was

together with a central power plant. The amount of $750,000 appearing in the estimates was put in at the suggestion of the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and considered to be sufficient for the first year's programme. After going over the whole matter with the Advisory Council, it was estimated that about $3,000,000 would be required during a period of from five to ten years to construct at Ottawa the laborities necessary to carry on this work. The Advisory Council also asked for an increase from $170,000 to $300,000 in the funds provided for administrative purposes, and this increase was to be found in the estimates.

to

CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS FOR CANADIAN WHEAT LANDS. Acording to Mr. W. J. Stephan, the Provincial Field Crop Commissioner of Alberta, wide-spread experiments determine the effects of super-phosphate fertilizers on the crops of Western Canada are to be carried out this spring. The Government of Alberta is co-operating with the Experimental Farms of the Dominion Department of Agriculture and with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in arrangements for experimental work to be carried out not only at Government institutions but by individual farmers.

Mr. Stephan states that at the Tadanac Smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, Ltd., at Trail, B. C., a million tons of this fertilizer could be obtained annually at a nominal price. The super-phosphate would be used to the extent of 50lbs per acre, which amount would cost 90 cent delivered.

DISTRIBUTION OF TEN MILLION TREES BY ONTARIO GOVERNMENT.

The Government of Ontario is this year offering ten million seedlings, mostly pine, for free distribution to aid re-forestation. Up to 3,500 forest trees are offered to any resident of the Province as well as 500 for windbreaks. It is expected that at least three-quarters of the amount offered will be used for private planting. The remainder will be devoted to supplying the needs of county and township forests.

Free distribution of Government trees, grown at nurseries in Ontario, started in 1907 and now amounts to about 30,000,000 trees. About 95 per cent. of this total was made up of pines of the red, white, Scotch

and jackpine varieties. Lately white and red pines have formed the bulk of the trees sent out. The demand has been increasing rapidly. In 1921, 225 persons applied and about 2,000,000 trees were distributed. Last year there were over 4,000 applicants.

LARGE INCREASE IN CANADIAN CONSUMPTION OF ELECTRICITY IN 1927.

Official figures just published show an increase of 13 per cent. in 1927 in the amount of central electric station energy marketed and consumed in Canada. The percentage of increase is the same as that recorded in 1926 over that for 1925, while the 1927 consumpton was 28 per cent. in excess of that for 1925.

Central electrc stations in Canada are now producing an average of over a billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy per month, or 12.6 billion kilowatt hours in 1927, compared wth 11.2 billion in 1926 and 9.8 in 1925. Of the 1927 output 87 per cent. or 11 billion kilowatt hours was used in Canada and 13 per cent. or 1.6 billion kilowatt hours was exported.

Of the total energy generated by central electric stations 98 per cent. was from water power, only 1 per cent. being from fuel.

SIR WILLIAM CROOKES, FOUNDER OF THE "CHEMICAL NEWS," A PIONEER OF THE SYNTHETIC NITROGEN INDUSTRY.

Sir Henry Rew, K.C.B., in the course of an article in the Sunday Times on April 8, accentuates the importance of synthetic nitrogen to agriculture, shewing that one firm has now facilities for extracting from the air 200 tons per day of synthetic ammonia. He says:

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Thirty years ago Sir William Crookes drew attention to the fact that the supply of the fixed nitrogen, mostly contained in nitrate of soda, which, so far as is known, is to be found in bulk only in Chile, was not inehaustible. He pointed out that in its free state nitrogen is one of the most abundant and pervading bodies on the face of the earth,' adding that every square yard of the earth's surface has ntrogen gas pressing down on it to the extent of about seven tons." At that time the capture, in other words, the fixation, of nitrogen from the air was one of the great discoveries awaiting the ingenuity of chemists.' Ten years

ago Sir William Crookes republished his famous address in a little book entitled The Wheat Problem,' and stated that the fixation of nitrogen had then been carried out on a commercial scale."

SHIPPING AT BRITISH PORTS.

