November 15, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



761 



twenty-three daily weather maps that were 

 published in various parts of the world at 

 the commencement of the twentieth cen- 

 tury. With the exception of Africa, only a 

 small portion of the north of which continent 

 was mapped, South America and a part of 

 eastern Asia, every part of the world has 

 charted each day the weather conditions 

 prevailing over it. 



The communication that attracted the 

 greatest popular interest in the Physical 

 Section was by Lord Kelvin on ' The Abso- 

 lute Amount of Gravitational Matter in any 

 Large Volume of Interstellar Space.' This 

 was a summary of his article in the Philo- 

 sophical Magazine for August (see also Nature 

 of October 24), the conclusion being that 

 the matter contained in the universe could 

 not be much more than a thousand million 

 times the mass of the sun, the number of 

 these bodies, estimated at one thousand mil- 

 lion, occupying only twenty-seven thou- 

 sandths of the proportion of space in the 

 universe. Dr. Glazebrook then opened a 

 discussion on optical glass and explained 

 the assistance which the National Physical 

 Laboratory might render in determining the 

 properties it should possess and the best 

 forms of lenses for various purposes. After 

 the reading of several optical papers, Dr. W. 

 J. S. Lockyer, assistant director of the Solar 

 Physics Laboratory at South Kensington, 

 spoke on the evidence of a thirty-five-year 

 period in the occurrence of sunspots, which 

 coincided with the climatic variations indi- 

 cated by Professor Briickner, of Berne, and 

 with the frequency of auroras and magnetic 

 storms observed since 1833. The closing 

 session of the Section on September 18 

 was mostly devoted to the magnetic papers. 

 A report presented by the Committee on 

 the Determination of Magnetic Force on 

 board Ship related to the instruments sup- 

 plied to the English antarctic ship Discovery 

 and to the German antarctic ship Gauss. 

 Captain E. W. Creak, F.R.S., described a 



new form of instrument for obsei*ving the 

 magnetic dip and intensity at sea which was 

 designed to replace Fox's apparatus. Lloyd's 

 needles are applied to an instrutnent that 

 can be used on a gimbal-table on board 

 ship and the Discovery and the Gauss have 

 been so fitted. The numerous communi- 

 cations to the Physical Section were of a 

 high order and, considering the technical 

 and special nature of many of them, the 

 attendance was well maintained. 



CHEMISTRY. 



Professor Percy F. Frankland, F.R.S., 

 Professor of Chemistry in the University of 

 Birmingham, delivered the inaugural ad- 

 dress, as president of the Section, on 

 the subject of ' The Position of British 

 Chemistry at the Dawn of the Twentieth 

 Century.' He first pointed out that the 

 history of British chemistry, as indeed of 

 British science in general, was remarkable 

 in that it was made up almost entirely of 

 achievements which were the result of pri- 

 vate enterprise. The foundation of Uni- 

 versity College, and other institutions for 

 higher education, by private initiation, and 

 without a particle of assistance from the 

 public exchequer, was quite in keeping with 

 the history of a country in which it was rec- 

 ognized that the Government did not lead, 

 but only followed where it was drawn or 

 propelled. There could be no doubt that 

 the extended cultivation of scientific chem- 

 istry in Great Britain, which was such a 

 noticeable feature of the concluding years of 

 the nineteenth century, has been greatly 

 assisted by the research scholarships open 

 to all branches of science and paid with the 

 income produced by the surplus from the 

 Exhibition of 1851. Until recently it had 

 been the feeling of a powerful majority that 

 public money should only be spent in such a 

 way as directly to benefit very large num- 

 bers, and in the case of educational funds, 

 therefore, it was only their utilization for 



