April 22, 1920] 



NATURE 



249 



McDougall, F.R.S., in the meklical school buildings 

 of the University, beginning on Friday, April 30. 



The subject for the Jacksonian prize of the Roval 

 College of Surgeons of England for 192 1 is "The 

 Pathology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Tuberculous 

 Disease of the Spinal Column with its Complica- 

 tiops." 



Applications for not more than three Ramsay 

 memorial fellowships for chemical research will be 

 considered by the trustees at the end of June next. 

 They must be received by, at latest, June 15 by Dr. 

 W. VV. Seton, organising secretary, Ramsay Memorial 

 Fund, University College, Gower Street, W.C.i. 

 The fellowships will each be of the annual value of 

 250Z., with, possibly, a grant of not more than 50L 

 per annum for expenses, and tenable for two years, 

 with the possible extension of a year. 



Dr. J. H. Andrew has been appointed to the chair 

 of metallurgy in the Royal Technical College, Glas- 

 gow, vacant by the transfer of Dr. Desch to the Uni- 

 versity of Sheffield. Dr. Andrew graduated in Man- 

 chester University with first class honours in 

 chemistry. After research work in metallurgy, he 

 received the M.Sc. degree in 1908, and was awarded 

 the Dalton scholarship. He continued metallurgical 

 investigations in the University laboratories until 



1914, was appointed research fellow and demon- 

 strator in 1910, and Carnegie scholar of the Iron and 

 Steel Institute. He received the degree of D.Sc. in 



1915. Since June, 1914, Dr. Andrew has been chief of 

 the Metallurgical Research Department of Sir W. G. 

 Armstrong, Whitworth, and Co., Ltd., Manchester, 

 and has gained a wide experience in the metallurgical 

 industry, having had unlimited scope for studying 

 practice and for research. His publications include a 

 number of important papers presented to the leading 

 metallurgical societies. 



Societies and Academies. 



London. ! 



Royal Microscopical Society, March 17.— Prof. John | 

 Eyre, president, in the chair. — T. E. Wallis : The Lyco- I 

 podium method of quantitative microscopy. Various I 

 methods have been devised by different workers in an : 

 attempt to find a satisfactory method of making deter- | 

 minations of percentage composition by means of the j 

 microscope- The most trustworthy of these require 

 specially constructed apparatus and are applicable in | 

 certain instances only. The. Lycopodium method is I 

 simple in principle, and with slight modifications may 

 be used for all kinds of problems. The only apparatus 

 needed is such as is used in ordinary microscopical 

 work. The results are correct to within la per cent, i 

 of the amount to be determined; they can therefore be 

 utilised with the same confidence as is the case with ! 

 results obtained by many well-known chemical opera- ! 

 tions having a similar range of error. — C. Da Fano : \ 

 Method for the demonstration of the Golgi apparatus 

 in nervous and other tissues. The author has been i 

 able to obtain a fairly constant staining of this 

 peculiar intracellular formation by substituting cobalt 

 for uranium nitrate in a formula originally proposed 

 by the Spanish biologist, S. Ramon y Cajal. Da 

 Fano's modification can be easily applied to all sorts 

 of tissues, as proved by an interesting series of quite 

 demonstrative microscopic preparations and lantern 

 slides shown at the meeting. Another step has thus 

 been taken in the study of the "internal apparatus" 

 discovered by Golgi in 1898, the functions of which, 

 however, still remain quite mysterious to biologists 

 nnd physiologists. i 



NO. 2634, VOL. 105] 



l.innean Society,. Macch. 18.— Dr. A. Smith Wood- 

 ward, president, in the chair.— Prof. J. SmaH : The 

 chemical reversal of geotropic response in roots and 

 stems. It was stated that when roots are place<l hori- 

 zontally in a moist atmosphere rendered very faintly 

 alkaline by ammonia vapour they tend to grow 

 upwards. When stems are treated in a similar way 

 with acetic acid vapour they tend to grow downwards. 

 These experiments form preliminary confirmation of 

 a theory of geotropic curvature which has been 

 elaborated as a correlation of previous work on the 

 electrical conductivity of roots with data accumulated 

 by other investigators. 



Aristotelian Society, March 22.— Prof. Wildon Carr in 

 the chair. — Clement C. J. Webb: Obligation, auto- 

 nomy, and the common good. It was contended that 

 the notion of obligation in which Kant rightly found 

 the essential feature of our moral consciousness cannot 

 be directly derived (as Green seems to suppose) from 

 the notion of a " common good " ; that, on the con- 

 trary, the notion of a "common good," and the 

 closely connected notion of a " general will," derives 

 its significance for ethics, and eventually for politics 

 also, from its connection with the notion of obliga- 

 tion ; and that this makes it necessary for any truly 

 ethical conception of the State to retain the idea of 

 "authority," as ascertained, indeed, through the 

 general will, because only thus can it be recognised 

 as authority — viz. the community for itself; not, how- 

 ever, as in itself merely the result of the general will, 

 but as the expression of an absolute factor therein, 

 which perhaps may be best described as the sove- 

 reignty of God. To the thought expressed in Kant's 

 choice of the word "autonomy" to express the status 

 of the good will may be traced along one line, of 

 descent the anti-authoritarian tendency in contern- 

 porary ethics and politics. 



Geological Society, March 24.— Mr. R. D. Oldham, 

 president, in the chair. — Mrs. Eleanor M. Reid : Two 

 pre-Glacial floras from Castle Eden (County Durham). 

 The seeds examined were obtained by Dr. C. T. 

 Trechmann from pre-Glacial clays, found' in fissures of 

 the Magnesian Limestone at Castle Eden. The cl^ys 

 were carried by the Scandinavian ice from the area 

 now covered by the North Sea. The study proved the 

 presence of two seed-bearing clays of different ages, 

 the eatjier being undoubtedly Pliocene. The Pliocene 

 age is confirmed by M. P. Lesne, who determined the 

 insect remains found intermingled with the seeds. 

 While the work was in progress material from the 

 base of the Pliocene of Pont de Gail (Cantal) gave 

 knowledge for the first time of a seed flora of known 

 age, low down in the Pliocene ; it showed that the 

 rate of change in the character of the West European 

 Pliocene flora was slower than had been suggested 

 bv Clement Reid and the author. A critical compari- 

 son was made befweeti the Cromerian, Teglian, 

 Castle Eden. Reuverian, and Pont de Gail floras on 

 the bases of the percentages of all exotics, and of 

 Chinese-North American exotics— that is, plants now 

 inhabiting the Far East of Asia or North America, but 

 not Western Europe— in each flora. The result proved 

 the Reuverian to be Lower Pliocene, not too of the 

 Middle Pliocene (as formerly suf^gested), and the 

 Castle Eden flora to be Middle Pliocene. Therefore 

 a studv of fossil- seeds had made it possible to dis- 

 criminate between strata intimately mixed in situ, and 

 to determine their geological age when unknown. — 

 Mrs. Eleanor M. Reid : .\ compnrative review of 

 Pliocene floras,^ based on the studv of fossil seeds. By 

 plottinfT as a curve the percentages of all exotics, and 

 of Chinese-North American exotics, frorn the five 

 floras (see above paper), it was found that all lay 



