March 30, 1893] 



NATURE 



527 



a simple mode of illumination for the microscope. — Surgeon V. 

 Gunson Thorpe's paper on the rotifera of China was read by 

 Prof. Bell. — Dr. G. M. Giles's paper on certain cystic worms 

 which simulate the appearances of tuberculosis was also read by 

 Prof. Bell.— Dr. R. G. Hebb said that he had never met with 

 any of the worms described in England. He had found 

 nodules in the lungs of sheep, and although unable to find the 

 worm, he had supposed it to be the cause of what he had found. 

 —Prof. Bell thought that what Dr. Giles stated in the begin- 

 ning of his paper was of considerable importance, because if 

 the large number of animals which were killed as being tuber- 

 culous were really not so, it might be possible to prevent their 

 destruction. There was, he imagined, a general dislike amongst 

 most persons — except such as were fond of high game — to eating 

 meat which swarmed with parasites of any kind ; for if it was 

 correct that the cattle in India which were reputed to be highly 

 tuberculous were not so, it was very important that the fact 

 should be widely made known. — The president said that he fully 

 agreed with Prof. Bell in his remarks. — Dr. A. C. Stokes's 

 paper on new brackish water infusoria from the United States 

 was taken as read. 



Linnean Society, March i6.— Prof, Stewart, President, 

 in the chair. — A curious freshwater alga, growing in a 

 perfectly spherical mass without any visible point of attach- 

 ment, and described as a condition of Cladophora, was 

 exhibited by Mr. A. W. Bennett, who stated that specimens 

 had been found in English and Welsh lakes, as well as in 

 Sweden, and that the peculiar spherical form of growth was 

 difficult to explain. Mr. G. R. Murray suggested that it might 

 be due to the action of a current, which would cause a con- 

 tinuous revolution of the mass. — Mr. R. I. Pocock exhibited a 

 singular nest, so called, of a myriopod received from Sierra 

 Leone, and formed of a clayey earth, which had become 

 hardened by exposure. It was suggested that it was not a nest 

 in the proper sense of the word, formed by the creature itself, 

 but rather a case fashioned by ants for the purpose of entomb- 

 ing their enemy. — Mr. G. F. Scott Elliot gave an interesting 

 account of the botanical results of the Sierra Leone Boundary 

 Commission, and of the collections made by him during five 

 months travelling. His remarks were criticised by Messrs. J. 

 G. Baker, C. B. Clarke, W. Carruthers, and Dr. Stapf, who 

 was present as a visitor. —Mr. J. H. Venstone described some 

 points in the anatomy of a mollusk {Melongona) from recent 

 dissections made by him, and exhibited several preparations in 

 support of his statements. Prof. G. B. Howes bore testimony 

 to the originality and value of the observations which in some 

 respects were at variance with the views of the most recent 

 writers on the subject. Messrs. G. R. Murray and Horace 

 Monckton offered some remarks on the similarity in certain 

 respects of the fauna and flora of the West Coast of Africa and 

 the East Coast of South America, with reference to the state- 

 ments made by Mr. Pocock and Mr. Scott Elliot. — The 

 meeting adjourned to April 6. 



Anthropological Institute, March 21. — Prof. A. Mac- 

 alister, F.R.S., President, in the chair. — Dr. Tylor exhibited a 

 collection of the rude stone implements of the Tasmanians, 

 showing them to belong to the palaeolithic or unground stage 

 of the implement-maker's art, below that found among pre- 

 historic times in Europe, and being on the whole the lowest 

 known in the world. Fragments or rough flakes of chert or 

 mudstone, never edged by grinding, but only by chipping on 

 one surface with another stone, and grasped in the hand with- 

 out any handle, served the simple purposes of notching trees 

 for climbing, cutting up game, and scraping spears and clubs. 

