February io, 191 6] 



NATURE 



657 



the number of students, including tlie summer attend- 

 ance, were registered by the following universities 

 (the number in brackets giving the increase in the 

 number of students) :— California (2375), Pennsylvania 

 (900), Minnesota (892), Chicago (837). The University 

 of California, with a total of 10,5:;^ students, was the 

 only institution with a gain of more than 1000 students. 

 Omitting summer students, the largest gains for 1915 

 are those of Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Four uni- 

 versities enrolled more than 7000 students, viz., Colum- 

 bia (11,888), California (10,555), Chicago (7968), and 

 Pennsylvania (7404). The article also provides some 

 interesting statistics as to the number of students 

 taking different branches of study. In engineering 

 Michigan now leads with 1498 students, followed by 

 Cornell with 1347. The largest medical school is at 

 New York University, where 509 students are now 

 enrolled. The school of commerce of New York Uni- 

 versity has 2639 students, and Pennsylvania comes 

 next with 1889. The school of education at Columbia 

 numbers 1972 students, as compared with 897 at Pitts- 

 burgh. These figures as to subjects are exclusive of 

 summer students. The largest summer session in 

 1915 was at Columbia, where 5961 students were 

 enrolled. At California a remarkable increase last 

 summer of 2012 brought the number of summer 

 students to 5364. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, February 3.— Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 president, in the chair. — Prof. W. Bateson and C. 

 Pellew : Note on an orderly dissimilarity in inheritance 

 from different parts of a plant. In a recent paper the 

 authors gave evidence as to the genetics of the wild- 

 looking "rogues" which appear as the offspring of 

 liigh-class types of peas. Among oilier pccuFiarities, it 

 was shown that F^ plants resulting from crosses be- 

 tween rogues and types were in their juvenile condi- 

 tion intermediate, showing influence of the type parent, 

 but on maturing they become rogues and have exclu- 

 sively rogue offspring. The authors interpreted this 

 to mean that the type-elements are left behind in the 

 basal parts of the plant. In the variety Gradus certain 

 intermediates (offspring of types) were observed to give 

 mixtures of types and rogues. In such intermediate 

 plants the characters often change with age, the lower 

 parts being more type-like, the upper more rogue-like. 

 Preliminary sowings of seed from these intermediates 

 indicate that when their offspring consists of types and 

 rogues, the types come predominantly from the lower 

 -pods and the rogues from the upper pods. The three 

 sets of facts are therefore consistent in indicating that 

 there is an orderly segregation in the body of the 

 plant, the type-elements being predominantly in the 

 lower parts. — H. M. Woodcock : Observations on 

 Coprozoic flagellates, together. with a suggestion as to 

 the significance of the kineto-nucleus in the Binu- 

 cleata. The paper deals with the first results of a 

 comprehensive study of the coprozoic flagellates of 

 goats and sheep. The coprozoic fauna comprises those 

 forms which pass through the alimentary tract in a 

 resting, encysted state, and underg-o all the active 

 phases of their life-cycle in the (moist) dung. — S. B. 

 Schryver : Investigations dealing with the phenomena 

 of clot formations. Part III. — Further investigations 

 of the cholate gel. It is shown. that there is a marked 

 similarity between certain vital activities of cefls and 

 the behaviour of cholate gel. (i) The erosive action 

 of certain organic substances on the cholate gel runs 

 parallel with their narcotic and cytolytic actions. (2) 

 Gel formation by calcium chloride is inhibited by 

 sodium, magnesium, and other chlorides. The same 



NO. 2415, VOL. 96] 



substances can also cause gel erosion, but the erosive 

 action can be antagonised bv the addition of relatively 

 small amounts of calcium 'salts. (3) To explain the 

 parallelism between certain biological actions of 

 organic substances and the antagonistic action of in- 

 organic salts, on one hand, and the action of these 

 substances on the cholate gel, on the other, it is sug- 

 gested that the cell membrane or cytoplasm is con- 

 stituted by a heterogeneous system of lipoids, pro- 

 teins, etc., held together in a magma containing a gel- 

 forming substance. with physical properties similar to 

 those of the cholatcs. On such a hypothesis, the bio- 

 logical action of certain substances can be explained in 

 a manner more satisfactory than is possible by the 

 assumption of the " lipoid " theorv of Hans Meyer and 

 Overton.— J. M. O'Connor: The 'mechanism of chem- 

 ical temperature regulation. Anaesthetised cats or 

 rabbits, when not shivering, consume oxygen in pro- 

 portion to their body temperature. When shivering, 

 more oxygen is consumed than would otherwise be 

 consumed at that body temperature. The onset of 

 shivering is dependent on the brain temperature being 

 below a point more or less fixed in a t^^iven animal. 

 The amount of " extra oxygen " consumed during 

 shivering is proportional to the extent to which the 

 average skin temperature is below this point. This 

 point towards which the animals regulate chemically 

 varies in different animals between 30° and 39° C. 



Mathematical Society, January 13.— Sir Joseph 

 Larmor, president, and later Prof. A. E. H. Love, 

 vice-president, in the chair. — Sir J. Larmor : The 

 transition from vapour to liquid when the range of 

 the molecular attraction is sensible. In the theory of 

 capillarity, and of change of state, the hydrostatic 

 pressure p is defined, in physical illustration, as the 

 difference between two much larger quantities, the 

 repulsion uj due to molecular motion, and the mutual 

 attraction P of the molecules. Its graph, in the 

 Andrews-Thomson diagram, determines the critical 

 point and the conditions for change of state. It is a 

 definite quantity only where the density is unform; 

 thus it loses its meaning inside interfacial layers of 

 rapid transition, though under fluid conditions it is 

 transmitted across such layers. The instability in 

 homogeneous fluid, and consequent separation of 

 phases, which ensues when dpjdv becomes positive, is 

 essentially a matter of the internal constitution of the 

 fluid, and ought to be so deducible. It is found, how- 

 ever, that the homogeneous medium is unstable for 

 variation of density when d{p—V)jdv is positive: 

 whereas instability from external stress, when the 

 density is not disturbed, occurs within the narrower 

 limits for which dpjdv is positive. When the range 

 of attractions is sensible there will thus be arcs of 

 internal instability along the isothermals above the 

 critical point, for which, however, separation into two 

 phases, vapour and liquid, cannot occur. It might be 

 imagined as relieved by gradual falling away of the 

 medium to modified states of molecular aggregation ; 

 and, in fact, the question arises, why this type of 

 change should be regarded as excluded in the usual 

 theory, notwithstanding the aptness of the van der 

 Waals equation. An S-shaped convolution of the iso- 

 thermal is still the condition for abrupt transition 

 of state. Other conditions restricting the form of such 

 law of attraction as is compatible with the existence 

 of a homogeneous phase are noticed. — T. W. 

 Chaundy : (i) \ note on the uniform convergence of 

 the series 2^n s'" "^- (2) A condition for the validity 

 of Taylor's expansion. — G. H. Hardy : The average 

 order of the arithmetical functions PACi:). — (x) and 

 C. E. Weatherburn : Green's dyadics in the theory of 

 elasticitv. — G. N. Watson: .\ problem in "Analvsis 

 Situs." ' 



