January 19, 1893] 



NATURE 



2S7 



I. Brodie. The vertebrate remains occur in a very thin band of 

 larly friable sandstone lying between two beds of green marl, 

 though in some places the same bed has itself no admixture of 

 "tondy material. Bones and teeth are so numerous that it might 

 almost be called a bone-bed. It does not exceed three inches 

 in thickness. It contains ichthyodoruiites of Cestraciont fishes, 

 abundant palatal teeth of Acrodus keuperinus, ganoid fish- 

 scales, and abundant broken bones, some of which may belong 

 10 fishes, others to Jabyrinthodonts, and amongst the latter a 

 fragment of a cranial bone. The Chairman congratulated the 

 Society on the presence of one of its Fellows who had been con- 

 nected with it for nearly sixty years, and had read his first paper 

 almost half a century ago. He hoped that the Society would 

 still continue to receive communications from the same source 

 of like interest and value. Mr. J. W. Davis, Mr. H. B. Wood- 

 ward, and Mr. E. T. Newton also spoke. — Calamostachys 

 lUnneyana, Schimp, by Thomas Hick. Communicated 

 by J. W. Davis. — Notes on some Pennsylvanian calami- 

 ties, by \V. S. Gresley. — Scandinavian Boulders at 

 Cromer, by Herr Victor Madsen, of the Danish Geological 

 Survey. Communicated by J. W. Hulke, F.R.S. During a 

 visit to Cromer in 1891 the author devoted much attention to 

 a search for Scandinavian boulders, and obtained three speci- 

 mens ; one (a violet felspar-porphyry) was from the shore, and 

 the other two were from the collection of Mr. Savin. The 

 first was considered to come from south-east Norway, and 

 indeed Mr. K. O. Bjorlykke, to whom it was submitted, 

 refers it to the environs of Christiania. The author considered 

 that the two specimens presented to him by Mr. Savin, who 

 had taken them out of Boulder Clay between Cromer and 

 Overstrand, were from Dalecarlia ; and these were submitted 

 to Mr. E. Svedmark, who compared one of them (a brown 

 felspar-hornblende-porphyry) with the Gronklitt porphyry in 

 the parish of Orsa, and declared that the other (a blackish 

 felsite-porphyry) might also be from Dalecarlia. This i)aper 

 was discussed by Mr. C. Reid, Mr. J. W. Divis, the Rev. P. 

 B. Brodie, Dr. Hicks, Mr. Marr, and the Chairman. 

 Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, December 19, 1892.— Sir Douglas Maclagan, 

 President, in the chair. — Dr. Hunter Stewart read a paper on 

 an extension of Kjeldahl's method of organic analysis, and de- 

 scribed an apparatus which he had devised for the estimation of 

 the amount of organic carbon present in water. — Prof. 

 Rutherford read a note by Dr. W. G. Aitchison Robertson on 

 the madder-staining of dentine. Rabbits were fed on madder 

 for some time and were then killed, the dentine being then 

 found to be stained. When other food was supplied for a time, 

 the process of feeding on madder being resumed afterwards, two 

 coloured layers were found in the dentine, with an intermediate 

 colourless layer. — Prof. C. G. Knott read a paper on recent 

 innovations in vector ihtory. He entered intoa critical exami- 

 nation of the anti-quaternionic altitudes taken up by Prof. 

 Willard Gibbs, Mr. Oliver Heaviside, Prof. Macfarlane, and 

 others. His chief arguments were (i) that the quaternion was 

 as fundamental a geometric conception as either its scalar or 

 its vector part — indeed more fundamental ; (2) that in the 

 development of his dyadic notation, Prof. Gibbs, being forced 

 to bring the quaternion in, logically condemned his own position ; 

 (3) that a really flexible vector analysis must be versorial, the 

 equations ij = k, jk = i, ki= j, &c., being from the geometrical 

 and physical point of view essentially rotational ; (4) that the 

 non-associative character of the vector-analysis, in which 

 '■..A l^'y vere assumeiltohe + i, rendered it totally unfit for 

 higher physical research ; (5) that this tinkering with the alge- 

 braic sign quite spoiled the real efficiency of the very beantiful 

 quaternion operator v— Prof. Gibbs, for example, being com- 

 pelled to introduce the (supposed) new functions of operation 

 Pot, New, Lap, Max, which in quaternions are the very simplest 

 of inverse functions of v, and are best expressed as such. 

 Dublin. 

 Royal Dublin Society, December 21, 1892.— Prof. A. C. 

 Haddon in the chair.— Prof. Sollas, F.R.S., read a paper on 

 pitchstone and andesite from tertiary dykes in Donegal. The 

 author found that a microscopical examination of some remark- 

 ably freshglassy rocks from Donegal revealed a close resemblance 

 between them and rocks of the same age in Arran. This helps 

 to confirm the supposed great extension of tertiary dykes through 

 the north-west of Ireland. Prof. Sollas next read a paper on the 

 variolite and associated igneous rocks of Rjundwood, co. 



