igS 



NATURE 



[August 12, 1909 



de Circonstaiice of the Conscil Permanent International 

 pour I'Exploration de la Mer. Dr. Pettersson finds that 

 in the underlying deep waters there is a tidal oscillation 

 which can have daily, monthly and annual periods. These 

 oscillations produce variations in the temperature and 

 salinity of the sea at certain depths, and their investigation 

 becomes of great commercial importance owing to their 

 action in determining the coming and the migration of the 

 herring shoals. The great annual oscillation of the coastal 

 water in the Norwegian sea shows amplitudes of more 

 than 100 m., and the corresponding expansion of the 

 coastal waters of the surface to the westward, in the 

 summer months, was found by Hjort and \ansen to cover 

 an area more than loo miles broad. 



The fourth report on earthquakes in Jamaica, by Mr. 

 Maxwell Hall, contains a catalogue of shocks recorded 

 since the commencement of the weather service in i.?8o, 

 and some interesting particulars regarding the fracture of 

 cables by the earthquake of January 14, 1907. The cable 

 to Colon was broken four miles south of Bull Bay, and 

 to the south of the break the cable was so deeply buried 

 in mud that it parted in the attempt to raise it. A 

 more extensive break took place at twenty miles further 

 south, where the cable had been dragged from west to 

 east, and the fractured ends were fully a mile apart, and 

 further south the cable was again buried in mud and had 

 to be abandoned. Captain Morrell, of the repairing ship 

 Henry Holmes, reports that the two ends of the cable 

 fitted together perfectly, the cable was in perfect condition, 

 there were no signs of erosion, and the wires were broken 

 clean as by a tremendous strain, which he considers to 

 have been produced by a landslide from the direction of 

 the shallow water to the deeper. Mr. Hall points out 

 that the soundings indicate a gradient of 740 fathoms in 

 five miles, or about i in 6, on the average, from the 

 California bank, but where the great break occurred the 

 sea-bed is apparently level or nearly so ; consequently, he 

 considers, the dragging of the cable for a mile or so 

 to the east, and the parting of the ends to the same extent, 

 could only have been produced by a great chasm opening 

 in the bed of the sea to the east of the great break. 



The first part of the " Bergens Museums Aarbog " for 

 the current year records an important discovery at 

 Jaederen of a house of the Middle Iron age. It consisted 

 of a single oblong room, the roof resting on beams set 

 upright, distinct marks of which were found in the clay 

 floor, and the interior being filled with remains of the 

 birch-bark roofing. The fireplace was a paved depression 

 in the centre, but fires had been made also in other parts 

 of the apartment. The antiquities discovered were, on the 

 whole, disappointing, consisting mainly of earthenware 

 pots and grindstones, of which illustrations are given in 

 the report.. This discovery is notable, because this is the 

 first house of this type which has been found in Norway ; 

 but in Sweden they are well known in Gotland, Oland, 

 and Uppland, and they seem to have been noticed in Fin- 

 land. 



Prof. Jl'ne Downey contributes an article on muscle 

 reading to the July number of the Psychological Review. 

 By muscle reading is meant that well-known communica- 

 tion between one person, the guide, and another, the sub- 

 ject, by means of involuntary movements of the guide, 

 when his attention is riveted in a given direction. The 

 writer contends that concentration of the guide's attention 

 not only induces free involuntary movements, but also 

 leads to more complex forms of " automatic " activity. 

 For instance, although the guide's attention may be 



NO. 2076, VOL. Si] 



momentarily distracted, his involuntary movements persist 

 unaltered. Or, again, despite his concentrated attention 

 in a given direction, his movements may have reference 

 to a preceding test instead of to the present one. Un- 

 fortunately, the scant experimental data given in the pre- 

 sent paper and her defects of experimental method make 

 it difficult to accept with confidence any of the writer's 

 interesting conclusions. 



Dl'Rtng a stay at the Sonnblick Observatory (3106 

 metres) in July, 1908, Dr. A. Wagner, of the Austrian 

 Meteorological Office, made some interesting observations 

 on cloud elements, the results of which are published in 

 the Sitstingsbcricliie of the Vienna Academy for December 

 last. The author deals with the water contents, both in 

 the gaseous form, as shown by the hair hygrometer, and 

 in its fluid form in drops or ice-crystals, also with the size 

 of the drops. During thick fog the humidity was generally 

 more than too per cent., and only sank below that amount 

 when the sun became visible through the fog. The mean 

 of the measurements of the fluid contents of the clouds 

 was about 2 grams per cubic metre ; the greatest value 

 was 4-84 grams, and the smallest 012 gram. The total of 

 the fluid and gaseous contents varied between 998 grams 

 and 4-17 grams per cubic metre; the fluid contents were 

 always less than the gaseous. Visibility was found to be 

 inversely proportional to the fluid contents ; its dependence 

 on the size of the drops could not be determined, owing 

 to the few measurements made of the latter. The mean 

 diameter of the drops, determined by the optical method, 

 was 33 fi, but only eighteen such observations were made, 

 on three days. 



The July number of the Journal of the Rontgen Society 

 contains a paper by Dr. G. H. Rodman on the historical 

 collection of si.xty-three Rontgen-ray tubes which has been 

 got together by the society, and is now in the possession 

 of the authorities of the Victoria and .\lbert Museum at 

 South Kensington, and will in a short time be installed in 

 two show-cases in the museum. The paper is well illus- 

 trated by photographs of the tubes, and will be of great 

 use to those who are unable to pay a visit to the museum 

 to inspect the tubes themselves. 



.\ vah;.4BLE report by Dr. H. Happel on the present 

 position of our knowledge of the properties of the 

 monatomic g.ases is to be found in the Physikalische 

 Zeitschrift for July 15. The author, after giving an 

 account of the theoretical advances made by Sutherland 

 and by Reinganum on the assumption of hard spher'cal 

 molecules, refers to the older work of Maxwell and Boltz- 

 mann, based on the molecules repelling each other accord- 

 ing to the inverse fifth power of their distance apart. He 

 shows that the experimental work done during recent 

 years on the viscosity, heat conduction, and diffusion of 

 the simpler gases does not provide more than general 

 support for any of these theories, and that there is great 

 nied of further investigation of these properties over very 

 wide limits of temperature. The theory of the gas-liquid 

 state and the theory of binary mixtures as stated by 

 van der Waals have, in Dr. Happel's opinion, proved 

 valuable weapons in the hands of those who, like Ramsay. 

 Travers, Dewar, and Kamerlingh-Onnes, have beer, 

 engaged in investigating the thermal properties of the 

 monatomic gases and of mixtures of them. 



.\ PAPER on refrigerating installations, with specia': 

 reference to the arrangements necessary when narrow 

 limits of temperature are required, was read by Mr. 

 Robert Balfour at a meelinsf of the Institute of Marine 



