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Notes: Results of high-speed streak photography of the initial stages of a discharge in technical vacuum are presented. The roles of electrode material, electrode spacing, gas pressure, and gas composition were investigated as well as the influence of cathode temperature. The results show that the visible light in the initial stages of the discharge oscillates in intensity with a period of between 4 and 5 ns. The period is little changed by any of the parameters studied. The results are examined in the light of three models for the process; explosive emission, oscillations in layers of solid adsorbate on the cathode, and oscillations in the space charges in the gap. The results definitely exclude explosive emission and do not fit well with the requirements of oscillations in cathode surface layers. It is concluded that space-charge oscillations are responsible for observed oscillations in visible light intensity and gap current.

Notes: Abstract. The molecular specificity of the substances which have auxin activity implies the existence of specific receptors. There have been many efforts to identify and isolate these receptors on the assumption that they should bind auxins with affinities coordinate to their activities in bioassays. However, the known complexity of auxin uptake and metabolism make this assumption seriously deficient. Although several such binding sites have, in fact, been identified, proof of a connection between these sites and auxin action has been lacking. Definite proof would include a requirement that the site be reconstituted, together with the appropriate macro-molecular machinery, to construct a model of an auxin response. At the moment, our ignorance of the biochemistry and molecular biology of auxin growth responses makes such a proof difficult. However, two avenues of research promise to accelerate the rate of progress. The increasingly potent tools of molecular biology should soon allow the dissection of auxin-regulated gene expression, while improved knowledge of plasma membrane proton pumps and the mechanism of cell wall biosynthesis should produce, in parallel, an understanding of the auxin regulation of acid growth.

Notes: After almost a century of discussion of the traditions about the apostles in Cynewulf's poem it is somewhat surprising to find that some simple literary contacts have been ignored. This is true of the latest edition of the poem and of the more recent book, Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry. In an earlier edition G. P. Krapp had chosen Bede's Martyrology as a source for Fates, but, since Dom Quentin's detailed work on historical martyrologies has excised the accretions which that martyrology has accumulated, the authentic Bede can now be left out of the discussion. In modern times it seems that two lists of apostles which preface the Hieronymian Martyrology in eighth-century manuscripts are regarded as analogues or contributory sources. These are the Notitia de locis Apostolorum (Notit.), a list of the apostles’ resting-places, in the Echternach manuscript, and the Breviarium Apostolorum (Brev.), in other manuscripts. The two tracts entitled De Ortu et Obitu Patrum in Migne's Patrologia Latina, the one normally assigned to Isidore of Seville (IO) and the other now regarded as an anonymous Hiberno-Latin tract (HLO) from the eighth century, and both including the apostles, have been considered by previous scholars. All these four works are early enough to have been consulted by Cynewulf, who is thought to have been writing in the ninth century, but none of them individually nor all of them collectively could have provided Cynewulf with all his factual details: none of them reports that James Zebedaei died ‘mid Iudeum’ (35 a) (although this fact could be assumed from Brev., IO and HLO, which state that he was killed by Herod), that Philip preached in Asia (38a), that Thomas raised Gad, the king's brother, from death and that he himself was killed by a sword (54–60), that Matthew preached in Ethiopia (64) and that a named king ‘Irtacus’ (68a) ordered him to be slain ‘wæpnum’ (69b), that Simon and Thaddeus (or Jude) went together to Persia (76b) and that they died on the same day (‘him wearð bam samod / an endedæg‘, 78b–9a). These details are all lacking in HLO, which has the least differences from Cynewulf's poem. Each of the other texts individually has other differences, Notit. having the greatest number. These abbreviated accounts, of course, merely transmit traditions about the apostles, and so it is clear that Cynewulf used different traditions for at least Philip, Thomas, Matthew and the pair Simon and Thaddeus, who are linked by Cynewulf, whereas in the other texts either they are separated or Thaddeus is not mentioned. It is possible that a curious assumption of ‘short poem, short source’ has prevented scholars from being alert to the significance of a clear clue which has long been available. In Brooks's edition we read that ‘the resurrection of Gad... is not mentioned in Bede's Martyrology, nor in the Breviarium; hence neither of these can be the sole source of the poem. A full account is given in the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas’, in other words, in the full story of Thomas's Passio. I hope to demonstrate that almost all the details about the apostles in the poem came immediately from the full stories of the Vitae or Passiones which are still extant. In my opinion it is unnecessary to consider the possibility of an abbreviated intermediary, since, as a religious of his period Cynewulf would have heard stories of the saints, including the apostles, on their feast-days, and, as we know, he had access to written accounts for two pieces for such festivals, a story of the Inventio Crucis for his poem Elene and a Vita S. Julianae for his poem under her name. He would have been remarkably inattentive, not to say undevout, if he had not recalled the few details about individual apostles from such hearing or reading.

Notes: REVIEWS

Notes: The relationship between ministers and the senior civil servants with whom they are in closest contact has long fascinated students of British government. For all the attention lavished on it, however, the relationship remains obstinately elusive and unsusceptible to clear categorization and analysis. The problem is partly one of finding a suitable frame of reference. Despite their well-established limitations, the Weberian model of an instrumental bureaucracy and the closely-related ‘politics-administration dichotomy’ still loom surprisingly large in academic analyses of bureaucratic behaviour. But the attempt to specify roles appropriate to civil servants, on the one hand, or ministers, on the other, runs the risk either of proving inadequate in face of the empirical evidence or of leading to the conclusion that one of the groups – usually the civil servants – is usurping the other's role or roles. Elements of the latter can be seen in the concern evinced in recent years about the power of civil servants vis-à-vis ministers in Britain. (Discussion of minister-civil servant relationships has, indeed, been almost entirely confined to aspects of power – particularly that of the minister's ability to get his way on policy.)

Notes: The earlier editors of the Old English Martyrology (OEM), T. O. Cockayne and George Herzfeld, recognized that some notices, or phrases within notices, drew on homilies by named patristic writers. Cockayne identified two entries which closely echoed sentences from two of Gregory's Homiliae in Evangelia, for Emiliana (5 January) from Homilia xxxviii.15 and for Cassius (29 June) from Homilia xxxvii.9. Herzfeld added two more, for Processus and Martinianus (2 July) from Homilia xxxii.7 and for Felicitas (23 November) from Homilia iii.3. Also, guided by Ruinart, Herzfeld identified a passage from Augustine's Sermo cccix.4 within the entry for Cyprian of Carthage (14 September). Herzfeld, by oversight, had actually ascribed his Latin quotation (cited in the Addenda) to Fulgentius of Ruspe's Sermo vi, although Fulgentius's sermon probably did influence one other phrase in the notice.