NO. 12 12, VOL. 47] 



Wicklow. He described them as a complex of basic rocks, in- 

 cluding altered ophitic doJerite, spilite (variolite du Drac), and 

 spherulitic tachyiite (variolite de la Durance). In connection 

 with the epidotisation of the rock the author pointed to the 

 excessive fissuring which it has undergone ; and showed that 

 the formation of .epidote is attended with considerable diminu- 

 tion of vjlume, sufficient to account for the cracks. The forma- 

 tion of serpentine and chlorite is attended with expansion, and 

 chlorite can scarcely be formed without the simultaneous libera- 

 tion of a disproportionately large percentage of quartz. This 

 explains the common association of chlorite with the quartz of 

 quartz veins. — Sir Howard GrubS, F.R.S. , described a new 

 system of mounting for monster reflecting telescopes. — Mr. H. 

 H. Dixon read a paper on the germination of seedlings in the 

 absence of bacteria. Seeds, the outer coats of which were 

 sterilized, germinated in the absence of bacteria, and being kept 

 absolutely free from bacteria did not, after growth had ceased, 

 suffer the decay of death, but remained for more than twenty 

 months apparently unchanged. An apparatus for sterilising the 

 outer coats of the seeds and sowing them without the introduc- 

 tion of bacteria was also described. — A paper was communicated 

 by Prof. A. C. Haddon, and Miss A. M. Shackleton, describing 

 some new species of Actiniae from Torres Straits. 



Berlin. 



Meteorological Society, December 6. — Dr. Vettin, Presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — Prof. Assmann gave a detailed description 

 of the meteorographs set up in the " Urania-pillars." Each 

 pillar contains a thermograph, a barograph, and a hygrograph, 

 placed side by side in a metal case through which a rapid cur- 

 rent of air is kept up. The thermograph consists of a Bourdon 

 spring, filled with alcohol, whose movements are communicated 

 to an external recording-lever. The barograph is made of four 

 boxes joined together, and delicately balanced by a weight, whose 

 movements are similarly recorded externally. The hygrograph 

 consists of a bundle of hairs 2 m. in length. The above instru- 

 ments have continued to work well after several months' use. 

 Their chief defect is due to the hygroscopic properties of the 

 paper on which the three levers trace their record. The large 

 amount of material in the shape of meteorograms already col- 

 lected has revealed a number of interesting facts. Thus, for 

 instance, the temperatures recorded on two closely- adjacent 

 pillars may difler by i" or more not only on a warm summer 

 day, but also during the night of November 26, the coldest of 

 this year. In one case the air was found to be warmed by the 

 adjacent row of houses exposed to direct sunlight. In another 

 the radiation was observed to be greater opposite a gateway 

 than in the street. The very considerable local differences of 

 air-temperature recorded on closely-neighbDuring pillars could 

 scarcely have been ii priori expected. 



Physiological Society, Decem'ier 9, 1892.— Prof, du Bois 

 Reymond, President, in the chair. — Prof. Exner, of Vienna, gave 

 a mwwf'of his researches on the innervation of the cricothyroid 

 muscle in rabbits and dogs. In each he had found a branch from 

 the pharyngeal branch of the vagus distributed to this muscle, to- 

 gether with the superior laryngeal nerve, to which he has given 

 the name of median laryngeal nerve. 'Phe communication was 

 illustrated by an experimental demonstration. — Dr. Hansemann 

 stated that he had obtained photographs of microscopic objects, 

 which when placed in a stereoscope, presented an appearance 

 of solidity. They were produced by taking one photograph of 

 the object in focus for a given level, and then a second photo- 

 graph at a different level. These photographs united stereo- 

 scopically gave the impression of solidity. — Prof. Hilgard drew 

 attention to the remarkable fact that the most civilized races of an- 

 tiquity usually established themselves in dry districts. This he at- 

 tributed to the fact, borne out by numerous analyses of soils in 

 America, that in dry regions the earth is far richer in mineral 

 food-stuffs necessary to plant life than in wet regions where 

 these are largely washed out of the soil. Hence in dry regions 

 simple irrigation suffices to produce a luxuriant vegetable growth, 

 while on the other hand the soil of moist regions is very 

 rapidly exhausted. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, January 9.— M. de Lacaze-Duthiers 

 in the chair. — Drainage waters of cultivated lands, by M. P. P. 

 Deherain. An experimental investigation of the substances 

 found in water drained from various cultivations showed that all 

 the waters contained a fair proportion of nitrates. Even beet- 

 root, which not only utilizes nitrogen for the formation of its 



