September i6, 1909J 



NATURE 



3-5 1' 



millions sterling. From 1885 to iqo2, during the period 

 the writer occupied the position of Director of Naval Con- 

 struction and Assistant Controller of the Navj-, the total 

 outlay on the 245 ships for the designs of which he was 

 responsible amounted to about 100 millions sterling. The 

 stress of foreign competition and the growth in dimensions 

 and cost of warships is leading to still greater expenditure 

 on the Navy, and it is good to know that Canada, 

 Australia, New Zealand, and So"uth Africa are ready and 

 willing to bear their share of the inevitable burden. 



All branches of engineering have been and will be drawn 

 upon freely in the execution of this great task. Mining 

 and metallurgy assist by the production of materials of 

 construction ; mechanical and electrical engineers contribute 

 machines and appliances required in shipyards and engine 

 factories, as well as guns, gun-mountings, and mechanical 

 apparatus of all kinds required in modern warships in 

 order to supplement and economise manual power ; marine 

 engineers design and construct the propelling apparatus, 

 and constantly endeavour to reduce the proportion of weight 

 and space to power developed ; naval architects design and 

 build the ships ; constructional engineers are occupied in 

 the provision of docks, harbours, and bases adapted to the 

 requirements of the fleet ; and other branches of engineer- 

 ing play important, if less prominent, parts. The progress 

 of invention and discovery is increasing, rapid changes 

 occur unceasingly, the outlay is enormous, the task is 

 never ending, but its performance is essential to the con- 

 tinued well-being of the Empire, and it must and will be 

 performed. 



The International Geodetic Association will meet in 

 London on September 21 and following days at the rooms 

 of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, 

 Westminster. The permanent commission of the associa- 

 tion, consisting of one representative from each contributing 

 country, is constituted as follows : — Belgium, Lieut. - 

 Colonel Gillis ; Chile, M. Bertrand ; Denmark, Major- 

 General Madsen ; France, General Bassot (president) ; 

 Germany, Prof. Foerster ; Great Britain, Sir George 

 Darwin (vice-president) ; Holland, Prof. H. G. van de 

 Sande Bakhuyzen (perpetual secretary) ; Hungary, Prof. 

 L. de Bodola von Zagon ; Italy, Prof. Celoria ; 

 Japan, Dr. Hisashi Terao ; Mexico, Sen. .Angel .Anguiano ; 

 Norway, Major -General Per Nissen ; Portugal, General the 

 Marquis d'Avila et de Bolama ; Russia, General 

 .Artomonoff ; Spain, Sen. Arrillaga ; Sweden, Prof. Rosen; 

 Switzerland, Prof. Gautier ; United States, Mr. Tittmann. 

 The .Argentine Republic will be represented by Prof. Porro 

 de Somenzi, Roumania by Colonel Rimniceano, India by 

 Colonel Burrard, Egypt by Mr. Keeling, Australia by Mr. 

 G. H. Knibbs. Among the seventy or eighty delegates, 

 other than members of the permanent commission, are 

 Prof. Helmert, chief of the Central Bureau, Potsdam, 

 Prof. .Albrecht and Prof, von Seeliger (Germany) ; Vice- 

 Admiral Ritter v. Kalmar and Major-General von 

 Sterneck (Austria), Lieut-Colonel Bourgeois and M. H. 

 Poincare (France), Baron Roland Eotvos (Hungary), Prof. 

 Kapteyn (Holland), and Dr. Backlund (Russia). -Among 

 the representatives of Great Britain are the Astronomer 

 Royal, Colonel Close, Major Leonard Darwin, Rear- 

 Admiral Field, Sir Archibald Geikie, Sir David Gill, Dr. 

 Glazebrook, Colonel Grant, Major Hills, Captain Lyons, 

 and Colonel Sir William Morris. By command of the 

 King, the delegates are invited to visit Windsor Castle on 

 Saturday, September 25. On Monday, September 27, the 

 meeting will be transferred to Cambridge, where the con- 

 cluding sessions will be held. 



The seventeenth annual exhibition of the Photographic 

 Salon is now open at the Gallery of the Royal Society 

 of Painters in Water Colours, 5A Pall Mall East. As the 

 NO. 2081, VOL. 81] 



promoters of this exhibition are interested only in pictorial: 

 work, the technician expects to find among the works- 

 they have selected for presentation expressions of the most 

 recent ideas as to approved methods, and the finest ex- 

 amples that these methods can furnish. Last year's Photo- 

 graphic Salon included a large number of colour photo- 

 graphs on autochrome plates, but this year there is nor 

 a single colour photograph of any kind. This must mean 

 that, in spite of the improvements in the manufacture and 

 in the methods of using plates for colour photography, the 

 results obtained are not generally satisfactory from the 

 artistic point of view. The shortcomings of these plates, 

 are well known and appreciated by those who have studied' 

 them, but they do offer possibilities of a certain measure- 

 of success in the rendering of colour, and we were not. 

 prepared for their total exclusion. The one hundred and 

 thirteen pictures hung, selected, presumably, from many 

 hundreds submitted, include examples of many styles and? 

 all degrees of merit. They range from a fuzziness that 

 leaves the subject hardly recognisable to the keenest 

 sharpness of definition, from the darkest to the lightest 

 possible, and from those that have large fiat patches of' 

 an even tint to those that show the most delicate 

 and perfect modelling that can be desired. It is the- 

 possibilities of these great varieties of style that are 

 of technical interest. The catalogue is defective im 

 not giving the methods by which the various examples 

 are produced, but we believe that we are correct in saying 

 that the portraits by Mr. E. O. Hoppe are all unsophisti- 

 cated platinum prints. These, and some of Mr. Frederick- 

 H. Evans's e-xhibits, and the portrait by Mr. Furley Lewis, 

 will be specially instructive to those who print in platinumi 

 as showing the rich results obtainable by this method. 

 In addition to the new work, there are nearly thirty 

 examples of photographs by the late David Octavius Hill,, 

 made more than sixty years ago. These demonstrate that 

 the vast strides photography has made during the last 

 half-century have tended rather to increase the output andT 

 multiply diversity of method than to raise the quality of" 

 the work from a pictorial point of view. 



By the death of Mr. Thomas Southwell, which took 

 place at his residence in Norwich on September 5, science- 

 has lost an amateur naturahst of the very best type, and! 

 one who, by the extremely careful and painstaking nature 

 of his work, set an example even to his professional; 

 brethren. Moreover, his natural-history studies were not 

 undertaken for the purpose of filling up the time of am 

 idle man, for during the best years of his life Mr. South- 

 well was in the employ of Gurney's (Barclay's) bank at 

 Norwich, and could study his favourite subject only in the 

 intervals of his professional work. In addition to possess- 

 ing a great knowledge of the ornithology of his county, 

 Mr. Southwell devoted special attention to whales andf 

 whahng, 'and for a long series of years his annual report 

 in the Zoologist on the product of the season's whahng. 

 and sealing expedition afforded a mine of valuable informa- 

 tion which could be obtained nowhere else. The great 

 value of these reports consists in the fact that the informa- 

 tion relating to the British portion of these industries was- 

 always at first hand, Mr. Southwell having got in touch, 

 with the whaling captains of Peterhead and Dundee. In> 

 addition to giving statistics concerning the annual catch, 

 of whales and seals, Mr. Southwell studied and collated' 

 all the information he could acquire concerning the dis- 

 tribution and migrations of the Greenland right-whale, andl 

 was thus enabled to formulate certain important theories, 

 on these points. In 1881 he published a small volume on, 

 the "Seals and Whales of the British Seas"; and his. 



