43^ 



NATURE 



[July 31, 1919 



their professional duties having ended with the con- 

 clusion of the war. 



The Canadian Royal Society combines the features 

 of the French Academy and the British Association, 

 in accordance with the views of the founder, the late 

 Duke of Argyll, who, as Marquess of Lome, and 

 occupying the office of Governor-General at the time 

 (1882), originated the society. It includes French and 

 English Literary and Historical Sections (Sections L 

 and IL) and three scientific sections, Chemistry and 

 Physics (Section IIL), Geology and Mineralogy (Sec- 

 tion IV.), and the Biological Sciences (-Section V.), 

 and its fellows, about 150 in number, are able to 

 assemble in session not more frequently than once a 

 year, owing to the vast distances necessary to be 

 travelled to reach the capital of the Dominion. 



The serious duties of the meetings were relieved 

 by many social functions, the principal one being the 

 garden-^party at Government House, given by their 

 Excellencies the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, 

 on the afternoon of May 20. There was also a 

 largely attended public luncheon, in honour of the 

 society, on the following day. 



As many as 131 communications were presented to 

 the various sections, and of these 51 were chemical, 

 physical, and mathematical, and 32 were botanical 

 and zoological, but owing to the absence of the presi- 

 dents of Sections I. and V. the usual opening ad- 

 dresses were omitted. In Section II. Principal 

 Maurice Hutton, Toronto, £?ave a masterly disquisi- 

 tion entitled "Humour and Satire," with ancient and 

 modern illustrations from Aristophanes to Jane 

 Austen, Dickens, and H. G. Wells; and in Sec- 

 tion III. Prof. L. V. King, Montreal, spoke on "Out- 

 standing Problems of Modern Physics," and Prof. 

 L. W. Bailey, University of New Brunswick, the 

 Nestor of Canadian geology, addressed Section IV. 

 on "Acadian Palaeography." The president of the 

 societv (Mr. Lemieux) delivered an eloquent and 

 remarkable address in French at the first evening 

 session (on May 20) entitled " Le Canada, la 

 Guerre et Demain." The second evening address took 

 the form of a memorial lecture, viz. the "Sir John 

 Murray Memorial Address," and the council^ invited 

 one of the Dominion's most eminent biologists and 

 the leading authority on the resources of Canada's 

 seas. Prof. E. E. Prince, Commissioner of Fisheries, 

 Ottawa, to deliver it. The annual popular evening 

 address is always one of the attractive features of 

 Royal Society week in the capital, and, as the 

 generosity of an anonymous Scottish donor had pro- 

 vided for this special lecture, it proved to be a very 

 notable event. 



Prof. Prince appropriately chose as his subject 

 " Life in the Ocean : A Review of Recent Deep-sea 

 Researches," a subject which formed the late Sir John 

 Murrav's life-work. The spacious ballroom of the 

 Chateau Laurier was packed by a crowded audience, 

 and moving pictures of fish-life under the waves and 

 of whales and whaling, and exquisite coloured pro- 

 jection views of marine vertebrate and invertebrate 

 life, added greatlv to the interest. Prof. Prince 

 referred to the fact that Sir John Murray was a 

 Canadian, born in Ontario in 7841, and at the time 

 of his tragic death in Edinburgh was honorary vice- 

 president of the Canadian Roval Society. He spoke 

 of his own personal friendship, dating from student 

 days at St. Andrews, when Sir John Murray occa- 

 sionallv visited the ancient universitv. After detail- 

 inrt the main features of the world's oceanic areas, 

 their extent, profound depths, currents, salinities, etc.. 

 th«^ lecturer emphasised the existence of unsuspected 

 minute organic fotms. enormous in amount, in the 

 ocean's depths, and of organic detritus there, ultra- 

 microscopic in its character. As the late Prof. 

 NO. 2596, VOL. 103] 



Minchin declared, this invisible organic matter was 

 of supreme moment in maintaining life in the sea. 

 Dr. W. B. Carpenter fifty years ago had styled sea- 

 water "minute broth." 



The enormously abundant diatoms, infusorians, 

 copepods, and the like could not suffice, it is generally 

 admitted, for the nutrition of the incalculable hordes 

 of mid-water and deep-sea creatures in the sea. A 

 familiar sponge (Suberites), one ounce in weight, 

 required 22 milligrams of carbon, to provide which 

 nearly one and a half billions of such a diatom as 

 Skeletonema, or more than seven billions of Thalas- 

 siosira, would be required to be ingested daily. A 

 small copepod such as Calocalanus must capture and 

 digest daily 9,750,000,000 Thalassiosira every twenty- 

 four hours; and an oyster 5 in. long consumed, it 

 has been calculated, one-twelfth of a cubic inch of 

 solid food daily, and would need to filter eight or nine 

 gallons of water, or nearly two thousand times its 

 own bulk, to obtain that amount of nutriment. Dr. 

 Kishinouye has stated that the Japanese sardine 

 would require to wander nine miles through the sea 

 to secure the | gram of food constituting its daily 

 diet; for i gram of diatoms, foraminifera, copepods, 

 etc., usually occurs in 1000 litres of the water where 

 the schools of fish feed. 



Is there not some unsuspected source of abundant 

 nutriment available in the sea? In addition to the 

 plankton, with all its infinitely varied and copious life, 

 Lohmann has signalised the nannoplankton, w^hich 

 passes through the finest tow-nets, and can be secured 

 only by centrifuging small quantities of sea-water; 

 but there remains the " Demerson," that extremely 

 plenteous floating organic matter, invisible, dis- 

 integrating, probably largely moribund, derived from 

 the sinking clouds of planktonic forms which " rain 

 down," as Prof. Moseley expressed it, from the upper 

 waters to. the depths below. ' The " Demerson " finally 

 settles on the floor of the sea as a thin colloidal 

 stratum, as . Bessels found in Arctic waters, and 

 Hornell describes in Indian waters off the Malabar 

 coast. Though the "Demerson" recalls the dis- 

 credited Bathybius of Huxley, yet marine biologists 

 are being compelled to recognise it as the great source 

 of nutriment for innumerable Benthonic forms at all 

 depths, from the coast to the abysmal zones in the 

 oceans of the world. 



At the close of the address President Lemieux, in 

 thanking Prof. Prince for it, said that the science of 

 the deep sea demonstrated how much stranger truth is 

 even than fiction, and that Prof. Prince's long services 

 in connection with the valuable biological stations 

 of Canada, his wide experiences as a fishery expert in 

 Canada, as well as in Irish, Scottish, New Zealand, 

 and -Australian waters, entitled him to speak with 

 authority on fisheries and life in the sea generally. 



At the closing business meeting of the society on 

 the afternoon of May 22 the election of officers for 

 iqio-2n took place, and it was announced that _ Dr. 

 R. F. Ruttan. the distinguished professor of chemistn- 

 in McGill Universitv* Montreal, had been chosen as 

 the new president of the Royal Society. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Glasgow.— His Majesty the King has been pleased 

 to appoint Dr. George Gerald Henderson. F.R.S., to 

 the Regius chair of chemistrv in the L^niversity of 

 Glasgow. Prof.. Henderson has held the chair of 

 cheniistrv in the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, 

 which is affiliated to" the L'niversity, since iSq2. _ He 

 was formerly lecturer and demonstrator in chemistry 

 at the University and at the Queen Margaret College 



