June 19, 1919] 



NATURE 



319 



United States and in Germany. In the United States 

 •here are lo students at universities and technical 

 institutions per 10,000 of population, in Germany 14, 

 and in the United Kingdom only 6; Scotland, 

 however, is more favourably situated, the value 

 being 17. According to >Sir J. J. Thomson's 

 committee, the total annual output of first and 

 second class honours men in science and engineering 

 from all the universities in this country is little 

 more than 500. The number of men students enter- 

 ing universities and colleges of England and Wales 

 during 19 13-14 was about 4400, about half this 

 number being from public schools. Of youths leaving 

 public schools about 25-30 per cent, pass on to uni- 

 versities ; of boys leaving State-aided schools at ages 

 over sixteen years, probably only 10 per cent. 

 Whereas the income from endowments of the eighteen 

 State-aided universities and colleges of England and 

 Wales amounts to about ioo,oooi.,a third of the income 

 being from Parliamentary grants, the total gifts and 

 •endowments of universities and colleges in the United 

 States in a single year, 1913-14 (excluding grants from 

 States, the Federal Government, or municipalities) 

 was equivalent to an income exceeding 2oo,oooZ. The 

 bequests to universities and colleges in the United 

 Kingdom in the same year amounted to, roughly, 

 5 per cent, of the American endowments, i.e. to about 

 the same value as the income derived. The Journal 

 also contains the report of the organising committee 

 of the British Scientific Products Exhibition and a 

 list of donors. The success of the 19 18 exhibition is 

 regarded as of hopeful augury for the corresponding 

 exhibition arranged to take place this year. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Geological Society, June 4. — Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, 

 president, in the chair. — Dr. A. S. Woodward : The 

 dentition of the Petalodont shark, Climaxodus, The 

 author describes the nearly complete dentition of a 

 new species of Climaxodus from the Calciferous 

 Sandstone of Calderside, near East Kilbride (Lanark- 

 shire), now in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edin- 

 burgh. Climaxodus and Janassa are shown to be 

 two distinct genera. These Petalodonts are especially 

 noteworthy among the Elasmobranchii, because during 

 the greater pa t of the life of each individual there 

 cannot have been more than six or eight teeth in 

 succession, a condition remarkably different from that 

 in all ordinary sharks and skates, in which the suc- 

 cessional teeth are always very numerous and rapidly 

 replaced. The same limited tooth-succession is to be 

 observed in the Carboniferous Cochliodontidse, and 

 perhaps also in the contemporaneous Psammodontidae. 

 — F. Debenham : A new theory of transportation by 

 ice : the raised marine muds of South Victoria Land 

 (Antarctica). A series of deposits of marine muds are 

 found on the surface of floating "land-ice" in the 

 deep bays of Ross Sea (Antarctica). Similar deposits 

 are also found on land up to. a height of 200 ft., in 

 some cases on old ice, in other cases on moraine. 

 The deposits are briefly described, and former theories 

 concerning them are discussed. A new theory is put 

 forward, prefaced by an account of the nature of the 

 typical ice-sheet which bears them. The upper sur- 



»i face of the sheet is known to suffer a net annual 

 I decrease, and evidence is given to show that the lower 

 ' surface has a net increase by freezing from below. 

 The theorv is that the sheet will freeze to the bottom 

 in severe "seasons, and enclose portions of the sea- 

 floor. Owing to the method of growth of the sheet 

 bv increments from below, the enclosed portions will 

 ultimatclv appear on the surface, thus being raised 

 vertically as well as translated horizontally. 

 NO. 2590, VOL. 103] 



Linnean Society, June 5.— Dr. A. Smith Woodward, 

 president, in the chair. — H. N. Dixon; Mosses from 

 Deception Island. The mosses were collected on 

 Deception Island, South Shetlands, by Mr. James C. 

 Robins. Deception Island is in lat. 63° S., long. 

 60° 30' W., closely adjoining the Antarctic continent 

 (Graham Land). It has been very little visited, and 

 until the present century only two plants — an unnamed 

 moss and a lichen — had been observed. Two mosses 

 were collected there in the second French Antarctic 

 Expedition (1908-10) by MM. Gain and Gourdon. 

 The present collection consists of eight species, one 

 known from most of the colder regions of the world, 

 one hitherto recorded only from the South Orkneys, 

 three of general Antarctic distribution, two hitherto 

 known only from the Antarctic continent, and one new- 

 species. The interior of the island is a vast crater, 

 into which the sea has irrupted, and is about five 

 miles across. Connected with this is a small lagoon, 

 some 500 vards in diameter; Mr. Robins describes it 

 as giving no bottom at 200 fathoms, and as fed by 

 warm or hot springs from the volcano. The whole 

 crater w^ould seem, in the middle of extreme glacial 

 surroundings, to afford an almost unique example of 

 an isolated biological area, and would appear to 

 deserve a careful survey as regards its fauna and 

 flora, especiallv in so far as concerns that of the 

 warm sorings ' and the lagoon fed by these.— Miss 

 Alwen M. Evans : The structure and occurrence of 

 maxillulae in the orders of insects. This paper em- 

 bodies the results of the author's investigation into 

 the structure and distribution amongst insect orders 

 of those vestigial mouth-parts which Hansen (1903) 

 homologised with the maxillulae of Crustacea. In it 

 is included, as completely as space w^ill allow, what 

 has hitherto been written' as to the presence and form 

 of these structures of the Insecta, since Hansen's 

 theorv was put forward.— E. E. Unwin : Notes upon 

 the reproduction of Asellus aqtiaiicus. The intimate 

 relationship between the moulting of the cuticle and 

 the reproductive processes is clearly shown, and the 

 details of the marriage-clasp, copulation, release of 

 the oostegites, egcf-laving, and fertilisation are 

 described. The appendages associated with these 

 operations are also described. The aeration of^ the 

 eggs in the brood-oouch is effected by a periodic 

 movement of the oostegites and by the flapping action 

 of the maxilUpedes. The eggs are prevente^ from 

 escaping at the anterior end of the pouch by the posi- 

 tion and movement of the first pair of legs, and by a 

 special coxal lobe carried by the maxillinedes. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, May 26.— M. L6on Guignard 

 in the chair.— G. Bigourdan ; The observatory of the 

 H6tel de Clunv, afterwards the Nautical Observatory. 

 _H Douvilli f Concerning a memoir of J. de Lap- 

 parent on the breccias 'of the neighbourhood of 

 Hendaye —P. Termier and G. Friedel : The dihrts of 

 strata, or "Klippes," of the Alais plain; fragments 

 of mvlonitic Urgonian limestone placed on the OJigo- 

 cene — H. de Chardonnet : An application of the eight- 

 hour day. An account of the successful introduction 

 of the eight-hour dav in Hungary in the artificial silk 

 industry. The machines are run continuously, women 

 taking 'two shifts during the day, and men the shift 

 from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.— L. E. J. Brouwer : The in- 

 variant points of the topological transformations ot 

 surfaces.— F. Vlis : Remarks on the serial constitu- 

 tion of absorption spectra. Several absorption spectra 

 can be represented by the r.elation 



A = A„+An4-BM*+Cn', 

 where n is an integer. Examples are given for the 

 absorption spectra of potassium permanganate, 



