December 12, 



895] 



NATURE 



'43 



•which appeared to constitute a representative series, and found 

 that, so far as the species on his lists were concerned, it was an 

 invariable rule that in the Amphisbienidae the right lung was the 

 smaller, and usually rudimentary or absent, while in all other 

 cases of inequality it was the left lung which was the smaller. — 

 Mr. W. Saville Kent read some observations on the frilled lizard 

 (■Chlantydosatirus kittgi) of Western Australia. After ilescribing 

 the peculiarities of this reptile, Mr. Saville Kent stated that he 

 was inclined to regard it, if not as a surviving representative of 

 the Dinosaurian reptilia, as, at any rate, a most interesting and 

 anomalous Jacertilian type that inherited its characteristic bipedal 

 method of progression from that extinct group. Mr. .Saville 

 Kent's paper was copiously illustrated by photographs taken by 

 him from life of Chlamydosaurus in its bipedal running and 

 other characteristic attitudes, and also by specimens which had 

 been mounted in strict accordance with these photographs. — 

 Two communications were read from Dr. A. G. Butler, on 

 a small collection of butterflies made by Consul Alfred Sharpe 

 at Zomba, British Central Africa, and on a collection of Lepi- 

 doptera recently collected in Eastern Central Africa by Mr. 

 G. F. Scott Elliot. — A communication was read from Mr. G. S. 

 West, on the buccal glands and teeth of certain poisonous snakes. 

 The author showed that in the Opisthoglyphous snakes the 

 poison-gland is very variable both in form and extent, and that 

 its duct opens into a cavity formed by muscular folds surround- 

 ing the grooved tooth. This opening is always towards the 

 outer side of the grooved tooth, and situated either at its base 

 or but a short distance from it, and the parts were shown to be 

 so related that the loss of the tooth does not cause any injury to 

 the duct. The reserve teeth were shown to be in no way con- 

 nected with the duct until called uj^on to replace teeth that had 

 been lost. The epithelium of the distal portion of the duct was 

 shown to be of a secretory nature, the cells being mucus-secret- 

 ing, similar to those forming the lining epithelium of the mouth. 

 In the HydrophiiiKc the poison-gland was shown to be more or 

 less free from the superior labial, and to consist of a large 

 number of longitudinally-disposed tubules converging anteriorly 

 towards a central poison-duct. There were two large poison- 

 fangs situated almost side by side at the anterior extremity of 

 the maxilla. The duct when approaching the region of the 

 taeth became slightly sinuous and suddenly enlarged, enclosing a 

 cavity into which there projected two muscular cushions, one in 

 front of the base of each tooth, and it was through the vertical 

 slit between these that the poisonous secreiion passed from the 

 duct to the grooves of the poison-teeth.— A communication was 

 read from Mr. William H. Ashmead, containing a report upon 

 the parasitic Hymenoptera of the Island of Grenada, comprising 

 the families Cynipida;, Ichneumonida;, Braconid?e, and Procto- 

 trypidre. This paper enumerated as occurring in Grenada 183 

 speciesof the families named in the title, and described 128 of 

 them as new. Of those previously known the majority had been 

 recently described by Mr. Ashmead as found in the neighbour- 

 ing island of St. Vincent. The Cynipidre were all parasitic 

 forms, there being apparently a total lack of any gall-making 

 forms of the family in the island. 



Geological Society, November 20. — Dr. Henry Woodward, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — The following communications 

 were read : — " Additional Notes on the Tarns of Lakeland," by 

 J. E. Marr, P\R. S. This paper was supplementary to one by 

 the author published in the Q. /. G. S., vol. li. (1895). It 

 contained additional notes on Wateredbath Tarn, described 

 Hard Tarn on Ilelvellyn, a pond of which the outlet had 

 gradually been diverted from a course over screes to one over 

 solid roclc ; Ilayeswater, a lakelet referred to by Dr. H. R. Mill 

 as in some respects intermediate between the mountain-tarns and 

 the valley-lakes ; and Angle Tarn, Patterdale, a good example 

 of a plateau-tarn. In the discussion that followed. Dr. II. R. 

 Mill said that as Mr. Marr had found every tarn that he 

 examined to be held in by a barrier of drift, it seemed most 

 likely that most, if not all, of the larger lakes would be found to 

 owe their origin to the same cause. In this connection it was 

 worth mentioning that Prof. W. M. Davis, of Harvard, con- 

 sidered, from the configuration of the larger lake-basins in the 

 district, that they were produced in drift-blocked valleys. — 

 *' Notes on the Glacial Geology of Arctic Flurope and its Islands. 

