l64 



NATURE 



[August ii, 1892 



by M. Marillier. The question asked in England had been, 

 "Have you ever, while in good health, and believing yourself 

 to be awake, seen the figure of a person or heard a voice which 

 was not in your view referable to any external cause?" In 

 England 17,000 answers had been obtained, and about I in 10 

 persons (taken at random) who had answered had had some 

 such hallucination in their lives. The great majority of these 

 hallucinations consisted of realistic appearances of living men, a 

 small minority of dead persons, and a still smaller group of gro- 

 tesque objects. A remarkable class was that of hallucinations 

 of several persons at one time — collective hallucinations ; and a 

 still more remarkable class was of those coincidental with some 

 distant event unknown to the percipient, such as the death of the 

 person whose figure appeared. The President came to the con- 

 clusion that after careful allowance for all sources of error, the 

 probability against these coincidences being chance was enor- 

 mous, and if the hypothesis that they were not casual was to be 

 accepted, the assumption of the inaccuracy of the infor- 

 mants and inquirers must be strained to an extreme pitch. 

 M. Marillier explained that it had been very difficult to get 

 any large number of answers in France because of the dislike 

 shown by the French to answer any ^psychological questions 

 about themselves. 



On Thursday morning, in Section A, Dr. Donaldson gave an 

 interesting account of the minute investigation of the brain of 

 Laura Bridgeman, the well-known blind deaf mute, who died 

 in 1889 in Boston. There was depression of the motor speech 

 centre, with slender sensory nerves and somewhat thin cortex 

 over the areas of the defective senses. In Section B Dr. Berillon 

 raised a lively debate by describing the good effects he had 

 brought about by hypnotism in the education of about 250 

 children, who were suffering from many childish discomforts, 

 such as night-terrors, insomnia, somnambulism, or faults, such as 

 kleptomania, idleness, cowardice, &c. After this Mrs. H. 

 Sidgwick gave a summary of some experiments in thought- 

 transference she had made, with the help of Miss A. Johnson 

 and Mr. G. A. Smith as hypnotiser. By thought-transference 

 she meant the communication from one person whom they called 

 the agent to another, whom they called the percipient, otherwise 

 than through the recognized channels of sense. The successful 

 percipients were seven in number, and had generally been 

 liypnotised. They had succeeded in transferring numbers, 

 mental pictures, i.e. mental pictures in the agent's mind, and 

 induced hallucinations given by verbal suggestion to one hypnotic 

 subject, and transferred by him to another. In the total number 

 of experiments the number of failures was much larger than of 

 successes, but as the antecedent probability could in most cases 

 be accurately determined, the proportion of successes was 

 amply sufficient to show that the result was not due to chance. 

 The many precautions necessary to such experiments were 

 described in detail. One percipient succeeded in the experi- 

 ments with numbers when divided from the agent by a closed 

 door at a distance of about 17 feet. Attention was called to 

 the great variability of results with the same percipients and 

 agents for which they had not been able to discover any reason. 

 An account was added of some experiments in producing local 

 anassthesia under conditions apparently excluding all suggestion 

 other than mental. The President wished to remark that he 

 thought it important in such experiments that all the failures 

 should be recorded as well as the successes. In the afternoon, 

 after papers by Dr. Lightnar Witmer, Dr. VVallaschek, and 

 Prof, von Tschisch, the President put several questions to the 

 vote as to matters of future organization, and it was decided to 

 hold the next international Congress in Munich in 1896, with 

 Prof. Stumpf as President and Baron von Schrenck as secretary. 

 A suggestion was also made that there should be an extraordin- 

 ary meeting in America next year, and a small American 

 committee was appointed to consider this. After a hearty vote 

 of thanks to the President and Secretaries, and a brief reply, 

 the Congress was dissolved. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, August i. — M. de Lacaze-Duthiers 

 in the chair. — On boron pentasulphide, by M. Moissan. If the 

 tri -iodide of boron, instead of being treated with sulphur in the 

 ■dry way at a low red heat, as in the preparation of boron tri- 

 sulphide, be mixed with sulphur and dissolved in carbon bisul- 

 phide at the ordinary temperature, boron pentasulphide is ob- 



NO. I189, VOL. 46] 



