xviii Proceedings. {^Mardi jth, igii. 



Society celebrated the centenary of the discovery of Dalton's 

 atomic theory. Professor van't Hoff was best known for his work 

 on Stereo-isonierism, and the theory advanced by him to 

 explain these phenomena is now generally accepted by chemists. 



Professor G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S., exhibited a cast of the 

 Gibraltar skull— the most complete palaeolithic skull known — 

 now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. It was 

 hewn out of a terrace of solid conglomerate limestone, under the 

 north face of the Rock of (iibraltar, by the Royal Engineers in 

 1848; but was only cleaned of its matrix and properly dis- 

 played last year by Professor Arthur Keith, of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, to whom Prof. Elliot Smith was indebted for this 

 cast. The outstanding features of this skull are (1) its small 

 brain capacity (1060 cc); (2) the great supra-orbital ridge of 

 bone and the low receding forehead; (3) the great orbits and 

 nose, larger than those of modern races ; (4) the blown out 

 appearance of the face due to the great development of the 

 air spaces of the upper jaw; and (5) the very slight development 

 of the mastoid process. 



Professor E. Rutherford, F.R.S., read a paper entitled 

 " The Scattering of the « and /3 Rays and the Structure 

 of the Atom," of which the following is an abstract. 



It is well known that the a and /3 particles are deflected 

 from their rectilinear path by encounters with the atoms of 

 matter. On account of its smaller momentum and energy, the 

 scattering of the /3 particles is in general far more pronounced 

 than for the a particles. There seems to be no doubt that these 

 swiftly moving particles actually pass through the atomic system, 

 and a close study of the deflexions produced should throw light 

 on the electrical structure of the atom. It has been usually 

 assumed that the scattering observed is the result of a multitude 

 of small scatterings. Sir J. J. Thomson {Froc. Cam. Phil. Soc, 

 15, Pt. 5, 1910) has recently put forward a theory of small 

 scattering, and the main conclusions of the theory have been 

 experimentally examined by Crowther for /3 rays {Froc. Roy. Sac, 



