Donations. The Committee wish to give their thanks to the many members who have added donations to their annual subscriptions and also to the Alpine Ski Club, London, for their generous contribution. They desire to place on record how much they appreciate this support.
Honorary Member. Sir George Simpson, K.C.B., C.B., C.B.E., F.R.S., has accepted Honorary Membership of the Society.
Sir George Simpson took part in the British National Antarctic Expedition 1910–13 and was Director of the Meteorological Office from 1920 until 1938 and again during the war.
Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. The Reverend W. L. S. Fleming has been appointed Director on the resignation of Professor F. Debenham, O.B.E.
Dr. J. E. Church writes “I am flying to Manila and up the Yangtze River on my way to India to organize a snow survey System in the Himalaya for the Government of India. On my way I want to get a look at the snow cover on the Yangtze and on my way back I should like to go south from Rio to the San Juan Basin of Argentina in the Andes.”
Dr. Henri Bader, one of the original research workers at the Weissfluhjoch Snow and Avalanche Research Station, Switzerland, is now working at the Bureau of Mineral Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He has joined the U.S. group of the International Commission of Snow and Glaciers and is a member of the National Research Council Commission on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Dr. S. E. Hollingworth has been appointed to the Yates-Goldsmid Chair of Geology at University College, London.
Die Schweizerische Geomorphologische Gesellschaft. This Society has been formed under the Presidency of Dr. Hans Annaheim, Basle, to co-ordinate geomorphological work throughout Switzerland.
Metric System. At the British Scientific Conference of 1946 it was suggested that the pound and the yard should be precisely related to their metric equivalents. If this is a preliminary step in the adoption of the metric system in the Empire, the least that can be said is that it is long overdue.
The Wrecked Dakota on the Gauli Glacier. A note in Die Alpen states that the Glacier Commission of the Swiss Naturforschenden Gesellschaft proposes to follow the descent of the wrecked aircraft down the glacier with accurate measurements, in the hope of ascertaining the exact manner of flow in the glacier. The report does not make it clear what method of sounding it is proposed to adopt.
The MÄrjelen See, the glacier lake of the Great Aletsch Glacier, has temporarily disappeared. The cause is doubtless the fracture of the ice dam by movement of the glacier. This phenomenon occurs at irregular intervals. In 1939 the lake was dry and in June 1945 it was three-quarters full.
Glacier Fluctuation. Dr. R. Streiff-Becker writes that the retreat of glaciers in the Alps was most marked in 1946. On the Claridenfirn at pt. 2,900 he found a yearly surplus of only 2.8 m. instead of the 4 m. necessary to maintain the status quo. At 2,700 m. there was only 80 cm. of firn surplus.
Volume Flow of Plastic Materials. A letter in Nature (Vol. 158, No. 4020,1946, p. 706) deals shortly with recent experiences on this question. Swainger (Nature, Vol. 158, No. 4005,1946, p. 165) had found an increase in volume during the plastic flow of duralumin under tensile test. Glanville and Thomas had shown that concrete under compression tended to fill its own voids and so to reduce its volume. Lee, Reiner and Rigden, the signatories of the letter, have observed the reverse effect in asphalt subjected to a simple constant-load tensile test.
Ice Cave Exploration. The Creux Bastian Underground caverns near Pre-Baillod, Neuchätel, were explored in June, 1946. Ice was found in considerable quantity 42 m. below the surface. The height above sea-level is 1,200 m. This is believed to be one of the lowest-lying deposits of permanent ice in the Jura. There appears to be little up-to-date literature on the phenomenon of permanent ice in caves below the snow line; J. Kunský’s paper on the Tropfsteinhöhle in the High Tatra (Zentralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie (Stuttgart), B. No. 5, 1937, pp. 209-15) appears to be the only one in recent years.
Glacier Exploration. Elsewhere in this issue will be found an article by Dr. Hans Carol on his experiences when penetrating to the glacier bed by means of the marginal crevasses. In the last issue there was a short note of an unsuccessful attempt by him to reach the glacier bed by means of a pot-hole. It is certain that until a glacier can be examined throughout its vertical depth the true nature of glaciers and of their modes of erosion will remain conjectural. Glaciology has suffered from conjecture and suggestion and unsubstantiated formulæ perhaps more than any other science. In theory the best way of obtaining facts would be to sink a shaft through the ice to the glacier bed, but to do this and to make the shaft motion-proof would be so expensive that, at present at any rate, it could not be contemplated. Another and more permanent method might be to drive an adit through the rock bed into the glacier, but this is even less within the scope of present possibilities. Dr. Carol seems therefore to have arrived at the only possible method for the present. As will be seen from the article very interesting facts have already come to light. It is to be hoped that Dr. Carol will persevere with his pioneer work.
Mr. H. F. P. Herdman will read a paper entitled “The Antarctic Pack-ice” in London in the late autumn; it will be illustrated by lantem slides and a short film. Further details will be announced , to members of the Society in due course.
