204 



NATURE 



[January 2, 1896 



only in terrestrial but also in cosmical physics, that the journal 

 which is to be devoted to phenomena connected with it will 

 appeal to a large class of investigators. To quote from the 

 circular heralding the new publication : " No other mechanical 

 means is so surely and so completely recording the physical 

 history of terrestrial and cosmical changes as the self-registering 

 magnetographs of our magnetic observatories, whereby the fitful 

 tremors of the delicately suspended magnetic needle are being 

 indelibly fixed on the sensitised sheet. On that paper, as 

 Maxwell eloquently expressed it, the never resting heart of the 

 earth is now tracing in telegraphic symbols, which will one day 

 be interpreted, a record of its pulsations and its flutterings, as 

 well as of that slow but mighty working [the secular variation] 

 which warns us that we must not suppose that the inner history 

 ©f our planet is ended." 



The British Medical Journal publishes the following list of 

 prizes awarded by the Paris Academic de Medecine. The 

 Barbier prize of ;i^8o, offered every year for the discovery of a 

 remedy for an incurable disease, such as hydrophobia, cancer, 

 epilepsy, cholera, &c., was not awarded to any of the ten 

 competitors, but an " encouragement " of £20 was granted to 

 M. E. Legrain for his work on the sero-therapeutic treatment of 

 typhoid, and smaller sums were awarded to five others. The 

 Henri Buigniet prize of £60, for the best work on the application 

 of physics or chemistry to medicine, was awarded to Dr. 

 -Chabrie for his memoir on the " Chemical Transformation of 

 the Fundamental Substance of Cartilage during Ossification." 

 The Adrien Buisson -triennial prize of ^420, offered for the 

 •discovery of a remedy for a disease hitherto looked upon as 

 incurable, was divided among the following : ^240 to Dr. 

 Jarre for his work on the " Cure of Tic Douloureux of the Face 

 ■by a New Surgical -Method " ; £^ to Dr. Chervin for his 

 memoir on " Stammering and other Defects of Pronunciation " ; 

 ;^40 to MM. Wurtz and Marcano for their essay on " Leprosy : 

 its Prophylaxis and Treatment" ; £20 to Dr. Galliard for 

 his work on " Pneumo-thorax " ; £2.0 to Dr. Christiani, of 

 Geneva, for his researches on the " Thryoid Body" ; and £20 

 to Dr. Calvin, of the Medical Department of the French Army, 

 for his work on " Chronic Paludism." The Chevillon] prize of 

 ;^6o, for the best work on the treatment of cancer, was awarded 

 to Dr. Repin for his work entitled " Contribution to the Study 

 of a New Method of Treatment of the Malignant Inoperable 

 Tumours : Toxitherapy." The Dauvel prize of £\o for the 

 ibest work on myxoedema was divided between Dr. Combe, of 

 Lausanne, and the Drs. Cristiani (M. and Madame), of Geneva. 

 The Desportes prize of £^^2 for the best work on practical 

 therapeutics was divided between Dr. Thibierge ( ' ' Therapeusis 

 • of Diseases of the Skin ") and Prof. Delorme (" Disappearance of 

 Neuritic Disorders, &c., by Localised and Forcible Com- 

 •pression "). The Huguier prize of ;if 120 ( triennial)] for the best 

 work on diseases of women, especially their surgical treatment, 

 was awarded to Drs. S. Bonnet and P. Petit for their " Practical 

 Treatise on Gynaecology. The Laborde prize of ^200 was 

 •divided, Drs. Gouguenheim and Glover being awarded ;^ioo for 

 their "Atlas of Laryngology and Rhinology"; Dr. Chipault 

 ;^6o for his "Operative Surgery of the Nervous System"; 

 Prof. Reverdin, of Geneva, ;^20 for his essay on "Surgical 

 Antisepsis and Asepsis," and Dr. Delbet ;^20 for his "Surgical 

 Anatomy of the Bladder." A prize of £\o (Prix Adolphe 

 Monbinne) was awarded to Dr. L. Petit for his book on " The 

 'Consumptive in the principal Countries of Europe." The Perron 

 prize (^^152) was divided among six candidates. Dr. Sabouraud 

 getting the lion's share {£72) for his work on " Human 

 Trichophytoses. " 



Mr. Dinshah A. Tai.eyarkhan, who was President of the 

 Tropical Section of the International Congress of Hygiene and 

 Demography, Budapest, has sent us, from Baroda, two short 

 NO. 1366, VOL. 53] 



notes referring to the discovery of the anti-toxin of snake-poison. 

