OCTOBER 13, 1899.] 
that Brooks holds has startled me, even although 
I cannot altogether appreciate his appeal to 
writers whose thought is still so comparatively 
medieval as Sir Thomas Browne and Berkeley. 
The remarks on determinism, for instance, are 
particularly apposite. If, in my turn, I might 
dare to speak for contemporary philosophers, I 
should say, there isno material for controversy, 
save under that misconception of the situation 
which Brooks so well lays bare. The crux of 
our discussion, it may be noted, seems to center 
in an equivoque as between the precise mean- 
ing attached to the term ‘naturalism’ by 
Brooks and Ward respectively. 
R. M. WENLEY. 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 
NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 
AT the sixth annual meeting of the German 
Electro-chemical Society, held at Gottingen in 
June, a strong address was delivered by Pro- 
fessor Hittorf on the necessity for the erection 
of special laboratories and creation of new 
chairs for inorganic chemistry in the German 
universities. After alluding to the address be- 
fore the last meeting of the Society by Van t’- 
Hoff on the increasing significance of inorganic 
chemistry, he showed the overwhelming pre- 
dominance given to organic chemistry in the 
universities. There are but three German 
universities where there is any adequate teach- 
ing of inorganic chemistry. At all the rest 
the full professors of chemistry are almost ex- 
clusively devoted to the organic field. If Ger- 
many is to keep pace in the practical world 
with England, America and France, a revival 
of inorganic chemistry is necessary, and for 
this men and laboratories are needed. 
AT the same meeting a new electrical resist- 
ance material for high temperature was de- 
scribed by W.C. Heraus. The platinum alloys 
are not satisfactory owing to their actual low 
resistance, although their relative resistance is 
high. The poorest conductor is the 30% irid- 
ium platinum alloy, and here the resistance for a 
meter of wire 0.3 mm. diameter is only 5 ohms. 
The new resistance material is formed by mix- 
ing clay with 10% to15% of platinum, mold- 
ing into pencils and heating to about 1250° in a 
reducing atmosphere. There appears to be 
SCIENCE, 
537 
formed a platinum silicon alloy which serves as 
the conductor. The resistance increases with 
the temperature up to a certain point, and 
then at higher temperature decreases, perhaps 
owing to the formation of more platinum-silicon 
alloy. The pencils can be used up to a red 
heat and promise to have a very considerable 
practical application. 
SoME time since a specimen of malachite was 
described by W. Autenrieth which contained an 
appreciable quantity of iodin. Exhaustive 
search, however, failed to find any further 
similar malachites until recently, when a series 
of malachites and cuprites from New South 
Wales proved almost without exception to con- 
tain iodin. These are described in the Chemi- 
ker-Zeitung. The amount of iodin in the mala- 
chite is 0.15%, and the iodin is given off merely 
on heating the mineral to low redness. The 
amount of iodin in the cuprite is less than one- 
tenth that in the malachite. These minerals 
were wholly free from silver and bromin, and 
chlorin was only occasionally present and then 
in mere traces. 
Vo. Jb, JBL. 
CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
WEATHER PERIODICITIES. 
THE question of periodicities in the weather 
has received the attention of many meteorolo- 
gists and physicists ; publications on this subject 
have been numerous and varied; but as yet no 
sort of general agreement as to, or acceptance 
of, results has been reached. In this country 
Clayton has been studying weather periodic- 
ities for some years, and his conclusions, al- 
though they have not attracted the notice that 
they deserve, have been noteworthy. Ina re- 
cent paper entitled Investigations on Periodicity 
in the Weather (Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and 
Sciences, XXXIV., No. 22), Clayton carries his 
investigations a good step farther in advance. 
Among his results it is shown that there is a 
small range in the frequency of thunderstorms 
in the United States, the plotted curves indi- 
cating a maximum a few days preceding the 
greatest northern declination of the moon. A 
similar result was obtained by Ekholm and 
Arrhenius for the thunderstorms of Sweden. 
Further, when the mean daily departures from 
