ArcuST 12, 1909J 



NA TURE 



199 



Engineers held at the White City on July 24. The 

 author's references to the difficulties of dealing with beef 

 are particularly interesting. Beef is much more difficult 

 to keep in condition during a voyage than mutton. The 

 temperature must never be low enough to produce solidifi- 

 cation ; such would cause the substance of the meat to 

 burst, and on thawing the meat would have a flabby 

 appearance, which would depreciate its value, although 

 perfectly wholesome as food. The temperature should be 

 maintained as nearly as possible at 29-5° F. The animals 

 must not be excited immediately preceding slaughter, or 

 have any sprained joints which would produce decomposi- 

 tion of the joint oil. The atmospheric conditions must 

 not be thundery or sultry at the time of slaughter, or the 

 air heavily charged with moisture, and scrupulous cleanli- 

 ness must be observed throughout. Indeed, the ideal con- 

 ditions for the slaughter-house should be those of the 

 operating theatre of a modern hospital. An article in 

 Engineering for July 30 states that there has not hitherto 

 been inuch success in the bringing of chilled beef from 

 Australia, but an experiment is now being made with a 

 large consignment, and will be watched w^ith interest. 



In the recently issued report of the proceedings of the 

 International Co?nmittee of Weights and Measures at its 

 meeting held in March last, the following points are of 

 interest. Livcstigations made at the bureau of the com- 

 mittee at Sevres have shown that when water at tempera- 

 tures between 6° C. and 8° C. is saturated with air, the 

 density of the water is diminished by about three parts in 

 a million. Vols. xiv. and xv. of the Travaii.x et 

 Memoiies of the committee, which are expected to be 

 published shortly, will include the researches of M. 

 Chappuis on the above subject, and also an account of 

 the experiments conducted by MM. Benoit, Fabry and 

 Perot with respect to the length of the metre in terms of 

 wave-lengths of light. The former volume will also con- 

 tain three important memoirs on the mass of a cubic 

 decimetre of water. The committee announces the adhesion 

 of Chili and Uruguay to the metric convention, and ex- 

 presses much satisfaction with the proposal of our Colonial 

 Office to distribute copies of the convention to all the 

 British colonies and dependencies. The report includes 

 two appendices by M. Guillaume. The first is a supple- 

 ment to his paper entitled " R^cents Progres du Systeme 

 m^trique," which was presented to the general conference 

 of weights and measures in 1907, and the second gives 

 an account of the present state of the question of standard 

 end-measures of length. It would appear from the latter 

 paper that Airy's method for determining the lengths of 

 end-bars, which had almost fallen into desuetude, has 

 recently been employed at the International Bureau with 

 considerable success. 



Tme issue of the Chemist and DrKggist for July 31 

 celebrates fittingly the attainment of our contemporary's 

 jubilee. The occasion of the annual summer issue of the 

 magazine has been taken to publish a history of the 

 growth of the periodical from its modest beginning in 

 1859 to the important technical journal it has since become. 

 The contents of this jubilee issue remind us that the 

 Chemist and Druggist has for many years given promin- 

 ence to the scientific aspects of pharmacology, and has 

 insisted consistently upon the value of a knowledge of 

 pure science if scientific principles are to be followed 

 successfully in technical processes. The present issue con- 

 tains, in addition, an exhaustive account of the proceed- 

 ings at the annual meeting of the British Pharmaceutical 

 Conference, held at N'ewcastle-on-Tyne towards the end 

 of last month. 



NO. 2076, A'OL. Si] 



A LIST of the lectures arranged for the session 1909-10 

 in connection with the extension section of the Manchester 

 Microscopical .Society has reached us. The purpose of 

 this section is to bring scientific knowledge, in a popular 

 form, before societies unable to pay large fees to pro- 

 fessional lecturers. The lectures are given gratuitously by 

 members of the society, and all fees paid for lectures are 

 devoted to the working expenses of the section. In 

 addition to lectures, the honorary secretary is willing to 

 arrange practical demonstrations in microscopy, micro- 

 scopical exhibitions, and the mounting of microscopic 

 objects, in connection with (he work of natural history 

 societies in the neighbourhood of Manchester. It is note- 

 worthy that there are about sixty lectures from which to 

 choose. The honorary secretary is Mr. R. Howarth, 

 90 George Street, Cheelham Hill, Manchester. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 



OESERV.-iTiONS OF S.^TUR.s 's RiNGS. — It will be remem- 

 bered that on the occasion of the disappearance of Saturn's 

 rings in 1907, Prof. Barnard, and other observers, found 

 that even when the rings were at minimum visibility there 

 still remained bright condensations on either side of the 

 planet. These, Prof. Barnard suggested, were possibly due 

 to the sunlight sifting through and being reflected from 

 the particles comprising the crape ring. 



Observations made during 1908 tend to confirm this 

 hvpothesis, for, when seen very obliquely, the crape ring 

 appeared much brighter than when seen at sucfi times 

 that the rings are more open, thus showing that the 

 particles are probably but sparsely disposed, and would 

 permit of such transmission and reflection of sunlight as 

 was suggested. The relative apparent brightnesses of the 

 inner and outer bright rings as seen at different epochs 

 also change, for during 1908, when the foreshortening of 

 the rings was great, the outer ring appeared to be the 

 brighter. Prof. Barnard suggests that if we could look 

 normallv at the surface of the rings the outer one would 

 be relatively dark, and the crape ring, perhaps, invisible. 

 .Although careful search was made for it. Prof. Barnard 

 was unable to detect any trace of the outer dark ring 

 discovered at Mount Rcvard, and sutiscquently observed at 

 Geneva and Greenwich (Monthly Notices [R..\.S.], vol. 

 Ixix., No. 8, p. 621). 



The Rel.mive .\tmospheric Efficiency of Telescopes. 

 — In a letter to No. 411 of the Observatory Mr. R. T. A. 

 Innes directs attention to the subject of the relative 

 efficiencv of telescopes of different apertures as compared 

 with the theoretical efficiencies. By tabulating the results 

 obtained by Burnham, with various apertures, he shows 

 that if the efficiency of the 36-inch Lick refractor be taken 

 as i-o, that of the 6-inch refractor used by Burnham is, 

 relatively, 2-5, the efticiency per inch of aperture apparently 

 decreasing regularly as the aperture increases. 



This plienomenon is attributed by Mr. Innes to atmo- 

 spheric interference ; with a large instrument it is more 

 difficult to find a night with perfect definition, and it is 

 onlv on such nights that close doubles, at the limit of the 

 observer's vision and the telescope's power, can be 

 observed. 



The Motion of the Pole. — No. 4344 of the Astto- 

 nomisehe Nachrichten contains a paper by Mr. H. Kimura 

 discussing the polar motion and the z component during 

 the period i890o-!9o8-5. The investigation of the four- 

 teen-months' period shows that it changed rather quickly, 

 being 436 days in 1893, 442 days (maximum) in 1897, and 

 427 days in 1907. No such abrupt change of amplitude 

 accompanied this change of period. 



The new discussion is opposed to the previous theory 

 that the annual period varies quickly while the fourteen- 

 months' period remains nearly constant, the opposite 

 appearing to be the case ; but, as Mr. Kimura points out, 

 the problem is a complicated one, in which many variables 

 are inherent, and will have to wait for further observa- 

 tions and studv before any definite conclusions are arrived 

 at. Special attention must be given to the effect of lati- 



