SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



339 



On March 12th Mr. John Hughes read a paper 

 at the Society of Arts On the " Use of Alkaline 

 Phosphates." The chair was taken by Professor 

 Hall, the Principal of Wye Agricultural College. 



Among the illustrated monthlies for March, 

 " Pearson's Magazine " contains several interesting 

 articles, among them being an account of the 

 stone forests of Arizona, an article on various kinds 

 of flying fish, illustrated from photographs, and a 

 sketch of a day in the life of a spider. 



We recently noticed an account in a publication 

 of the Hull Museum of a prehistoric war canoe, or 

 rather the carved representation of one. We hear 

 now that a large canoe, formed of the trunk of a 

 tree, has been discovered in Mayo. This canoe is 

 capable of holding twenty men, and is beautifull}^ 

 carved. 



A GENERAL monthly meeting of the Royal Insti- 

 tution was held in the afternoon of March 3rd, 

 Sir James Crichton-Browne, Treasurer and Vice- 

 President, in the chair. It was announced that 

 His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had gra- 

 ciously consented to become Vice-President of the 

 Institution. The special thanks of the members 

 were returned to •' An Old Member" for a donation 

 of £50 to the Fund for the Promotion of Experi- 

 mental Research at Low Temperatures. 



A Stone-age Gallery has been erected in the 

 Prehistoric Room of the Rritish Museum, and con- 

 tains an admirable series of exhibits, illustrating 

 the tools and weapons of man prior to his acquaint- 

 ance with the use of metals. Affixed to the wall 

 near the stairs by which the gallery is reached is 

 a map of England and Wales, showing the prin- 

 cipal sites where remains of the Stone Age have 

 been found. These lie south of a line drawn from 

 the Wash to Bristol Channel, and are marked by 

 white-headed pins, while black-headed pins show 

 the sites of caves from which traces of the presence 

 of man have been recovered. The Stone-age 

 Gallery will perhaps never be a "popular" show, 

 but it is visited by a large number of people inter- 

 ested in the subject, and that number is on the 

 increase. The exhibition is a valuable addition to 

 the Ethnographical Department of the Museum. 



Lord Rayleigh on February 27th, at the Royal 

 Institution, gave as the Bakerian Lecturer a paper 

 On the Law of the Pressure of Gases between 

 75 and 150 millimetres of Mercury. In this lie 

 stated that tlie observations recorded were in- 

 tended to bridge over in some degree the gap 

 between the very low pressures (below 1-5 mm.) 

 dealt with in a recent paper and pressures ap- 

 proaching the atmospheric for which the usual 

 mercury column and cathetometer method are 

 adequate. The principal novelty consists in the 

 use of two similar manometric gauges. Pressures 

 in the ratio of 1 : 2 are obtained by tlie use, lirst 

 of a single gauge, and, secondly, of the two 

 gauges connected in series. Tlie equality of the 

 gauges is tested by observations upon them when 

 combined in parallel. The use of these gauges 

 allows abundant accuracy in the measurement of 

 the pressures and the difficulties relate rather 

 to the adequate determination of volumes and 

 temperatures. The results show that within the 

 very smallest limits of variation, air, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and argon obey Boyle's law. In the case 

 of nitrous oxide a deviation was observed in the 

 direction that might be expected. 



In the " Irish Naturalist " for March Dr. ScharfE 

 figures and gives an account of a white-beaked 

 dolphin stranded in Dublin Bay. 



The Vaccination League have been investigating 

 rumours as to the alleged ill effects of the vaccina- 

 tion of employes in certain business establish- 

 ments, and have received answers from the various 

 employers, who state that there is not a word of 

 truth in the stories that have been circulated that 

 arms had been amputated in consequence. 



One Hundred and Fifty Thousand marks, or 

 £7,500, have been guaranteed by private individuals 

 for the establishment of a Cancer Research Insti- 

 tute at Frankfort-on-the-Main. The Berlin Com- 

 mittee for the Investigation of Cancer have received 

 from German doctors material covering twelve 

 thousand cases, from which it appeared that cancer 

 was not hereditary, but contagious. 



The nervousness which many persons feel about 

 electric traction and currents generally should be 

 allayed by the papers read recently at the Institute 

 of Electrical Engineers. Mr. A. P. Trotter showed, 

 from the results of a number of personal experi- 

 ments, that the electric pressure ordinarily in use 

 for jpurposes of traction, 500 volts, is only likely to 

 do serious mischief under exceptional circum- 

 stances. It is fortunately improbable that this 

 limit is not likely to be much exceeded. 



A newspaper says that the seismographic in- 

 struments of the University Observatory at Moscow 

 duly recorded the disturbances at Shemakha, in 

 Transcaucasia, a distance of no less than 1,400 

 miles as the crow flies. The earthquake shocks 

 took place at 12.15 p.m. at Shemakha, local time, 

 and were noted by the Moscow instruments at 

 12.13 p.m., that is, allowing for the 35 minutes 

 difference between the local times of the two 

 places, little over half an hour after they had 

 occurred. It appears that the vibration of the 

 earth's crust thus travelled at the rate of 800 metres 

 per second. 



At a recent meeting of the Royal Society Sir 

 Norman Lockyer read a paper on the effects of 

 pressure on the spark discharges from metallic 

 substances, whicli had an important, though in- 

 direct, bearing on the interpretation of the pheno- 

 mena recently exhibited by the new star in 

 Perseus, and previously by that in Auriga. Here 

 certain of the bright lines in the spectrum were 

 found to be associated with absorption lines on 

 their more refrangible sides. This appearance he 

 had attributed to the presence of two bodies 

 moving with a very great relative velocity, one 

 causing a radiation, the other an absorption spec- 

 trum. This interpretation had been questioned, 

 results of experiments being quoted as adverse, and 

 it had been suggested that the pairs of lines were 

 more probably due to high pressure. In order to 

 test this hypothesis the author had made experi- 

 ments with iron, silver, lead, copper, zinc, and 

 magnesium under water by means of which certain 

 experimental difficulties were avoided and very 

 high tensions obtained when electric sparks were 

 discharged. The results, which he described in 

 detail, j)roved to be very different from those 

 which had been observed in the spectra of the new 

 stars, thus demonstrating that, whatever be the 

 cause, it cannot be that which produces the appear- 

 ances presented in the spectrum of the spark in 

 water. 



