October 28, 1897 J 



NATURE 



631 



At the matriculation on October 21, 872 freshmen, including 

 nine advanced students who had graduated in other Universities, 

 were enrolled. 



The Ilarkness Cieological Scholarship for women has been 

 awarded to Miss Hilda D. Sharpe, of Newnham College. 



The first Congregation of the Prifysgol Cymru (University 

 of Wales) for conferring degrees was held in the Park Hall, 

 Cardiff, on Friday, October 22. Ten students from Aberyst- 

 wyth, Bangor, and Cardiff were admitted to the B.A. degree of 

 the University, and five, including one lady, to the B.Sc. degree. 



The new physical laboratory and workshop at the Langton 

 Schools, Canterbury, were formally opened on Tuesday under 

 the presidency of the Ven. Archdeacon of Maidstone. Dean 

 Farrar gave an address in which he traced the growth of scientific 

 instruction in secondary schools, and emphasised the work done 

 by the Committee of the British Association in developing the 

 newer methods. The new rooms give the school full facilities 

 for instruction in science, as it now comprises chemical and 

 physical laboratories, store-room, manual workshop, and a well- 

 equipped lecture theatre devised somewhat after the plan of the 

 chemical lecture theatre at the Royal College of Science. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 

 American lotirnal of Science, October. — Fractional crystallis- 

 ation of rocks, by G. F. Becker. Among the phenomena most 

 often appealed to in .support of the theory of magmatic segrega- 

 tion or differentiation is the symmetrical arrangement of material 

 in certain dikes and laccolites. But this separation is more 

 readily accounted for by the theory of fractional crystallisation. 

 Before solidification, the lava constituting a dike or laccolite is 

 subject to convection currents. The colder masses flowing down 

 the sides of the bed deposit first the less fusible rock, leaving 

 the more easily fusible mass to solidify in the centre. The process 

 only takes weeks where a molecular flow would take centuries. 

 —On the conditions required for attaining maximum accuracy 

 in the determination of specific heat by the method of mixtures, 

 by F. L. O. VVadsworth. Errors in reading temperatures are 

 the most serinus. To avoid them, the calorimeter should be 

 small, and the surface of the solid large. The initial tempera- 

 ture of the latter should be as high as possible. The calorimeter 

 should be surrounded by a water jacket, maintained at a tempera- 

 ture higher than the initial temperature of the water by an 

 amount given in an equation worked out by the author. He 

 also describes an improved calorimeter in which the body is 

 conveyed in a small car of sheet copper along a track laid along 

 an inclined tube which serves as a heating chamber. This 

 prevents loss of heat, and also enables the observer to experi- 

 ment upon small fragments. — On a new species of the Palinurid 

 genus Linuparus found in the Upper Cretaceous of Dakota, by A. 

 E. Ortmann. Two unique specimens of a hitherto unknown 

 fossil have been acquired by Princeton University. They are the 

 first remains of the Palinuridae found on the American conti- 

 nent. They not only show all the chief characteristics of the 

 family, but are so well preserved that their generic position may 

 be made out. The fossil is congeneric with a species living now- 

 a-days in the Japanese seas, namely with Linuparus trigonus, 

 hitherto regarded as a monotypic genus. The author calls the 

 new species Linuparus atavus, and gives a full description. — On 

 an improved heliostat invented by Alfred M. Mayer, by A. ti. 

 Mayer. The author describes a form of heliostat invented by 

 his father, which is of simple construction and possesses certain 

 decided advantages. It consists of a kind of wide telescope 

 containing a large object-glass and a bi-concave lens which con- 

 centrate a parallel beam upon a system of two total-reflection 

 prisms, one of which is mounted on the axis of rotation. A very 

 intense beam is thus obtained, which is at the same time so free 

 from heat that the most delicate microscopic slides may be ex- 

 posed to the rays. Magnifications of 3800 diameters may thus 

 be obtained on a screen. 



American [ournal of Mathematics, vol. xix., No. 4 (October). 

 — On three septic surfaces, by J. E, Hill. The surfaces here dis- 

 cussed at, some length are thus introduced : If, in the general 

 cubo cubic transformation between two spaces, we cause the 

 principal sextic of one space to degenerate into a twisted 

 quintic of deficiency 2, and into a right line meeting the 

 quintic twice, to the general cubic surface upon which the 

 right line lies, there will correspond in the second space, a 



NO. 1461, \OL, 56] 



