April 27, 1911] 



NATURE 



30: 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Royal Meteorological Society, April 19.— Dr. H. N. 

 Dickson, president, in the chair. — W. Marriott: Varia- 

 tions in the English climate during the thirty years 188 1- 

 19 10. The Royal Meteorological Society in 1874 com- 

 menced the organisation of a series of " second-order 

 stations " at which observations of pressure, temperature, 

 humidity, rainfall, and wind are made twice a day, viz. 

 at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. In addition to these, another class 

 of stations, termed " climatological," at which observa- 

 tions are made once a day, viz. at 9 a.m., was organised 

 in 1880. The monthly results from all these stations have 

 been published in the " Meteorological Record." The 

 author has taken the general monthly means of all these 

 results as representing the means for England and Wales, 

 and these general means were exhibited to the meeting in 

 the form of an interesting series of diagrams, in which the 

 variations of the various elements for each month were 

 shown in red when above the average, and in blue when 

 below the average, for the thirty years 1881-1910. The 

 warmest months were August, 1899, July, 1900, and July, 

 1901, while the coldest months were February, 1895, 

 January, 1881, and December, 1890. During the last four- 

 teen years the temperature in October was above the aver- 

 age, with only one exception, viz. 1905. The years with 

 the highest mean temperature were 1898, 1893, and 1899, 

 and the years with the lowest temperature were 1892, 

 1888, and 1887. The month with the highest mean 

 pressure was February, 189 1, and that with the lowest 

 pressure was March, 1909. On the average, April is the 

 month with the least rainfall, and October the month with 

 the heaviest rainfall, while June has the least number of 

 days of rain. The wettest months during the thirty years 

 were October, 1903, and October, 1891, and the driest 

 months were February, 1891, and April, 1893. The years 

 with the heaviest rainfall were 1903 and 189 1, and the 

 years with the least rainfall were 1887 and 1893. The 

 wind diagrams showed that the prevailing winds were from 

 the south-west and west, but that in April, May, and June 

 north-easterly winds were more pronounced than in the 

 other months of the year. — Captain C. H. Ley : (i) The 

 value of the two-theodolite method for determining vertical 

 air motion ; (2) an automatic valve for pilot balloons. 



Manchester. 

 • Literary and Philosophical Society, March 21.— Mr. 

 Francis Jones, president, in the chair.— W. Thomson : 

 The influence of atmospheric pressure and humidity on 

 animal metabolism. In a previous paper the author stated 

 he had found that the percentage of carbonic acid gas 

 contained In the exhaled air from the lungs was greater 

 when breathing dry than when breathing damp air, also 

 when breathing in mountainous districts where the atmo- 

 spheric pressure was low than when breathing in the 

 valley, and, again, was greater when breathing In the 

 valley than when breathing at the bottom of a deep coal- 

 pit, where the pressure Is still greater. The experiments 

 recorded in the present paper were made upon the exhaled 

 air from three men and one boy, and upon guinea-pigs 

 and mice, and the results from all show that, as a rule, 

 when the barometer fell the percentage of carbonic acid 

 in the exhaled air rose, and when the barometer rose the 

 percentage of carbonic acid fell. As the air became more 

 moist the percentage of carbonic acid fell, and it rose 

 when the air became drier. There was a lower percentage 

 <rf carbonic acid in the exhaled air when the weather was 

 warm than when it was cold. — Miss Margaret C. March : 

 The ornament of Trigonia clavellata and some of its 

 derivatives. 



April 4. — Mr. Francis Jones, president, In the chair. — 

 Prof. W. W. Haldane Ooo and A. Adamson : Dioptrie- 

 meters. The methods of measuring the focal |>ovver of 

 thin lenses directly In dioptrics have been investigated. In 

 I ho case of converging lenses, the method of obtaining this 

 lUie directly from observations on the optical bench is to 



tcrmine the reciprocal of the focal length in metres by 

 ilrulation, by scale or tabic of reciprocals, or by a 



iphical construction which will enable the value in 



iptries to be road off from a uniform scale placed at 

 Ljht angles to the line along which the focal length has 



n measured. In the case of concave lenses (as well as 



NO. 2165, VOL. 86] 



converging lenses) the authors have adopted a method 

 originally suggested by Guilloz, but practically unknown in 

 physical laboratories. They have designed an Instrument 

 called a " dioptriemeter, " which is of great simplicity and 

 convenience. It consists essentially of a scale of con- 

 centric circles i mm. apart, which is viewed through a 

 pin-hole at a distance of 200 mm. Midway between the 

 pin-holes and scale is a disc with a circular opening of 

 10 mm. radius, so that twenty circles are seen. If a con- 

 cave lens be placed against the disc more circles are seen, 

 the excess above twenty giving the power in dioptrics. 