Arrivals of vessels engaged in the foreign trade at United Kingdom ports in February showed a small increase as campored with the corresponding month of last year; departures in cargo were 5.3 per cent. larger, but those in ballast 5.7 per cent. smaller. In the coasting trade arrivals and departures rose by 7.8 and 7.3 per cent. respectively; arrivals in ballast fell by 3.4 per

cent.

CANADIAN ELECTRIC STATIONS.

Electrical energy supplied in Canada is almost wholly based on water power, the output of hydro-electric stations during 1926 having been almost 99 per cent. of the total of all generating stations and their dynamo capacity (dynamos driven by water wheels) was over 95 per cent. of the total. Nevertheless, the number of fuel-power plants was considerable, aggregating 301. Only 15 of the fuel stations had capacities above 1,000 k.v.a., but they produced over 80 per cent. of the output of all fuel plants.

Of the output of 11,911,039,000 kilowatt hours generated in 1926 by hydro-electric stations, 14 plants with capacities of 50,000 k.v.a. and upwards generated over 70 per cent. The ratio of their output to their maximum capacity was 51.4 per cent., which was considerably higher than for the majority of the stations.

Production of electrical energy increased during the year by nearly 2,000 million kilowatt hours, owing mainly to the rayid increase in the pulp and paper and mining industries.

TWO COMPANIES ORGANISED IN CANADA FOR AERIAL TRANSPORT.

Mr. J. E. Hammell, President of Howey Gold Mines, Ltd., a pioneer of the Red Lake Mining district in North-western Ontario, has just organised Northern Aerial Minerals Exploration, Ltd., and has ordered for the Company four big Fokker monoplanes. Four light cruisers, probably De Haviland Moths, will also be purchased. Captain H. A. Oaks will be Director of the aerial staff and Assistant Manager of the enterprise.

The project is to undertake prospecting by air, sending men to new fields and keeping them supplied.

CANADA AS A COPPER PRODUCER.

The Dominion Bureau of Statistics at Ottawa has just issued its preliminary report on the mineral production of Canada during the calendar year 1927, from which it appears that the total production of cop per in Canada last year was 140,141,823 lbs. valued at $17,174,955.

Two-thirds of the total Canadian production of copper in 1927 was derived from the mines of British Columbia, the output reaching 91,685,843 lbs., valued at $11,845,811. The greater part of the remainder was obtained from the nickelcopper mines of the Sudbury district of Ontario, the output reaching 45,334,303 lbs., worth $4,945,823, but a small tonnage was shipped in the form of concentrates from the Eustis mine in Quebec. The production of copper in Quebec totalled 3,121,677 lbs., valued at $403,321.

RAW COAL AGE PAST.
"NEW SCIENTIFIC FUELS MUST SAVE
MINING INDUSTRY."

"In twenty years from now probably no one outside the mining districts will ever see a lump of coal," said Sir Granville Ryrie, K.C.M.G., High Commissioner for Australia, when he recently visited the North Metropolitan (London) Power Company's electrical generating station at Willesden. Sir Granville inspected the new boiler installation in which pulverised fuel is used in conjunction with burners of the new dispersive type, which are the inven tion of a well-known Australian engineer.

"We have to recognise," he said, " that the Raw Coal Age is past. The future of the British minnig industry is bound up with a far more scientific and less extravagant use of the products of coal than has hitherto been achieved.

"For over a century Britain has been squandering her coal resources. Necessity and invention are now combining to induce her to use them economically.

"It is of vital importance to the British Empire, for which during the past century coal has been currency, to be among the first to appreciate the importance of the new developments in the region of pulverised fuels and low temperature distillation."

"THE LANCET" ON SANITATION

OF THE DEAD.