 Part i. Kolguev Island," by Colonel II. W. Feilden, with a 

 report on the erratic boulders from the Kolguev beds, by 

 Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S. Kolguev Island, about the size 

 of Norfolk, was about 50 miles from Arctic Russia and about 

 J30 miles south-west of the nearest part of Novaya Zemlya, with 



NO. 1363, VOL. 53] 



soundings not exceeding 30 fathoms between it and Russia, and 

 probably not more than 75 fathoms between it and Novaya 

 Zemlya. It was entirely composed of a vast accumulation of 

 glacio-marine beds. The northern two-thirds of the island 

 consisted of an elevated ridged area with a maximum height of 

 250 feet. The author had been furnished with notes by Mr. 

 Trevor-Battye concerning the geology of this region. It was 

 inferred from his observations that this elevated region was com- 

 posed of beds of sand with erratic boulders not less than 80 feet 

 deep, resting on clays — the "Kolguev clays." Mount Bolvana 

 rose as a symmetrical cone above the tundra, detached from the 

 northern plateau, pointing, in the ojjinion of the author, to the 

 occurrence of marine erosion. The southern portion of the 

 island was tundra, a dead flat of grass, bog, and peat-levels reach- 

 ing to the sea ; good sections of the Kolguev clays wefe exposed 

 in the gullies traversing it near the sea on the western coast. In 

 the vicinity of the Gobista river the Kolguev beds consisted of 

 clays merging here and there into sands. They were charged with 

 bouldersoften ice-.scratched, indicating continuous deposition in 

 a comparatively deep sea. The beds yielded many .shells of 

 arctic mollusca, such as Saxicava arcttca, Afya, &c. , apparently 

 dispersed from top to bottom. The ice-pack had forced many 

 fragments of semi-fossil wood on to the shore, no doubt worked 

 up from a bed immediately below sea-level. No deposit was 

 met with in Kolguev Island precisely similar to what is called 

 "till" in Scotland, though there were many boulder clays 

 in Britain which were in no measure superior in toughness 

 to those of Kolguev ; for instance, those of the Yorkshire coast, 

 and the chalky boulder clays of Norfolk. It is suggestive that 

 all the glacial deposits met with by the author in arctic and 

 polar lands (except the terminal moraines now forming above 

 sea-level) should be glacio-marine beds. Prof. Bonney, in his 

 report, described the rocks brought home by the author. A 

 discussion followed, in which Mr. Marr, Mr. Trevor-Battye, 

 Mr. Boulger, Dr. G. J. Hinde, Dr. Gregory, and the Rev. 

 Edwin Hill took part. 



Cambridge. 

 Philosophical Society, November 1 1.— Prof. J. J. Thom- 

 son, President, in the chair. — The following communications 

 were made : — A method of measuring the hysteresis of iron, by 

 Mr. G. F. C. Searle. A bar of iron is placed in a solenoid, 

 and the magnetising current flowing in the solenoid also pas.ses 

 through the fixed coils of an electrodynamometer. This current 

 can be reversed. A secondary coil is wound on the iron, and 

 the current induced in it by the variation in the magnetic in- 

 duction passes also round the suspended coil of the electro- 

 dynamometer. Thus if H is the magnetic force due to the 

 solenoid, and B is the magnetic induction in the iron, the current 

 in the fixed coils is proportional to H, and the current in the 

 suspended coil is proportional to dB'idt, provided that B changes 

 so slowly that the effects due to self-induction in the secondary 

 circuit are negligible. The couple experienced by the sus- 

 pended coil at any time is proportional to HdBldt, and thus the 

 angular momentum acquired during a double reversal of the 



magnetising current is proportional to / HdB or to 4* / Hdl, 



where / is the intensity of magnetisation. Thus the " throw ' 

 of the spot of light reflected from a mirror attached to the sus- 

 pended coil is proportional to the energy lost in hysteresis during 

 the double reversal. Experiments were shown to illustrate the 

 manner in which the method could be applied to investigate the 

 effects of strain and temperature upon the hysteresis in iron. — 

 The form of cubic surfaces containing twenty-seven real straight 

 lines, by Mr. W. H. Blythe. The paper was illustrated by two 

 plaster models. The first represented the general case of a cubic 

 surface having twenty-seven real straight lines, the position of 

 the lines being shown by threads. The second wa.s a rough 

 model of the special form having a tangent plane at infinity, 

 which contains three of the lines. It is constructed to show the 

 position of the remaining twenty-four straight lines, which form 

 a symmetrical system. — Expansion produced by the electric 

 discharge, by Miss Martin. At the suggestion of Prof. 

 Thomson, the experiments of Meissner on the expansion of 

 gases by the' electric discharge were repeated by Miss Martin. 

 After some preliminary experiments, in which the results obtained 

 differed from those of Meissner, new apparatus was set up, an 

 exact copy of Meissner's, consisting of an ozone generator with 

 a sulphuric acid pressure-gauge attached ; the tWJ tinfoil coats 

 of the generator were connected with the terminals of an 

 electrical machine. In Meis.sner's original experiments it was 



