The scientific work accomplished by Peary consisted, first, in the dem onstration that there is no land at or near the pole, or in the neighbor hood of his route thither; second, in obtaining a line of soundings from Cape Columbia to the pole; third, tidal observations at a number of points on the north coasts of Greenland and Grant Land. The Northwest Passage.-Capt. J. C. Bernier, the Canadian Arctic explorer, in his steamer Arctic, has been occupied during the past two years in exploring the lands and islands bordering on Lancaster and Melville sounds, especially in Banks Land. Last July he started north again, this time with the intention of attempting the Northwest passage by a more northern route than that taken by Amundsen. He expects to complete the voyage in 1911, spending the present winter at Winter Harbor, on Melville Island. Amundsen's Expedition.-Capt. Amundsen left Norway in June, 1910. on the Fram with the intention of going around Cape Horn and through the Pacific and Bering straits into the Arctic. There he plans to be hemmed in by the ice and to drift, if possible, across the North Pole, thus repeating Nansen's experiment. | He does not expect to enter the Arctic Ocean until the summer of 1911. He is provisioned for seven years. Antarctic Exploration.-Capt. R. L. Scott, R.N., started in June, 1910, for a second expedition to explore the Antarctic Continent. His ship, the Terra Nova, left Littleton, New Zealand, at the end of Nov., intending to make a landing on the shore of MacMurdo Sound. The purpose is to take up the exploration of the interior of the Antarctic Continent where his former expedition and Shackleton's expedition left off, and to carry the work forward as far as means permit. For transportation on land Siberian ponies will be used. as was done in his former expedition and also in Shackleton's. These two expeditions are the only ones which have yielded important information concerning the interior of the Antarctic Continent. Scott's explorations showed that the great ice barrier is in reality the front of an enormous ice field or glacier. mainly floating on the surface of a great bay or sea, and fed by glaciers coming down from elevated land on the west and probably upon the east side also. Scott traveled southward up the western margin of this ice field four hundred miles. He also climbed from his headquarters on MacMurdo Sound, to the summit of the high table land to the westward. Shackleton traveled up the western border of the ice field until he reached a great glacier coming down from the high lands to the westward. He followed up this glacier to the summit of the plateau, and then kept on southward until he reached a point only ninety-three miles from the South Pole, when he was obliged by scarcity of provisions to return. At the point where he turned back he was at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the sea. During his absence on this southward journey another party of the expedition reached the South Magnetic Pole, and a third party climbed Mt. Erebus. Charcot's Expedition.-In Feb. Dr. Jean Charcot, in the steamer Pourquoi Pas, arrived at Punta Arena, Chile, after two seasons spent in exploring the shores of the Antarctic. During the first season he completed a map of Adelaide Island, eighty-one miles long, and south of it discovered a great gulf. The coast was surveyed for 120 miles as far as Alexander I Land. The expedition returned north and wintered at Peterman Island. During the second season he discovered new lands west and south of Alexander I Land, and steamed as far west as longitude 126° between the parallels of 69° and 71°. Asia. In western China Count Charles de Polignac, with two companions, has been engaged during 1909 and 1910 in exploring certain rivers, branches of the Yang Tse, with respect to their navigability. Africa.-M. H. Hubert returned to France in Aug., 1910, having completed a geographical and geological exploration of more than ten degrees square, about 400.000 square miles, in French West Africa. M. August Chevalier is at present new information about the g graphic features of this region. engaged in the exploration of Da-equipped and obtained considera homey. The lower and middle parts of this region he has completed and is now at work in upper Dahomey. The Sudan.-For several years the Egyptian Government has been engaged in preparing a reconnaissance map of the Sudan, and at present nearly all the inhabited part has been mapped on scales of 1:250,000 or 1:1,000,000. In 1908 Capt. Cortier commenced an exploration of a part of southwestern Sudan. His expedition was under the auspices of the French Ministry of the Colonies, the Société de Geographie of Paris, and the government of French West Africa. This work was brought to an end and Capt. Cortier returned to France about the middle of the year. This expedition was eminently successful, having mapped and made geological studies of an area 650 by 300 miles in extent, lying mainly between latitudes 15° 30 and 20° north, and longitudes 0° and 10° east. Positions were fixed by astronomical observations and by triangulation. Belgian Congo.-During the year there has been published in London an account by E. Torday of his explorations during the previous two years in the Kasai country of Belgian Congo. Here he found cannibals living undisturbed. The region explored is about the size of New York and Pennsylvania combined, but is so cut up by rivers and impenetrable forests that there are at least a dozen entirely dissimilar tribes in the territory, varying from the Bankutu cannibals to the Batetela, who, Mr. Torday declares, are the most progressive negroes in Africa. Spitzbergen. For several years an exploration of the Spitzbergen Archipelago has been in progress. This was financed originally by the Prince of Monaco, and latterly by the government of Norway. Besides preparing a topographic map, a geological survey is being made. Canada. During Aug. and Sept., 1910, Prof. Raymond McFarland, of Middlebury College, with several assistants, made an important expedition to the unexplored region about little Lake Mistassini and Lake Temiscamie. The party was well Alaska.