100 YEARS AGO

The following interesting announcement appears on a page in the catalogue of Messrs. Johnson, Matthey, and Co., Hatton Garden, London — “In furtherance of scientific research, Professors and recognised scientific investigators will with pleasure be supplied with metals of the platinum group, in moderate quantities, and for periods to be arranged, free of charge, on condition that the precious metals are ultimately returned (in any form), and that the results of the investigations are furnished.”

The coasts of Japan are particularly liable to incursions from spring tides, of which one occurring on June 15, 1896, in the course of eighteen minutes swept away 9381 houses and 6930 boats, killing 21,909 people and wounding 4398. To minimise the damage done to life and property by such inroads, protective forests have been planted at various places along the littoral. ⃛ The action of these forests is three-fold: they check the force of the tidal wave; they delay its advance, giving more time for saving the lives of inhabitants living behind the forest; and, lastly, they prevent houses and property from being washed away into the sea.

From Nature 27 October 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

The second season's work of the British-Kenya Miocene Expedition in the Kavirondo region of Lake Victoria has culminated in one of the most important discoveries yet made there. Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, the field director of the Expedition, has announced the finding on Rusinga Island on October 2 of the greater part of a skull of one of the species of Miocene apes belonging to the genus Proconsul, probably Pr. africanus (Hopwood). ⃛ [T]his new discovery for the first time provides information regarding the whole of the facial skeleton and much of the brain case. ⃛ Mrs. Leakey was actually the first to see some small fragments of the skull, where they had been washed out on the slope of one of the gullies which were being explored. She directed the attention of her husband who, cutting back into the beds, brought to light this most important, and indeed unique, fossil.

From Nature 30 October 1948.