with advantage be taken up more extensively 

 by instrument makers in this country. 



In order to assist makers of volumetric apparatus in 

 establishing standards and perfecting methods of construc- 

 tion, the Bureau of Standards at Washington has for the 

 last four years issued a circular containing specifications 

 for and regulations for testing such apparatus. The third 

 edition of this circular is embodied in an article in the 

 May issue of the Bulletin of the bureau, on the testing 

 of glass volumetric apparatus, by Messrs. N. S. Osborne 

 and B. H. Veazey. In it the various specifications and 

 rules for manipulation of the apparatus are discussed, and 

 much information is given which bears directly on the 

 construction, use, and testing of volumetric apparatus in 

 general. As an example of the degree of accuracy ex- 

 pected, we note that for a litre flask the error should 

 not exceed 0-3 cubic centimetre. 



In an article in the Physikalische Zeitschrift for Sep- 

 tember I, Prof. H. A. Lorentz expresses with some reserve 

 the belief that a satisfactory deduction of the law of radia- 

 tion of a black body based on the electron theory, without 

 the introduction of the so-called law of equipartition of 

 energy, is impossible without serious modifications of the 

 fundamental ideas of the theorj itself. We must therefore 

 accept Prof. Planck's theory of radiation as the only one 

 tenable at the present time, and must wait for an explana- 

 tion of the reason why the resonators of the theory do 

 not appear to come within the province of the statistical 

 mechanics of Gibbs. Prof. Lorentz points out a further 

 difficulty of the electron theory of conduction of heat and 

 electricity in metals as developed by Drude. According to 

 this theory the oscillations of the free electrons within 

 the metal account for the radiation of long .waves by the 

 metal, but are incapable of giving the short-wave radiation 

 correctly, and no satisfactory explanation of this incon- 

 sistency has yet been given. 



An interesting contribution to the study of differences in 

 the physiological behaviour of the right- and left-handed 

 forms of optically active substances is contained in a short 

 note by G. Bruni in the Gazzetta Chimica Italiana (vol. 

 xxxviii., ii., p. i). It is well known that the lower 

 organisms, such as moulds, often show a striking prefer- 



