SCIENCE CONGRESS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 September 1923, Page 4

SCIENCE CONGRESS.

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION. SYDNEY, Sept. I. Professor Ellsworth Huntingdon addressed the Science Congress on the possibilities of propliecying rain six months abend, pointing out how productivity in arid areas would he increased if cultivation could he carried out. with some knowledge as to when rain was likely to come.

At llie Science Congress, Professor Cook, discussing the organisation ol wireless time signals in the Pacific eouutric-, said that the present, signals were arrnngd to suit the convenience of astronomers in the Atlantic, rather than in the Pacific zone. It was desirable that separate signals should he designed specially for the Pacific zone and sent from Honolulu. The Congress recommended that- the signal used should lie sent once daily from Greenwich, at one o'clock in the morning. Professor Wells, of Chicago University, read a paper on cancer. He stated that accurate post mortems on forty thousand mice, whose ancestry might be 1 raced back" thirty generations, which was equivalent to « thousand years of human life, had been conducted by himself, with a view to ascertaining if Mendel's law of transmission held. The general conclusion was that transmission of malignant disease obeyed Mendel’s law. Applying these experiments to human experience, he considered 1 here was some justification for considering Mendel's law was to some extent operative in regard to human beings. Papers read at the Science Congress were in reference to tbe oil ami water resources of the Pacific, region, including Mr P. G. Morgan’s on petroliferous areas in New Zealand. Professor Eiisterfield stated that New Zealand geologists still had hopes that the production of oil in some nans of New Zealand would prove an economic proposition. The discussion indicated that the prospects of developing payable oil in Australia, Papua, and some of the other countries bordering on the Pacific were hopeful.

A COINCIDENCE. SYDNEY. Sept. 3. Doctor Bigot, el Rivenlew. was showing J)r Omen, one of tbe Japanese delegates to the Science Congress. and one of the greatest authorities in the world on seisinography, his seismographs at the time when the Tokio earthquake records were being received. Both saw at a glance that it was a big earthquake, but not until Dr Omori had departed did Dr Bigot ascertain thy locality.

Dr Bigot slates that the disaster is grave and serious for the Japanese attending tho Science Congress as many of their relatives and friends are at Tokio.