354 



NATURE 



[February 7, 1901 



Wherever the Slavs migrated they introduced the custom of 

 incineration, and carried with them the characteristic metal 

 head-rings, the ends of vt^hich terminated in sigmoid curves 

 (Hackenringe). The settlement of the Venede on the Baltic 

 dates back to the fourth century, B.C. The Baltic Slavs were 

 profoundly affected by the expansion of the Germans about the 

 beginning of our era, but apparently not till the eighth century 

 A.D., did the slavs colonise Northern Russia. 



Mr. R. Shelford, of the Sarawak Museum, has sent us a 

 copy of his paper in the October number of the Ibis, describing 

 the arrangement of the down and plumage in the embryos and 

 young of Centropiis sinensis— an aberrant cuckoo. Certain 

 differences from the arrangement obtaining in the allied C. 

 celebensis are noticed. 



The sixth fasciculus of vol. v. of the Memoirs of the Boston 

 (U.S.) Society of Natural History is devoted to an elaborate 

 memoir by Mr. R. P. Bigelow on the anatomy and development 

 of the medusa known as Cassiopea xamachana. In common 

 with the allied Polyclonia frondosa, this is a form specially 

 modified for a sedentary existence in shallow water among 

 mangrove roots. 



We have received the Report of the Museums Association for 

 1900, containing the account of the meeting held at Canterbury 

 in July last under the presidency of Dr. Henry Woodward. It 

 is satisfactory to learn that this useful association is in such a 

 flourishing condition that it has to consider how best to spend 

 its surplus income. The Report includes the President's address, 

 together with twelve papers and various notes. Mr. F. A. 

 Bather gives specimens of descriptive museum labels for certain 

 groups of echinoderms, but the extreme technicality of these 

 suggests that they are suited for a zoological text-book rather 

 than for the ordinary pubUc. A heading like " Cryptoblas- 

 TUS, E. AND C," is calculated to mystify rather than enlighten 

 the uninitiated. In his address, the President dwells on the 

 difficulty of amalgamating the recent and fossil zoological collec- 

 tions in the British Museum owing to the constitution of the 

 Staff. 



The abstract of a paper by Dr. W. H. Gaskell on the origin 

 of the eyes of vertebrates and the meaning of the second pair 

 of cranial nerves appears in the November issue of the Proceed- 

 ings of the Anatomical Society. After stating that the ancestor 

 of the vertebrates possessed a pair of diverticula from the fore 

 part of the alimentary canal with which the ganglia of the 

 retina and the optic stalks of the lateral eyes were connected, 

 the author pointed out that such a pair of blind diverticula 

 exist in generalised crustaceans, such as Branchipus and Apus, 

 adding that there is a connection between these diverticula and 

 the retinal ganglion. It is therefore assumed that similar struc- 

 tures existed in the extinct trilobites. From this and other 

 evidence it is inferred that the origin of the vertebrate eye is 

 traceable to an animal derived from the trilobite stock, such as 

 was abundant when the fish-like cephalaspids made their appear- 

 ance. 



The horary values of the magnetic elements (declination and 

 horizontal force) at Copenhagen, in the years 1895-1896, are 

 given by M. Adam Paulsen in the Annales de I'Observatoire 

 magnetique de Copenhague, just received from the Denmark 

 Meteorological Institute, of which M. Paulsen is director. 



The Sanitary and Economic Association, Ltd., Gloucester, 

 have sent us a pamphlet published by them for the purpose of 

 promoting the economy of coal, the abatement of smoke, and 

 NO. 1632, VOL. 63] 



the diffusion of an elementary knowledge of the first principles 

 of warming and ventilating generally. 



Prof. S. P. Thompson's interesting story of " Michael 

 Faraday : His Life and Work," published in the Century 

 Science Series, is now available in the popular edition at the 

 low price of half-a-crown. The book was reviewed in Nature 

 of June 8, 1899 (vol. Ix. p. 123). Messrs. Cassell and Co. 

 are the publishers. 



Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston and Co. have published 

 the sixth edition of Mr. N. E. Yorke-Davies' little book on 

 " Health and Condition in the Active and the Sedentary." The 

 book contains a clear statement of the laws of health, with 

 special reference to the dietetic treatment of ailments due to 

 errors in eating and drinking. 



One of the most remarkable catalytic agents recently dis- 

 covered is metallic nickel, reduced from its oxide at a low 

 temperature. Two or three years ago MM. Sabatier and 

 Senderens showed that this metal is capable of causing the 

 direct combination of hydrogen with ethylene and acetylene, ]| 

 ethane being formed in both cases. In the current number of * 

 the Comptes rendus they now show that reduced nickel is a 

 very active catalytic agent, so far as the addition of hydrogen is 

 concerned surpassing even spongy platinum. Thus a mixture 

 of hydrogen and benzene vapour, passed over reduced nickel at 

 about 200° C, readily gives hexahydrobenzene, no benzene 

 escaping conversion if the hydrogen is in excess. The reaction 

 appears to be a general one, since the homologues of benzene 

 behave similarly ; nitrobenzene is reduced to aniline. 



The phenomenon of birotation of the sugars has given rise 

 to a considerable amount of work without any very definite 

 results being obtained. In the current number of the Zeit- 

 schrift fur physikalische Chemie there is a paper,- by Dr. 

 Yukichi Osaka, on the birotation of ^-glucose, which throws 

 much light "upon this subject, and forms an interesting applica- 

 tion of the dissociation theory of solution. From the velocity 

 constants of the change of rotation of a?-glucose, both alone and 

 in presence of acids, bases and neutral salts, it is shown that 

 this sugar acts as a weak acid, the velocity of the change of 

 rotation being proportional to the concentration of the hydroxyl 

 ions, and to the square root of the concentration of the hydrogen 

 ions. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Sykes's Monkey {Cercopithecus albigularis) 

 from East Africa, presented by Mr. J. Coombes ; two Black- 

 necked Swans {Cygniis nigricollis) from Antarctic America, a 

 Yellow-rumped Parrakeet (Platycercus Jlaveolus) from Aus- 

 tralia, three Blue-fronted Amazons {Chrysotis aesiiva) from 

 South America, deposited. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN, 



Variations in the Motion of the Terrestrial Pole. — 

 In the Astronomical Journal (vol. xxi. No. 489), P«"pf' S. C. 

 Chandler investigates the data available for determining the 

 changes in the annual elliptical component of the polar motion. 

 References to these changes have been previously made in 

 A. /. Nos. 422 and 446, but no decisive conclusions could then 

 be made. The data are taken from the records at Pulkowa, 

 Leyden, Washington, Berlin, Cambridge and Madison, and are 

 grouped for two epochs, 1865, 1883. From each series the 

 effect of the 427-day term of the latitude variation is elimmated 

 after correction to a uniform value of the aberration constant and 

 stellar parallax ; from the residuals the constants of the annual 

 term ot the latitude variation are found, and finally, by combin- 

 ing these constants for all the series at each epoch, the elemen 

 of the ellipse are computed for 1865 and 1883. 



