January 23, 1896] 



NATURE 



287 



eluding section of the paper dealt with the effects of denudation 

 on the plateaux. The author remarked that there was certainly no 

 other area in Europe where the study of the combined influence 

 of atmospheric and marine denudation could be so admirably pro- 

 secuted, and where the imagination, kindled to enthusiasm by 

 the contemplation of such scenery, could be so constantly and im- 

 periously controlled by the accurate observation of ascertainable 

 fact.— The British Silurian species of Acidaspis, by Mr. Philip 

 Lake. Descriptions were given of those species of Acidaspis in 

 the Silurian of Britain which have hitherto been incompletely 

 described. The British forms were compared with those from 

 the same system in Sweden and Bohemia. Five, out of nine, 

 were represented by the same or very closely allied species in 

 Sweden ; two in Bohemia. All the Swedish forms except one 

 were represented in Britain, and one in Bohemia as well as in 

 Britain. 



Royal Microscopical Society, December i8, 1895. — Mr. 

 A. D. Michael, President, in the chair.— Mr. E. M. Nelson 

 exhibited and described a portable microscope in which the 

 stage had been enlarged to 4^" x 5", and the bod^ fitted with 

 three draw-tubes giving a range of length from 4^' to 12J". — 

 A discussion on tube-length ensued, in which Mr. C. Beck, Mr. 

 Nelson, and Mr. J. E. Ingpen took part.— Dr. H. C. Sorby 

 gave an interesting account of his methods for preserving some 

 of the more delicate marine organisms.— Mr. T D. Ersser ex- 

 hibited a new method for showing the multiplied images formed 

 by the compound eyes of insects. — The President having 

 reminded the Fellows that the meeting on January 15 would 

 be their annual meeting, the list of Fellows recommended as 

 officers and Council for the ensuing year was then read. 



Mathematical Society, January 9.— Major Macmahon, 

 R.A., F.R.S., President, in the chair. —Prof. Elliott, F.R.S., by 

 a method used in connection with seminvariants, showed how to 

 obtain a criterion as to whether or not a rational integral homo- 

 geneous function of J, a function of x, and its derivatives, is an 

 exact differential, and further showed that if it is its integral can be 

 found by differential operations only. — The President announced 

 the title of a paper by Prof. Tanner, viz. on a certain ternary 

 cubic. The paper, in the absence of the author, was taken as 

 read. The notes chiefly relate to the automorphs and units of 

 the form, and include a short geometrical discussion. — Mr. S. 

 H. Burbury, F.R.S., made a further communication on Boltz- 

 mann's minimum function. Lieut. -Colonel Cunningham, R.E. , 

 and Dr. Larmor, F.R.S., joined in a discussion on the paper.— 

 Mr. Love, F.R.S. (Hon. Sec), communicated some examples 

 illustrating Lord Rayleigh's theory of the stability and instability 

 of certain fluid motions, and subsequently answered questions, 

 bearing on the subject, by Dr. Larmor. 



Entomological Society, January 1 5. — The sixty-third annual 

 meeting. Prof. Raphael Meldola, F.R.S. , President, in the 

 chair. — After the balance-sheet had been read by one of the 

 auditors, Mr. Goss read the report of the Council. It was 

 announced that the following gentlemen had been elected as 

 officers and Council for 1896 : President, Prof. R. Meldola, 

 F.R.S. ; Treasurer, Mr. Robert McLachlan, F.R.S. ; Secre- 

 taries, Mr. Herbert Goss and the Rev. Canon Fowler ; Librarian, 

 Mr. Geo. C. Champion ; and as other members of the Council, 

 Mr. Walter F. H. Blandford, Mr. Geo. F. Hampson, Prof. Edwd. 

 B. Poulton, F.R.S., Mr. Osbert Salvin, F.R.S., Dr. D. Sharp, 

 F.R.S., Mr. Roland Trimen, F.R.S., the Lord Walsingham, 

 F.R.S., and Colonel J. W. Yerbury, R.A. It was announced 

 that the President would appoint Dr. D. Sharp, Mr. Roland 

 Trimen, and Mr. W. F. H. Blandford Vice-Presidents for the 

 Session 1896-1897. — Prof. Meldola then delivered an address, 

 in which he first drew attention to the remarkable literary 

 activity of the entomologists of this country during the past 

 year, referring particularly to the works recently published by 

 Miall, Meyrick, Barrett, Rye, Lucas and Buckton, and to the 

 new volume of the " Cambridge Natural History " by Sedgwick, 

 Sinclair and Sharp. Attention was also called to the interesting 

 discoveries in insect physiology by Latter and Hopkins. The 

 main portion of the address was devoted to a plea for a more 

 liberal use in biological work of the theoretical or speculative 

 method which had proved so fruitful in other branches, and 

 which, in the President's opinion, might with advantage be more 

 freely employed in connection with entomological investigation. 

