Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

We have the 'honour of announcing the arrival of a son and heir to our good chief, who leads 'us in the way that we should go— Professor Marsden—and append the following in the hope that it will come in useful before long.

"Tim and the Etatree."
(A story for Daddy to tell at bedtime.)

Dedicated to one, Timothy, who has lately joined the cheery band of physicists; extending to him the glad hand of welcome from the Physics Department.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Tim who lived with his father and his mother. Tim's father kept a litter of pet molecules who were always squabbling together and trying to knock one another into electrons. After a while father got fed up 'with the noise they made, Which kept him awake at night, so he gave the litter to Tim, and told him to take them down to the market and sell them for Pakapoo tickets. On the way down the road Tim met a broken down old man who said he was a vucchemist, and this old man imposed upon Tim, and bought the molecules off him for a drop of H₂O. When Tim arrived home with the H₂O his father was greatly enraged at his son's lack of intelligence, for he had thought to apprentice him to his own trade of a fisicsprof, so that he might carry on the good work. However, he sent Tim to bed, and putting the drop of H₂O in the bath, drowned it.

Next morning, Tim's father got up early, so that he could get along to work at 8 o'clock. On going into the bathroom he found the door hard to open, and on wrenching it down, he gazed with astonishment on the scene before his eyes—lo, and behold!—out of the bath grew an enormous tree, which had burst through the roof and stretched up towards the wireless station. He called Tim and elicited the information that, the day before, while cleaning his teeth, Tim had spilt in the bath some dried up eta seed, which had evidently only required H₂O to make it grow. Father did not page 60 want to be late for work and keep his underlings waiting, so he told Tim to climb up and see how far the tree went. So up Tim climbed and climbed and climbed until after eight hours he stopped for rest, being a union boy and having, with Government permission, joined the Alliance of Labour. Next day, however, he reached the top, but to his dismay he stepped right into a cloud, and the water condensed on him as ice, and down he fell to the ground, frozen hard. Father chipped off the worst with an axe, and then took Tim down and boiled him up in the latent heat of steam apparatus to remove the last trace of ice.

Next day, Tim tried again, and this time succeeded in reaching the top, and started off down the street of the strange land above.

The shades of night were falling fast, so Tim asked at the first house for a night's lodging. "Oh," said the woman who answered the door, "my name is Mrs. Gasvapor, and as I have to obey my boarder, Boyleslore, I can't let you in, or he might plot the adiabatic curve between your PV and P, and then where would you be?" But Tim was a hardy lad and did not mind risking this calamity, so he was let in, and hid in the Torricellian vacuum. By and by Boyleslore came home and said, "I smell a labboy." "Oh, I think you're mistaken," said Mrs. Gasvapor, "for by the first law of thermodynamics its impossible, and anyhow the dinner is cooked in Dines' hygrometer, so have a meal and then you'll feel better."

So Boyleslore had a meal, and then commanded his landlady to send in the tame coefficients of expansion of solids, liquids and gases, and his viscosity, so that he might frolic with them till bedtime. After a short time the old man got drowsy and went to sleep, for he was at one time a 'Varsity student, and the lecture habit had taken a firm hold on him. At this, out hopped Tim from the Torricellian vacuum, and grabbing up the coefficients and the viscosity he tied them up in a kinetic theory and dashed for the door and down the mean free path. Unluckily Boyleslore noticed him bang the door and gave chase. Tim did not have such a long lambda as did Boyleslore, so the race would have been a losing one for Tim had he not slipped, owing to his P.V. not being quite constant, but obeying Vanderwaal's equation instead of Boyleslore, and fallen into his father's arms at the bottom of the tree. "Quick," he said, "make haste, Dad, and apply a cooling correction or we'll have Boyleslore down on top of us." So dad quicked and applied a cooling correction by the areometric method and completely destroyed the lower part of the tree, leaving Boyleslore stranded up in the air on the upper part, unable to reach the ground.

When Tim handed over the goods with a smile of satisfaction, his father took them with suspicion—"Are you sure you have not cooked them Tim?" he said. "No, father," said Tim, "and you know the yarn about G. Washington—well, the same applies'to me." At this, father was very pleased. "Splendid," he said. "Tim, my boy, you are a chip off the old block, I will start you working at my trade tomorrow." So father took the coefficients down to his work and palmed them off on his underlings as his own recent discoveries, as a result of years and years of labour.

And everyone lived happily ever after.