April 29, 1880] 



NATURE 



615 



Wales and Cumberland felspathic ashes being metamor- 

 phosed into felstone-like rocks. 



Mr. Ward had always a strong bent towards educa- 

 tional work, and lectures of his first given to a school 

 audience, and afterwards before the Keswick Literary 

 Society, were expanded and published as text-books 

 ("Elementary Natural Philosophy" and "Elementary 

 Geology," 1872). Like the late Canon Kingsley with the 

 Chester Society of Natural Science, Mr. Ward exerted 

 an immense influence in attracting people to the pursuit 

 of natural science, and in breaking down those trammels 

 which prevent people of different ranks meeting for a 

 common useful object ; and not only increased the number 

 of members of the Keswick Society and put its muse.im 

 in scientific order, enriching it with his own collections, 

 but united the society with the other societies of the 

 county, and formed them into the Cumberland Association 

 — a society publishing a useful journal. In 1S78 he left the 

 Geological Survey and entered the Church, holding suc- 

 cessively two cures under the Bishop of Carlisle : the first, 

 a curacy at Keswick ; the second, the vicarage of Rydal. 

 Thus in the shadow of Wordsworth's home, surrounded 

 by the mountains he loved so well, he closed his useful, 

 respected, and sadly too short life. C E. R. 



THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL 

 ENGINEERS 



AT the recent meeting of the Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers four papers were read on subjects of prac- 

 tical interest to engineers and men of science, viz., on 

 Electric Lighting, by Dr. John Hopkinson, F.R.S. Re- 

 marks on ChernofFs papers on Steel, by Mr. W. Anderson 

 of Erith. On Permanent Way for Street Tramways, with 

 special reference to Steam Traction, by Mr. J. D. Larsen ; 

 and on Water Pressure Engines for mining purposes, by 

 Mr. H. Davey of Leeds. . 



Dr. Hopkinson's paper is divided into three principal 

 parts. The first is a continuation of a paper read 

 by the author in April, 1879, in which he exhibited 

 by means of a curve the interconnection between the 

 current passing through a dynamo-electric machine, 

 the speed of revolution, and the electromotive force. 

 Since the date of the author's earlier paper other elec- 

 tricians have made experiments in the same direction ; 

 notably Aucrbach and Meyer in Germany, and Dr. Sie- 

 mens, F.R.S. , in this country. The results arrived at by 

 these experiments arc now given in a similar form to 

 that adopted by the author for illustrating his own 

 experiences. 



The second part of the paper deals with the brightness 

 of the electric arc. It is common to speak of the bright- 

 ness of an electric light in terms of so many candles. 

 The colour of the electric light is however different to 

 that of a candle. Hence "the statement without qualifi- 

 cation, that a certain electric lamp and machine give a 

 light of a certain number of candles." " is wanting in 

 definite meaning." "Captain Abney {Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society, March 1S78) has given the results of 

 the measurements of the red, blue, and actinic light 

 of electric arcs in terms of the red, blue, and actinic 

 light of a standard candle." It has also been ascer- 

 tained that the electric light under certain circum- 

 stances gives very different intensities of brightness in 

 different directions. These two facts, together with certain 

 practical difficulties, have rendered the measurement of 

 the li^ht emitted by the electric arc somewhat difficult. 

 In the second part of his paper Dr. Hopkinson describes 

 the methods which he has adopted for overcoming these 

 difficulties. 



In the third section the author considers the efficiency 

 of the electric arc, and concludes by giving a rule for the 



"measurement of the efficiency of any system of electric 

 lighting in which the electric arc is used, the arc being 

 neither exceptionally long nor exceptionally short." 



Mr. Anderson's remarks on Chernoft's papers on Steel 

 are chiefly interesting as tending to direct attention to an 

 almost unknown series of papers by a distinguished 

 Russian metallurgist. Few men have had better oppor- 

 tunities for becoming acquainted with the nature of steel 

 than M . Chernoff. He has been for some years assist- 

 ant manager of the celebrated Abouchoff Steel Works, 

 close to St. Petersburg. At these works five different 

 processes of manufacturing steel, viz., the old crucible, 

 the Siemens crucible, the Bessemer, the Siemens-Martin, 

 and the Whitworth fluid compressed steel systems, may 

 all be seen in operation. Visitors to the Vienna Exhibi- 

 tion in 1 S73 will remember the splendid specimens of 

 artillery, including a breech-loading forty-ton gun, which 

 were turned out by this factory. The establishment is 

 provided with an admirable laboratory, with one of 

 Kirkaldy's testing machines, and with every appliance 

 necessary for investigating the nature and properties of 

 the metal. L T nder these circumstances any contribution 

 to our knowledge of steel coming from the pen of M. 

 Chernoff would probably well deserve the attention of 

 English metallurgists. The first of the papers referred 

 to was published in 1868, but was not translated into 

 English till 1876. It deals with the chemical composition 

 of steel, the effects of introducing extraneous subjects 

 into its composition, and the effect upon its properties and 

 molecular structure of heating the metal vip to various 

 temperatures as high as the melting point, and then 

 cooling it again from the melting point. 



In 1876 M. Chernoff published a paper on the Bessemer 

 Process, " which gives a number of interesting analyses 

 made at the Abouchoff works andjelsewhere, and institutes 

 a comparison as to the dimensions of apparatus, quantity 

 of air required, and other details, in different countries 

 and for various qualities of iron." 



In 1878 he produced a paper on the Structure of Cast- 

 Steel Ingots, which deals with the nature and origin of 

 the defects to be met with in ingots, and the proper 

 method of obviating them. This paper also goes into the 

 very important question of whether steel-castings do or do 

 not require subsequent treatment under the hammer, and 

 the author gives tables of experiments to show that by 

 proper annealing .steel-castings can be rendered " fully 

 as tough, tenacious, and ductile as the forged metal." 



Mr. Anderson has done good service by translating 

 these papers for the benefit of English readers. He 

 notices at the beginning of his own paper that the 

 Russian language is so little understood that it is only 

 by accident that the labours of many very distinguished 

 Russians became known in Western Europe. We com- 

 mend this remark to the attention of the editorial 

 committee of the Institution of Civil Engineers. The 

 Transactions of the Institution have for some time been 

 remarkable for the admirable series of abstracts of 

 papers published in foreign periodicals. No English 

 engineer can now complain that the scientific publications 

 of other countries are inaccessible to him, therefore it 

 seems the greater pity that any little difficulty about the 

 language should cause the labours of Russian savants to 

 have been overlooked. 



The latter portion of Mr. Anderson's paper has nothing 

 to do with M. Chernoff. It deals principally with the 

 effect which occluded gases seem to play in the hardening 

 and tempering of steel, and also considers the molecular 

 changes, and the variations in the specific gravity of steel 

 brought about by tempering. On this point we should 

 like to draw the author's attention to a most interesting 

 series of experiments by Dr. Schott, a German, on the 

 effect of tempering glass in oil ; a resume of which is to 

 be found in the foreign abstracts of the last volume of 

 "Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers." 



