266 



NATURE 



[January ic, 1901 



kinds. Incidentally there will be considerable opportunity for 

 experiments in the improvement of land and the best methods 

 of growing various crops. 



Announcement is made in the British Medical Journal 

 that the rich family of Mitsui of Tokio has offered an extensive 

 site in that city for the erection of a University for women, and 

 three other citizens have between them contributed a sum of 

 24,000/. for the cost of the necessary buildings. The work is 

 already in progress, and it is hoped that the new University will 

 be opened in the spring of 1901. It is not likely that there will 

 be any want of students, as in recent years very many young 

 ladies of good family have applied to be admitted to the Univer- 

 sity courses, especially to the faculty of medicine and the 

 Polytechnic School. The latter institution is intended for the 

 training of civil engineers, a circumstance which seems to show 

 that Japan is about to set an example to Europe in opening up 

 a new sphere of labour for the women of the future. 



The new Calendar of University College, London, announces 

 several developments for the present year. There will be a 

 •course of work in experimental psychology, and an elementary 

 -course of physiological demonstrations on the nervous system 

 and the sense-organs. A complete installation for the produc- 

 tion of liquid air has recently been presented to the College, 

 :.and facilities are offered for research at low temperatures. In- 

 , struction is given in spectroscopy, which forms a subdepartment 

 to chemistry, and is equipped for practical work in spectrum 

 analysis and spectrum photography. A special course on the 

 morphology of the Sporangium has been arranged, and sub- 

 departments in physiological chemistry and histology have been 

 established. The Calendar contains an important speech 

 -delivered by Lord Reay, president of the College, on the 

 development of the University of London ; and lists of original 

 publications by members of the Faculties of Arts, Laws and of 

 Science. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIAL. 



American Journal of Science, December, 1900. — Torsional 

 magneto-striction in strong transverse fields, by C. Barus. The 

 effect of longitudinal magnetisation is an increment of rigidity in 

 all paramagnetic metals, whereas the permanent effect of a 

 transverse or a circular field is relatively inappreciable so far as 

 rigidity is concerned. — Notes on tellurides from Colorado, by C. 

 Palache. The minerals described include sylvanite from Cripple 

 Creek arid two well-developed Hessite crystals from Boulder 

 ••County. — New species of Merycochoerus in Montana, by Earl 

 iDouglass. The new species is called Merycochoerus laticeps. 

 It has a low skull, broad behind the orbits, and narrowing 

 •rapidly towards the front and back. Brain case short, the 

 length behind the post-frontal process being about one-half the 

 ■distance in front of it. Premaxillaries united in front, forming 

 a trough-shaped depression, evidently for the accommodation of 

 a proboscis. Maxillaries deeply concave on the sides of the 

 face. This, with the malo-maxillary ridge, which widens out- 

 ward rapidly towards the zygomatic arch, forms a broad and 

 nearly horizontal shelf above the posterior premolars and anterior 

 molars. — Mohawkite, stibio-domeykite, domeykite, algodonite, 

 and some artificial copper arsenides, by G. A. Koenig. In the 

 Keeweenaw copper formation, the arsenides are not found in the 

 bedded deposits of native copper, but always in fissures, inter- 

 secting the beds. The veins have thus far only been observed 

 in the lower beds, near the foot of the formation to the south- 

 east. Arsenic, however, is found in the smelted and refined 

 copper of all the mines. The author describes the physical and 

 chemical constitution of the minerals named. — Heat of solution 

 of resorcinol in ethyl alcohol, by C. L. Speyers and C. R. 

 Resell. Since heat is rejected when resorcinol dissolves in a 

 large excess of ethyl alcohol, and since heat is absorbed when 

 it dissolves in a small quantity, the temperature should not 

 change when these substances are mixed in some certain propor- 

 tion. This proportion is found to be about six grammes of 

 resorcinol to about 100 grams of ethyl alcohol. — ^The sulpho- 

 cyanides of copper and silver in gravimetric analysis, by R. G. 

 van Name. The estimation of sulphocyanides by precipitation 

 with silver nitrate and direct weighing of the precipitate is 

 wholly permissible. The mefchod is extremely simple, and the 

 results are quite accurate. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, December 6, 1900. — " On the ' Blaze Cur- 

 rents' of the Frog's Eyeball." By Dr. A. D. Wdler, F.R.S. 



