134 



NA TURE 



[December 12, 1895 



manufactures, and particulars of the scheme under which the 

 award is made may be had on application to the Honorary 

 Secretary, at the head office of the Institute, Gresham College, 

 Basinghall Street, E.C. The results of the researches by Dr. 

 Martin O. Forster, the Salters' Research Fellow for the current 

 year, at the Institute's Central Technical College, were com- 

 municated to the Chemical Society at its last meeting. 



A NUMBER of the former students of Prof. Bonney's Geolog- 

 ical Classes at the University of Cambridge, and at University 

 College, London, have united to present him with his portrait 

 as a memento of their personal esteem, and in recognition of his 

 labours among them, and of his services to geological science. 

 The portrait will be presented to Prof. Bonney on Monday, 

 December i6, at 3.30 p.m., at University College, Gower 

 Street. The work has been executed by Mr. Trevor Haddon, 

 of the Abbey Studio, 18 Great George Street, Westminster, 

 where it will be on view on Friday and Saturday, December 13 

 and 14, from 10 to 4. A platinotype reproduction of the picture 

 has been prepared under the supervision of the artist, who will 

 be glad to afford further information. 



The following are among the lecture arrangements at the 

 Royal Institution before Easter :— Pi of. J. G. McKendrick, six 

 lectures (adapted to a juvenile auditory), on sound, hearing and 

 speech ; Prof. Charles Stewart, eleven lectures on the external 

 covering of plants and animals : its structure and functions ; 

 Prof. H. Marshall Ward, three lectures on some aspects of modern 

 botany ; Lord Rayleigh, six lectures on light. The Friday even- 

 ing meetings will begin on January 17, when a discourse will be 

 given by Lord Rayleigh, on more about argon ; succeeding dis- 

 courses will probably be given by Prof. Burdon Sanderson, 

 Mr. W. S. Lilly, Dr. John Murray, Mr. J. J. Armistead, Dr. 

 Edward Frankland, Mr. A. R. Binnie, Mr. Sidney Lee, Prof. 

 T. R. Eraser, Prof. Dewar, and others. 



The Government of India has resolved to establish an im- 

 perial bacteriological laboratory at Agra, under the directorship 

 of Prof. Hankin, and an imperial chemical laboratory in Cal- 

 cutta. According to the British Medical Journal, health officers 

 are to have a six months' training in bacteriology ; special 

 diplomas, after careful training in hygiene, are to be granted 

 by the colleges, and 1900 municipalities will be expected to 

 appoint trained men for sanitary work. To make the scheme 

 complete, further laboratories will probably be organised on a 

 smaller scale in each of the great Indian presidencies, and 

 arrangements will be made for giving six months' training of 

 medical officers in the service. The scheme, when completed 

 in details and in course of time, will give to India a perfect 

 sanitary organisation and service. 



The fireball of November 22, whiph formed the subject of- 

 letters in NAruRE of November 28 and December 5, attracted 

 the attention of a large number of observers. Mr. W. B. Tripp, 

 writing from Isleworth, says the meteor was observed there at 

 about 6.56 p.m. Mr. J. H. A. Jenner noted the spectacle at 

 Lewes at the same time, and remarked that the trail was visible 

 ■for two or three minutes, and remained quite straight until it 

 disappeared. He adds ; " The path of the meteor was along 

 the eastern sky from south to north, following a line from about 

 the centre of the constellation Perseus towards o Ursa Major. 

 The colour of the ball itself was reddish, and the motion seems 

 to have been comparatively slow." This meteor was seen also 

 at Chichester and Dover. At the latter place, the time noted by 

 Mr.W. H. Pendlebury was 6.53 p.m., and the light emitted was 



d to have been "sufficiently brilliant to throw the electric 



ht into shadow, while the glow remained visible for between 

 one to two seconds." 



