366 Scientific Intelligence. 



tion, Completely Revised, by J. C. Cain. London, 1920 (Mac- 

 millan and Co., Limited). — It is a pleasure to welcome a new 

 edition of this important work which has served mam^ of our 

 older chemists since their younger days as a valuable source of 

 reading and reference, for the first edition appeared in 1877. 

 The beautiful portrait of John Dalton, the frontispiece, as well 

 as many other illustrations are very familiar, having been 

 retained in all the editions ; but while the present editor, as he 

 says, has ' ' reverently preserved the general character and style of 

 the book," it appears to have been very well brought to the 

 present time. There have been many additions to our knowledge 

 of the non-metallic elements and a gain of 199 pages in the size of 

 the book since the time of the first appearance of this volume, but 

 it is found that the present edition is only thirteen pages larger 

 than the last one of 1911. The book is so well known that fur- 

 ther comments upon its character and excellence seem to be 

 unnecessary. h. l. w^ 



5. Musical Sands. — Cecil Carus-Wilsox has been interested 

 in musical sands for a long time and has published several com- 

 munications on the subject. He distinguishes two types of these 

 sands according to the place of their occurrence: 1°, Desert 

 sands such as are found at Jebel Nagous in the desert of Mt. Sinai 

 and 2° Beach sand, of which the earliest recorded example was 

 found on the Island of Eigg. The phenomenon reported in the 

 first kind is as follows : When a disturbance was started in the 

 upper layers on a slope the loose sand thus set in motion rolled 

 down in widening lines like the spread of ripples from a disturb- 

 ance on the surface of water. This was accompanied by a fluc- 

 tuating musical sound described as partaking of the character of 

 the note of a mellow church bell and sometimes it was like that of 

 a stringed instrument. 



The beach sands on the other hand are said to emit a staccato 

 note under a footfall or when struck with a plunger of wood or 

 brass. The author thinks that these notes are produced by the 

 intermittent slipping and rubbing between clean and well 

 rounded grains of quartz of nearly uniform size, free from rough- 

 ness, sharp angularities, or adherent matter ; apparently having 

 in mind the stuttering motion of slate pencil upon a school slate, 

 or the similar effect in the case of the wetted finger w^hen rubbed 

 on the edge of a tumbler. The vibrations thus started in the sand, 

 or in the striking body, are ultimately elevated into a musical 

 note. In support of this view Mr. Wilson has shown that the 

 highly musical Eigg sand may be rendered mute by adding a cer- 

 tain quantity of dust or angular grains, and on the contrary, 

 certain sands which were not previously musical may be made to 

 emit notes after eliminating dust or angular grains. 



The author's experiments were made only on beach sands and 

 consisted chiefly in striking a sample of sand contained in a 

 receptacle such as a porcelain cup which was found to be most 

 suitable. The musical sound emitted depended upon the nature 