 The first of these notes was published in January 1890 ; but as we 

 find no mention of a publisher or society upon it, we conclude it 

 was issued privately, though it appears to have been brought before 

 the medical faculty at Baroda. In the course of his paper, the 

 author suggested that " the blood of a weasel must itself be an 

 antidote to snake- poison," and remarked: "An alternative process 

 may also be tried^in first inoculating animal-blood with the virus 

 of a serpent, and then preparing an extract for inoculation into 

 the blood of a human being bit by a serpent." No experiments 

 are described by Mr. Taleyarkhan, the object of the notes he 

 has sent us being to call attention to his suggestions, made 

 five years ago, and to compare them with the actions taken by 

 Prof. Eraser. 



The question of the destruction of undersized fish and its 

 prevention was by no means exhausted by the evidence laid 

 before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which 

 was appointed to consider the subject in 1893. The evidence 

 supplied to that Committee by the Marine Biological Association 

 proved that the plaice of the English Channel belong to a smaller 

 race, and reached maturity at a smaller size than those of the 

 North Sea. Mr. J. T. Cunningham, one of the naturalists of 

 the Association, has during the last year paid special attention 

 to the further investigation of this subject in the North Sea, and 

 has proved that the limits determined at Grimsby do not apply 

 to the whole of that region. On the one hand, his evidence does 

 not support the contention of the Germans that the plaice on 

 their coast are a smaller race than those on the English side, but 

 on the other hand he has found that the plaice landed at 

 I^owestoft from the Dutch coast south of Texel are no larger 

 than those of the English Channel, the extreme length of im- 

 mature females being fourteen inches in the latter case, as against 

 eighteen inches in the case of fish generally obtained in the 

 North Sea. The difficulty of devising beneficial regulations to 

 be applied to the fishing industry, while such important facts 

 were still unknown, is^^sufficiently obvious. 



Recent attempts to improve the existing methods for the 

 isolation of argon from the atmosphere have led to a closer 

 examination of reactions in which nitrogen is directly absorbed 

 by metals. The number of these known to be capable of readily 

 combining with nitrogen at a red heat now includes magnesium, 

 lithium, barium, aluminium, zinc, iron, and copper. Magnesium 

 nitride, the properties of which were first pointed out by Brigled 

 and Geuther, and which played an important part in the dis- 

 covery of argon, is now well known, but our knowledge of 

 other metallic nitrides is still incomplete. Metallic barium, 

 which is readily prepared by the action of sodium at a moderately 

 high temperature upon the double fluoride of barium and 

 sodium, has just been shown by M. Limb (Compies rendus, 

 December 9), to absorb nitrogen energetically, and its use as a 

 cheap means of preparing argon from air is suggested. Other 

 nitrides have been prepared by a new method by MM. Rossel 

 and Frank {ibid. ). Calcium carbide, well powdered and mixed 

 with finely-divided magnesium (aluminium, zinc, iron or copper), 

 on heating over a Bunsen burner, with free access of air, gives 

 calcium oxide, together with a nearly quantitative yield of the 

 corresponding nitride. But the most remarkable results have 

 been given by lithium. This metal was recently shown by M. 

 Guntz to absorb nitrogen with incandescence at temperatures 

 below a red heat. It has now been shown by M. Deslandres 

 {ibid.), and M. Guntz {Coinptes rendtis, December 16), that 

 this absorption takes place slowly in the cold. The latter ex- 

 posed about ten grams of lithium over sticks of caustic soda 

 to a slow current of air ; the product after four months consisted 

 of seventy-six parts of nitride, twenty parts of hydroxide, and 

 only four parts of metallic lithium. M. Deslandres proved the 

 same fact under somewhat different conditions by allowing a 