The author demonstrated by experiment on the frog's eyeball 

 the responses to electrical stimuli, which he terms " blaze 

 currents." He gave an account of his work, which is briefly 

 summarised in the following statements. The normal electrical 

 response to light and to every kind of stimuli is positive, i.e., 

 from fundus to cornea ; it is partly retinal, partly by other tissues, 

 it is reversed by pressure. " Blaze currents " are responses to 

 electrical stimuli, and are comparable with the normal discharge 

 of an electrical organ amounting to 0'03 volt. " Blaze currents " 

 manifest summation of stimuli and effects, staircase increase and 

 fatigue decline. The energy of a blaze effect may considerably 

 exceed the energy of the exciting cause. An eyeball will show 

 blaze currents during five days after excision, they diminish 

 under prolonged illumination, and increase under prolonged 

 darkness. The influence of increased temperature and pressure 

 is studied, and under the latter four types of response are re- 

 corded. 



If single electrical currents are passed through a normal 

 eyeball an J a galvanometer in a homodrome and in a hetero- 

 drome direction, i.e., with and against the direction of normal 

 discharge, the homodrome (positive) deflection is greater than 

 the heterodrome (negative) deflection. 



Edinburgh. 



Royal Society, December 3, 1900. — The Rev. Prof. Duns in 

 the chair. — Dr. R. J. A. Berry read a paper on the true crecal 

 apex, or the vermiform appendix — its minute and comparative 

 anatomy. The object of the microscopical investigation was to 

 see what, if any, analogies exist between the true apex of the 

 csecum in the lower animals and its equivalent, the vermiform 

 appendage, in man. Three types were selected, the rabbit, the 

 cat and the pigeon ; and in these there is a marked accumula- 

 tion of lymphoid tissue at the true cascal apex, the accumulation 

 reaching its maximum development within a week after birth. 

 These developments were illustrated by numerous lantern slides ; 

 and from them, combined with a comparison of the correspond- 

 ing arrangements in other animals, it was concluded ihat 

 lymphoid tissue is the characteristic feature of the ceecal apex, 

 the vermiform appendix in man being represented in the 

 vertebrate kingdom by a mass of lymphoid tissue, situated most 

 frequently at the csecal apex ; that, as the vertebral scale is 

 ascended, this lymphoid tissue tends to be collected into a 

 specially differentiated portion of the intestinal canal — the 

 vermiform appendix ; and that this appendix in man is not, 

 therefore, a vestigial structure, but is a specialised part of the 

 alimentary canal. Dr. Thomas Muir communicated two papers, 

 (i) Some identities connected with alternates and with elliptic 

 functions ; (2) A peculiar set of linear equations, the latter being 

 an interesting case of bi-rational transformation. 



Dec. 17. — Lord Kelvin, President, in the chair. — The chair- 

 man made a communication on the transmission of force, the 

 main conclusions being that the aether itself could not be 

 subject to gravitation, the supposition involving instability, and 

 that although electric and magnetic force could be explained 

 mechanically in terms of points which acted as sources and sinks 

 of aether flow, no explanation had hitherto been given of 

 gravitational force. We seemed to be compelled to fall back 

 upon the simple assumption that gravitational action was an 

 inseparable attribute of the atoms of matter, that it was a 

 fundamental fact behind which it was impossible to get. Mr. 

 C. Tweedie, M.A., in a note on Dr. Muir's paper on a peculiar 

 set of linear equations, read at last meeting, gave a simpler demon- 

 stration of a general theorem suggested in that paper. Prof. 

 J. T. Morrison (Stellenbosch) communicated a paper (date 

 Nov. 6) on a suggested solar oscillation, with some of its possible 

 astronomical and meteorological consequences ; together with a 

 generalisation as to the constitution of matter and the cause of 

 gravitation. The sun was supposed to be subject to a pulsation 

 of twenty-two years' period with reference to an axis nearly 

 coincident with the axis of rotation ; and on this assumption, 

 for which cosmical causes might be plausibly suggested, the 

 sun-spots occurring in the regions of greatest surface displace- 

 ment received a ready explanation. Variations of temperature 

 accompanying the expansion and contraction of the sun would 

 produce a corresponding periodicity in the vertical projection of 



NO. 1628, VOL. 63] 



