398 



NA rURE 



[February 24, 1898 



would enable him to compile a census of the 112 Watsonian vice- 

 counties, the writer has looked through most of the magazines, 

 county floras, proceedings of local natural history societies, 

 the Botanical Record Club's Reports, &c., in the library of 

 the British Museum, and he finds that fairly good lists have 

 been published for about fifty vice-counties ; there are, there- 

 fore, about sixty-two vice-counties in Great Britain for which 

 he can find no lists of the commoner mosses. Mr. Horrell 

 has already received lists or offers of assistance from corre- 

 spondents in about thirty-four vice-counties, but would much like 

 to find a moss student in each vice-county who would undertake 

 to prepare a list of his district during the next two or three years. 

 Mr. H. N. Dixon and Mr. E. M. Holmes have offered their aid 

 in examining doubtful or critical species. Mr. Horrell's address 

 is 44 Brompton Square, London, S.W. 



In a contribution to the Transactions of the Nova Scotia 

 Institute of Science, ix., Mr. E. H. Archibald describes a series 

 of determinations, made at Dalhousie College, of the conductivity 

 of aqueous solutions containing potassium and sodium sulphates. 

 The object was to ascertain if the conductivity was calculable in 

 the case of mixtures of these solutions from the formulae given by 

 the dissociation theory of Arrhenius and others. It would 

 appear that for mixtures of solutions of these salts, not more 

 concentrated than 08 equivalent gramme-molecules per litre, it 

 is possible by the aid of the dissociation theory to compute the 

 conductivity within, or but little beyond, the limits of the error of 

 observation. For more concentrated solutions the differences 

 between the calculated and observed conductivities ranged up to 

 I '47 per cent. ; but this discrepancy seems attributable, in part at 

 least, to certain asssumptions regarding the ionisation-coefficients, 

 which could not be regarded as rigorously correct, except at in- 

 finite dilution. 



Messrs. Macmillan and Co. will publish in a few days 

 the first volume of a comprehensive treatise on " Magnetism 

 and Electricity," by Prof. Andrew Gray, F.R.S. In this work 

 an attempt has been made to present the subject* from the be- 

 ginning from the point of view of action in a medium, and to 

 bring the experimental and theoretical results described as far as 

 possible down to date. The present volume, though it takes for 

 granted a knowledge of some of the most elementary phenomena 

 and apparatus, aims at giving an account of experimental work 

 as well as of the related magnetic or electric theory. It 

 includes the ordinary phenomena of magnetism and their theory, 

 a discussion of electrostatics and of steady flow of electricity, of 

 electromagnetism and of the electromagnetic theory of light. 

 The treatment is as far as possible dynamical, and to facilitate 

 reference to dynamical theorems, a chapter on general dynamics 

 has been included in this first volume. In Volume ii. will be 

 given, among other matters, an account of experimental work 

 on magnetism, of recent work on Hertzian, Rontgen, and other 

 radiations, and of general dynamical theories of electromagnetic 

 action, a continuation of the discussion of the voltaic cell begun 

 in Volume i., and a chapter on electrolysis. 



The Mexican Scientific Society, which is called "Antonio 

 Alzate," is doing excellent work, to judge from the recent num- 

 bers of its Memorias which have reached us. Among other 

 papers we find seismic observations at Orizaba, by M. C. Mottl ; 

 physico-chemical studies on the fat of the Yoyote shrub 

 {Thevetia yecotli),hy Prof. Villasefior ; on the decimalisation 

 of the circle and of lime, by M. J. de Mendizabal-Tamborrel ; 

 on the concentration of auriferous and argentiferous minerals, by 

 T. L. Laguerenne ; on the augmentation of weight of tuber- 

 culous and anaemic patients in rarefied air, by Dr. D. Vergara 

 Lope ; studies on the transpiration of Mexican plants, by Prof. 

