March 7, 19 18] 



NATURE 



19 



i clear, but lasted at most only five hours after 

 loval from the mother liquor, becoming opaque 

 ^ iiiie, like porcelain. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Scicices, January 28. — M. Leon Guignard 

 he chair. — The president read the decree authoris- 

 ihe creation of a new division of six members under 

 title "Application de la Science h. 1 'Industrie. "— 

 RIondel : The experimental determination and appli- 

 i.ins of the vector representing the effects of the 

 it armature reaction and leakages in alternators.— 

 do Sparre : The hammering in a pipe with wall of 

 i.ible thickness, in the case of a progressive closing. 

 \ Buhl : Certr.in Abelian sums of double integrals.- - 

 I.attes : The repetition of rational substitutions with 

 iwo variables. — G. Julia : Problems concerning the repe- 

 tition of rational functions. — F. Iversen : The asymp- 

 totic values of meromorphic functions and the tran- 

 scendaiit singularities of their inverse functions. — J. 

 Guillaume : Observations of the sun made at the Lvons 

 f~>'iservatory during the third quarter of 1917. Ob.- 

 \ations were made on ninety days, eighty of which, 

 !• I to August 19, were consecutive. — A. Valeur and 

 b. Luce : The action of methylene iodide upon i : 4- 

 dimethylaminopentene. A closed ring is not formed, as 

 with iodine, but the addition of methylene iodide to 

 nitrogen takes place, as with methyl iodide. — F. 

 Grandjean : The step-like structure in certain aniso- 

 '^- pic liquids. — P. Russo : Some peculiarities of the 

 iiitoid rocks of the Rehamna district (western 

 rocco). — R Chudeau : The tectonic of western 

 ica. — G. Lecointre : The presence of the Cambrian 

 (possibly) ..Silurian at Casablanca (western 

 occo). — Ch. Dufour : Value of the magnetic 

 nents at the Val-Joyeux Observatory on Januarv i, 

 S. — Ph. Flajolet : Perturbations of the magnetic de- 

 cimation at Lyons (.Saint-Genis-Laval) during the 

 ' third quarter of 1917. — C. E. Brazier : The diurnal varia- 

 tiun of the velocitv of the wind in altitude. — M. and 

 •U-. F. Moreau : Cytological study of the development 

 lu- apothecium of the Peltigeraceae. — .A. Lecaillon : 

 u- cytological data relative to the phenomena of 

 ural oarthenogenesis which occur in the silkworm. 

 \. Sartory : The tubercle bacillus associated with an 



tpora. The Oospora was isolated from a sputum 

 containing tspical tubercle bacilli. The two micro- 

 misms possess certain characters in common, but 

 Qospora proved to be non-oathogenic to the guinea- 

 and rabbit. — F. G. V. Miranda : Biochemical re- 

 ches on Proteus vulgaris. Comoarison of the pro- 

 1)1 rties of a pathogenic strain and a saprophytic strain. 

 I he experimental work cited confirms MetchnikofT's 

 view that the pathogenic and saprophytic forms of 

 Proteus are identical; the small differences between the 

 ious strains r-^sult from the influence, more or less 

 nged, of the culture conditions. — A. Berthelot : 

 aines and war wounds. — MM. Rousseaux and 

 The soluble nitrogenous materials as an index 

 -the baking value of flour. 



Melbourne. 

 Royal Society of Victoria, December 13, 1917.— Prof. 

 .A. Osborne, president, in the chair. — Prof. W. A. 

 : A contribution to the theory of gel structure, 

 vestigations carried out in 1910 showed that bubbles 

 formed in gels assumed lenticular forms, but without 

 any dominant angle. The Struve-Baumstark pheno- 

 nitnon- — i.e. the expression of the liquid phase on treat- 

 ment with ether — ooints to the fact that in certain gels 

 the liquid phase is held by capillarity.— .\. J. Ewart : 

 ii) Contributions to the "flora of .Australia, No. 26. 

 Aniongst theplants enumerated isia newlv introduced .St. 

