April 17, 1879] 



NATURE 



571 



of the Royal Berlin Herbarium and of the Hanbury Collection 

 for being enabled to study the rare valuable specimens laid 

 before the Fellows of the Linnean Society. — The account of a 

 remarkable peat flood in the Falkland Islands, by Mr, Arthur 

 Bailey, was communicated by Mr. W. T. Thiselton Dyer. 

 About midnight, November 29, 1878, it was discovered that a 

 black moving mass of peat, several feet high, was making its way 

 towards the settlement at the rate of between four and five miles 

 an hour. The next morning (30th) it was found that the town of 

 Stanley was cut in two, intercourse between its east and west ends 

 alone being possible by boats. Fortunately no lives were lost, 

 and by the energy and activity of the inhabitants in the forma- 

 tion of a trench, much injury and destruction were consider- 

 ably arrested. — The Secretary read in abstract some notes on 

 Moquilea, with a description of a new species by Mr. John 

 Miers. The author specially compares and marks the differences 

 between the genera Moquilea and Licania, they ha\-ing often 

 been confounded, and he afterwards points out the distinctive 

 characters constituting his new species, Moquilea orgattensis. 



Chemical Society, April 3. — Mr. Warren De La Rue, 

 president, in the chair. — The following papers were read : — On 

 terpin and terpinol, by Dr. Tilden. The author has continued 

 his previous researches, and has succeeded in obtaining crystals 

 of terpin hydrate from essence of lemon ; the author considers 

 terpinol to have the constitution of an alcohol. Oil of lemon 

 cajeputol, oil of coriander, and citronella contain bodies closely 

 resembling terpinol. — On a gold nugget from South America, 

 by Mr, G. Attwood. These nuggets are found in alluvial soil in 

 Venezuela. Numerous gold-bearing quartz-veins are found in 

 tiie neighbouring hills. About one-half of the nuggets are 

 covered with a dark brown substance resembling a silicate of 

 iron. AVhen this is dissolved much finely divided gold separates, 

 and the nugget is partly covered with dull fine gold. The gold 

 obtained from the quartz is less pure than that of the nuggets. 

 The author concludes that gold nuggets gradually increase in 

 size owing to the accumulation of fresh particles of finely-preci- 

 pitated gold. — On lead tetrachloride, by Mr. W. W. Fisher. 

 The author has not isolated this compound, but has obtained it 

 in solution by dissolving lead dioxide in hydrochloric acid ; the 

 yellow solution thus formed precipitates brown hydrated peroxide 

 of lead when treated with solutions of alkalis, &c. The author 

 also suggests the use of chlorine or bromine in the presence of 

 sodium acetate as a means of quantitatively determining lead by 

 precipitation as a peroxide. — On the transformation of aurin into 

 trimethyl pararosanilin, by Messrs. Dale and Schorlemmer. This 

 is effected by the action of an aqueous solution of methylamine 

 at 125' on aurin. — On the solution of aluminium hydrate by 

 ammonia and a physical isomeride of alumina, by C, F. Cross. 

 By boiling the ammoniacal solution of aluminia hydrate a preci- 

 pitate is obtained, which on drying and ignition furnishes alumina 

 which is extremely hygroscopic, absorbing 35 per cent, of 

 water. — Researches on dyeing, Part ii. Note on the emission of 

 colouring matter, by Dr. Mills and Mr, Campbell. The experi- 

 ments were made with silk and a dilute solution of Nicholson's 

 blue. The authors affirm that a real and uniform dyeing effect 

 can always be obtained with silk and Nicholson's blue, the 

 heat and souring used by dyers being unadvisable. The authors 

 recommend the addition of common salt to the vat. 