 L. G. Seurat ; on the syrup of iodide of iron, by Prof. F. 

 Solorzano ; on orogenic movements, by M. P. C. Sanchez ; 



NO. 1478, VOL. 57] 



on the temperature of plants, by MM. Moreno and Anda ; 

 measurement of the tension of the blood of the dog, by Dr. 

 j D. Vergara Lope ; and formulae for the velocities and pressures 

 in guns, by M. F. Angeles ; as well as reviews of books, 

 &c. The Society, besides publishing these Memorias in a con- 

 venient size for binding up with the majority of octavo scientific 

 papers, has adopted the excellent plan of beginning each paper 

 on a right-hand page ; any specialist can thus bind up separate 

 papers oh selected subjects without impairing the rest. 



A RECENT number of the Cape of Good Hope Agricidliiral 

 Journai contains an article on " The serum method of treating 

 cattle as a preventive of rinderpest in South Africa," in which 

 the joint report of the French experts arkd the Government 

 Veterinarian is given in extenso. It contains rules for the 

 application of the method of treating cattle by the injection of 

 protecting blood, and attention is called to the importance of 

 procuring the blood from animals which have suffered from 

 rinderpest in its most severe form, and which have been 

 " salted " or rendered immune to the disease one to five months 

 previously, and have received at least one injection of rinderpest 

 blood. It is urged that general measures should be taken 

 throughout the whole of South Africa to prevent the spread of 

 rinderpest, the protective measures already adopted by the 

 Governments of the South African Republic, Orange Free 

 State, and the Cape Colony have had some good effect, but it 

 is feared that unless further and more vigorous steps are taken, 

 the epidemic will conquer the whole of South Africa. If we 

 consider that it was in the beginning of the year 1896 that 

 rinderpest first made its appearance in Matabeleland and 

 Mashonaland, and in less than eighteen months had destroyed 

 all the cattle of these two countries, and had also overwhelmed 

 the territory of the South African Republic and the Orange 

 Free State, the necessity for united and strong action appears 

 sufficiently imperative. It is at present, the report tells us> 

 spreading from north to south, and from east to west, and 

 seriously threatens the herds of the Cape Colony, Basutoland, 

 Natal, and Zululand. As regards the subsequent use of the 

 carcases of rinderpest animals, the consensus of opinion appears 

 to deprecate] as unsafe the practice of simply salting and 

 drying rinderpest oxen hides, whilst it is also stated that the 

 farmer cannot be trusted to convert fat into soap without risk of 

 accidentally spreading the disease. 



The Kekule Memorial Lecture, delivered before the Chemical 

 Society on December 15 (see p. 180), by Prof. F. R. Japp, 

 F.R.S., is published, with a portrait of Kekule, in the February 

 issue of the Society's Journal, 



Under the title] of " A Visit to Giessen ; or. Thoughts on 

 Liebig and Chemistry in Germany," Prof. Senier, of Queen's 

 College, Galway, recently delivered a lecture. The lecture has 

 now been published by Mr. Edward Ponsonby, Dublin, and it 

 makes a very interesting pamphlet on Liebig and his work. 



The second part (for February 1898) of the xaon\k)\.y Journal of 

 Applied Microscopy, published by the Bausch and Lomb Optical 

 Company, Rochester, N.Y., contains a full account, with illus- 

 trations, of the very extensive and complete laboratories con- 

 nected with Cornell University, viz. those for botany, micro- 

 scopy, histology, embryology, bacteriology, and pathology. 



Three well-arranged catalogues of works on various branches 

 of the mathematical and physical sciences have just been issued 

 by Messrs. William Wesley and Son. The catalogues include 

 works from the libraries of the Rev. A. Freeman, Dr. Albert 

 Marth, and Dr. Hind. Rare and valuable memoirs and books 

 are enumerated in the lists, and the scientific bibli,ophile who 

 consults the catalogues will be repaid for his trouble. . 



The results of meteorological observations made at Bangalore, 

 Mysore, Hassan, and Chitaldrug, under the direction of Mr. J. 



