440 



NATURE 



[March io, 1398 



Asia. Of this bird the eggs were first obtained, we 

 believe, by Fedtchenko, and have ever since ranked as 

 great rarities, and collectors will therefore be interested 

 in finding specimens included among those collected last 

 year and mentioned by Prof. Newton. R. L. 



NOTES. 



The Council of the Royal Society have invited Dr. Wilhelm 

 Pfeffer, professor of botany in the University of Leipzig, and 

 foreign member of the Royal Society, to deliver the Croonian 

 Lecture on March 17. The subject of the lecture is to be " On 

 the Nature and Significance of Functional Metabolism {Betriebs- 

 stoffwechseh) in the Plant." The lecture will be delivered in 

 German. Prof Pfefier is well known among botanists for his 

 two volumes on " Pflanzenphysiologie," published in 188 1 from 

 Tubingen, and the second edition of which was issued last year ; 

 while his views on the function of chlorophyll, and its absorption- 

 spectrum, are familiar to workers on the physiology of plant- 

 life. 



More than 100 foreign zoologists have now consented lo be 

 members of the ' ' Committee of Patronage " of the Fourth In- 

 ternational Congress of Zoology, and a large number of them 

 have expressed the hope that they will be able to be present at 

 the meeting in August next. Among these we may mention 

 the names of Prof Hackel, of Jena ; Prof, Graff, of Graz ; 

 Prof Grassi, of Rome ; M. Blanchard, of Paris ; Baron Jules 

 de Guerne, who has been associated with the Prince of Monaco ; 

 Dr. Jentink, of Leyden, who was President of the Third 

 Congress ; Dr. Dollo, of Brussels ; and Prof Collett, of 

 Christiania. From the United States it is hoped there will be a 

 somewhat large contingent ; Profs. Osborn and Scott, Prof E. 

 B. Wilson, and Mr. Watase, of Chicago, all hope to be able to 

 come. 



The sixth "James Forrest'' Lecture of the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers will be delivered on Thursday, March 17, at 

 eight o'clock. Prof W. Boyd i:)awkins, F.R.S., the lecturer, 

 takes for his subject " Geology in relation to Engineering." 



The Mayor of Bradford presided at a meeting, held on 

 Monday, for the purpose of considering a proposal to invite the 

 British Association to Bradford for the year 1900. It was 

 unanimously decided to send an invitation to the Association 

 for the year 1900, and an executive committee was appointed to 

 make arrangements if the invitation should be accepted. 



It is expected that some of the observers of the recent total 

 eclipse of the sun will give a preliminary account of their 

 observations at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society 

 to-morrow. 



The Municipal Council of Paris have inserted in the budget 

 for this year the sum of ten thousand francs, for the laboratory 

 of photography and radiography at the Salpetriere. 



The following grants have recently been made by the 

 Trustees of the Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund 1—250 

 dollars to Prof Gustav Hiifner (Tubingen), for the investigation 

 of hsemin and hsematine ; 288 dollars to Prof Carlo Bonacini 

 (Modena), for researches in colour photography ; 250 dollars to 

 Prof John Milne, to aid in a seismic survey of the world. 



The Zurich correspondent of the Times states that the 

 observatory on Mont Blanc, which was constructed by M. 

 Joseph Vallot some seven years ago, is to be transferred to 

 another site. The present structure is built on a small rocky 

 plateau, which extends for a short distance from the Rochers 

 des Bosses, but its position is no longer favourable for scientific 

 observations. The construction of the building has served as a 

 NO. 1480, VOL. 57] 



barrier against which the snow piles itself in ever-increasing 

 masses, causing both trouble and expense to the observatory 

 staff. The whole erection is to be transferred, piece by piece, 

 on the backs of workmen from the Rochers des Bosses to a 

 rocky point at the same altitude, where the ground will first be 

 levelled by blasting, and, in spite of the difficulties of climate 

 and transport attending these operations, it is hoped that the 

 whole transfer will be finished in the course of one summer 

 season. 



At the meeting of the Entomological Society of London on 

 March 2, a discussion took place on the reported introduction of 

 the San Jose scale, Aspidiotus perniciosus, into Great Britain. 

 Mr. R. Newstead, the only British entomologist who is now 

 specially occupied with Coccidse, stated that during the past nine 

 years he had never once met with this species among the 

 numerous scale-insects taken in this country and forwarded to 

 him for identification. It was impossible even for an expert lo 

 distinguish it, without careful microscopical preparation and 

 examination, from among the thirty or more described species 

 of Aspidiotus, and any attempt to identify it on imported fruit 

 by naked-eye observation, or with a hand-lens, was therefore 

 quite impracticable. The risk of its distribution by importation 

 on fruit was small ; there was, however, much more likelihood of 

 its introduction on plants or trees. At the same time he saw no 

 reason to suppose that it would be more injurious in this country 

 than the common Mylilaspis pomoriun ; in America the San 

 Jose scale had several, sometimes as many as five, generations in 

 the year, but in this climate it would probably conform with the 

 habits of all other scale-insects at present investigated and 

 become single-brooded. Mr. Newstead's conclusions were 

 generally agreed with by the Fellows present. 



According to the Bulletin de la SocidtJ Fravgaise de 

 Physique, M. Cremieu has devised an ingenious means of pro- 

 ducing elliptic sound -vibrations in air. By the interference of 

 the longitudinal vibrations of two organ-pipes, placed at right 

 angles, and vibrating under the influence of two diapasons with 

 the proper difference of phase, an elliptic motion was set up at 

 the intersection of the tubes, and its existence was made evident 

 by means of delicate quartz fibres which followed all the move- 

 ments of the air. 



M. A. Leduc, in a paper read before the Societe Fran5aise de 

 Physique, criticises the well-known law of mixture of gases, 

 according to which the pressure of a mixture is the sum of the 

 pressures of its constituents at the same volume and tempera- 

 ture. This law is only true for perfect gases, and is then 

 equivalent to the statement that the volume of the mixture equals 

 the sum of the volumes of its constituents at the same pressure 

 and temperature. From experiments on several gas-mixtures, 

 M. Leduc considers that the second form of the law is 

 rigorously applicable to certain mixtures of real gases, and is, in 

 general, in closer approximation with experiment than the first. 



In the Annates du Bui-eau Central Meteorologique, M. 

 Moureaux gives an account of ttie different comparisons he has 

 made between the magnetic instruments of the Pare Saint Maur 

 Observatory and those of the observatories at Kew, Uccle 

 (Brussels) and Pavlovsk (St. Petersbourg). The comparison 

 observations made at Kew have already been described by Mr. 

 Chree in a communication to the Royal Society. The declina- 

 tion at Pavlovsk was found to be i'"3 higher than the French 

 standard, the horizontal force o"oooi3 lower, and the dip o'"8 

 lower. At Uccle the declination was i'*5 lower, the horizontal 

 force 0"00002 lower, and the dip was not compared. In the 

 account of the Kew comparisons an arithmetical error occurs 

 which makes the horizontal force difference O'oooii when it 

 ought to be o "00012. 