Geological Society, March 26. — Henry Clifton Sorby, 

 F.R.S., president, in the chair. — William Adamson Barron, 

 Gr^ory Dent, Julian John Levcrson, and Rear- Admiral Fran- 

 cisco Sangro Tremlett, R.N., were elected Fellows of the 

 Society. — The following communications were read : — Results 

 of a systematic survey (in 1878) of the directions and limits of 

 dispersion, mode of occurrence, and relation to drift-deposits of 

 the erratic blocks or boulders of the west of England and east 

 of Wales, including a revision of many years' previous observa- 

 tions, by D. Mackintosh, F.G.S. The author's researches lead 

 him to the following conclusions : — Boulders fi-om the North- 

 Criffel range and Lake-district can be traced from the Sohvay 

 Firth to near Bromsgrove (about 200 miles), and over an area in 

 greatest breadth (from near Macclesfield to Beaimiaris) of 90 

 miles, those from Criffel being particularly abundant near Wol- 

 Tcrhampton. Boulders from the Arenig occupy a triangular 

 area, limited by a line drawn northward from Chirk to the Dee 

 estuary, and to the south-east of that town are found as far as 

 Birmingham and Bromsgrove. The dispersion of the more 

 distant ^riffel boulders would require submergences of from 400 

 to 1,400 feet ; of the Lake-district a little deeper ; while the 

 distant dispersion of the Arenig boulders took place at sub- 



mergences between 800 and 2,000 feet. The author describes 

 several of the more local drifts, and correlates the lower boulder- 

 clay of the north-west with the chalky boulder-clay of the east of 

 England. He considers floating ice, not land ice, to have been 

 the agent of dispersion. — On the glaciation of the Shetland 

 Isles, by B. N. Peach, F.G.S. , and John Home, F.G.S. After 

 an account of pre^^ous opinion on the subject, the authors pro- 

 ceeded to describe the different islands, re^dewing in succession 

 the physical features, geological structure, the direction of 

 glaciation, and the various superficial deposits. From an ex 

 amination of the numerous striated surfaces, as well as from the 

 distribution of boulder-clay and the dispersal of stones in that 

 deposit, they inferred that duiing the period of extreme cold 

 Shetland must have been glaciated by the Scandinavian Mer de 

 Glace, crossing the islands from the North Sea towards the 

 Atlantic. The authors described the order of succession in the 

 Old Red Sandstone formation in Shetland, and referred to the 

 discovery of an abundant series of plant-remains in rocks which 

 have hitherto been regarded as forming part of the series of 

 ancient crystalline rocks. The plant-remains are identical with 

 those found in the Old Red Sandstone rocks in Caithness, Ork- 

 ney, and Shetland, from which it was inferred that the quartz- 

 ites and shales in w hich the fossils are imbedded must be classed 

 with this formation. The authors also described the great series 

 of contemporaneous and intrusive igneous rocks of Old Red 

 Sandstone age, adducing evidence in proof of the great denuda- 

 tion which has taken place in the members of this formation in 

 Shetland. — On the southerly extension of the Hessle boulder- 

 clay in Lincolnshire, by A. J. Jukes-Browne, B.A., F.G.S. 



Manchester 



Literary and Philosophical Society, January 8. — Charles 

 Bailey, F.L.S., in the chair. — Mr. Thomas Rogers read a paper 

 on, and exhibited many specimens of, ballast plants collected at 

 Cardiff in September, 1878. 



February 25. — E. W. Binney, F.R.S,, in the chair. — On the 

 mean temperatures of the winters of the last twenty-nine years, 

 by the Rev. Thomas Mackereth, F.R.A.S., &c. 



March 4. — J. P. Joule, F.R.S. , president, in the chair. — On 

 a modification of Bunsen's calorimeter, by Prof. Balfour Stewart, 

 LL.D., F.R.S. — The poisonous qualities of the yew, by William 

 E. A. Axon, M.R.S.L., F.S.S. 



March 18. — J. P. Joule, F,R,S,, president, in the chair, — On 

 siliceous fossiUsation, part 2, by J. B. Hannay, F.R.S. E., 

 F.C.S., Assistant Lecturer on Chemistry in the Owens College. 



Edinburgh 



Royal Society, March 17. — Prof. Kelland, president, in the 

 chair. — Sir William Thomson communicated a paper on vortex 

 motion, gravitational oscillations in rotating water. This paper 

 contained an investigation of oscillations under the influence of 

 gravity, of a mass of rotating liquid ; former communications 

 having been chiefly directed to the discovery of the vortex theory 

 of atoms. In Laplace's great work on the theory of the gravi- 

 tational oscillations of a mass of water spread over an approxi- 

 mately spherical body, he takes account of the fact that the 

 earth is rotating and of the effects produced thereby on the mo- 

 tions of the ocean, and how these motions are affected by the 

 great continents. Sir William Thomson finds that vortex mo- 

 tion due to the rotation of the earth affects the tides very con- 

 siderably, even in such comparatively small areas as those of the 

 English Channel and the North Sea. He shows that in a 

 limited basin without an apertiu-e, covering from, say, one to ten 

 degrees of latitude, any tidal phenomenon which there may be, 

 due to the gravitation attraction of the moon, is greatly affected 

 by the rotation of the earth, if the greatest period of free oscil- 

 lation of liquid in the basin is comparable with the period of 

 rotation of the earth. It is to this fact that the peculiar pheno- 

 menon of the tides in the English Channel is due. The peculiarity 

 is this, that for instance when it is high water at Dover, there is 

 low water at the other end of the channel, and simultaneously a 

 nodal line at St. Alban's Head, i.e., no rise or fall there; more- 

 over, there are currents across this nodal line towards the end of 

 the channel at which the tide is rising, i.e., water is flowing east 

 across this line when tide is rising at Dover, and west when it is 

 rising at the other extremity. This phenomenon holds true only 

 for ten or twenty miles on the English side of the Channel. On 

 the French side there is nothing of this kind but a gradual 

 transition of the time of high tide along the coast. On the 

 English coast, within a comparatively short distance, not. more 



