August 5, 1909J 



NA TURE 



163 



cut the characteristic features of the subject with the 

 utmost faithfuhiess ; the topics range from thunder- 

 storms to valley formations, and through a great 

 variety of field and garden forms of life. Amongst 

 such a feast of good things it is invidious to select, 

 but we may mention the articles on British carnivores 

 ind rodents, on the grasses and sedges, on the 

 " crvptozoic " fauna, and on certain British trees, as 

 jmong the most attractive. The physiographical 

 papers bv Dr. Lockyer, j\lr. M. Duncan, and the late 

 j\lr. Lomas are of great interest. No more fascinating 

 worli could be easily suggested that would appeal to 

 the e\e with such success as this volume does, and 

 though the text is of unequal merit, it has throughout 

 the advantage of being tlie work of trained observers 

 in the field. 



(j) By this new volume of Prof. Farmer's " Book 

 of Nature Study " the student is introduced to plant 

 life. The headings of the first four chapters seem to 

 us remarkably chosen. They may be summarised 

 thus ; — Seeds and seedlings, the bud and its growth, 

 vegetative methods of reproduction, the importance of 

 hairs. Surely this is a very inadequate and unequal 

 manner of treating the subject. Miss Laurie has, 

 iiowever, described the objects under discussion well, 

 .and the illustrations are good. May we point out that 

 two of the experiments could not be got to work as 

 described and figured? An incompletely described ex- 

 periment is worse than useless in an elementary book. 

 On p. 40 (Fig. 29) carbon dioxide would enter by the 

 lower edge of the bell-jar, and thus vitiate the experi- 

 ment. One inch of water is, of course, needed. Fig. 

 30 (p. 50) represents an experiment which even the 

 author would find physically impossible to set up in 

 the manner described. Sufficient stress, furthermore, 

 is not laid on the fact that all parts of the plant 

 breathe. On p. 56 the storing function of the stem 

 is not referred to. We must, in fact, state that the 

 four chapters give one an inadequate idea of plant 

 life. Prof. Lang's chapters on some flowering plants 

 require ' no comment. We have here a few flowers, 

 or, rather, complete plants carefully described. The 

 types chosen are readily obtained, and thus every 

 student can have a living plant by his side when work- 

 ing through the descriptions in the book. 



RESEARCHES AT THE NATIONAL PHYSICAL 

 LABORATORY. 



VOL V. of the Collected Researches of the 

 National Physical Laboratory, which has re- 

 cently appeared, consists of reprints of thirteen 

 memoirs emanating from the laboratory, and extends 

 to 266 pages. Engineering subjects are answerable 

 for about eighty of these pages, while the rest are 

 about equally divided between electricity, metallurgy, 

 and cosmical physics. 



Of the engineering memoirs that deaUng with 

 wind pressures is of great importance. By ex- 

 periments on plates and on lattice-work structures, 

 both in natural winds and in pipes within 

 which a uniform flow of air was maintained, it is 

 shown that the pressure is proportional to the square 

 of the velocity, and further, that the actual pressure 

 on a lattice-work structure when exposed to the wind 

 may be found by observations taken on a small model 

 placed in a pipe through which a uniform current 

 of air is flowing. 



A second memoir of interest to engineers is that 

 on a new fatirue test for metals. The material 

 tested is in the f irm of a ring, which is kept rotating 

 about its own a iis under pressure by means of three 

 rollers w-hich tear on its outer surface. LInder a 

 NO. 2075 VOL. 81] 



test of this kind the superiority of nickel steel rails 

 for railway work is well brought out. 



In the electrical section, one of the most important 

 memoirs deals with the history of the standards of 

 electrical resistance kept at the laboratory. The ulti- 

 mate standards are of mercury in glass, and were first 

 set up in 1902. They show no change in the in- 

 terval, but many of the secondary standards have 

 increased in resistance by a few parts in 10,000 since 

 they were constructed, some ten, others twenty, years 

 ago. Some of the secondary standards have, how- 

 ever, proved more satisfactory, those of platinum, 

 some of those of platinum-silver, and some of the 

 manganin ones, appearing to be unchanged. 



As the result of a comparison of the new electric 

 current balance of the laboratory with the standard 

 ampere balance of the Board of Trade set up fourteen 

 years ago, it appears that the two agree to within 

 i/iooth part of i per cent. 



In the metallurgical department the alloys of lead 

 and tin have been investigated in considerable detail, 

 both thermally and microscopically, and the eutectic 

 found to be 37 per cent, lead, 63 per cent. tin. A new 

 method of determining the phosphorus in phosphor tin 

 has been also worked out, and promises to be both 

 shorter and much more convenient than the older 

 methods. 



Only a portion of the work of the department 

 which deals with cosmical physics is recorded in this 

 volume. This portion consists of a discussion of the 

 magnetic declination as recorded at Kew during the 

 years 1S90-1900 in the light of, or, rather, the ob- 

 scurity provided by, the multitude of theories of 

 terrestrial magnetism now in the field. It is shown 

 that the records are incompatible with any theory 

 which regards magnetic disturbances as directly de- 

 pendent on the area of the sunspots visible at the 

 time. From the report of this department we note 

 that at Kew the mean declination during igo8 was 

 16° i& W. , the mean dip 67° i' N., and the mean 

 horizontal force o"i852 c.g.s. units. By the end of 

 the present year it is hoped that the new observatory 

 at Eskdalemuir will be in full working order, many 

 of the recording instruments being already installed. 



From this short summary it w-ill be seen that 

 vol. V. is well worthy to rank with its prede- 

 cessors, as a contribvition to science of which the 

 nation may feel proud. C. H. L. 



JOHN REID, 1809-1S49. 



UNDOLBTEDLV 1S09 was an annus mirahilis. 

 Nineteen hundred and nine is, therefore, the 

 hundredth anniversary of the birth of certain great 

 ones in letters, in politics, and in science. Several 

 epoch-makers have their statues in the intellectual 

 Valhalla of the nation, but it would not be well if 

 we allowed the statues on their pedestals to make 

 us overlook the busts in the smaller niches. One 

 of the busts in the Hall of Shades is that of the 

 Scotsman, John Reid, born April 9, 1809, the son 

 of a cattle-dealer, dying July 30, 1849, Chandos pro- 

 fessor of anatomy and medicine in the United College 

 of St. Salvator and St. Leonard in the University 

 of St. .\ndrews. Forty-nine years only intervened — 

 they were filled with the activities of a strenuous 

 Scottish character. 



John Reid, the sixth child of Henry Reid and Jean 

 Orr, his wife, was born in the little town of Bath- 

 gate in Linlithgowshire, the same in w'hich two years 

 later James Young Simpson, the epoch-maker, first 

 saw the light. 



From his native parish school, Reid passed, at 



