SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



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The. gift of £200,000 which Sir E. Cassel has 

 placed at the disposal of the King is to be used f or 

 providing additional sanatoriums for the open-air 

 treatment of tuberculosis. His Majesty is per- 

 sonally interesting himself in the work, and has 

 also the assistance of an advisory committee. 



" The Utilisation of Exhaust Steam "- was the 

 subject of a paper read by Mr.. John Buley some 

 weeks ago at a meeting of the Institution of Junior 

 Engineers. Mr. Buley urged that for heating cir- 

 culations of buildings, such as hospitals, asylums, 

 and public baths, exhaust steam should be made 

 to play always an important part. In a discussion 

 that followed reference w r as made to the difficulty 

 of the presence of grease in exhaust steam and of 

 scalding. 



In a lecture given to young people under the 

 auspices of the Royal Geographical Society Dr. 

 Vaughan Cornish dealt with the question of the 

 length and speed of ocean waves. During storms 

 waves with periods from eight to eleven seconds 

 were observed with lengths from 328 feet to 620 

 feet, while a ten-second wave was 512 feet long. 

 The sides of these waves had an average slope of 

 not less than 1 in 10. A set of such waves would 

 have a height of about 25 feet ; but there was 

 generally a swell running at the same time, which 

 increased the total rise and fall of the water. It 

 made the waves irregular, and caused waves of 

 much larger size than 25 feet to recur not un- 

 frequently. When, after a storm, the shorter- 

 waves had become no steeper than the swell, it 

 w T as that which became in its turn the conspicuous 

 thing at sea, and, instead of wave-crests separated 

 from one another as far as the two ends of Burling- 

 ton Gardens, we had commonly a wave of about 

 15-seconds period, with 1,150 feet between the 

 ridges — that is, roughly, the length of St. James's 

 Street. The lecture was illustrated by lantern 

 slides and cinematographs. 



Dr. Vaughan Cornish, whom we have men- 

 tioned elsewhere as lecturing to young people on 

 ocean waves, read a most interesting paper at a 

 meeting of the London Geologists' Association 

 '• On the Waves of Sand and Snow." Dr. Cornish 

 explained that when the wind blows over the sea 

 in the direction in which the waves travel it goes 

 into eddies on the lee side, and the difference in 

 pressure on the two sides increases the height of the 

 ridge. In the case of waves of sand and snow there 

 is the same distribution of eddies, but the action 

 of the wind is somewhat different, the increase of 

 ridges being mainly due to friction at the surface. 

 Apart from this difference the two sets of pheno- 

 mena were very similar. A large number of 

 lantern slides from photographs were shown, 

 which Dr. Cornish had taken on the coasts of 

 Great Britain, in the Egyptian desert, and the 

 prairies of Canada. The lecturer discovered a 

 singular connection between the forms of snow- 

 drifts and those of bodies that travel through 

 fluids, such as fish, cetaceans, and among human 

 inventions the Whitehead torpedo. The recent 

 alterations in the form of the Whitehead torpedo 

 made it more like the profile of the snow-drifts than 

 was the case with earlier torpedoes. Among other 

 interesting phenomena Dr. Cornish has been inves- 

 tigating tidal bores. The best example in Britain is 

 afforded by the bore in the river Severn, of which 

 he recently obtained a cinematograph picture. 



A correspondent of the " Lancet " has in his 

 possession a silver-plated copper figure of one of 

 the numerous deities worshipped in India, which 

 is no less than Amma, the goddess of small-pox. 

 The curious point about the idol is that while its 

 face is quite clear and clean cut, there fits on over 

 it a sort of mask representing another face horribly 

 swollen and deeply pitted with small-pox. 



We understand that Mr. A. E. Conrady has been 

 appointed chief optician and adviser to Messrs. 

 W. Watson & Sons, of London, Edinburgh, and 

 Melbourne. His attention is to be given to a new 

 series of astronomical telescopes, and to the 

 Holoscopic Microscope objectives and condensers, 

 also to the Holoscopic Photographic Lenses, for 

 which Messrs. Watson & Sons have become so 

 celebrated. 



An interesting experiment has been tried on one 

 of the large American railways in order to ascer- 

 tain how much an engine loses in weight through 

 the wear of a known amount of work. The engine 

 was taken to pieces and each separate part minutely 

 weighed. It was then reconstructed and put back 

 into active service. It was again taken to pieces 

 and carefully weighed. The results when published 

 should prove very interesting. 



Captain Bernier, the Canadian explorer, has 

 already secured £20,000 out of the £30,000, at 

 which he estimates the cost of his intended ex- 

 pedition to the North Pole. Wireless telegraphy 

 will play an important part in this expedition, and 

 will enable the explorers to be always in touch 

 with their ship, a vessel of about 300 tons net, 

 built specially for the purpose. Captain Bernier 

 expects to be absent four years, and is confident 

 that he will not only be able to reach the Pole, 

 but also to secure the various scientific objects 

 desired. 



Science Teaching. — The month of January 

 was marked by several meetings of those inter- 

 ested in the teaching of science, and more par- 

 ticularly that teaching which is the giving of a 

 training, and not merely the imparting of a series 

 of facts. This, by the bye, with all due deference 

 to the old-fashioned schoolmaster, is not worthy 

 of being considered an education, nor, must we 

 own, is a knowledge of scientific method without 

 general culture. At the first meetings of interest — 

 and these were the four held by the Conference 

 of Science Teachers, the fourth arranged by the 

 London County Council — such interesting subjects 

 as hygiene (bodily and mental), natural history — 

 meaning zoology — and nature study received 

 attention. They were also supplemented by some 

 detailed descriptions of what may be looked upon 

 as an experiment, even though it be successful — 

 the conduct of rural secondary schools, the one 

 brought into existence by Lady Warwick being 

 chiefly discussed. We may pass from it to the 

 scheme now advocated by the same educationist 

 for a representative nature study exhibition during 

 the coming summer. The provisional committee 

 met and co-opted a number of fresh supporters, 

 and appointed a sub-committee to bring forward a 

 scheme for consideration on the first of this 

 month. The third point of interest was the 

 Conference of Public School Science Masters, at 

 which, after the discussion of the disadvantages of 

 Army and University examinations, a new Asso- 

 ciation of Public School Masters was formed, with 

 Professor Riicker as President. 