septic surface upon which the line is triple and the quintic is 

 double. If, however, the principal sextic of the first space 

 breaks up into a twisted quartic of the second kind, and into a 

 conic, meeting the quartic four times, to the general cubic sur- 

 face passed through the conic, there will correspond in the 

 second .space, a septic surface possessing the quartic doubly and 

 the conic triply. If, however, finally, the principal sextic of 

 the first space degenerates completely, to the general cubic, 

 passed through two transversals, and one line, of the remaining 

 ingredients (four lines), there will correspond, in the second 

 space, a septic surface, possessing three lines (corresponding to 

 the first three above) triply ancl three lines (corresponding to 

 the last three) doubly.— On Sylvester's proof of the reality of the 

 j Roots of Lagrange's Detcrminantal Equation is an examination 

 j by Dr. Muir of the applicability of Sylvester's \ixooi (Phil. Mag., 

 j 1852) to an extension of the theorem which recently appeared 

 in \\\G Phi/. Mag Dr. Muir gets some interesting results. — Dr. 

 I Kluyver, of Leyden, writes concerning the twisted biquadratic. — 

 i M. Rene de Saussure, in " Calcul Geom^trique Regie," gives an 

 j analytical treatment of a subject which he had previousl dis- 

 cussed, by a purely geometrical method (see his article " tude 

 de Gf'ometrie Cineniatique reglee," vol. xviii. No. 4). — In a note 

 on Mr. A. B. Basset's paper, " Theory of the Action of Magnet- 

 ism on Light" (vol. xix. p. 60), Dr. Larmor offers a few re- 

 marks which he hopes may be worth recording. — M. Paul 

 Appell gives a few examples d'inversion d'integrales doubles 

 "que j'ai enonce dans une courte Note des Comptes rendu s, Fev. 

 I, 1897." Two Notelets are : Bemerkungen zu C. S. Pierce 

 Quincuncial Projection, by I. Frischauf, and on the Sign of a 

 Determinant's Term, by Ellery W. Davis. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, October, vol. 

 iv. No. I. — The number opens with an account of the fourth 

 summer meeting of the Society, which was held at Toronto on 

 August 16-17 of the present year. Owing to the meeting of 

 the British Association, and from other causes, the success of the 

 gathering exceeded all anticipation. Fifty-five persons attended, 

 and twenty-one papers were read. An analysis of the papers 

 is given, and two of them are printed in ^jr/^;;j<?— concerning 

 regular triple systems, by Prof. E. H. Moore, and collineations 

 in a plane with invariant quadric or cubic curves, by Prof. H. 

 S. White. — "A generating function for the number of permuta- 

 tions with an assigned number of sequences " is the title of a paper 

 read by Prof. F. Morley at the May meeting of the Society. In 

 Liouville's fournal 1895, ^""^ '"^ earlier memoirs, M. Andre 

 proves the formula P„ , -= j P„_i, , -f- 2 P„_i.j_i -f (« - s) 

 P»— 1, *- 2> where P,,, , is the number of permutations of n things 

 (say of the number 1,2,. . . «) with s sequences ; and shows 

 that (taking the number of sequences as great as possible) the 

 numbers i Ph+i, „ are the coefficients of .r"/// .'in 1/(1 - sin x), 

 when expressed as a Maclaurin series. Prof. Morley states his 

 object to be to obtain a function of x and y which, when de- 

 veloped in positive integer powers of x and y, will have P„, ., as 

 the general coefficient. — Dr. V. Snyder reviews " La Geometric 

 reglee et ses Applications," by G. Koenigs. The reviewer 

 remarks : " One gathers that the author had intended to make 

 the treatise much more extensive, especially as the second part 

 of the title is entirely ignored. Roughly the book is a repro- 

 duction, with some extensions, and some omissions, of parts of 

 three papers by Prof. Klein [Math. Ann., ii. jip. 203-213 ; v. 

 pp. 257-268 and pp. 278-293). Should one use the book, to 

 enable him to better understand most of the memoirs on line- 

 geometry, it would prove a valuable aid, but read alone, the 

 reader would get but a narrow and one- sided idea of its useful- 

 ness." — The courses of lectures at the University of Berlin, and 

 other fragments of mathematical news are given in the Notes. 



Symons's Monthly Meteorological Magazine, October. — 

 Weather maps and early synchronous meteorological observa- 

 tions. On June 5, 1850, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution wrote to Mr. Glaisher to learn what was being done in 

 this country. Mr. Glaisher's reply is printed, and, as Mr. 

 Symons points out, the letter is very remarkable, considering its 

 dale, and shows that the first reports made at filty railway 

 stations about the year 1849 were not telegraphed but were sent 

 by train. These were collected each afternoon in London by the 

 Daily A^ews, and thirteen of them were printed in their next 

 issue. The observations were also collated and charted day 

 by day by Mr. Glaisher. The first daily report issued by 

 Admiral FitzRoy was on September 6, i860. — True time. This 

 is a reprint of a circular by .Mr. John Milne, slating that there 



