294 



NATURE 



[October 27, 192 1 



Societies and Academies. 



"London. 



Aristotelian Society, October lo. — Dr. F. C. S. 

 Schiller, president, delivered an inaugural address : 

 Novelty. Novelty is an all-pervasive psychical fact. 

 Every mind has a history which never quite repeats 

 itself, and this history affects its apprehension. The 

 same is true of all reality : its flow sets in one direc- 

 tion only, and is irreversible. The past is irrevocable 

 and the future never exactly calculable, history is 

 therefore always relevant to essence. The method 

 of history at first sight seems to imply a denial of 

 novelty. The new is explained by taking it as a 

 case of the old. It has to be taken thus to be con- 

 trolled. But the abstraction is essentially a fiction 

 and leads to a subsequent recognition of the new and 

 a modification of the old "law " by the new "case." 

 Thus the negation of novelty in scientific method is 

 only provisional and methodological. The philo- 

 sophic sciences also are not really pledged to a different 

 procedure. Logic must recognise novelty, if reason 

 is not to be divorced from reasoning and reasoning 

 to become unmeaning. "Novelty or Nullity " is the 

 first law of thought, if thought is admitted to pre- 

 suppose thinking. Metaphysics has ancient prejudices 

 against novelty, as involving change. It assumes 

 that Being must be a constant quantity. Yet its 

 notion of Being is only an hypothesis, and abstractly 

 there are the possibilities that it may increase or 

 diminish. Empirically the former seems exemplified 

 in psychic being, the latter in physical. The existence 

 of novelty means creation out of nothing. This con- 

 ception has long been among the paradoxes which the 

 Christian religion affirmed in spite of philosophy and 

 science and language. Yet the conception has re- 

 ligious value, for a world of which the being is con- 

 stant cannot change for the better because it cannot 

 change at all. Valuations are not onlv facts them- 

 selves, but the ultimate determinants of all the facts 

 we recognise. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, October lo. — M. Leon Guignard 

 in the chair. — E. L. Bouvier and R. Roidor : The ap- 

 pearance of males and females in the nests of the 

 field-ant {Formica pratensis) and the tawny ant of 

 the Upper Jura (F. rufa). In the study of seventeen 

 ants' nests during June, most of the anthills pro- 

 duced winged ants, but only one sex from each nest. 

 For F. rufa the unisexual period is followed by 

 another, during which both sexes come out.- — M. 

 Tilho : The Franco-Anglo-Egyptian frontier and the 

 line of the watershed between the basins of the Nile 

 and Lake Tchad. A sketch of the work before 

 the British and French Boundary Commissions, and 

 of the application of wireless telegraphy by the latter 

 for the purpose of rapid and accurate surveying. — 

 L. Fabry : The atmospheric wave produced by the 

 explosion of the works at Oppau. The seismograph 

 at Marseilles Observatory registered no vibration ; the 

 barograph curve showed a sudden variation of 0-5 mm. 

 at 8.4 a.m. (Greenwich time) which might have been 

 due to the explosion. — T. Varopoulos : Increasing 

 functions. — P. Fatou : Functions admitting several 

 theorems of multiplication.^G. Valiron : The Picard- 

 Borel theorem in the theory of integral functions.— 

 J. Chazy : Stability in the problem of three bodies. — C. 

 Nordmann : Intrinsic brightness and the effective " dia- 

 meters " of stars. Remarks on a recent publication 

 of J. Wilsing on this subject. The author published 

 results based on a similar method in igio, and these 

 are tabulated alongside the figures given by Wilsing. 



NO. 2713, VOL. 108] 



The two are in good agreement. — J. Duclaux and P. 

 Jeantet : The absorption spectrum of oxygen. Details 

 are given for the portion of the spectrum between 

 1900 and 2000 A.U. — A. Damiens : Tellurium sub- 

 bromide. The existence of TeBrj in the gaseous state 

 was pointed out in a previous communication ; it has 

 now been isolated by suddenly cooling the vapour to 

 — 80° C. The lower bromide is unstable and hygro- 

 scopic. — M. Grandmougin : The constitution of the 

 poly sulph on abed derivatives of indigo. — G. Andoyer : 

 Determination of the added water and fat removed in 

 samples of decomposed milk. — E. Fournier : The role 

 of pre-existing fissuration in the tectonic flexibility of 

 hard rocks and in the formation of mylonites. — A. 

 Guebhard : The true "directing lines" of terrestrial 

 orogeny. — H. Ricome : Curvilinear growth. — H. 

 Coupin : The contribution of the seed to the 

 adult plant. This varies with the plant ; it 

 is considerable in some (bean, soya bean, 

 peanut, pumpkin, and nasturtium), small in the pea, 

 and very small in lucerne, artichoke, radish, tomato, 

 and many other plants. — J. Legendre : Anophelism 

 and rabbit-breeding. A. maculipennis shows a 

 marked preference for the rabbit over any other 

 animal, and the author concludes that rabbit-breeding 

 gives efficacious protection against European malaria 

 transmitted by this mosquito. — L. Bertin : The 

 extreme variability of the Roscoff stickleback (Gas- 

 terosteus aculeatus). — C. Michailesco : Experimental 

 researches on the variations of sensibility of the blind 

 spot. — E. Raband : Tropisms and muscular tonus. — 

 L. M. Betances : The chromophilia of the granulation 

 known as azurophile.—E. F. Terroine and H. Barthe- 

 lemy : Composition of the egg of the brown frog 

 (Rana fusca) at the egg-laying period. The composi- 

 tion of the egg of R. fusca is independent of the age 

 or weight of the individual.— F. Fremiet and Mile, du 

 Vivier de Streel : The chemical composition of the 

 egg and of the tadpole of Rana temporaria. — MM. 

 Desgrez, Guillemard, and Hemmerdinger : Individual 

 protection against carbon monoxide : reagent and 

 apparatus. Details of the preparation of the mix- 

 ture of iodine pentoxide and sulphuric acid used as 

 absorbent and of the respirator in which it is used. — 

 G. B. de Toni : The leaves torn from the E manu- 

 script of Leonardo da Vinci, preserved in the library 

 of the Institute. The Venturi manuscripts at the 

 library of Reggio-Emilia contain three volumes of 

 transcriptions of the da Vinci manuscripts. From 

 these it is possible to reconstruct, at least in part, the 

 E manuscript and others of da Vinci preserved at the 

 Institute. 



Washington, D.C. 

 National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings, vol. 6, 

 No. 9. September, 1920.- P. W. Bridgman : Further 

 measurements of the effect of pressure on resistance. 

 The new evidence corroborates the point of view that 

 for most elements the most important feature in_ deter- 

 mining the variations of electric resistance is the 

 amplitude of atomic vibration. — W. Duane and R. A. 

 Patterson : Characteristic absorption of X-rays, L 

 series. Three critical absorption wave-lengths were 

 found for each of the nine elements examined, and 

 a brief discussion of the bearing of these results on 

 certain empirical laws in recent years is given.— W. 

 Duane and R. A. Patterson: On the relative positions] 

 and intensities of lines in X-ray spectra. New expe-' 

 riments with a discussion as to the light they throw i 

 upon the constitution of the atom. — H. Bateman : On^ 

 a differential equation occurring in Page's theory of! 

 electromagnetism. — J. R. Kline : A new proof of a 

 theorem due to Schoenflies.— S. J. Meltzer : Are the 

 superior cervical ganglia indispensable to the 



