February 28, 1901] 



NA TURE 



433 



lines. A useful piece of apparatus can be made by silvering the 

 outside of a hemispherical glass vessel. The concave mirror 

 thus formed should be mounted on a stand, and a small electric 

 lamp arranged so that it can move along the axis of the mirror. 

 A spherical wave starting at the focus of a hemispherical mirror 

 is reflected as a saucer-shaped wave, the curved sides of the 

 saucer coming to a focus in a ring surrounding the nearly flat 

 circular bottom. If the lamp is placed at the focus the luminous 

 ring and the uniformly illuminated area within it can be shown 

 on a ground glass screen. If the lamp be moved to a point 

 midway between the focus and the mirror, a ring of intense 

 brilliance, with very little light within it, is formed. — A paper 

 on cyanine prisms, by Prof. R. W. Wood, was read by Mr. 

 Watson. Prof. Wood has already described a method of making 

 prisms of solid cyanine by pressing the fused dye between plates 

 of glass. Until recently, angles of about half a degree were the 

 largest that could be used with advantage on account of the 

 small quantity of green light transmitted. A new supply of the 

 dye has been found to transmit a large quantity of green light with 

 an angle of over one degree. By viewing the filament of an 

 incandescent electric lamp through one of these prisms the 

 anomalous spectrum is seen, the colours being arranged in the 

 order green, blue, violet, red, orange. Prof. Wood has crossed 

 one ot these prisms with a photographic copy of a diffraction 

 grating having 2000 lines to the inch. On viewing a naked arc 

 lamp the diffraction spectra are deviated by the prism, the red 

 ends being turned up and the blue-green ends turned down. — 

 The chairman said he had been trying to obtain some cyanine, 

 but had not succeeded. Rosaniline has an anomalous dispersion, 

 but cannot be fused. The acetate of rosaniline might, however, 

 be used. The Society then adjourned until March 8. 



Chemical Society, February 7.— Prof. Thorpe, president, 

 in the chair. — The action of hydrogen bromide on carbo- 

 hydrates, by H. J. H. Fenton and M. Gostling. The authors, 

 having previously shown that bromomethylfurfuraldehyde results 

 from the action of hydrogen bromide on Isevulose, sorbose, 

 inulin or cane sugar, now show that all forms of cellulose give 

 large yields of the same bromomethylfurfuraldehyde under 

 similar conditions ; since the formation of this substance is 

 characteristic of ketohexoses or of substances which give rise 

 to them by hydrolysis, it seems conclusively proved that cellu- 

 lose contains a nucleus similar to that of laevulose. — The ketonic 

 constitution of cellulose, by C. F. Cross and E. J. Bevan. The 

 authors contribute a statement of the evidence, other than that 

 contained in the previous paper, in favour of the supposition 

 that Isevulose or some other ketose is the raw material used in 

 the plant for the elaboration of cellulose. — Note on a method 

 for comparing the affinity Values of acids, by H. J. II. Fenton 

 and H. O. Jones. The authors have shown that oxalacetic 

 phenylhydrazone is decomposed on heating with water, giving 

 •carbon dioxide and pyruvic hydrazone, whilst on heating with 

 acids, pyrazolone carboxylic acid and water are produced in 

 accordance with the following equations : — 



CH2.CO2H 



I 

 C : NgHPh 



CO2H 



CH2.CO.OH 



I 

 C:N.NHPh 



I 

 COoH 



CH3 



I 

 CiNjHPh-l-CO^. 



CO2H. 



CH2.CO 



I I 

 CrN.NPh-hHaO. 



I 

 CO.H 



It is shown that, on heating with acids, the volumes of carbon 

 dioxide evolved are in the inverse order of the affinity values 

 of the acids used, other conditions remaining the same. — 

 Organic derivatives of phosphoryl chloride and the space con- 

 figuration of the valencies of phosphorus, by R. M. Caven. 

 The author has prepared substituted phosphoryl chlorides of the 



form OP^Ra, in which the groups R^, Rg and R3 are ethoxyl 



nRj 

 and the anilido- and paratoluido-residues respectively ; the same 

 substance is obtained irrespective of the order in which the 

 substituting groups are put into the molecule, and the author 

 therefore concludes that these three groups are similarly situated 

 with respect to the rest of the molecule. — o-Hydroxycamphor- 

 carboxylic acid, by A. Lapworth and E. M. Chapman. A 



NO. 1635, VOL. 63] 



method for the preparation of camphorquinone in quantity is 

 given, and it is shown that this substance reacts with hydrogen 

 cyanide to form a mixture of stereoisomeric a-hydroxycyano- 



,C(OH).CN 

 camphors, CgHj^y | ; this substance behaves as an 



\co 



a hydroxynitrile, and may be hydrolysed to o-hydroxycamphor- 



/C(OH).COoH 

 carboxylic acid, CgHiX | . — The bacterial decom- 



\co 



position of formic acid, by W. C. C. Pakes and W. H. Jolly- 

 man. The authors show that certain bacteria decompose formic 

 acid as sodium formate into equal volumes of carbon dioxide 

 and hydrogen. — Preparation of substituted amides from the 

 corresponding sodamide, by A. W. Titherley. — Note on two 

 molecular compounds of acetamide, by A. W. Titherley. — 

 Diacetamide : a new method of preparation, by A. W. Titherley." 

