422 



NA TURE 



[September 2, 1897 



Association, Canadian climatology, and the state of medical 

 education in Canada. A vote of thanks for the address was 

 proposed by Lord Lister, and seconded by Sir James Grant. 

 Upon the evening of Tuesday Prof. Richet delivered a lecture 

 upon Pasteur and his work. 



The annual general meeting of the Federated Institution of 

 Mining Engineers will be held in Edinburgh on September 

 14-16. The following papers are among those to be read or 

 taken as read: — "Submarine Conl-mining at Bridgeness," by 

 Mr. Henry M. Cadell. " Alternating Multiphase Machinery 

 for Electric-power Transmission," by Mr. Walter Dixon. " Ob- 

 servations on some Gold-bearing Veins on the Coolgardie, 

 Yilgarn, and Murchison Gold-fields, Western Australia," by 

 Mr. Edward Halse. "The South Rand Coal-field and its con- 

 nection with the Witwatersrand Banket Formation," by Mr. 

 A. R. Sawyer. 



In the Atti dei Lined, vi. 2 (July i8), Dr. Calandruccio and 

 Signor Grassi give a brief account of their latest observations on 

 the metamorphoses of the Murienoids. The authors have fol- 

 lowed the transformation into the cnecal stage of several Lepto- 

 cephahis brevirostris having their larval teeth still intact. This 

 transformation takes place without the animal burying itself in 

 sand. It is noteworthy, too, that the anterior and posterior 

 extremities of the body have already acquired nearly all 

 the characteristics of the csecal stage when the remainder 

 of the body is still far from possessing them. The Lepto- 

 cephaloids of Myrus vulgaris are very similar to those of 

 Ophichthys hispanus ( = 0. reniicaudus). The Tiluroids may 

 in all probability be referred to Serrivomer. Dr. Calandruccio 

 and Signor Grassi have now observed the larval and semi-larval 

 stages of all the Murenoids of the Mediterranean, with the 

 exception of the very rare Chlopsis bicolor and the occasional 

 Murcenesox savanna. 



A METHOD of determining the heights of clouds, and 

 especially of the ill-defined stratus cloud, by means of the search 

 light, was suggested by Prof. Cleveland Abbe many years ago. 

 It was proposed to establish a search light, the beams of which 

 should be vertical ; the apparent altitude of the centre of the 

 luminous spot of the cloud was to be observed from a station 

 not far away, and the height was a matter of easy calculation. 

 Prof. Abbe returns to the subject in the Monthly Weather 

 Review (May), and points out that with the great increase in 

 the power of the modern search light, further applications have 

 become practicable ; thus in harbours on the sea-coast, where 

 one wishes to ascertain the presence and development of low- 

 lying fogs, the search light which renders them visible is an 

 invaluable assistant. A year ago some accounts were published 

 relative to the cloud effects on Mount Low and Pasadena. 

 According to these accounts Mount Low is about 15 miles 

 north-north-east from Los Angeles, and about 6 miles in a 

 straight line from Pasadena. When the beam of light fell upon 

 the bodies of clouds they at once became luminous, so that all 

 the details of motion were visible ; when the beam fell upon 

 the falling rain, the great cone of light glowed like molten metal. 

 It seems, concludes Prof. Abbe, that the formation and motion of 

 fog and cloud at night-time could be advantageously studied by 

 means of the search light. The height at which fog first forms, 

 and its gradual extension upwards and downwards during the 

 night, would be a very interesting and profitable investigation. 



• The disturbance of submarine cable working by electric 

 tramways forms the subject of a paper by Mr. A, P. Trotter in 

 'Cae. Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. As soon 

 as the electric tramway service was started at Cape Town, the 

 working of the syphon recorder of the submarine cable of the 

 NO. 1453. VOL. 56] 



Eastern and South African Telegraph Company was found to 

 be seriously affected. When the tramcars were started and 

 when they were stopped, "kicks" were recorded by the syphon 

 recorder, and. these being superimposed upon the received 

 signals made it difficult and often impossible to read the mes- 

 sage. The first mile of the cable was at a mean distance of about 

 half a mile from the tramway. After a long series of experi- 

 ments Mr. Trotter found that the only way to cancel the dis- 

 turbances was to lay a new cable of about five miles long as 

 nearly as possible over the old one, the cable terminating in an 

 earth plate. As soon as this had been done the traffic was 

 resumed, and no appreciable disturbances of the recorder took 

 place. In the discussion upon the paper, Mr. W. H. Preece 

 said that similar disturbances occurred wherever electrical tram- 

 ways, and telegraphs, submarine or overland, existed together. 

 Prof. Ayrton gave an account of observations of magnetic 

 disturbances over the whole neighbourhood of the City and 

 South London Electric Railway, which runs underground 

 between London Bridge and Stockwell. The suspended 

 magnet used in the investigation showed that disturbances of 

 the earth's magnetic field occurred throughout the whole region 

 of the line, and were caused either by magnets or masses of iron 

 in the passing trains, or by currents passing through the earth. 



Among many other papers in the Proceedings of the Indiana 

 Academy of Science,'dated 1894, but only just received, is one by 

 Mr. D. T. MacDougal, showing that various species of Cypri- 

 pedium have an irritant action upon the human skin. It was found 

 that when the leaves of C. spectabile were rubbed lightly upon the 

 skin of the wrist, arm, face, or ear, the person experimented 

 upon was usually " poisoned " in a degree corresponding to the 

 manner of application, and in a time varying from ten to twelve 

 hours. There could be no doubt about the unpleasant effects 

 produced by the leaves, for Mr. MacDougal soon found that he 

 could not obtain subjects willing to sacrifice their feelings upon 

 the altar of scientific knowledge. He was able to prove, how- 

 ever, that similar painful effects were produced by C. pubiscens 

 and C. pai-viflorum. To ascertain whether the effect was due 

 to the mechanical injury resulting from piercing the skin by the 

 pointed hairs upon the leaves, or to the corrosive action of the 

 secretion found on the outside of the globular tips of the 

 glandular hairs, separate tests were made by material from C. 

 spectabile. The hairs of each kind were taken from the leaf by 

 means of a pair of fine forceps, and the tip pressed against the 

 skin. Irritation was found to result from the contact of the 

 glandular hair only. It was found, further, that the irritant 

 action of the plant increased with the development of the plant, 

 and reached its maximum with the formation of the seed-pod, 

 from which it is inferred that this is a device for the protection 

 of the reproductive bodies during the period from pollination to 

 the maturity of the seeds. 



The Sitzungsberichte der Physikalisch-medicineschen Societal 

 in Erlangefi for 1896 contains a paper, by M. Willibald Hoff- 

 mann, on the forces exerted by an electric field on an in- 

 candescent electric lamp, through which a current is flowing. 

 When a highly exhausted vacuum tube is placed in the neigh- 

 bourhood of such a lamp, it is found that, with discharges of 

 moderate frequency, the filament begins to oscillate ; more rapid 

 discharges, however, impart to the filament a certain rigidity of 

 position, which causes it to tend to maintain a fixed distance 

 from the discharge-tube when the lamp is moved about. The 

 author investigates the cause of these phenomena. — The same 

 volume contains papers by Alfred Bettinghaus, on the geology of 

 the Rathsberg plateau ; by Dr. Gotthold Fuchs, on certain 

 aniline derivatives and their physiological action ; by Dr. Fritz 

 Glatzel, on the alkalimetry of the blood ; and by Dr. Joseph 

 Rosenthal, on Rontgen rays. 