 Illustrations were taken from the work of Bates on mimicry, 

 Wallace on the colours of insects, and Poulton's researches on 

 variable colouring, all of which had been prompted by hypo- 



NO. 1369, VOL. 53] 



thesis, and which had led to discoveries of large bodies of facts 

 which would never have been gleaned by haphazard observation. 

 In conclusion, the President referred to the losses by death 

 during 1895 of many Fellows of the Society and other entomo- 

 logists, special mention being made of Prof. Charles V. Riley, 

 Prof. C. C. Babington, F.R.S., the Right Hon. T. H. Huxley, 

 F.R.S., M. E. L. Ragonot, Major J. N. Still, Prof. Carl H A. 

 Gerstacker, M.D., M. Claudius Rey, M. Jules F. Fallou, and 

 Mr. W. H. Tugwell. 



Royal Meteorological Society, January 15. — Annual meet- 

 ing.— Mr. R. Inwards, President, in the chair,— The report of 

 the Council showed that the Society was in a satisfactory con- 

 dition, thirty-four new Fellows having been elected during the 

 year. Mr. Inwards devoted his presidential address to the sub- 

 ject of meteorological observatories, which he illustrated with 

 numerous lantern slides. After describing some ancient obser- 

 vatories, including the Nilometers and the Tower of the Winds 

 at Athens, he gave an account of national observatories, of which 

 the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was taken as a type. High- 

 level observatories were next described, of which that on Mont 

 Blanc was taken as a type. Special reference was also made to 

 the observatories on the Sonnblick, the high-level ob.servatory 

 at Arequipa on the Andes, and that on Ben Nevis. An account 

 was next given of tower observatories, together with some of the 

 results obtained from the Eiffel Tower at Paris. Mr. Inwards, 

 in concluding, said : ' ' One can figure to oneself a tower piercing 

 the air from any of the elevated tablelands of this country- 

 Salisbury Plain, the Stray at Harrogate, or the Downs between 

 Guildford and Dorking— and from which the most interesting 

 results could not fail to accrue. It is the opinion of M. Vallot— 

 no mean authority— that a high tower is for air-observing pur- 

 poses equivalent to a mountain station of ten times the altitude : 

 and this is plain when one considers that any mountain must act 

 as an obstacle which thrusts upward the strata of the atmosphere 

 into a form almost like its own, so that some of the effects are 

 very little different from those observed below ; while a tower 

 like the Eiffel Tower thrusts itself in the air without obstructing 

 its movements. It is the boast of the Royal Meteorological 

 Society that it is gradually covering the country with a network 

 of private observing stations, and is collecting together, for the 

 enlightenment of all future time, a mass of accurate knowledge 

 on the subject of the changes in our atmosphere, its varying 

 moods, its beating pulses, its calms and its convulsions, so that 

 when the philosopher is born who is destined to unravel all its 

 mysteries, he will have the tools and instruments ready to his 

 hand."— Mr. E. Mawley was elected President for the ensuing 

 year. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, December 2, 1895.— Prof. Geikie in the 

 chair. — Before business proper was commenced, the Chairman, 

 in reviewing the work of the past session, congratulated the 

 Society on the reappointment of Lord Kelvin as President. 

 This was the third time, he remarked, that the Edinburgh Royal 

 Society had provided the Royal Society of London with a 

 President. In referring to the successful completion of the 

 Challenger Reports, for which the Society offered its heartiest 

 congratulations to Dr. Murray, Prof. Geikie hoped that 

 Government would be induced, by the publication of these 

 results, to equip a proper expedition to the Antarctic regions. — 

 Prof. Tait read a paper, by Lord Kelvin, on the application of 

 network to a surface, in particular to a toroidal surface. Lord 

 Kelvin had had his consideration directed to this subject, in 

 connection with attempts to protect the pneumatic tyres of 

 bicycles, which were examples of a toroidal surface. Dr. Noel 

 Paton read a communication on the relationship of the liver to 

 fats.— Mr. James Milne, gave an account of a mass of manu- 

 factured iron, which he found m the valley of the Rhone near 

 the Glacier de la Plaine Morte. It bore the date 1807, and Mr. 

 Milne was of opinion that it had been left there as a mark by an 

 expedition which did some scientific work in the Alps in that 

 year. 



December 16, 1895. — Prof. Copeland, Vice-President, in the 

 chair.— An obituary notice of the late Dr. Benjamin Carrington, 

 by W. H. Pearson, Esq., was read by Prof. Tait.— Dr. C. 

 Hunter Stewart, of the Public Health Laboratory, made two 

 communications on allied subjects : Three years' daily deter- 

 minations of the amount of carbonic acid in the atmospheric 

 air, and in the ground air of Edinburgh ; and on the physical 

 and chemical examination of the soil, and the relation of 

 the soil to the incidence of summer diarrhoea in Scotland. — 