"The problem is one which has always confronted mankind, and it is so closely bound up with religious beliefs and social customs that it is difficult to approach it with a dispassionate mind. Even in an age of comparative hygienic enlightenment the mere suggestion of any interference between the bereaved relatives and their dead would give pain and offence to many. Nevertheless, the methods of the disposal of the dead as carried out in this country are far from satisfactory. Prolonged contact of the dead with the living is bad from every point of view, and would be of benefit to everyone if at the earliest possible moment after death the corpse could be removed from the dwelling-house to a mortuary or undertaker's parlour. During the subsequent interval which must necessarily elapse before burial or cremation, decomposition could be prevented by the use of a refrigerating plant,, or, as is so common in America, by the practice of embalming. Instead of embalming, it has been suggested that sanitation of the corpse should be carried out by the injection of formalin or some other antiseptic solution into the main vessels, but it is a question whether this would be desirable or even effective. There is very little evidence that in this country disease is ever propagated by the presence of a corpse under ordinary conditions, and it is doubtful if the injection of antiseptic solutions into the great vessels would render a corpse bacteriologically sterile. Such an injection would effectively allay the bogy of premature burial, but this fear can be dealt with by other means. And there is the real danger that embalming or antiseptic injections might interfere with a subsequent examination of the body should this be considered necessary. One of the great objections to cremation is the possibility this procedure affords of the concealment of crime, and for this reason special precautions must be taken before any body can be cremated. It is conceivable that injections might have a similar drawback, and for this reason, if for no other, they would have to be rigidly controlled. Unless and until cremation becomes general, anything which tends to delay the corruption of a corpse and its resolution into its constituent elements is to be deprecated. The rapid removal of the body from the dwelling-house to some recognised place would fulfil all requirements, and if this could be combined with a post-mortem examination by an accredited individual, the fear of premature burial would dis

One of the most difficllt problems in the production of magnetic fields of the order of half a million gauss is to construct a satisfactory coil. Even in the method developed by Kapitza, in which the field is only produced for a fraction of a second, the heating of the coil is a serious limitation, whilst the electromagnetic forces on the coil give rise to stresses in the copper of the order of 7,000 kgms./sq. cm. beyond the elastic limit of ordinary copper.

This paper develops methods for selecting dimensions of coil which will produce the greater field for given power input, and for fixed allowable temperature rise. The dependence of maximum field on temperature rise, internal radius of coil and power of source, is investigated.

A method is developed of calculating stresses in different parts of coil and for designing coil with maximum stability under these stresses. Formulæ are developed for calculating coefficients of mutual inductance of solid coils and a circle in their end plane, mutual inductance coefficients being tabulated and presented in graphical form for a wide range of coil shapes. The forces on a coil of rectangular or stepped section can then be deduced rapidly by simple arithmetical operations, and the shape giving minimum shearing forces selected.

The Band Spectrum of Water Vapour. By D. JACK. Communicated by O. W. Richardson, F.R.S.

The band A 3428 has been analysed from new measurements. Results show that for this band the emitter has same initial state as for band 3064, and same final state as for bands 3122 and 2875.

Various papers of Prof. Townsend and his assistants are discussed, and his claim that the results are not reconcilable with the Quantum Theory shown to be unfounded. In particular, the presence of metastable states in the term-systems of the gases studied is shown to undermine, at two different points, a theory which has implicitly assumed their non-existence. Numerical discussion of his curves is possible only in very rough form, since experimental methods employed are statistical, and introduce too many unknown quantities; but within wide limits of obtainable accuracy no disagreement is found.

Statistical methods are also criticised on their own merits. In one problem they lead to results in complete contradiction with the principle of conservation of momentum. This is immediately evident, but has not been recognised.

The objections raised by Townsend against the accepted view are shown to rest usually on misapprehension as to the exact implication of the statement he attacks. In particular, his claim that Quantum Theory violates the principle of conservation of momentum rests on his having taken literally a loose, but convenient, phrase in a short secondary summary.

The Light of the Night Sky: Its Intensity Variations when analysed by Colour Filter III. By LORD RAYLEIGH, F.R.S.

The intensity of light of sky at night has been observed by collaborating workers at a number of stations scattered over the world. As in previous work, colour filters are used to separate as nearly as may be the region of the green auroral from the red and blue regions of the spectrum on either

side. These are called red, auroral and blue components respectively. The broad r sult is that the intensity in each component has the same general values and range of intensities (four or fivefold) previously found for England.

