Feb. 24, 1876] 



NATURE 



339 



"This did not prevent medical speculators from opening an 

 institution in Berlin for inhaling oxygen, where it is now being 

 sold at 7(/. the cubic foot, whi'e oxygen water is sold at id. the 

 bottle. As water of 0° does not absorb 4 per cent, of its volume, 

 a half-litre bottle contains less than 20 cb.m., or 00017 

 grammes of this gas ! It seems incredible that such a dose 

 should be expected to produce any effect whatever. Just as travel- 

 lers are recommended to provide themselves with concentrated 

 food, those who wish to climb the highest mountain tops, or by 

 means of balloons reach great heights, where the thinness of the at- 

 mosphere might cause them dangerous inconveniences, are advised 

 to use pure oxygen as a concentrated means of respiration. 1 

 P. Bert- exposed himself and others in proper apparatus, to 

 degrees of rarefaction of air, which far surpassed that of the 

 greatest heights ever reached by man. The want of breath and 

 symptoms of suffocation which ensued, when the barometer 

 stood at from 300 to 250 mm., were, according to his account, 

 at once relieved by one breath of pure oxygen. A mixture of 

 the same with atmospheric air proved even more effectual than 

 the pure gas, and, on an aerial voyage which the late MM. Croce 

 Spinelli and Sivel undertook from Paris on the 22nd ol March, 

 1874, they provided themselves with mixtures containing 45 and 

 75 per cent, of oxygen to 55 and 25 1^ er cent, of nitrogen. 

 They were enabled by the help of this gas to make valuable 

 physical observations,^ at heights of more than 6,000 metres, 

 leisurely and without any bodily inconvenience ; and although 

 Glaisher had succeeded in reaching still greater heights without 

 this assistance, oxygen offers a means of gaining strata hitherto 

 inaccessible." 



These words, however, were scarcely written when the news- 

 papers annoimced the death of the courageous navigators on a 

 new aerial voyage ; suffocation appears to have set in so suddenly 

 as to incapacitate them at once from using their respiratory 

 apparatus. 



The physiological applications of oxygen form the bridge to 

 some considerations on the practical uses of ozone, the discovery 

 of which had been greeted by exaggerated hopes. 



A. Oppenheim. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Chemical Society, Feb. 17.— Prof. Abel, r.R.S., president, 

 in the chair. — The president announced that Mr. James Duncan 

 had presented the Society with a most life-Uke and spirited 

 marble bust of Dr. Hoimann. He then called upon Prof. 

 Frankland to deliver his lecture " On some points in the analysis 

 of potable waters." A report of this we give on another page. 

 — A full discussion of the variation in purity of the water sup- 

 plied during the past eight years by the various London com- 

 panies followed, illustrated by most excellent diagrams, and the 

 lecturer concluded by pointing out some of the objections to the 

 other well-known processes employed for water analysis. 



Zoological Society, Feb. 15.— Prof. Mivart, F.R.S., in the 

 chair. — Mr. Sclater exhibited the parrot called in Tschudi's 

 "Fauna Peruana" Conutus iiltgeri, and observed that it had 

 been certainly wrongly determined. Mr. Sclater was of opinion 

 that the bird belonged to a species hitherto unrecognised, and 

 proposed to call it Ara couloni, aiter M. Coulon, ol Neuthaiel, 

 who had sent the specimen for exhibition. — Dr. Cobbold, 

 F.R.S., exhibited ana made remarks on a Parasite {Echino- 

 rhynchus), obtained from the Tamandua Anteater, which had died 

 in the Society's menagerie. — Mr. W. K. Parker, F.R.S., read 

 the second portion of his memoir on ^-Egithognathous Birds. — 

 A communication was read from the Rev. O. P. Cambridge, in 

 which he described a new order and some new genera and 

 species of Arachnida from Kerguelen Island, from specimens col- 

 lected by Mr. Eaton during the Transit of Venus Expedition. — 

 Mr. G. French Angas commimicated descriptions of four new 

 species of land shells from Australia and the Solomon Islands, 

 which he severally proposed to name Helix moresbyi. Helix 

 ramsdet.i, Heax beatnx, and Helix rhoda. Mr. Angas also 

 made some remarks on the nomenclature ot Helix angasiana of 

 Pfeiffer, and Helix bttaniata of Cox. — Mr. Sclater read some 

 notes, by himself and Mr. Salvin, on some ot the Blue Crows of 

 America, taken from specimens lately examined, and pointed 



' Fonvielle (La Science en Ballon Paris, 1869), and eUewhert. 

 ' Bert, Compt. Rend. 1874, 911. 