From a letter addressed to Mr. R. H. Scott, by Dr. J. Hann, 

 are glad to learn that the Austrian expedition for the 

 NO. 1363, VOL. 53] 



Society's exploration of the Red Sea has succeeded in es- 

 tablishing meteorological stations at Jedda, Kosseir, and 

 Brothers Islands, about forty miles off the coast of Upper 

 Egypt, and has provided them with self-recording barometers. 

 At the latter station the observer is a Norwegian, in charge of 

 the lighthouse. It is hoped that the observations will be con- 

 tinued for at least two years, and will furnish an important con- 

 tribution to the meteorology of the district. Observations 

 have been made at the Dutch Consulate at Jedda for some years, 

 and by the Italians at Massowa, but, generally speaking, 

 observations at land stations in those parts are scarce. The 

 expedition will investigate the southern parts of the Red Sea, 

 between Jedda and Massowa, during the winter months, and we 

 learn that the zoological collections have up to the present time 

 been very satisfactory. 



Zoologists will be glad to note that the editor and publisher 

 of the Zoologischer Auzeiger have recently announced the steps 

 which they are prepared to take in conjunction with Dr. Havi- 

 land Field towards a reform of existing bibliographical methods. 

 With the new year the Zoologischer Anzeiger will be to some 

 extent remodelled. It will retain its present mode of publica- 

 tion in approximately fortnightly numbers, as well as its division 

 into two sections, independently paged, one dealing with 

 scientific communications, and the other with current literature. 

 But complete volumes of the Anzeiger will no longer take the 

 form of annuals. They will be determined simply by bulk : 

 forty sheets of " Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen " and forty 

 sheets of "Litteratur" will together compose a volume. The 

 " Litteratur " section, moreover, will be obtainable in three 

 different forms : (i) the ordinary edition, (2) an edition printed 

 on one side of the paper only, and (3) a ticket-edition, suitable 

 for the formation of card-catalogues. The two first editions of 

 this " Bibliographia Zoologica" will be issued from the office of 

 the Zoologischer Anzeiger in Leipzig, but the ticket-edition will 

 be exclusively issued from the office of Dr. Field's International 

 Bibliographical Bureau in Ziirich. This combination of Dr. 

 Field's and Prof Carus's forces should prove of great service to 

 students of every branch of zoological literature, which in these 

 latter days has attained such enormous dimensions. 



It is now nearly twenty years since the brilliant, if brief, 

 career of Bathybitcs was extinguished by the discovery that this 

 primordial organism was in fact no organism, but a colloid pre- 

 cipitate of calcium sulphate produced by the action of alcohol on 

 sea- water. Ten years later, however, Bathybius, or its next of kin, 

 seemed to come to life again in the form of a remarkable protozoon 

 parasite discovered by M. Moniez in the body cavity of certain 

 small fresh-water Crustaceans (Ostracoda and Cladocera); and 

 named by its discoverer Schizogenes parasiticus. This creature 

 was described as an irregularly shaped disc of homogeneous, 

 slightly refractile protoplasm, which showed no differentiation 

 into zones and contained no nucleus, no contractile vacuole, 

 and no granule of any kind. It was stated to exhibit a certain 

 power of movement, and to reproduce itself by fission or con- 

 striction. It would appear, however, that Schizogenes is not to 

 escape the fate of its more illustrious predecessor. Dr. G. W. 

 Miiller, well known by his monograph on Ostracoda in the 

 Naples series, has found that the Schizogenes of the Ostracoda is 

 no organism, but the viscid chitinous secretion of the so-called 

 shell-gland. {Zool. Anz., No. 486.) The secretion shows the 

 different shapes and movements characteristic of Schizogenes 

 owing to the absorption of water. Schizogenes can, in fact, be 

 created at will by compressing the fresh shell-gland of an Ostra- 

 code in water beneath a cover-slip. 



It has been shown by several investigators that luminous 

 vibrations of short wave-length are capable of producing an 

 inflammation of the skin. It is, therefore, easy to understand 