-D. C. Witherspoon, C. Giffin, and F. H. Moffit explored area of about 4,000 square miles ly adjacent to and south of the cent part of the Alaska range, and tween the Gulkana River on the e and the Susitna River on the w Work was begun at Paxton on Fairbank's trail about July 1st a carried westward to Valdez Creek The expedition was organized three parties, and geologic and to graphic reconnaissance surveys w made on a scale of 1:250,000. T expedition worked northward to crest line of the range, while other party, under the leadership J. W. Bagley and S. R. Capps, plored the region lying north of crest line. This second expedit made a geologic and topograp reconnaissance map (scale 1:250,0 of an area of about 2,000 squ miles, bounded on the south by Alaska range, on the east by Delta, and on the west by the nana River, and north by the Tana flats. A. G. Maddren and C. G. Anders carried a geologic and topograp exploratory survey (scale 1:250,0 southwestward from Ruby Creek, the Yukon, to Haiditarod, in the noko basin, including a large part the drainage of the Innoko River P. S. Smith and H. M. Eakin ma a geologic and topographic reconna sance survey of the region lying tween the middle Koyukuk and middle Kobuk, including the val of Pah River. The original plan carrying the survey to the southw could not be carried out because the failure of the delivery of suppl for the party on the Kobuk, as c tracted for. PEARY, Robert E.-The North Pole. N ROOSEVELT, Theodore.-African Ga XXIV. CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS CHEMISTRY INORGANIC AND PHYSICAL Hydrogen Peroxide and Ozone. CHEMISTRY ARTHUR WESLEY BROWNE The great activity of investigators in the fields of inorganic and physical chemistry is shown by the fact that during the year ending Sept. 1, 1910, in the neighborhood of two thousand articles descriptive of experimental researches in these fields have been published in the scientific journals. It is obviously impossible to enumerate even the titles of these investigations or to attempt the presentation, in nontechnical language, of any systematic résumé of the work, or any adequate account of its bearing upon past, present, or future science. Attention is here briefly called to a few of the many advances made during the past year, selected almost at random from the mass of material worthy of comment. Water, the most familiar of all substances, when studied under unusual conditions of temperature and pressure, behaves in a surprising manner. By using the novel method of subjecting water to a pressure of 3,000 kilograms per square centimeter, and then cooling it, first with solid carbon dioxide, and finally with liquid air, Tammann has succeeded in preparing a new variety of ice, heavier than liquid water. As its temperature rises, this ice swells and breaks up into a white, powdered mass of ordinary ice occupying from four to eight times the bulk of the original sample. One interesting conclusion of the research is that water in freezing cannot exert a pressure greater than 2,500 atmospheres, since at this pressure "ice III," as the new variety is termed, is stable. A vessel capable of withstanding this pressure will therefore not be burst by the freezing of water. It has been shown by G. W. Shearer that when certain metals, such as aluminum, zinc, and magnesium, are immersed in water containing dissolved oxygen, appreciable amounts of hydrogen peroxide are formed. Another new and interesting method by which the formation of small quantities of this substance has been effected consists in passing an electric current through a strong solution of potassium hydroxide in water at the temperature of -40° C. By this method Riesenfeld and Reinhold have succeeded in obtaining hydrogen peroxide at the positive electrode, by what may be regarded as an oxidation process, whereas the electrolytic formation of the substance has taken place hitherto at the negative electrode by a process of reduction. After water has been exposed for two hours to the influence of ultraviolet light, in the presence of air, it is found to contain hydrogen peroxide, formed without doubt by the action of ozone upon the water. Such liquids as olive oil and kerosene, which are capable of dissolving ozone, are found after similar exposure to contain this substance in solution. E. van Aubel, who performed these experiments, considers that the formation of ozone in the neighborhood of a quartz mercury lamp is now well established. Manchot has demonstrated the presence of ozone in flames, finding it possible to detect the substance in any hot flame such as the oxyhydrogen or even the ordinary gas blast flame. Haber and Hodsman, by using a silver capillary tube, succeeded in detecting czone in very hot flames, including the oxygen carbon monoxide flame. Action of Ultraviolet Rays Upon Gases.