690 



NATURE 



[February 18, 191 5 



work of an advisory nature was carried out. Valu- 

 able research has been performed by Mr. E. A. Speyer, 

 who has now accepted a forestry appointment in 

 Ceylon, and by Mr. W. E. Hiley. The finances of 

 the Forestry School are assisted by an annual grant 

 of 250^. from the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. 



The authorities of the Royal Technical College, 

 Glasgow, may well be proud of the part which mem- 

 bers, students, and past-students of the college are 

 taking in the King's service in connection with the 

 war. A list, confessedly incomplete, which has been 

 issued, gives the names of 1023 officers, non-com- 

 missioned officers, and men, together with their rank, 

 regiment, or ship, and the last year in college, all of 

 whom have been thus connected with the college, and 

 the names of forty-seven other men serving about 

 whom particulars are as yet unknown. 



A COPY of the calendar for the session 1914-15 of 

 the University College of North Wales has been re- 

 ceived. The new calendar follows on the same lines 

 as those of previous issues. We notice that during 

 1913-14 the extension work in agriculture carried out 

 by the college was placed, as regards organisation, on 

 a new footing'. In three of the North Wales counties 

 served by the collegfe, advantage was taken of the 

 offer of Government help through the Farm Institute 

 Fund to increase very greatly the sum annually 

 devoted to agricultural instruction and to place the 

 work in the hands of county organisers, appointed by 

 the college, but working under the directions of the 

 county agricultural committees. Special lecturers in 

 horticulture, poultry-keeping, and dairy work are also 

 provided by the college for county work. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, February 11.— Sir William Crookes, 

 president, in the chair. — Dr. D. H. Scott : Lepido- 

 strobus kentuckiensis, nomen nov., formerly Lepido- 

 strobiis Fischeri, Scott and Jeffrey. — ^A correction. 

 The name Lepidostrobus Fischeri having been antici- 

 pated by Renault in 1890, it is necessary to give a 

 new name to the Kentucky cone described by Scott 

 and Jeffrey (Phil. Trans.,' Ser. B., vol. ccv.', 1914, 

 P- 354)- The fossil is now named Lepidostrobus 

 kentuckiensis. — T. Lewis and M. A. Rothschild : The 

 excitatory process in the dog's heart. Part ii. — The 

 ventricles, (i) The excitation wave appears at the 

 pericardial surface of the dog's heart at times which 

 show no great variation relative to each other; but 

 the distribution of the time values over the surface 

 with such variations as thev show is verv fairly con- 

 stant from heart to heart. '(2) The time at which the 

 excitation wave appears at the surface is controlled 

 by the length of the Purkinje tract to the endocardium 

 beneath the region tested, and by the thickness of the 

 ventricular muscle in the same region. (3) The ex- 

 citation wave is not propagated by simple spread from 

 base to apex or apex to base through bands of muscle 

 fibres, as has commonly been held hitherto. (4) The 

 capacity of striated cardiac tissue to conduct appears 

 to be related to the size of the cells composing it and 

 to its load of contained glycogen. (5) The auriculo- 

 ventricular bundle and its branches constitute a 

 system of fibres specially endowed in regard to their 

 arrangement and physiological properties to give quick 

 distribution of the excitation wave throughout all 

 parts of the ventricle. ^ — A. J. Walton : The variation 

 in the growth of mammalian tissue /» vitro accord- 

 ing to the age of the animal. Previous work has 



NO. 2364, VOL. 94] 



shown that plasma of animals varies considerably in 

 its value as a medium for the cultivation of tissue. 

 The present experiments were carried out with a 

 view of determining whether these differences were 

 due to the age of the animal from which the plasma 

 was obtained. The tissues and plasma of rabbits 

 were alone used, and the majority of animals 

 were of a known age. Tissues of young and old 

 animals were used and were grown in pure plasma 

 from the same animals. In all cases it was found 

 that the young tissues grew better than the old, but 

 the plasma of the young animal was not nearly so 

 satisfactory a medium as that of the old animals. 

 Hence the best results were obtained when young 

 tissues were grown in the plasma of old anirnals and 

 the worst results when old tissues were grown in 

 young plasma. 



Geological Society, February 3.— Dr. A. Smith Wood- 

 ward, president, in the chair. — Prof. T. McKenny 

 Hughes : The gravels of East Anglia. The author 

 discusses the sources from which the subangular 

 gravels that cover such large areas in East Anglia 

 can have been derived. He points out that their 

 great variety of fracture, colour, etc., proves that 

 they cannot have come directly from the Chalk, or 

 from Boulder Clay derived directly from the Chalk, 

 or from the Lower London Tertiaries, none of which 

 contain subangular gravels but only beds of pebbles, 

 and those mostly of small size. The character of the 

 flints in the gravels indicates that they have been 

 derived from surface-soils which have been winnowed 

 and shifted by soil-creep, rain, and streams, until 

 arrested on the terraces and flats of the valleys. The 

 dry land of Miocene age was the first over which the 

 flints of our gravel-beds could have received that sub- 

 aerial treatment which they all seem to have under- 

 gone. — E. Anderson and E. G. Radley : The pitchstones 

 of Mull and their genesis. The pitchstones here dis- 

 cussed occur with extraordinary frequency, intruded 

 into the Tertiary plateau-lavas of the eastern portion 

 of the Ross of Mull, as well as in less number in 

 other parts of the island. They fall into two main 

 divisions, distinguished by the absence or by the pre- 

 sence of porphyritic felspars. The petrological char- 

 acters of these pitchstones, and their more crystalline 

 margins, are such that they seem to warrant the 

 grouping of the rocks under a new type-name, and 

 the name leidleite has been chosen. The porphyritic 

 pitchstones occur as flat or gentlj-inclined sheets ; 

 they also are associated with a more crystalline phase, 

 and have been grouped under the type-name innin- 

 morite. 



Zoological Society, February 9. — Mr. R. H. Burne, 

 vice-president, in the chair. — E. G. Boulenger : An 

 Aglyphodont Colubrid snake (Xenodon merremii), 

 with a vertically movable maxillary bone. The ver- 

 tical mobility of the maxillary bone in snakes had 

 previously been regarded as essentially characteristic 

 of the Viperidae. Observations on the snake in ques- 

 tion, which was recently received by the society from, 

 Mr. W. A. Smithers, showed that the mobility of its 

 maxillary bones was so great that the fangs could be 

 not merely erected, but were capable of being thrust 

 forward and sideways, the mechanism being as per-^ 

 feet as in any of the vipers. Mr. Boulenger pointed 

 out that the discovery of a solid-toothed Colubrid with 

 vertically movable maxillae went a long way towards 

 settling the so often discussed problem of the deriva- 

 tion of the viperine maxillary bone. The author traced 

 the probable evolution of the bone, expressing the. 

 opinion that the Viperidae were descended from the 

 Opisthogiyph Colubrids, and that the old view, re- 

 cently revived, that they were of Proteroglyph 



