714 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 829- 



According to Nature the staff of the Exeter 

 Museum has prepared and arranged for public 

 exhibition the fine series of about 4,000 species 

 and 20,000 specimens of land-shells received 

 towards the latter part of 1909 as a bequest 

 from the late Miss Linter. According to the 

 terms of the will, the collection was to be made 

 accessible to the public within a specified 

 period, and this heavy task has been success- 

 fully accomplished. Lack of space prevented, 

 however, the whole collection being shown at 

 once, and it has accordingly been arranged to 

 exhibit it in sections. 



Sir William Eamsay, has, as reported in 

 the London Times, announced that for the 

 first time radium had been produced in Great 

 Britain from British ore. The announcement 

 was made on the occasion of the visit of a 

 number of gentlemen to the British Eadium 

 factory, Limehouse, where the process of puri- 

 fication has been carried on since June. The 

 ore came from the Trenwith mine of the St. 

 Ives Consolidated Mines (Limited). In the 

 course of a statement which he made on the 

 conclusion of the inspection of the works. Sir 

 William Eamsay mentioned that, up to the 

 present, the amount of pure radium actually 

 produced was over half a gram, or 5,500 milli- 

 grams of 10 per cent, radium, though the fac- 

 tory has been laid out to produce one gram of 

 pure radium per month. Apart from the new 

 supply, he said, there were not more than five 

 grams of radium in the world at the present 

 moment. From each ton of pitchblende, if it 

 was pure, 530 milligrams of radium could be 

 extracted, and the loss in crystallization was 

 small, amounting barely to one milligram. 

 The Cornish supply of pitchblende. Sir W. 

 Eamsay declared, was, as far as he could 

 judge, very much richer in radium than the 

 pitchblende which could be got in Austria, 

 and there was no other source of supply known 

 at present of the same magnitude as that 

 yielded by the Cornish mines. " The supply 

 of radium is thus assured," he added. " From 

 a medical point of view alone the demand will 

 be very great; in fact, the present demand is 

 much greater than the supply." At Karlsbad 

 and Joachimsthal baths containing radium 



water were prescribed and had been found 

 very serviceable in cases of rheumatism, gout, 

 neuritis and every form of nervous complaint. 

 The present quoted price of radium was from 

 £18 to £20 a milligram. Sir W. Eamsay 

 further explained that polonium, a newer and 

 rarer element than radium, also exists in the 

 pitchblende concentrates which have been 

 taken from the Cornish mines. This element. 

 is got from a rich solution by what Sir W. 

 Eamsay described as a very simple process, 

 which had been tried at the factory on a small' 

 scale. " Inasmuch," he said, " as polonium 

 disappears to one haK its amount in 140 days, 

 the probability is that its particular use will 

 be for medical purposes. It has never been 

 brought into the market, however, and its 

 therapeutic action has not been tried at all. 

 It gives off the same amount of rays as- 

 radium, but it is a much rarer element than 

 radium in the sense that there is much less of 

 it in the pitchblende. Another element, actin- 

 ium, which was discovered by M. Dibierne, 

 Mme. Curie's colleague, we have not yet 

 touched, but we know it is in the residues. 

 All these elements have different periods of 

 life. Eadium is only half gone in 1,700 years, 

 polonium in 140 days." The visitors were 

 shown the radium which is stored at the fac- 

 tory in a specially constructed safe lined with 

 lead and asbestos, and for the safety of which 

 the greatest precautions are taken. 



The Michael Sars Expedition under Dr- 

 Hjort, financed and accompanied by Sif John 

 Murray, which, as already mentioned, left 

 Plymouth on April Y, has completed its work. 

 The Geographical Journal states that the ob- 

 servations began oft' the west coast of Ireland,- 

 and were continued southwards oft' the west 

 coasts of Europe and Africa as far as Cape 

 Bojador. Thence the expedition went by way 

 of the Canaries and the Sargasso Sea to the 

 Azores, and thence to Newfoundland, whence- 

 the Atlantic was once more crossed on the 

 homeward voyage. Throughout the cruise 

 both physical and biological observations were 

 constantly made, the number of stations 

 amounting to 74. More than six hundred 