 3 Compt. Rend. 1874, 946. 



out certain changes which it would be necessary to make in the 

 nomenclature of the group adopted in their " Nomenclator 

 Avium Neo'ropicalium. " 



Geological Society, Feb. 2.— Mr. John Evans, F.R.S., presi- 

 dent, in the chair.— Edward Richard Alston, David Corse Glen, 

 Thomas Vincent Holmes, William G. M 'Murtrie, Charles Bine 

 Renshaw, Robert Drysdale Turner, and George Ferris WTiid- 

 boume, were elected Fellows of the Society. — Evidence of a carni- 

 vorous reptile {Cynodrakon major, Ow.) about the size of a lion, 

 with remarks thereon, by Prof. Owen, F. R. S. The specimens 

 described by the author consist of the fore part of the jaws and the 

 left humerus of a reptile obtained from blocks of Triassic (?) rock 

 from South Africa, forwarded by the late Mr. A. G. Bain. The 

 upper jaw displays a pair of enormous canine teeth much resem- 

 bling Uiose of Machairodus, being of a very compressed form, 

 with the hinder trenchant margin minutely toothed. There is no 

 dentated border to the fore part of the crown. No teeth can be 

 detected in the alveolar border of the right ramus of the lower 

 jaw, which extends about an inch behind the upper canine. In 

 the symphysial parts of the lower jaw the bases of eight incisors 

 and of two canines are visible, the latter rising immediately in 

 front of the upper ones, to which they are very inferior in size, 

 and being separated by a diastema from the incisors. In this 

 character, as in the number of incisors, the fossil resembles 

 Didtlphys ; and in structure both canines and incisors resemble 

 those of carnivorous mammals. The left humerus is io4 inches 

 long, but is abraded at both extremities. It presents characters 

 in the ridges for muscular attachment, in the provision for the 

 rotation of the forearm, and in the presence of a strong bony 

 bridge for the protection of the main artery and nerve of the 

 forearm during the action of the muscles, which resemble those 

 occurring in carnivorous mammals, and especially in the Felidae, 

 although these peculiarities are associated with others having no 

 mammalian resemblances. The author discusses these characters 

 in detail, and indicates that there is in the probably Triassic 

 lacustrine deposits of South Africa a whole group of genera 

 {Galesaunts, Cynochampsa, Lycosaurus, Tigrisuchus, Cynosuchus, 

 Nythosaurus, Scaloposauras, Procolophon, Gorgonops, and Cyno- 

 drakon), many of them . represented by more than one species, 

 all carnivorous, and presenting more or less mammalian analogies, 

 for which he proposes to form a distinct order under the name 

 of Theriodontia, having the dentition of carnivorous type ; the 

 incisors defined by position, and divided from the molars by a 

 large laniariform canine on each side of both jaws, the lower 

 canine crossing in front of the upper, no ectopterygoids, the 

 humerus with an entepicondylar foramen, and the digital formula 

 of the forefoot, 2, 3, 3, 5 ; 3 phalanges. The author further 

 discussed in some detail the remarkable resemblances presented 

 by these early reptiles, in some parts of their organisation, to 

 mammals, and referred to the broad questions opened out by 

 their consideration. He inquired whether the transference of 

 structures firom the reptilian to the mammalian type has been a 

 seeming one, due to accidental coincidence in species indepen- 

 dently created, or whether it was real, consequent on the in- 

 commg of species by secondary law. In any case the lost 

 reptilian structures dealt with in the present paper are now mani- 

 fested by quadrupeds with a higher condition of cerebral, 

 circulatory, respiratory, and tegumentary systems, the acqui- 

 sition of which, the author thought, is not intelligible on 

 either the Lamarckian or Darwinian hjrpotheses. — On the oc- 

 currence of the genus Astrocrinites (Austin) in the Scotch 

 Carboniferous Limestone Series, with the description of a 

 new series {A. ? Benniei), and remarks on the genus, by Mr. 

 R. M, Etheridge, jun. The author, in his introduction to the 

 paper, commenced with a general history of the genus Astrocri- 

 nites of Austin, commenting upon the change of name it had 

 received from the several authors who had written upon and 

 noticed the species A. tetragonus of Austin. In 1843 Major T. 

 Austin described this aberrant Echinoderm under the name 

 Astrocrinites, assigning its geological horizon to be the Carboni- 

 ferous Limestone, and locality Yorkshire. Dr. H. G. Bronn 

 rejected the name Astrocrinites on account of its resemblance to 

 Astetocrinites of Miinster, and proposed instead that of Zygo- 

 crinus. Romer, from the four-rayed structure of our Astrocri- 

 nites, allied it to the Cystoidea rather than to the Blastoidea. 

 Prof, de Koninck, and M. le Hon, however, referred Zygocrinus 

 to the Blastoidea, -and stated their reasons for so doing. Prof. 

 Morris, in 1854, altered Austin's AstrocriniUs into Astrocrinus, 

 and does not notice Bronn's name, Zygocrinus. Pro£ Pictet 

 provisionally referred the latter genus structurally to Codonaster, 



