326 TRANSACTIONS OF SOCIETIES. 



Monday, February 13th : Dr. E. T. Mellor, F.G.S., President, m the 

 chair. — "'Amygdaloidal epidiorite, Bulawayo":A. E. V. Zealley. A 

 description of a variety of hornblende rock which occurs extensively 

 in some parts of Rhodesia. The amygdaloidal character is boldly 

 developed, and the author believes that the series originated as a lava 

 flow. — " The diamond-bearing deposits of Bagagem and Agua Suja in 

 the State of Minas Geraes, Brazil " : D. Draper. Descriptive notes of 

 the mineralogy and geological structure of the areas mentioned. 



Royal Society of South Africa. — Wednesday, March 15th; Prof. 

 H. H. W. Pearson, M.A., Sc.D., F.L.S., Vice President, in the chair.— 

 " Sylvester's and other unisignants " : Dr. T. Muir. The author 

 endeavoured to throw fresh light on Sylvester's work by bringing it 

 into the same field of view with recent investigations of a more general 

 character. — '• The fourth order perturbations in the motions of Satellites 

 III. and IV. of Jupiter " : R. T. .\. Innes. A recomputation of long- 

 period inequalities in the longitude of the third great satellite of 

 Jupiter, and a computation — for the first time — of inequalities in the 

 motion of satellite IV. — " The funeral ceremonies of the Hottentots " : 

 C. L. Biden. Descriptive of the practices of native medicine men 

 during illness of a patient, and of the customs carried on during the 

 weeks following upon a fatal termination. — " The meteorites in thie 

 Bloemfontein Museum '' : Prof. W. A. D. Rudge. Descriptions of 

 the Kroonstad (1877) and Winburg (1881) meteorites. The former con- 

 sists of a fibrous mass of iron-nickel alloy, the latter contains 94 per 

 cent, of iron and 2 per cent, of nickel, the nickel being confined to veins 

 which intersect the mass. The nickel-iron alloy is magnetic and 

 remains so up to a dull red heat. — " Seismographic record of the South 

 African earthquake of October, iqio " : Dr. J. R. Sutton. The hori- 

 zontal pendulum moved over an extent equal to half its average daily 

 E.W. oscillation. — " Collodial gold and Purple of Cassius " : Dr. J. 

 Moir. Behaviour of chlorauric acid solution (i : 200,000) towards a 

 number of reducing agents. Colloidal aurous chloride, which is of a 

 brown colour, seems to be formed when pure stannous chloride is 

 added, and purple of Cassius only when an oxidising substance with 

 loosely bound oxygen is employed. " Some remarkable oxidation pro- 

 ducts of Benzidine" : Dr. J. Moir An investigation of the blue pro- 

 ducts obtained from benzidine by certain oxidation processes. — " The 

 Egyptian influence of Rhodesia ruin builders, or vice versa " : H. W. 

 Tarbutt. The author considers the native origin of the Rhodesian 

 ruins not improbable, if the articles found are compared with those of 

 Egyptian primitive art. .Such resemblance the author thinks are almost 

 unvarying. 



South African Institute of Engineers. — Saturday, March nth: 

 J. A. Vaughan, President, in the chair. — "Ore Bin Design" : N. Y. 

 Robertson. The author indicated how, by means of a graph, the 

 weight of ore accommodated in a standard bin of specified height 

 could be readily determined, and then proceeded to investigate the 

 pressures on the vertical and inclined members of such a bin. 



Chemical, Met.allurgic.al, and Mining Society of South Africa.— 

 Saturday, March 18th: Dr. J. Moir, M.A., F.C.S., President, in the 

 chair. — "The amalgamation of gold in Banket ore" :W. R. Dowling. 

 The history of amalgamation recovery since the early days of the 

 Witwatersrand gold mines was traced, and the necessity or advisability 

 was discussed of aimalgamating the final pulp leaving the crushing 

 plant as an overflow of the tube-mill classifiers. — "Air lift agitation 

 of slime pulp" : R. Allen. An account of the development of 

 methods for agitating slime pulp by means of compressed air, and of 

 the application of air-lift apparatus on the Transvaal mines. 



South African Society of Civil Engineers. -Wednesday, April 

 i2th:Col. G. T. Nicholson, M.I.C.E., President, in the chair.— 

 "Notes on the maintenance of Permanent way" : W. G. CocKs. 