 The circles are so numbered that the value Is directly read 

 off. The same method is applied to a convex lens. The 

 instrument Is especially useful for investigating the proper- 

 ties of cylindrical lenses and the combinations of lenses. 

 It can further be employed for finding the deviation of 

 light by thin prisms and estimating their power in prism- 

 dioptries. The method employed in the instrument has 

 been found to be quite as accurate in principle as the usual 

 optical-bench methods for thin lenses. — Prof. E. Knecht : 

 The action of hydrogen peroxide on qulnone. It was 

 shown that when hydrogen peroxide is allowed to act on 

 quinone In presence of ammonia, the solution becomes 

 heated, and a brisk evolution of oxygen takes place. On 

 acidulating the solution and extracting with ether, hydro- 

 quinone was found to have been formed in considerable 

 amount. Toluquinone behaves in a similar way to 

 ordinary quinone. — Dr. A. N. Meldrum : The develop- 

 ment of the atomic theory : (vi.) the reception accorded 

 to the theory as advocated by Dalton. At first Dalton's 

 physical atomic theory met with keen opposition, and his 

 chemical theory with neglect. To make the chemical 

 theory known required, in addition to Dalton's own 

 efforts, the zeal of Thomas Thomson and the support of 

 William Hyde Wollaston. For years it came to almost 

 nothing, except in Sweden and Italy. In Sweden, J. J. 

 Berzelius, learning of it in the year 1808 from a memoir 

 by Wollaston, received it with enthusiasm, and set him- 

 self, with immense success, to test it on the grand scale. 

 In Italy it was the knowledge of Dalton's theory which 

 stimulated Amadeo Avogadro to enunciate and maintain, 

 exactly a hundred years ago, the hypothesis that equal 

 volumes of different gases contain under the same con- 

 ditions the same number of molecules. This hypothesis, 

 after the lapse of fifty years, became the fundamental 

 dogma of molecular science. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, April 10. — M. Arnrrd Gautier in 

 the chair. — M. Gouy : Intercathodic action in a uniform 

 magnetic field. It has been shown by experiment that 

 intercathodic action is produced when the negative charges 

 are connected by the lines of magnetic force. It Is now 

 shown that this condition may be replaced by another 

 which is equivalent to it, that there is a maximum of 

 electric potential on the path of the electrons. — M. Salet : 

 The absorption and diffusion of light by meteorites of the 

 intersideral space. The number of meteorites received by 

 the earth in a year has been estimated at over 10", and 

 their mass to be of the order of i gram. If these 

 meteorites do not form a stream displaced with the sun, the 

 number per unit volume in space is of the order of lo-*. 

 Some consequences of the diffusion of light by these 

 meteorites are developed, and also of the bearing on the 

 calculations of Pearson on the standard deviation. — Ch. 

 Fabry and H. Buisson : Some applications of the pheno- 

 mena of interference to the study of ncbul.t;. The method 

 of applying the Fabry interferometer to a telescope is 

 described : interference rings have been obtained with this 

 apparatus from the nebula in Orion without difficulty. — 

 A. Buhl : Development of a method due to M. Darboux on 

 the theory of moments of inertia. — M. Darboux : Remarks 

 on the preceding note. — Andrt? Broca : The measurement 

 of geodesic angles by the method of repetition. Construc- 

 tion of a suitable apparatus and results of the measure- 

 ments. The maximum error found was i in 300,000. — 

 J. Le Roux : The fundamental covariants of the second 

 order in the finite deformation of a continuous medium. 

 — L. Hartmann : The mechanism of the permanent 

 dfformation in metals submitted to extension. A study 

 of the manner in which the layer of oxide formed 

 on tempered steel comes off when the clastic limit is 

 passed.— G. A. Homsaloch : The line spectrum of air given 