Much of the variation is irregular, and has not been found to be correlated at the different stations. The stations were widely separated, and further investigation with stations nearer together is required.

Five years' observation in England ap pears to indicate a definite annual periodicity, which survives the process of averaging the same month (February, e.g.) for each year. Amplitude of variation corresponds to intensity ratio of 1.6. Maximum is in October. The scanty available evidence suggests a similar variation in the S. hemisphere, with opposite phase, maximum in April.

Relativity and Wave Mechanics. By W. WILSON, F.R.S.

The equations of motion of a charged particle can be derived from those of an uncharged (which represent a geodesic in space-time continuum) by substituting for mechanical momentum

has been proposed from time to time to determine such constants, especially of crystals, by measuring, by an interferential method, the central deflexion of a rectangular plate, supported at two opposite edges, and bent by concentrated pressure applied at the centre of one of its faces. No theoretical formula, connecting central deflexion of plate with load, linear dimensions of plate, and elastic constants of load have ever been obtained, even for an isotropic, let alone a crystalline, plate. The object of the paper is to obtain such a formula in the case where the material is isotropic. The problem, a purely mathematical one, is solved completely, and calculated numerical values of central deflexion are tabulated for various values of ratio breadth :length, and for two values of Poisson's ratio for the material.

THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN.

Papers communicated:

San-ichiro Mizushima and Takeo Aso: "Electrolytic Conductivity under High Frequency."

Heima Shinozaki: "Studies on Hydrogen Cyanide. Part III. Some Thermodynamic Calculations."

Kuro Nakamura : "Specific Heat of Binary System of Some Organic Solvents."

Kisaburo Tabuse & Masumi Chikashige: "Contribution to the Chemistry of Tellurium. I. Tellurium-Sulphur-Oxide."

Ryuichi Konoko and Masumi Chikashige: "Contribution to the Chemistry of Tellurium. II. Determination of the Transition Temperature of Sẞ-Sa in the Solid Solution of Small Quantity of Tellurium in Sulphur.

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THE WIDER ASPECTS OF

COSMOGONY.

THE UNIVERSE SLOWLY MELTING AWAY. At the Royal Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, London, on March 7, 1928, Dr. J. H. Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society, in his Trueman Wood lecture on "The Wider Aspects of Cosmogony," said the evidence of geology, and of radio-activity in rocks in particular, showed that the earth must be something like 2,000 million years old, which was several thousand times the age of the human race.

"In all probability the life in front of the human race must enormously exceed the short life behind it. A million million years hence, so far as we can foresee, the sun will be much the same as now, and the earth will be revolving round it much as now. The year will be a little longer, and the climate a lot colder, while the rich accumulated stores of coal, oil, and forest will have long been burnt up; but there is no reason why our descendents should not still people the earth.

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Perhaps it may be unable to support so large a population as now, and perhaps few will desire to live on it. On the other hand, mankind being 3,000,000 times as old as now, may-if the conjecture does not distress our pessimists too much-be 3,000,000 times as wise."

Dr. Jeans said that the sun was wasting daily he put its wastage at 360,000 million tons and the radiation of the stars was imposing an endlessly recurring capital levy upon their masses. It made the stars poorer, but it tended to equalise the wealth that remained. Observation and theory agreed in indicating that the universe was melting away into radiation. Our position was that of polar bears on an iceberg that had broken loose from the icepack surrounding the pole, and was inexorably melting away as the iceberg drifted to warmer latitudes and ultimate extinction.

"In the 1,000 million stars surrounding our sun there are, at a moderate computation not more than 10,000 planetary sytems, because there has not been time for more than this number to be born. They are of course still coming into existence; calculation suggests a birth rate of about one per 1,000 million years. Thus we should have to visit thousands of millions of stars before finding a planetary system of as recent creation as our own, and we should have to visit millions of millions of stars