578 



NA rURE 



[October S, 1908 



coloiiv have received, at the least, pound for pound grants 

 in aid of building and furnishing funds, in addition to 

 annual grants for upkeep, that the Government will, as 

 soon as its funds permit, make a substantial grant in aid 

 of the fitting-up of this museum, as well as an increased 

 grant in aid of upkeep, so as to enable the only museum 

 in northern Cape Colony to be organised and administered 

 in a manner worthy its place as an educational institu- 

 tion." 



The dread of premature burial has always been a very 

 real one among some members of the community, so much 

 so that an association for the prevention of premature 

 burial exists. Its physician-in-chief, Mr. Brindlcy James, 

 has issued a booklet entitled " Death and its Verification " 

 (Messrs. Rebman, Ltd., price \s. net), in which the various 

 tests of death are detailed. They are all simple ones, and 

 some will probably be new to most practitioners. 



The study of the topography and municipal history of 

 Praeneste, contributed to series xxvi. of the Johns 

 Hopkins University papers on historical and political 

 science by Mr. R. Magoffin, opens a collection of geo- 

 graphic-historical memoirs on the cities of the Latin 

 League which promises to be of considerable interest. 

 The position of the city, the modern Palestrina, situated 

 on Mount Glicestro, marks it' out as the strategical key 

 of Rome, and its political and religious rival. The study 

 of the remains of the cyclopean walls, with their gates 

 open in the direction of the chief water supply, the 

 reservoirs, the remarkable pair of caves, whence, as tradi- 

 tion tells, when the rock was opened pieces of wood in- 

 scribed with ancient characters leaped out, afterwards 

 associated with the curious cult of Fortune Primigenia, 

 and the details of the municipal government, based upon 

 a study of the epigraphical materials, is a good example 

 of the new methods of investigation which are now being 

 applied to the solution of the archaeological problems of the 

 ancient Italian cities. Mr. Magoffin promises elsewhere to 

 provide a coloured diagram showing the stages of the 

 city's growth. His review of the many problems con- 

 nected with the site would have been more readily in- 

 telligible if the present memoir had been accompanied by 

 a sketch-map. 



The Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, 

 under the superintendence of Mr. H. A. Hunt, has com- 

 menced the publication of bulletins dealing with the 

 meteorology of the whole of Australia. No. i (issued 

 March) is an excellent general epitome of the climate and 

 meteorology of that continent, by Mr. G. H. Knibbs, re- 

 printed from the year-book of the Commonwealth, and 

 contains the averages and extreme values at the Australian 

 capitals from a long series of observations, illustrated by 

 diagrams showing the annual fluctuation of the various 

 elements. No. 2 (issued July) deals specially with rainfall, 

 and includes a map showing the mean annual values for 

 the decade ending 1906 (an unusually dry period). The 

 map shows that the heaviest rains fall over the northern 

 and eastern parts of Australia ; Mr. Hunt states that the 

 most trustworthy, although lighter rains, are experienced 

 over the south-western and south-eastern portions, in- 

 cluding Tasmania. These bulletins may be welcomed as 

 an important addition to meteorological literature. 



The annual report of the Royal Alfred Observatory, 

 -Mauritius, for 1907 shows that the rainfall for that year, 

 from a mean of sixty-seven stations, was 13 inches below 

 the average. The tracks of four out of eight cyclones 

 which occurred in the Indian Ocean have been plotted. 



NO. 2032, VOL. 78] 



Photographs of the sun were taken daily when the weather 

 permitted, and 300 negatives were sent to the Solar Physics 

 Committee ; particulars of fifty-four earthquakes were for- 

 warded to the Seismological Committee of the British 

 Association, and weekly summaries of the weather from 

 May to December were cabled to the director-general of 

 Indian observatories in connection with the monsoon pre- 

 dictions. We regret to learn that the clerical work is 

 falling into arrear, owing to a reduction in the vote for 

 extra assistance, and that from want of funds the ob- 

 servations for 1902 and 1903 are still unprinted. The value 

 of the work of the observatory in connection with inter- 

 national cooperation can hardly be overrated ; it is one 

 of the places mentioned in the resolutions of the Inter- 

 national Association of .Academies at the meeting in May, 

 1907, and the Meteorological Committee (London), refer- 

 ring to this subject in its last annual report, mentions the 

 observatory as " one of the most important scientific estab- 

 lishments of the southern hemisphere." 



We have received from Messrs. Heynes, Matthew and 

 Co., of Cape Town, a catalogue of scientific apparatus 

 stocked by them. The' list includes apparatus for collect- 

 ing and storing botanical, zoological, and mineralogical 

 specimens, also microscopes, reagents, and instruments 

 required in bacteriology. We notice among the contents 

 wire presses for drying plants, Grubler's stains, Hearson's 

 incubators, and geological outfits for prospectors. It will 

 interest readers in South Africa to know that these can 

 be obtained without sending to Europe. 



In a note in the Transactions of the .American Mathe- 

 matical Society, ix., 2, Prof. J. L. Coolidge discusses the 

 " equilong " transformations of space. In an " equilong " 

 transformation, if any oriented plane is cut by three non- 

 coaxial oriented planes infinitely near thereto in a triangle, 

 this triangle transforms into a triangle equal in all respects 

 to it. The author finds that the most general " equilong " 

 transformation in a Euclidean space of n dimensions de- 

 pends on the most general conformal transformation of a 

 space of n—\ dimensions, and an arbitrary function of the 

 direction parameters. The distance parameter enters 

 linearly. The mathematical proof which is given for three- 

 dimensional space is easy to follow. 



An important essay on logic and the continuum has 

 been contributed to the Bulletin of the .American Mathe- 

 matical Society for June by Prof. E. B. Wilson, of Boston, 

 U.S. .A. It deals largely with Zermelo's proposed solution 

 of the problem, first stated by Prof. Georg Cantor in 

 1883, as to whether every set, and in particular the con- 

 tinuum, can be well ordered. In a postscript the author 

 refers to Schoenflies's report on the same subject. Among 

 Prof. Wilson's conclusions, the view is put forward that 

 the well ordering of any set is of practically no signifi- 

 cance, and is quite worthless apart from an algorithm 

 which accomplishes the ordering — an algorithm which 

 shall not require an operation which transcends the cardinal 

 number of the given set. This quotation must be regarded 

 as a mere indication of the general character of the ques- 

 tions discussed in the paper. 



The fact that the salient feature of modern practice is 

 the successful handling of low-grade materials from which 

 the value could not profitably be extracted by older methods 

 is strikingly emphasised in an article on modern develop- 

 ments in the metallurgy of lead and zinc, by Mr. A. 

 Sehvyn-Brown, in the Engineering Magazine (vol. xxxv., 

 Xo. 6). Descriptions are given of the Huntington and 

 Huhcrlein process, the Carmichael-Bradford process, the 



