July i, 1909] 



NA TURE 



17 



from his winter quarters to within loo geographical miles 

 of the South Pole. The party would have to march so far 

 as Edinburgh before reaching Captain Scott's record, and 

 onwards to a point 240 miles beyond John o' Groats 

 before reaching the limit of the journey. Mr. Shackleton 

 told his story in a simple and graphic manner, which 

 revealed, without unduly emphasising, the hardships and 

 dangers experienced by his companions and himself on the 

 great southern journey, and by the party under Prof. 

 David which reached the South Magnetic Pole. The 

 Lloyd-Creak dip-circle, he mentioned, worked remarkably 

 well under the severe climatic conditions. The lecture was 

 illustrated by a number of very interesting photographs, 

 while at the close there was a display of " living pictures " 

 — the first ever taken in the Antarctic regions — which 

 afforded a very good idea of the movements of penguins 

 and seals. One scene, which Mr. Shackleton will be well 

 advised to omit in future, illustrated the death of a seal 

 shot by the explorers. After the lecture the Prince of 

 Wales, on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, pre- 

 sented to Mr. Shackleton a special gold medal, and to a 

 number of other members of the expedition replicas of the 

 medal in silver. 



The next meeting of the French Association for the 

 .Advancement of Science will be held at Lille from 

 August 2-7. The secretary of the association should be 

 addressed at 28, rue Serpente, Paris. 



The annual meeting of the .Association for the Oral 

 Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb will be held at the 

 Portman Rooms, Baker Street, W., on Tuesday, July 13. 

 Lord .Avebury will preside. 



Mr. F. Muir and Mr. J. C. Kershaw send home, under 

 date March 12, a description of a Peripatus which they 

 have recently found in Ceram. This is the first time 

 that Peripatus has been found in the Moluccas. The speci- 

 mens, sixty-three in number, were all females. " In the 

 size of its eggs (o-oj mm.) and in its mode of develop- 

 ment and birth it approaches the neotropical group." In 

 its other characters it appears to resemble Melano-Peri- 

 patus (the New Britain species found by Dr. Willey). The 

 authors name the species Peripatus ccramensis. A descrip- 

 tion of it, with illustrations, will be published in the forth- 

 coming number of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science. 



The issues of the British Journal of Photography for 

 June 18 and 25 contain a detailed account of a noteworthy 

 collection of apparatus intended for the easy demonstr.i- 

 tion of certain optical and visual phenomena specially 

 interesting to photographers. The apparatus, which was 

 designed by Dr. E. Goldberg, of Leipzig, and is now on 

 view at the International Exhibition of Photography at 

 Dresden, is arranged in forty-four small cabinets. Each 

 cabinet is fitted with the requisites for a single experiment, 

 and is accompanied by printed instructions briefly stating 

 the result to be looked for, and indicating the necessary 

 manipulation, which is in every case so simple that the 

 merest tyro can hardly fail of success. The points illus- 

 trated include defects of the eye, such as irradiation, 

 chromatic aberration, the blind spot, and Purkinj^'s 

 figures ; various subjective phenomena of colour ; some 

 effects of intermittent illumination ; elementary examples 

 of reflection, refraction, dispersion, diffraction, and absorp- 

 tion ; colour mixture, with special regard to the devices 

 employed in the modern processes of colour photography. 



During the course of the discussion on cable rates and 

 Press intercommunication in connection with the Imperial 

 Press Conference, Mr. Marconi gave some interesting 

 NO. 2070, VOL. 81] 



information. He remarked it would be injudicious for the 

 Governments concerned to enter into a scheme of State- 

 owned cables without first having investigated the 

 capabilities of a wireless connection between the two 

 countries. In discussing these connections, he said, we 

 should refer to electric communication instead of cable 

 communication. The cost of two stations capable of com- 

 municating over distances which have proved practicable — 

 3000 miles — would be about 50,000/. for each station. This 

 estimate, of course, is subject to variation. He is, he 

 continued, certainly of opinion that it may be possible m 

 the near future to communicate over greater distances, 

 perhaps 6000 miles, or even more. There is a very 

 interesting theoretical point about communicating a distance 

 of 6000 miles, which is that when the equator is passed 

 the wireless waves may begin to converge again, and it 

 may occur that at the Antipodes messages can be received 

 much easier than half-way to the Antipodes. That re- 

 mains to be proved. At present the Marconi Company is- 

 prepared to take a limited amount of Press messages 

 across the Atlantic at 2id. per word. When the stations 

 are completed it is hoped to take a large amount — 15,000 

 or 20,000 words a day. If the_amount is considerable the 

 company would be prepared to give a service at 2d. a 

 word from Canada to England. 



The new buildings of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 

 South Kensington, were opened in State by the King on 

 June 26. Mr. Runciman, President of the Board of 

 Education, read an address, in which, on behalf of the 

 Board, he thanked the King and Queen for consenting to 

 open the new buildings, and explained the numerous uses 

 of the museum. The address showed that the first object 

 of the founders of the museum was to encourage a high 

 standard of excellence among the craftsmen, manufacturers, 

 and designers of this country. For many' years lack of 

 space prohibited a systematic arrangement and classifica- 

 tion of the collections. The completion of the new build- 

 ings now makes it possible to display the collections in 

 a manner worthy of the ambition which prompted their 

 formation. With this object in view the Board of Educa- 

 tion has formulated a scheme for the future organisation 

 and management of the mu-seum. The collections are 

 classified in eight departments. Each department will have 

 its own expert staff, while a separate staff will have charge 

 of the supplementary collections intended for loans to pro- 

 vincial museums and schools of art. In the course of 

 his reply the King said : — " The placing of an expert staff 

 in charge of each section of the museum will have the 

 double advantage of maintaining and developing the more 

 scientific arrangement which has now become possible, and 

 also of bringing about a more accurate knowledge of the 

 history and beauty of the individual exhibits, and of their 

 educational value." 



There has, so far, been an entire absence of summer 

 weather, and June has proved wet, cold, and almost sun- 

 less over the United Kingdom. In England the weather 

 has been especially bad, and the aggregate rainfall is 

 largely in excess of the average. In London the totat 

 measurement of rain, not including yesterday, June 30, 

 was 4-29 inches, whilst the average for the month is 

 2-21 inches. The duration of bright sunshine is only 

 eighty-seven hours, the average for the month being 167 

 hours, and in some recent years June has had 240 hours 

 of sunshine ; in May the sun was shining brightly in 

 London for 297 hours. At Greenwich there have only been 

 three days with the shade temperature above 70°, and 

 there is only one year, i860, with so few warm days in 

 June during the last sixty-eight years. In June last year 



