February 6, 1S96] 



NATURE 



335 



taceous series in those parts of Southern England and Western 

 France which are nearest to one another. They claim to have 

 defined the limits of the Cenomanian stage in Western France, 

 and to have shown that this group of beds is simply a southern 

 extension of our Lower Chalk, formed in a shallower part of 

 the Cretaceous Sea and nearer to a coast-line, — The Llandovery 

 and associated rocks of Conway, by G. L. EUes and E. M. R. 

 Wood, Newnham College. In the paper a full description of 

 the representatives of the Birkhill, Gala (Tarannon), and Wen- 

 lock beds was given, and the distribution of the fossils (chiefly 

 graptolites) in the various subdivisions was recorded. Many 

 of the graptolites are forms which had been described from 

 Swedish dejx)sits, but had hitherto been unrecorded in this 

 country. — The gypsum deposits of Nottinghamshire and Derby- 

 shire, by A. T. Metcalfe. The gypsum deposits of these coun- 

 ties occur in the Upper Marls of the Keuper division of the 

 Triassic system. The author described their occurrence in thick 

 nodular irregular beds, large spheroidal masses, and lenticular 

 intercalations, and their association with satin-spar, alabaster, 

 selenite, and anhydrite. 



Edinburgh. 



Royal Society, January 6. — The Hon. Lord M'Laren in the 

 chair. — Dr. Buchan submitted a paper on the high temperatures 

 of September, and the Ben Nevis observatories. He described 

 briefly the weather of September generally, which was markedly 

 anticyclonic, and selected for consideration the 28th, 29th, and 

 30th of the month, as being characteristic in an intensified 

 degree. On these days, the state of the atmosphere at Fort 

 William, and low levels in Scotland generally, was one of great 

 humidity. On the top of the mountain, on the other hand, there 

 was great dryness. It was the opinion of Prof. Tait, and other 

 physicists whom he had asked, that when the vapour in the 

 atmosphere existed as pure vapour, it was practically dia- 

 therminous to the sun's rays. Between the (reduced) barometer 

 at the top of the mountain, and the barometer at Fort William 

 with a temperature difference of four degrees, there was only a 

 difference of half a tenth, while the calculated difference for such 

 a difference in temperature should have been a hundredth. He 

 considered this inquiry to be of value in the prediction of storms. 

 — Dr. Knott read a paper on the strain produced in iron and 

 nickel tubes in the magnetic field. He described the apparatus 

 used, and the numerous difficulties to be overcome, and 

 exhibited graphs of the volume-changes of the tubes. He had 

 found the behaviour of steel tubes so extraordinary that he re- 

 served it for further treatment. — Prof. Tait described some 

 further work he had done in the study of the path of a rotating 

 spherical projectile. From the equations involved he had de- 

 duced the paths which such a moving body should follow, and, 

 though some of these looked extraordinary, being concave up- 

 wards, and even looped, he was not without hopes of reaching 

 them in practice. He had already succeeded in the case of some 

 of them, with a teetotum. 



Dublin. 



Royal Dublin Society, December 18, 1895. — Prof. A. C. 

 Haddon in the chair. — Mr. A. Francis Dixon read a paper on 

 the development of the branches of the fifth cranial nerve in 

 man. The paper was illustrated by models of the fifth cranial 

 nerve in five different stages of the human embryo. — Prof. 

 Grenville A. J. Cole read a paper on the rhyolites of County 

 Antrim, with a note on bauxite. These rocks, often spoken of 

 as " trachytes," occur as isolated exposures among basalts. 

