March 21, 1901] 



NATURE 



507 



consists of a detailed account of the ground. By various sec- 

 tions the extent of the deposit is shown, and it is demonstrated 

 that the deposit occupies a basin, of which the Pendle district 

 occupies the maximum area of deposit, for the sequence thins 

 out rapidly north-west and south. But although the beds thin 

 out, a calcareous series with a typical zonal fauna is always 

 present. Beds containing this fauna are traced from County 

 Dublin, the Isle of Man, BoUand, Craven, the Calder and 

 Mersey valleys, to Derbyshire and North Staffordshire. It is 

 shown that this series, for which the term Pendleside Series is 

 proposed, occupies a basin about the size of the area indicated 

 above, and that the beds are lithologically distinct from the Yore- 

 dale Beds of Wensleydale, and contain a different fauna. Part ii. 

 discusses the question in detail, from a palseontological point of 

 view. The migration of certain families of fossils from the north to 

 the south, brought about by a slow change of environment, is 

 shown by tables, and lines called " isodiectic lines " are drawn 

 to represent this distribution. It is shown that the Nuculid^e 

 are found in the lowest Carboniferous beds in Scotland, but 

 come in at successively higher horizons as the beds range south- 

 ward. These facts and comparative thicknesses are the basis of 

 an argument as to the local distribution of land and water in 

 Carboniferous times ; and it is shown that the peculiar change 

 m type which Carboniferous rocks undergo in passing from 

 north to south is due entirely to physiographical conditions, and 

 not to any theoretical assumption of contemporaneous faulting. 

 It is shown, moreover, that the Craven Faults />er se have had 

 nothing to do with this change of type. The correlation of the 

 limestone-knolls of Craven with the Pendleside Limestone is 

 demonstrated to be no longer tenable. 



Zoological Society, March 5.— Dr. W. T. Blanford, 

 F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair. — Mr. Sclater exhibited, on 

 behalf of Captain Stanley Flower, photographs of a young 

 female giraffe, a young male white oryx (Oryx hucoryx), and 

 a male ostrich, with the vocal sac extended, which had been 

 taken from examples living in the Zoological Garden at Ghizeh, 

 Egypt. — There were exhibited, on behalf of Dr. Einar Ldnn- 

 berg, two photographs of a skull of the musk-ox from East 

 Greenland. — Dr. Smith Woodward read a paper on some 

 remains of extinct reptiles obtained from Patagonia by the La 

 Plata Museum. They included the skull and other remains of a 

 remarkably armoured Chelonian, Miolania, which had pre- 

 viously been discovered only in superficial deposits in Queens- 

 land and in Lord Howe's Island, off the Australian coast. 

 The genus was now proved to be Pleurodiran. There was 

 also a considerable portion of the skeleton of a large extinct 

 snake, apparently of the primitive genus of the South American 

 family Ilysiidse. Along with these remains were found the 

 well-preserved jaws of a large carnivorous Dinosaur, allied to 

 Megdlosaurus. Either the dinosaurian reptiles must have sur- 

 vived to a later period in South America than elsewhere, or 

 geologists must have been mistaken as to the age of the for- 

 mation in which the other reptiles and extinct mammals 

 occurred. The discovery of Miolania in South America seemed 

 to favour the theory of a former Antarctic continent ; but it 

 should be remembered that in late Secondary and early Tertiary 

 times the Pleurodiran Chelonians were almost cosmopolitan. 

 Future discovery might thus perhaps explain the occurrence 

 of Miolania in South America and Australia, in the same 

 manner as the occurrence of Ceratodus in these two regions was 

 already explained. — ^Mr. R. I. Pocock read a paper contain- 

 ing descriptions of six new species of trap-door spiders from 

 China. One of these, Haloproctus ricketti, was remarkable as 

 constituting a new genus of a specialised group of Ctenizidse, 

 hitherto known only from the Sonoran area of North America. 

 Another, Latouchia fossoria, also a new genus, was a more 

 typical Ctenizoid. — Mr. R. H. Burne read a paper on the inner- 

 vation of the supraorbital canal in the sea-cat [Chimaera mon- 

 strosa). — Mr. F. E. Beddard, F.R.S., read descriptions of 

 certain new or little-known earthworms belonging to the genera 

 Polytoreutus and Typhoeus. Mr. Beddard also described the 

 clitellum and spermatophores in the annelid Al/na stuhlmanni. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, February 18.— Prof. Geikie in the chair. — 

 Di:. Peddie communicated a paper by the late Mr. Shand and 

 himself on the thermoelectric position of solid mercury. 

