158 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 866 



ography, an excellent index and a general 

 map of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic re- 

 gions concludes the work. 



Much of the land mass of the islands is of 

 igneous or granitic rocks, but fossils of ter- 

 tiary age, in limestone, have been found on 

 Campbell Island and all the conditions indi- 

 cate the probability that all the islands formed 

 part of a continental area connecting them 

 with New Zealand. Wingless species or spe- 

 cies with reduced wings are numerous among 

 the insects, as might be expected. 



In his general review the editor leans to- 

 ward the theory of a great Antarctic conti- 

 nent in the warmer Tertiary time — with con- 

 nections or close relations with Patagonia, 

 South Africa and Australasia — as best ex- 

 plaining the distribution of animal and plant 

 life now existing and the fossil remains which 

 have been collected in the Antarctic and sub- 

 Antarctic regions. 



Wm. H. Dall 



ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL TABLES OF 

 PETSICAL AND CHEMICAL CONSTANTS 

 At the International Congress of Applied 

 Chemistry, held in London in 1909, an inter- 

 national commission was appointed with 

 power to undertake the publication of " An- 

 nual Tables " containing all constants and 

 other numerical data which may be of interest 

 in physics, chemistry or in the technical appli- 

 cations of these sciences. The plans outlined 

 by the commission received the endorsement 

 of the International Association of Aca- 

 demies and the official recognition and finan- 

 cial support of many of the governments and 

 learned academies of the world. Since its 

 inception the commission has been enlarged 

 and made more thoroughly representative of 

 the various branches of science. It is now 

 composed of twenty-five chemists and physi- 

 cists representing the following countries: 

 Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, France, 

 Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, Scandi- 

 navia, Spain, Switzerland and the United 

 States. 



Owing to the immense volume of scientific 

 and technical literature which is continually 



being produced, the difficulties in the way of 

 ascertaining whether any given measurement 

 has been made or not are increasing year by 

 year. Existing systems of indexing and ab- 

 stracting offer only limited help, since a 

 large number of measurements are made in 

 the course of researches to which they are 

 purely subsidiary, so that their existence can 

 not be inferred from the titles and subtitles- 

 of the papers in which they are recorded. 

 Also, tables which appear only at long inter- 

 vals, such as those of Landolt and Born- 

 stein, can of necessity cover only a small part 

 of the ground and are never quite up to 

 date. The " Annual Tables " should there- 

 fore fill a serious gap which has hitherto ex- 

 isted in the systematic indexing of scientific 

 and technical results. 



During the year 1910 all scientific publica- 

 tions which might contain material of value 

 were systematically scrutinized by a large 

 corps of abstractors. From the data thus ob- 

 tained a volume of tables and bibliography is 

 about to be published, covering the year 1910. 

 The volume will form a valuable addition to 

 the physical chemical tables which already ex- 

 ist and will, together with the succeeding 

 annual volumes, prove a powerful aid to the 

 work of the investigator, both in pure and 

 applied science, and will enable him to find 

 with ease those data which he may require 

 and which it would be most difficult to ob- 

 tain by individual search. Many important 

 constants published in little used journals, or 

 in papers which are inadequately indexed, 

 will be saved from oblivion. Each value, 

 given in the tables, will be accompanied by the 

 name of the author, by a reference to the 

 original paper and by an indication of the 

 exact conditions under which the measure- 

 ments were made. The text of the tables 

 will be printed in English, German, French 

 and Italian. 



The committee urgently requests authors of 

 scientific papers to cooperate with them by 

 sending to one of their number (two) re- 

 prints of all articles published. This is espe- 

 cially desirable in the case of papers pub- 

 lished in the form of theses, of government 