 Diacetamide may be directly prepared by the action of acetyl 

 chloride on acetamide.— Organic derivatives of silicon, by F. S. 

 Kipping and L. L. Lloyd. Silicon tetrachloride, when treated 

 with one molecular proportion of an alchohol, exchanges one 

 chlorine atom for an alkyloxy-group yielding a substance of the 

 composition SiClg.OR. The latter, by similar treatment with 

 two other alcohols, can be converted ultimately into a substance 

 of the constitution SiCKORiXORjj.ORj. — Isomeric hydrind- 

 amine camphor-ir-sulphonates. Racemisation of o-bromo- 

 camphor, by F. S. Kipping. From the examination of the 

 ^/-hydrindamine j/-camphor-ir-sulphonate, it is concluded that 

 slight racemisation occurs during the sulphonation of dfa-brorno- 

 camphor.— Tetramethylene carbinol, by W. H. Perkin, jun. 

 Tetramethylenecarboxylic chloride is reduced by sodium and 

 moist ether to tetramethylene carbinol, a colourless oil boiling 

 at 143-144°. 



Zoological Society, February 5.— Mr. Howard Saunders, 

 vice-president, in the chair.— Mr. Sclater called attention to the 

 fine specimen of Prjevalsky's Horse {Equus prjevalskii) now 

 mounted and exhibited in the gallery of the Museum d'Histoire 

 Naturelle of Paris, and made some remarks on its structure and 

 peculiarities. — Mr. Oldfield Thomas gave an account of the 

 mammals which Mr. R. I. Pocock and he had collected during 

 a trip to the Balearic Islands in the spring of 1899. Twenty- 

 four species were enumerated and remarked upon, amongst 

 which was a new form of hedgehog, described as Erinaceiis 

 algirus vagans.—Dx. W. G. Ride wood read a paper on the 

 horny excrescence on the snout of the southern right whale 

 (Balaena australis), known to whalers as the "bonnet," in 

 which he showed that the minute structure is the same in 

 essential features as that of the stratum corneiim of the normal 

 skin of the whale. The cuticular fibres were set at right angles 

 to the surface, and were not sharply differentiated or readily 

 separable. Comparisons were drawn by the author between the 

 structure of this horny excrescence and that of the nasal horn of 

 the rhinoceros, the hoof of the horse, the horn of the ox 

 and the baleen of the whale. — Mr. G. A. Boulenger, F.R.S., 

 enumerated the species of batrachians and reptiles represented 

 in a collection made by Dr. Donaldson Smith in SomaHland in 

 1899. Of the reptiles two were new to science and were 

 described under the n'i.me.^Hemidactyluslaevisz.nA H. barodamis. 

 — Mr. Sclater made some additional remarks on the two pieces 

 of zebra-skin, exhibited at a previous meeting, which had been 

 sent to him by Sir H. H. Johnston, K.C.B., from the Semleki 

 Forest on the borders of the Uganda Protectorate, and ex- 

 pressed his opinion that they belonged to a hitherto unknown 

 species, for which he proposed the provisional name of Equus 

 johnstoni. — Mr. J. L. Bonhote read a paper on a second col- 

 lection of Siamese mammals made by Mr. Th. H. Lyle, consul 

 at Nau, Siam. The collection, although small, was of consid- 

 erable interest, the twenty specimens composing it being 

 referable to eleven species, one of which. Sciurus macclellatidi 

 kongensts, was described as new. Mr. Bonhote also communi- 

 cated a paper containing an enumeratipn of the 139 species of 

 birds of which specimens had been collected during the " Skeat 

 Expedition" to the Malay Peninsula in 1899-1900. — Mr. F. E. 

 Beddard, F.R.S., described a new species of freshwater annelid, 

 under the name of Bothrioneurott iris, from specimens obtained 

 in the Malay Peninsula during the "Skeat Expedition" in 

 I 899- I 900. 



Entomological Society, February 6.— The Rev. Canon 

 Fowler, president, in the chair.— The president exhibited a 

 specimen of Colias edusa var. helice, with the margins of the 



