\ 



724 



NATURE 



[February 24, 19 16 



llscated and sent to Sofia. The library of the Theo- 

 loj^ical College of Prizrend met the same fate. The 

 I)riceless treasures of the Ethnographical Museum in 

 Belgrade have been disbanded, and are being divided 

 between Austria and Hungary. 



The duty of the nation towards its children was 

 never more serious and imperative than at the present 

 crisis. We are under a grave obligation to raise up 

 an educated generation of men and women to take the 

 place of those who, being in the main the most virile 

 of the nation, will suffer to an unprecedented extent 

 death and disablement in the course of tKe war. We 

 have found by bitter experience that our past neglect 

 of education has placed us in grave peril, both in 

 respect of scientific military resources and in regard 

 to industrial and commercial enterprise. Yet, despite 

 the indubitable truth of all this, we find that the 

 education committees are being subjected to extra- 

 ordinary pressure by Interested sections of the nation, 

 not only in rural areas, but in industrial centres also, 

 to economise in essential features in the subjects and 

 means of education, and, not content with this, in 

 requiring that the children shall be released from 

 school at an untimely age. In Lancashire it is de- 

 manded by textile employers and employed alike that 

 the full-time school age shall be reduced ; in a com- 

 mercial centre like Bradford a like demand is made, 

 and throughout the agricultural areas the cry is that 

 the children shall be placed at the disposal of the 

 farmers. According to a statement made by the 

 President of the Board of Education a few days ago, 

 there are now some 8000 children otherwise legally 

 liable to attend school who have been exempted by 

 various education cxammittees. The Government should 

 in this matter lead the nation and make unmistakably 

 clear that the child-life shall not be exploited, but 

 conserved so that physically and mentally it shall be 

 fitted adequately for the onerous responsibilities which 

 will surely be required of it. The women of the 

 nation have shown how satisfactorily they have re- 

 sponded to the industrial demand, and there is little 

 doubt that they would be found equal under proper 

 economic conditions to the claims of agriculture. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, February 17. — Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 president, in the chair.— A. R. Cushny and S. Yagi : 

 The action of cobra venom. Tlie action of cobra 

 venom has generally been supposed to be exerted 

 in part on the central nervous system, in part on the 

 terminations of the motor nerves. It is shown that 

 there are no symptoms of central nervous action in 

 either cold or warm-blooded animals, and that death 

 occurs from paralysis of the motor nerve terminations 

 in striated muscle. In the fro|^ this is accompanied 

 by slowness, and finally arrest of the circulation from 

 a direct action on the heart.. In mammals the failure 

 of the respiration is due to the paralysis of the respira- 

 tory nerve terminations, but this is often accompanied 

 by the inhalation of saliva, which accelerates asphyxia. 

 The heart is also weakened by quantities of venom 

 greater than the minimum lethal dose. A number of 

 antidotes were examined, without any great success, 

 because no antidote appeared capable of ejecting the 

 venom from its combinations in the tissues. — L. Don- 

 caster : Gametogenesis and sex-determination in the gall- 

 fly. Ncuroterus lenticularis. Part III. In A'^. lenti- 

 cularis there are two generations in the year, agamic 

 females appearing in early spring, and sexual females 

 and males in early summer. Previous work had 

 shown that any individual agamic female has only 

 NO. 2417, VOL. 96] 



male or only female offspring, and the object of the 

 present work was to discover the nature of the differ- 

 ence between these two classes of agamic females. 

 Two possible cytological causes might account for the 

 fact that some sexual females produce only male-pro- 

 ducing offspring, while others produce only female- 

 producing. If each fly pairs only once, the difference 

 might depend on the existence of two kinds of males, 

 or it might arise through differences in the maturation- 

 processes of eggs laid by the two classes of sexual 

 female. No cytological differences in the spermato- 

 genesis of different males could be detected. The 

 maturation phenomena of the eggs (about 300) of 

 fifteen separate females have been examined, and while 

 they seem to fall into two rather distinct types, the 

 differences are not sufficiently considerable to correlate 

 them with the sex-phenomena with any confidence. — 

 Philippa C. Esdaile : The structure and development of 

 the skull and laryngeal cartilages of perameles, with 

 notes on the cranial nerves. The writer has had the 

 unique advantage of examining in detail a series of 

 six embryo skulls of perameles. The development has 

 been observed and the ossification of the cartilage and 

 membrane bones described and figured. Many ques- 

 tions of interest have been noted, the most important 

 being the aflinities and formation of the ala temporalis 

 and its subsequent ossification Irom cartilage and mem- 

 brane. — J. C. Bose and S. C. Das : Physiological inves- 

 tigations with petiole-pulvinus preparation of Mimosa 

 pudica. The present investigation is to show how an 

 isolated preparation of petiole-and-pulvinus of Mimosa 

 maj- be rendered as efficient for researches on irritability 

 as the nerve-and-muscle preparation of a frog. On 

 isolation of the preparation from the plant, the shock 

 of operation is found to paralyse it. Experimental 

 conditions are described for restoration of excitability 

 which can be maintained uniform for more than 

 twentj'-four hours, after which a depression sets in. 

 The rate of fall of excitability becomes rapid forty 

 hours after the operation, the sensibility being finally 

 abolished after the fiftieth hour. For the determination 

 of the role played by different parts of the pulvinus 

 in response and recovery, response-records were taken 

 when selective amputation was made of (i) the upper, 

 and (2) the lower, half of the pulvinus. It is shown 

 that the excitability of the upper half is eighty times 

 If-ss than that of the lower. Chemical agents induce 

 characteristic changes in excitability. The responses 

 exhibit fatigue when the period of rest is diminished. 

 The ijassage of a constant current is found to remove 

 the fatigue. Response is enhanced under exposure 

 to light, and diminished in darkness. Lip-ht is shown 

 to exert a direct stimulating action on the pulvinus, 

 independent of photosynthesis. Injury caused by cut 

 or section of the petiole indnres a variation in the 

 conducting power. Two different effects are pro- 

 duced, determined by the tonic condition of the speci- 

 men. In normal specimens, injury depresses the con- 

 ducting power ; in sub-tonic specimens it enhances it. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, January 31. — M. Camille Jordan 

 in the chair. — The President announced the death of 

 Guido Baccelli, correspondant for the section of medi- 

 cine and surgery, and of Edouard Ileckel, corre- 

 spondant for the section of rural economv. — A. 

 Laveran : Experimental infections of mice bv Leish- 

 niania tropica ; a case of infection by the digestive 

 tract. A detailed description of the transmission of the 

 disease to a mouse by a culture administered by the 

 mouth. Three other mice, similarly treated, were not 

 infected. — S. Brodetsky : An analoery between linear 

 differential equations and algebraical equations. — A. 

 I Perot : A method of observing the coincidences of two 



