2l8 



NATURE 



[November 15, 191; 



the last two or three decades in the clinical know- 

 ledge of mind and body, and particularly to the amount 

 of material for study furnished daily by the injuries of 

 war, the president passed to the consideration whether 

 anything in our new knowledge throws light on the old 

 philosophical problem. He rejected as inconceivable 

 the notion that psychical and physical action can be 

 comprised within one energetical system, or that there 

 can be direct equivalence of exchange between the two 

 orders. The alternative of parallelism, apart from its 

 incredibility on the ground of extravagance, is in direct 

 conflict with the facts of individual experience. The 

 important fact in regard to the nature of mind and 

 body is that each is the unity and continuity of an 

 organic individuality, and that every modification of 

 cither is a modification of the whole. Interaction 

 must therefore, it was argued, be interaction between 

 I he whole mind as an individual unity of personal ex- 

 perience and the whole body as a living unity of co- 

 ordinated mechanisms. Such interaction is not causal 

 in the sense the term is used in physical science. It 

 is the mutual adaptation of two individual systems 

 distinct in their order, diverse in their function, and 

 divergent in their principle, both of which are neces- 

 sary and complementary to the common end for which 

 they co-operate, living action. The term which best 

 expresses their interaction is solidarity in its old legal 

 meaning, which denoted the unity of common purpose, 

 the diverse obligations, and the corresponding claims 

 on the members, of a partnership. The philosophical 

 theory sought further to deduce the principle of a dicho- 

 tomy of living experience into two divergent but com- 

 plementary systems, mind and body, from the nature 

 of living action. 



Mineralogical Society, November 6.— Anniversary 

 meeting. — Dr. J. W. Evans in the chair.— Miss E. 

 Smith : Etched crystals of gypsum. Baumhauer con- 

 ducted experiments on colemanite and calcfte to de- 

 termine whether the phenomenon of etched figures is 

 due to lack of homogeneity or irregularity in the inci- 

 dence of the dissolving liquid, or to lack of homo- 

 geneity in the crystal itself. Further experiments now 

 made on cleavage surfaces of gypsum tend, on the 

 whole, to confirm Baumhauer's conclusion that the 

 second hypothesis is the correct one.- — Dr. G. T. Prior : 

 The mesosiderite-grahamite group of meteorites. 

 Analyses of the mesosiderite Hainholz and the gra- 

 hamite Vaca Muerta show that these meteorites do 

 not differ materially as regards the amount of felspar, 

 and microscopical examination of other mesosiderites 

 supports the idea that there is no real distinction be- 

 tween them ; the name mesosiderite is therefore pro- 

 posed for the whole group. The ground-mass of these 

 meteorites consists mainly of anorthite and a pyroxene, 

 poor in lime and having a ratio of MgO to FeO of 

 about 2. The iron and olivine are ver)'^ unevenly dis- 

 tributed, and have chemical compositions such as they 

 have in the pallasites. the iron being poor in nickel 

 (ratio of Fe to Ni generally greater than lo) and the 

 olivine poor in ferrous oxide (ratio of MgO to FeO 

 fiom 6. to q). In accordance with the author's concep- 

 tion of a genetic relationship of meteorites, it is sug- 

 gested that a eucrite-like magma, i.e. one of higher 

 oxidation, was invaded by a pallasite-like magma of 

 lower oxidation. The curiously unequal distribution 

 of the nickel-iron and the shattered (cataclastic) struc- 

 ture, which is !?enerallv confined to the oarts rich in 

 iron, support this view. — Prof. H. Hilton : Chang- 

 ing- the plane of a gnomonic or stereographic projec- 

 tion. A method was described by means of which the 

 gnomonic or stereographic projection of a crystal on 

 any plane mav be obtained when the projection on one 

 plane is ijiven. The application to the drawing or 

 orthographic projection of the crystal was also dis- 

 NO. 2507, VOL, 100] 



cussed.^— Prof. H. Hilton: Cleavage angle in a 

 random section of a crystal. A graphical ' method was 

 given by means of which it is possible to calculate the 

 chance that the angle between the cleavage-cracks on 

 a random section of a crystal with two good cleavages 

 may lie between specified limits. The method was 

 worked out in detail for the cases in which the angle 

 between the cleavage-planes was 90° or 60°. 



Optical Society, November 8. — Prof. F. J. Cheshire, 

 president, in the chair.— Lt.-Col. A. C, Williams : De- 

 scription of certain optical stores which have been cap- 

 tured from the enemy. The paper dealt with certain 

 optical military instruments which are representative 

 of those employed by the Central Empires, Most of 

 them are used in connection with artillery. The first 

 part of the paper had reference to the general require- 

 ments of such instruments and the methods of their 

 employment. The second part contained a detailed 

 description of the instruments, including the optical 

 data, mechanical construction, weight, dimensions, etc. 

 The concluding part contained some observations as to 

 the general design of the instruments as regards ser- 

 viceability, portability, finish, internal cleanliness, the 

 employment of complicated prisms, and adjustments. 

 Finally, the principal needs as to the designing of 

 military optical instruments in this country were con- 

 sidered, and suggestions given as to the most satis- 

 factory solution of the question. 



Manchester, 

 Literary and Philosophical Society, October 16.— Mr. 

 W. Thomson, president, in the chair. — D. Ward 

 Cutler : Natural and artificial parthenogenesis in 

 animals. Parthenogenesis, or the production of an 

 organism from an egg which has not been previously 

 fertilised by the male element, was shown to be of 

 wide occurrence in the animal kingdom, though con- 

 fined to only a few of its great divisions. The life- 

 cycles of many of the animals which exhibit this 

 method of reproduction were described, and it was 

 pointed out that though fertilisation, among these 

 animals, almost always resulted in the production of 

 females, the sex of the animals developing from par- 

 thenogenetic eggs was male in some species, female 

 in others. Experiments were then described which 

 tended to show that the cause of , the change from, 

 sexual to parthenogenetic reproduction was due to the 

 interaction of the external factors (environment) and 

 internal factors resident in the egg. The cytological 

 aspect of the subject was developed in detail in the 

 paper. Some of the most important theories regard- 

 ing the cause of sex-production were then discussed, 

 and it was shown that the one put forward by Wilson 

 and Castle seemed at present to lit the facts more 

 nearly than any other. This theory regards male and 

 female formation as a quantitative phenomenon and 

 not a qualitative one; thus " femaleness is maleness 

 plus something else." The second part of the paper 

 dealt with the experiments which had been performed 

 I on the eggs of various animals that are not normally 

 'parthenogenetic, causing them to develop without the 

 action of the male element. This phenomenon has 

 I been termed artificial parthenogenesis. Boursier in 

 1847 stated that a virgin silkworm placed in sunlight 

 and then shade produced eggs from which caterpillars 

 developed, and Tichomoroff was able to get larvae 

 from unfertilised eggs by placins^ them for a short 

 time in strong sulphuric acid. Since iSqq, however, 

 observations have accumulated enormously, and the 

 substances capable of producing develooment are many 

 and various. The following are a few of the sub- 

 stances used : — Hypertonic solutions, acids, therrnal 

 changes, cvtolytic agents, blood sera, shocks from in- 

 duction coils. Although most observers have worked 



