July 31, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



167 



re-stoppered, they were still liable to the unex- 

 pected evaporation and leakage already descritjed. 

 Hence, without any manner of doubt, the shortage 

 which struck the southern party so hard. 



That the oil could have soaked the supplies 

 placed seven feet below the oil tins by escap- 

 ing through the stopper in the form of vapor, 

 seems impossible. A possible and very plaus- 

 ible explanation of this leakage of oil is the 

 conversion of ordinary tin into the allotropic 

 form, gray tin powder. This change to gray 

 tin powder is known to take place at a maxi- 

 mum rate at — 48° 0. and may take place 

 more slowly at other temperatures below 18° 

 0. Should this change occur along the sol- 

 dered seams of the container, the mysterious 

 leakage of oil might well be explained. This 

 peculiar disintegration of tin is also shown by 

 certain alloys of tin. Articles of pewter (tin 4 

 parts, lead one part) have frequently been 

 known to show such changes and this change 

 has indeed been given the name " museum 

 disease," referring to pevrter articles. Earup^ 

 claims that the admixture of other metals in- 

 fluences the rate at which said change occurs 

 and in the series zinc, cadmium, copper, silver, 

 lead, the accelerating influence increases in the 

 order given, lead having the greatest acceler- 

 ating effect. Since hard solder may contain 

 65 per cent, tin and since pewter is known to 

 show this property, it may also be expected in 

 such a hard solder. If such is the case, it is a 

 good indication of the extreme care which 

 must be exercised to meet the severe and un- 

 usual conditions surrounding polar explora- 

 tion. 



B. T. Brooks 



Mellon Institute op Industrial Eeseakch, 

 University op Pittsburgh 



cubist literature of Gertrude Stein or her dis- 

 ciples and imitators wiU recognize at once the 

 diagnostic symptoms of infection in an article 

 by P. C. van der Wolk in one of the most 

 sober journals of genetics.^ This paper is 

 entitled " New Eesearches into Some Statis- 

 tics of Coffea." Note the apparent innocence 

 of the title. Here are some excerpts : 



In both of the former communications we saw 

 how that generally the different curves, within the 

 definite end curve, are present in a greater or 

 smaller number of removings; the tops of the dif- 

 ferent curves remove in all directions, whereby the 

 crucial point is still that the place of those tops 

 is not so arbitrary. ... I thought in the begin- 

 ning to have an instance in which all the curves 

 exhibited precisely the same top as was the case 

 with the first four curves. Suddenly however half- 

 way up the tree, the top thrust out a large dis- 

 tance to the right side, and to my astonishment 

 the consequent curves as well as the definite end 

 curve exhibited exactly the same top as curve 5. 

 It is noteworthy that this top-removing happened 

 suddenly, witliout transition. . . . Let us now refer 

 back to both of the previous investigations. We 

 then once more observe all those analyzed curves. 

 Is there then a difEerenee in principle between 

 this newly recorded case and all the others? Is 

 there a difference in principle in the question 

 whether it is only once that a top-removing of the 

 curves occurs within the end curve (as in our pres- 

 ent case) or that several times top-removing takes 

 place (as is the case in the two previous communi- 

 cations). Certainly not. [Italics are the au- 

 thor's.] 



The scientific world will await with renewed 

 interest this author's fourth communication, 

 which we understand is to be a statistical 

 study of top-removing in Cannabis indica. 



J. F. A. 



CUBIST SCIENCE 



Those stanch defenders of the citadel of 

 pure science, who have so long arrayed them- 

 selves against the insidious invasion of meta- 

 physics, must now arm themselves to repel a 

 new foe. This is nothing less than that 

 dernier cri of esthetic literature — cubism! 

 Those who have come in contact with the 



2 C/. " Handbuch d. Anorganische Chemie, ' ' 

 Abegg, III., pp. 550. 



MOTIONS OF ATMOSPHERE 



To THE Editor op Science: Eecent letters 

 from mathematicians and physicists seem to 

 show that there are very few students or pro- 

 fessors in our universities who pay much at- 

 tention to the difficult problems that refer to 

 motions of the atmosphere on a large scale. 

 But surely there must be some physicists who 



1 Zeitsohrift fiir Indulctive Abstammungs- und 

 Vererbungslehre, 1914, XI., p. 355 ff. 