tained. It fuses at 390°, and does not pass through the pasty 

 state. In contact with water it forms boric acid, sulphuretted 

 hydrogen, and a precipitate of sulphur. Mercury and silver 

 reduce it to the trisulphide, forming metallic sulphides. Heated 

 to fusion in a vacuum it decomposes into sulphur and the tri- 

 sulphide. Its density is i'85. It is very difficult to obtain free 

 from iodine, but in all the preparations the ratio between the 

 boron and the sulphur has indicated the formula BjSo. — On the 

 stripped plants of autumn, and their utilization as green manure, 

 by M. P. P. Deherain. It has been found that by 

 planting the ground with vetch or mustard, and digging 

 it in during the autumn, the amount of nitrogen 

 retained in the soil was nearly doubled. — Remarks on alimenta- 

 tion in the Ophidia, by M. Leon Vaillant. — A report on the 

 great anaconda of Central America kept in the reptile menagerie. 

 Since 1885 the snake has eaten on the average five times per 

 annum, its nourishment consisting of goafs, three rabbits, and 

 one goose. The interval between two meals was in one instance 

 204 days. — On symmetric tetrahedral curves, by M. Alphonse 

 Dumoulin. — On .Stokes' law, its verification, and interpretation, 

 by M. G. Salet. — A spectrum, given by a spectroscope with 

 quartz prisms, is received on the fluorescent substance contained 

 in a Soret eye-piece. It is then projected transversally on to the 

 slit of a second spectroscope. Through this the diagonal spec- 

 trum of Stokes' classical experiment is seen with perfect defini- 

 tion, no ray exceeding the theoretical limit. The law thus 

 verified can also be • deduced from thermodynamic con- 

 siderations. According to Stokes' law, "the rays emitted 

 by a fluorescent substance always have a smaller refrangibility 

 than the exciting rays." If it were possible to transform yellow 

 into violet light by fluorescence, many chemical reactions 

 would become possible which only occur at the higher tem- 

 perature at which violet appears in the spectrum. This would 

 be equivalent to the passage of heat from a colder 

 to a hotter body, in contradiction to the second law of thermo- 

 dynamics. — Constitution of pyrogallol, by M. de Forcrand. — 

 On Cascarine, by M. Leprince. — Physiological examination of 

 four cyclists after a run of 397 km., by MM. Chibret et Huguet. 

 This distance, which was covered by the youngest of the party, 

 an Englishman of 18, in seventeen hours, was that between 

 Paris and Clermont-Ferrand. It was found that the tempera- 

 ture was at the finish rather below than above the normal ; that 

 the coefficient of utilization of urinary nitrogen varied inversely 

 as the degree of fatigue, and that therefore a decided waste of 

 nitrogen is a concomitant of excessive fatigue. The nutriment 

 taken during the course consisted of much alcohol, champagne, 

 beef-tea, and Kola solution in the case of the Englishman. He 

 and the next in speed both took Kola. The winner was 

 extremely fatigued at the finish ; the next man, a Frenchman of 

 28, not at all. His pulse was beating at 60, that of the former 

 at 84. The coefficients of utilization of nitrogen were 76*32 

 and 58 "27 per cent, respectively. — On the properties of the 

 vapours of formol or formic aldehyde, by MM. F. Berlioz and 

 A. Trillat.— Subcutaneous grafting of the pancreas : its im- 

 portance in the study of pancreatic diabetes, by M. E. 

 Hedon. — On the habits of Clinus argentatus Cuv. and Val., by 

 M. Frederic Guitel.— On a Permian Alga, with its structure pre- 

 served, found in the boghead of Autun : Pila Bihractensis, by 

 MM. C. Eg. Bertrand and B. Renault.— The chalk of Chartres, 

 by M. A. de Grossouvre. 



CONTENTS. PAGE 



The British Association 341 



Section D— Biology.— Opening Address by Prof. 

 William Rutherford, M.D., F.R.S,, President 



of the Section 342 



Section E— Geography.— Opening Address by Prof. 

 James Geikie, LL.D., D.C.L.,F.R.SS.L. & E., 



F.G.S., President of the Section 34^ 



Section G— Mechanical Science.— Opening Address 

 byW.CawthorneUnwin,F.R.S.,M.Inst.C.E., 



President of the Section 355 



Notes 361 



Our Astronomical Column: — 



Natal Observatory 3^2 



Geodetic Survey of South Africa 302 



The International Congress of Experimental 



Psychology 3^2 



Societies and Academies 3"4 