 (iilin's wort, found in the Government House grounds. 

 hilst the spread of Erica arborea as a naturalised 

 n is also noted. Interesting data are furnished 

 NO. 2523, VOL. lOlJ 



regarding the depth at \Mhich sweet briar and furze can 

 reproduce their shoots. (2) Chlorophyll, xanthophyll, 

 and carotin, and the production of sugar from 

 formaldehyde. A new and rapid method was described 

 of producing sugar from formaldehyde, in which the 

 products were glucose, laevulose, calcium, and sodium 

 tartrates. — J. T. Jutson : (i) The influence of salt on 

 rock-weathering in subarid Western Australia. It is 

 suggested that the salt from the dry pans, during 

 periods of moisture, impregnate the rock around the 

 lake, causing marked disintegration, which sometimes 

 produces cavernous structure in the rocks of' the lake 

 margin. (2) The formation of natural quarries in sub- 

 arid Western .Australia. Illustrations are given of cir- 

 cular, triangular, and vertically faced quarries due to 

 the varying hardness and nature of the weathered rock. 



Washington, D.C. 



National Academy of Sciences, November, 1917 (Pro- 

 ceedings, vol. iii.. No. 11).— G. A. Bliss: \ necessary 

 and sufficient condition for the existence of a Stieltjes 

 integral. — L. P. Eisenhart : Transformations of appli- 

 cable conjugate nets of curves on surfaces. — C. A. 

 Fischer : Bilinear and N-linear functionals, — C.L.BurdIck 

 and J. H. Ellis: The crystal structure of chalcopyrite 

 determined by X-rays. Chalcopyrite belongs to the 

 tetragonal system of crystals, few of which have been 

 examined for structure. The lattice is of the face- 

 centred type. — W. M. Davis : The isostatic subsidence 

 of volcanic islands. Darwin's primary theory of coral 

 reefs holds good, although his supplementary theory of 

 broad ocean-floor subsidence ne<;>ds modification.— O. 

 Veblefl : The deformation of an N-cell.— G. D. BirkhoH : 

 A theorem on series of orthogonal functions with an 

 application to Sturm-Liouville series.— R. A. Daly : 

 Low-temperature formation of alkaline felspars in 

 limestone. .\ review of recent European literature and 

 a discussion of American Rocky Mountain dolomite.— 

 C. Barus : The interferometry of small angles, etc. 

 Methods by direct and reversed superposed spectra. 



December, 1917 (vol. iii.. No. 12).— C. W. Metz and 

 C. B. Bridges : Incompatibility of mutant races in 

 Drosophila. The evidence from two cases of incom- 

 patibility in laboratory cultures, taken with evidence 

 from apparently mutant forms and incompatible varie- 

 ties of Nature, tends to remove a serious objection to 

 the mutation hypothesis, and emphasises the possible 

 evolutionarv importance of mutations involving incom- 

 patibility.— H. D. Curtis: Absorption effects in the 

 spiral nebulae. Negatives of spiral nebulae obtained 

 with the Crossley reflector show that the phenomenon 

 of dark lanes caused by occulting or absorbing matter 

 is much more frequent than has been supposed. The 

 results mav bear directly on the explanation of the pecu- 

 liar grouping of the spirals. — O. L. Raber : The syner- 

 getic action of electrolytes. Synergy is the opposite of 

 antagonism ; although antagonism is frequently re- 

 ported, few cases of synergy have been noted. — W. 

 Craig : Appetites and aversions as constituents of in- 

 stincts. .Although innate chain reflexes constitute a 

 considerable part of the equipment of doves, few or 

 none of their instincts are mere chain reflexes. On 

 the contrary^ each instinct involves an element of 

 appetite or of aversion, or both.^ — A. R. C. Haas: 

 Rapid respiration after death. The respiration of 

 Laminaria mav be much greater after death than in the 

 normal condition. —Caroline E. Stringer: The means 

 of locomotion in Planarians. The locomotion is essen- 

 tiallv a muscular act in which the cilia play no neces- 

 sarv part. — J. F. McClendon : Diurnal changes in the 

 sea at Tortugas, Florida. C\ Barus : Note on interfero- 

 meter methods of measuring the elastics of small 

 bodies. — W. M. Davis • Sublacustrine Glacial erosion 

 in Montana. The Clark fork branch-glacier seems to 

 have done its visible erosive work onf the vallley-side spurs 