 The Tasmanians appear to have kept up this rudimentary art 

 in their remote corner of the world until the present century, 

 and their state of civilisation thus becomes a guide by which to 

 judge of that of the prehistoric drift and cave men, whose life 

 in England and France depended on similar though better im- 

 plements. The Tasmanians, though perhaps in arts the rudest 

 of savages, were at most only a stage below other savages, and 

 do not disclose any depths of brutality. The usual moral and 

 social rules prevailed among them ; their language was efficient 

 and even copious ; they had a well-marked religim in which 

 the spirits of ancestors were looked to for help in trouble, and 

 the echo was called the "talking shadow." Such facts make 

 it clear that neither antiquity nor savagery reaches to really 



primitive stages of human life, which belongs to a remoter 

 past. — A paper by Prof. Politis on burial customs in modern 

 Greece was read ; also a paper on the cave paintings of Aus- 

 tralia, by the Rev. John Mathew. 



Edinburgh. 



Royal Society, February 20.— The Hon. Lord Maclaren, 

 1 vice-president, in the chair. Mr. Malcolm Laurie read a paper 

 j on the anatomy of the Eurypterida:. Chelicerre exist in front of 

 the mouth mSlimonia and Eurypterus, thus making the number 

 of cephalothoracic appendages in these forms agree with that of 

 I the arachnida in general. The presence of an epiconite on the 

 ■ basal joint of the walking limbs is also an arachnid character. 

 The third to sixth free segments in Slimonia carry paired 

 I plate-like appendages, each of which appears to have borne one 

 j or more branchial lamellae. There are sternites covering the 

 whole ventral surface of each segment ; Sliinoiiia differing in 

 J this respect from Eurypterus, which, according to Schmidt, has 

 i no sternites on these segments. The suppression of the sternite 

 of the second free segment and the reduction of its appendage 

 to nothing but branchial lamellae is due to the enormous develop- 

 ment of the genital operculum which covers this region. This 

 I suppression of the second segment seems to point to a closer 

 I relation of these forms to the Pedipalpi, in which the same 

 [ thing occurs, than to the scorpion, in which the second segment 

 I and its appendage are well developed.— The Rev. Prof. Duns 

 I discussed the early history of some Scottish mammals and 

 ! birds.— Prof. Rutherford communicated a paper, by Dr. W. G. 

 Aitchison Robertson, on the digestion of sugar in health. 



March 6. —Mr. T. B. Sprague discussed a new algebra, by 

 means of which permutations may be transformed in a variety of 

 ways, and their properties investigated. In this algebra seven 

 symbols of operation are used, the multiplication table being — 



Prof. Tait read a note on the compressibility of liquids in con- 

 nection with their molecular pressure. 



March 20. — Dr. D.Gill, H.M. Astronomer at the Cape of Good 

 Hope.communicated a paper illustrated by photographs on recent 

 progress in celestial photography. The method recently used for 

 the determination of the sun's distance by observations of the 

 planet Victoria was also described. A number of separate series of 

 observations have been made — each series by itself being more 

 trustworthy than observations made during a transit of Venus. 

 The results indicate also that the present estimate of the mass 



1 of the moon is about one per cent, too large. — A paper was 

 communicated by Dr. Robert Munro on a remarkable glacier 



i lake, formed by a branch of the Hardanger-Jokul, near 

 Eidfiord, Norway. 



I Paris. 



I Academy of Sciences, March 20. — M. Loewy in the chair. 

 I — On the next solar eclipse, by M. J. Janssen. — On the pre- 

 paration of a variety of swelling graphite, by M. Henri 

 Moissan. M. Luzi has divided the varieties of graphite into 

 two classes, according to their behaviour on treating with a 

 little nitric acid and calcining. Those which swell up he calls 

 graphites, and those which do not graphitites. The varieties 

 i produced ordinarily in the electric arc and by solution in iron 

 I do not swell. It can, however, be obtained in the first condi- 

 ! tion by suddenly cooling the casting in water, when the swell- 

 j ing graphite will be found in the more interior portions. The 

 I best way of preparing it is by means of molten platinum. About 

 ' 200 gr. of platinum are fused in a carbon crucible placed in the elec- 



NO. 1222, VOL. 47] 