-The chemical action of ultraviolet rays upon certain mixtures of gases has been studied by several chemists to the study of sol other than water. The epoch-ma researches of E. C. Franklin an associates, for example, have sl not only that liquid ammonia des to share with water the distincti being an almost universal solvent that chemical reactions taking between substances dissolved in 1 ammonia are in many cases cl analogous with reactions between responding substances dissolved water. As a further illustration this field of investigation may be the work published during the year by Röhler, who has studied properties of formamide as a so for inorganic salts, and who has trolyzed numerous solutions of dissolved in this substance. In tinuation of his own earlier resea upon the reactions occurring in tone and in pyridine solutions Naumann has within the year i tigated the reactions in methyl ac and in ethyl acetate solutions. methyl acetate, for example, he found that an insoluble salt ma precipitated, just as in aqueous tions, by the interaction of two so salts. Direct Synthesis of Ammon One of the very important adva of the year has been the develop by Haber and Le Rossignol of a tical method for the preparatio ammonia by the direct union of trogen and hydrogen. When a ture of these gases is subjected pressure of about 200 atmospher a temperature in the neighborhoo 500° C., and in the presence of a able contact material, such as mium or uranium, ammonia is tinuously produced. The great vantage possessed by this pr over other methods for the chen fixation of nitrogen lies in the that it involves the expenditur comparatively little energy, and be used even in localities w cheap water power is not avail provided that coal for use in generation of hydrogen may be tained. Carbon Monosulphide.-The im tance to chemical research of recognition and study of anal is well attested by the work Franklin, to which reference is in a preceding paragraph. Since ammonia and water are, respectively, compounds of hydrogen with nitrogen and oxygen, two elements that occupy neighboring positions in Mendeléeff's periodic classification, it is only natural to expect that these compounds should be closely related in many of their properties and reactions. Inorganic chemists have for many years used the analogies of this sort that are brought to light in the periodic system as a guide in their investigations. A preliminary account just published by Dewar and Jones of their researches upon the compounds of carbon with sulphur furnishes additional justification of this procedure. It has long been suspected that carbon should form two compounds with sulphur, analogous with its two oxides. For over half a century, however, the search for gaseous carbon monosulphide has been fruitless, although solid substances with the desired empirical composition have been obtained. Dewar and Jones have subjected the vapor of carbon bisulphide to the action of the silent electric discharge, with the result that free sulphur is formed, together with a gaseous substance that condenses at the temperature of liquid air and that polymerizes with explosive violence, at a slightly higher temperature, to a brown solid. This explosive gas is considered by the investigators to be either the long-sought carbon monosulphide, or some other new volatile sulphide of carbon. compounds during the past year are the preparation of a new compound of nitrogen and sulphur by Burt; the preparation by Ebler and Krause of zinc hydrazide ZnN.NH2, the first metallic derivative of hydrazine ever prepared; and the investigation by Dimroth and Fester of the interaction of hydronitric acid, HN,, with acetylene and with hydrocyanic acid, which yields triazole, C2N,H,, and tetrazole, CN,H,, respectively. The work of Eder and Valenta, who have studied the arc spectra of the new elements lutecium and neo-ytterbium, calls to mind the discovery of these elements in 1907 by Urbain, who succeeded in obtaining them by decomposition of the supposedly elementary substance ytterbium. Auer von Welsbach, who recognized the probable complexity of ytterbium as early as 1905, gave the names casseopeium and aldebaranium to the new elements. Each of these investigators has published during the past year a statement of his claims to priority in the work. Tellurium.-In 1869, Mendeléeff, in announcing the periodic law, stated that the atomic weight of tellurium should have a value between 123 and 126, although the generally accepted value at that time was 128. During the last forty years the atomic weight of the element has frequently been determined, in the hope of explaining the abnormally high value by showing the presence in the supposedly pure tellurium of a new element Carbon subnitride, another interest-possessing a higher atomic weight. ing new compound of carbon, has been prepared by Moureu and Bongrand by withdrawing two molecules of water from butine diamide. This compound has the formula C,N,, and consists of fine, white needles which melt at 21° C. In its odor, and in the violently irritating properties of its vapor, which takes fire in air at 130° C., it resembles cyanogen. Bone and Coward have demonstrated the possibility of forming methane by direct union of carbon and hydrogen. At a temperature of 1,100°-1,200° C. they obtain from pure carbon over ninety-five per cent of the methane theoretically obtainable. Among the important advances in the chemistry of inorganic nitrogen The results of these investigations have been almost entirely negative, and have pointed toward 127.5 as the most probable value for the atomic weight of tellurium. It is with great satisfaction, then, that chemists have learned within the last few months, of the work of Browning and Flint, who have apparently succeeded at last in solving the problem. In a preliminary article these investigators have given an account of their method, which consists essentially in the decomposition of tellurium tetrachloride by the action of water. Examination of the more easily decomposed portion led to the discovery that the tellurium contained in this fraction possessed a lower atomic |