 The thermoelectric line was found to be nearly parallel to that 

 of iron and to meet the line of copper very near the tempera- 

 ture of - 50° C. — Mr. Thomas Heath read a paper on 



NO. 1638, VOL. 63] 



observations of the Edinburgh rock thermometers, in which 

 the observations both of the old and the new sets were fully 

 discussed. There was some doubt about the corrections to be 

 applied to the new set ; but treating them in the same way as 

 the old set which had been installed by Prof. Forbes in 1837, 

 but had been broken in 1876 by a madman, Mr. Heath found 

 that the results were fairly consistent. There was evidence of 

 change of conductivity with depth, and the values of the con- 

 ductivity deduced by him from the harmonic analysis were 

 somewhat smaller than the values deduced by Forbes and 

 Everett from the older observations. The new thermometers, 

 however, had been steadily sinking in position since they had 

 been installed in 1879. 



March 4. — Sir Arthur Mitchell in the chair. — Prof. Letts 

 and Mr. J. Hawthorne communicated a paper on the seaweed 

 Ulva Lalissima and its relation to the pollution of sea water by 

 sewage, in which they had investigated with care the manner of 

 fermentation under various conditions. One of the most 

 remarkable facts about this seaweed is the high proportion of 

 nitrogen, distinctly in excess of what is met in other similar 

 plants, in this respect resembling an animal rather than a 

 plant. Viva Latissima is found in great quantity in certain 

 parts of Belfast Lough and Dublin Bay, where the water is 

 strongly polluted by sewage. In similar situations in Stran- 

 ford Bay, where there was comparatively little sewage, the 

 weed was rarely met with. — Mr. Aitken, in some further notes 

 on the dynamics of cyclones and anticyclones, discussed the 

 relation between storm tracks and the regions of maximum tem- 

 perature and maximum humidity. Four facts were mentioned 

 as supporting the theory that cyclones were convectionally 

 driven, namely : (i) the circulation in cyclones is principally 

 towards the centre, (2) the velocity increases towards the centre 

 at all levels, (3) storm tracks form and follow with the season 

 change of the areas over which the supply of hot moist air is 

 most plentiful, (4) the greater violence of winds in cyclones than 

 in anticyclones points to some source of energy in cyclonic areas. 

 — Prof. Copeland, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, gave an 

 account of the observations of the new star in Perseus, dis- 

 covered by Dr. Anderson. Since the first night of observation 

 the character of the spectrum of the star had changed greatly, 

 being now a faint continuous spectrum crossed with broad, 

 bright lines, flanked on the more refrangible side with dark 

 absorption bands. No evidence of polarisation could be 

 detected in the bright lines. The star was now on the wane, 

 and would probably gradually diminish in brightness until it 

 ceased to be visible to the naked eye. In the after discussion 

 Dr. Knott pointed out how the distribution of the bright and 

 dark bands fell in with the view that the phenomenon was due 

 to a collision taking place mainly in the line of sight, the later 

 stages requiring the relative displacement towards us of gaseous 

 products, cooling by their expansion. 



Manchester. 



Literary and Philosophical Society, March 5. — Prof. 

 Horace Lamb, F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Mr. C. E. 

 Stromeyer referred to the results of a study of tidal waves which 

 he had published in Nature in 1895, and which indicated that 

 in the majority of cases of which records were available the 

 tidal waves appeared to proceed from the Faraday Reef. Par- 

 ticulars of the tidal wave which recently struck the Teutonic 

 are not yet to hand for comparison with former records. — Mr. 

 W. E. Hoyle read a paper entitled " On the genera Octopus, 

 Eledone and Histiopsis," in which he dealt with the nomencla- 

 ture of these genera. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, March 11. — M. Fouque in the 

 chair. — Utilisation of the points of Collins for the determination 

 of a quadrilateral, by M. Hatt. — On the complete synthesis of 

 acetylpropylene and the terpenic hydrocarbons, by M. Barthelot. 

 Propylene and acetylene, mixed in equal volumes, are heated 

 together to about 500° C. The hydrocarbon C^Hg is formed, 

 together with methane. — Remarks on my last communication 

 relating to the telegraphic and telephonic lines established on 

 the snow of Mont Blanc, by M. J. Janssen. — On the waves of 

 the second order, with respect to the velocities which may be 

 presented by a viscous fluid, by M. P. Duhem, — Maltosuria in 

 certain diabetics, by MM. R. Lepine and Boulud. The differ- 

 ence between the rotatory power and the copper-reducing power 

 in the case of certain urines from diabetic patients can be ex- 

 plained by the assumption that maltose is present as well as 



