June 28, 19 17] 



NATURE 



359 



current rapidly diminishes, decomposing the liquid and 

 doing chemical work. The author made the following 

 statements : — (i) The platinum cathodes disintegrate 

 and a colloidal solution of platinum is formed. (2) 

 The cathode on the negative side of the spark-gap 

 generally disintegrates to the greatest extent ; the next 

 cathode disintegrates less, and so on, the least dis- 

 integration occurring in the cell at the positive side 

 of the spark-gap. (3) The cathodes develop, to the 

 naked eye, an appearance as if they were covered 

 with platinum black. Certain plates examined under 

 the microscope seemed covered with numerous craters. 

 (4) The production of gas does not appear to be the 

 same in each of the electrolytic cells in series ; some- 

 times no gas at all appears to be evolved from the 

 most negative cathode. (5) The rate of disintegration 

 of a cathode appears to be small when the cathode is 

 first placed in the sulphuric acid, and appears to in- 

 crease to a maximum in course of time. (6) One 

 specimen of platinum appears to behave differently 

 from another. 



Royal Meteorological Society, June 20. — Major H. G. 

 Lyons, president, in the chair.- — C. E. P. Brooks : The 

 reduction of temperature observations to mean of 

 twenty-four hours, and the elucidation of the diurnal 

 variation in the continent of Africa. Mean tempyera- 

 tures obtained from various combinations of observa- 

 tions should be reduced to true mean or mean of 

 twenty-four hours to make them comparable. This 

 is generally done by interpolation, but interpolation is 

 not possible in Africa. An alternative method is given 

 by representing the diurnal variation of temperature 

 by means of the first two terms of a Fourier series — 

 T?i==a„ + a, sin(H+A,)+a, sin(2H+A,). This gives 

 six variables, and a„ can be found if we have three 

 observations a day and two of the constants, a^ and 

 O2 can be calculated from mean maximum minus mean 

 minimum, and the reduction of various combinations 

 of hours to true mean is discussed on these principles, 

 and the connection of the various constants with 

 physical factors is also discussed. — F. J. W. Whipple : 

 Autographic records of the air- wave from the East 

 London explosion, January 19, 1917. The Records 

 which were made use of in this investigation were of 

 two kinds, those from ordinary barographs and those 

 from the recorders used for indicating the pressure in 

 gas mains. The gas engineer measures the difference 

 between the pressure in his mains and the pressure 

 of the air so that his instruments show sudden changes 

 in air-pressure, as well as the barographs, and on a 

 much more open scale. As a large number of records 

 were available in the neighbourhood of London, it 

 was possible to map in some detail thp intensity of the 

 air-wave from the East London explosion. .\ measur- 

 able disturbance was shown as far to the north-west 

 as Enfield, and as far south as Whyteleafe. but the 

 range to the north-east was very restricted. — R. C. 

 Mossman : Some aspects of the cold period, December. 

 1916, to April. 1917. In the course of his remarks the 

 author said that the mean temperature of the British 

 Isles during the period under notice, taking the mean of 

 the twelve divisions used in the Monthly Weather Re- 

 ports of the Meteorological Ofl^ce, was' i-q° C. below 

 the normal, the extremes ranging from -28° C. at Bel- 

 voir Castle, in Leicestershire, and —27° at Newquay, to 

 -0-5° at Castle Bay, in the Hebrides. The cold,' ex- 

 cept in December, was general over Western Europe, 

 the^mean temperature of Sweden being 1-9°, of Holland 

 ^ u-1 ^"^ **^ Norway 1-5° below the average, 

 whilst as far south as Gibraltar the mean 

 was M under the averac^e. It was show-n 

 that when the eastern portions of the British 

 Isles had a mean temperature below the normal in 

 NO. 2487, VOL. 99] 



each month from December to April, an event that had 

 only occurred on five occasions in the last century and 

 a half, there was then a pronounced tendency for the 

 depression of temperature to continue without inter- 

 ruption until the end of the year. The only exception 

 occurred in 1808, when a warm p>eriod covering the 

 four months, May to August, was sandwiched between 

 two cold spells. The frequent absence of historic 

 frosts during long periods of uniform cold over the 

 British Isles was also referred to. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, May 21. — Dr. J. Home, president, in 

 the chair.— Capt. Miller and Dr. H. Rainy: Observa- 

 tions on the blood in gas poisoning. From a study of 

 fifty cases, they found that in all cases of any degree 

 of severity there was a change in the relative propor- 

 tions of the different kinds of white-blood corpuscle, 

 the lymphocytes being proportionately much increased. 

 This increase in anv marked case is sufficiently strik- 

 ing to be of some importance when the medical ofncer 

 is in doubt as to the trustworthiness to be placed upon 

 the statements of men complaining of being gassed. 

 The change is one which develops early, probably 

 within a month of the gassing, and continues for a 

 long time. It appears to be independent of the kind 

 of gas, and is shown by patients exhibiting many 

 varieties of symptoms. It is not clear what the change 

 is due to ; but it is probable that chronic inflammatory 

 change in respiratory arid gastric mucous membranes 

 is at least a factor.-^H. M. Steven : The Chermes of 

 spruce and larch and their relation to forestry-. For 

 the development of the Chermes group of aphids two 

 hosts are normally required and a period of two years. 

 The one host is a species of spruce, and the other rnay 

 be a species of larch, pine, or silver fir. A description 

 was given of the biologs- of the species of the genera 

 Chermes and Cnaphalodes, which occur on larch and 

 spruce, and it was shown that there were separate and 

 independent cycles on spruce' only. The cumulative 

 damage done on larch is frequently very severe. Ex- 

 periments on the fumigation of coniferous nursery 

 stock were now being carried out, and it was hoped 

 to ensure that trees planted out on an area would be 

 free from infection, and thus the further spread of the 

 Chermes would be checked.— F. L. Hitchcock : The 

 square root of a linear vector function. The purpose 

 of this paper was to examine and classify the various 

 cases in which a solution could be obtained of the 

 functional equation first studied by Tait, namely, 

 f^ ■= ^, where ^/x' is a given linear vector function and 

 f is to be found. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, June 11. — M. .\. d'Arsonval in 

 the chair. — A. Carnot : Ammonio-cobaltic molybdate, 

 tungstate, and vanadate. The estimation and separa- 

 tion of cobalt. — C. E. Guillanme : Changes in the ex- 

 pansion of the alloys of iron and nickel under the 

 action of various thermal and mechanical treatments. 

 An account of the changes in the expansion of invar 

 by varying thermal and mechanical treatment has 

 been published already. The present paper gives re- 

 sults obtained with other nickel-iron allovs, containing 

 from 275 to 69 per cent, of nickel. t—G. Charpy and M. 

 Godchot : The conditions of formation of coke. The 

 quality of the coke in these experiments was defined 

 bv the resistance to compression, expressed in kilo- 

 grams per square cm., and exact details are given of 

 the method of preparihg the test cylinders. The influ- 

 ence of temperature of coking on the strength of the 

 coke was ver>' marked. — M. Leclainche was elected a 

 member of the section of rural economy in succession 

 to the late M. A. Chauveau. — G. Julia : Indeterminate 