 At Templepatrick, rhyolite is seen to be intrusive in the Lower 

 Basalts ; but elsewhere the junctions are quite obscure. The 

 author believes that there is not justification for the construction 

 of sections showing the supposed relations of the rocks ; but he 

 urges that the mass at Tardree Mountain is very complex, and 

 he calls special attention to the extensive flows of fluidal, 

 perlitic, and spherulitic lavas at Sandy Braes. The various 

 rocks are described in detail, and a survey of this area suggests 

 that the pale bauxites of Co. Antrim have been derived from the 

 decomposition of the rhyolites. Soluble salts of aluminium may 

 have .been .formed throughout the lavas by the action of 

 solfataras, &c. ; waters containing alkali-carbonates may have 

 acted .on these, causing the precipitation of the basic aluminium 

 carbonate studied by MM. Urbain and Renoul ; and the extreme 

 instability of this compound may have given rise to aluminium 

 hydrate, which would be washed 'down into lakes during the 

 interval between the outpouring of the Lower and Upper 

 Basalts, together with the iron oxide also found in bauxite. At 

 Ballygloughan, north of Ballymena, a distinctly biotitic rhyolite 



occurs as an intrusive neck ; and at Cloughwater there is a patch 

 of most delicately fluidal character ; both these have vertical 

 flow-planes. The rhyolites of Co. Antrim are often poor in 

 ferro-magnesian minerals, but soda-pyroxene is common at 

 Carnearny and on Sandy Braes. — Prof. James Lyon described a 

 system of hot-water supply for domestic purposes. In the case 

 of hot-water supply by means of domestic boiler and circulating 

 cylinder, in order to obviate the necessity for drawing off" a 

 quantity of cold water from the rising pipe before the hot water 

 can be obtained, the rising pipe is often returned near the bottom 

 of cylinder to produce circulation. When this is done a flap 

 valve of special construction should be placed at the latter point, 

 to prevent cold water supply from flowing from bottom of cyhnder, 

 and thus mingling with the hot water which is being drawn. 



Paris, 

 Academy of Sciences, January 27.— M. Cornu in the 

 chair. — On the equilibrium of an elastic body, by M. H. Poin- 

 care. — Of the utility of photography by the X-rays in human 

 pathology, by MM. Lannelongue, Barthelemy, and Oudin. In 

 diseases in which there is an actual loss of substance of the bone, 

 or an abnormal growth of bony tissue, the photographs taken by 

 the Rbntgen method confirm the previous diagnosis, — On a non- 

 linear differential equation of the second order with doubly 

 periodic coefficients, by M. Hugo-Gylden. A particular solution 

 of an equation of importance in astronomy. Application 

 is made of the solution to the planet Hilda (153) with a satis- 

 factory result. — Biological studies on some Hirudinia, by M. A. 

 Kowalevsky. — On the linear equations and the method of 

 Laplace, by M. E. Goursat. — On the addition of the arguments 

 in the periodic functions of the second order, by M. G. 

 Fontene. — On the complete solutions of the equation 



;*:, tan ^^ ^- x^\SiX\. i + ... + jf„ tan I = k ."^ , 



by M. Carl Stormer. — On certain invariants relating to a group 

 of Hesse, by M. Boulanger. — On groups of operations, by 

 M. Levasseur. — Theory of pitching on a rolling sea, by M. A. 

 Kriloff. — Some properties of the Rontgen rays, by M. Jean 

 Perrin. The conclusion is drawn that these rays are not identical 

 with the kathodic rays, since the latter cannot pass out through 

 vacuum tube walls of i mm. in thickness. The propagation of 

 the Rontgen rays is shown experimentally to be linear ; they 

 are not reflected either by a mirror of polished steel or of glass, 

 neither are they refracted by prisms of paraffin or wax. Un- 

 successful attempts to form diffraction fringes showed that if the 

 phenomenon is periodic, the period is much below that of green 

 light. — Observations on the preceding communication by M. 

 Poincare, pointing out that Prof. Rontgen has already shown 

 that the X-rays are not refracted. — Dark light, by M. Gustave 

 Le Bon. An ordinary photographic dry plate, placed under a 

 negative in a printing-frame, and the negative closely covered 

 with a thin plate of iron, was exposed to the light of a paraffin 

 lamp for three hours. Vigorous and prolonged development 

 brought out a faint but well-defined image. If a plate of lead 

 was wrapped round the back of the frame, and bent over the 

 edges of the iron plate so as to enclose the printing-frame 

 in a metallic box, after three hours' exposure to the same 

 source of light an image was obtained ' ' which was nearly 

 as vigorous as if no obstacle had been interposed between 

 the light and the plate." M. Le Bon proposes to con- 

 tinue the study of the properties of light after its passage 

 through opaque bodies. — Action of heat on mercurous iodide, 

 by M. Maurice Francois. To avoid the complications intro- 

 duced by the presence of air, the mercurous iodide was heated 

 ZH vacuo. The reaction is a limited one, equilibrium resulting 

 when a fixed amount (depending on the temperature) of mer- 

 curous iodide has been broken up into mercury and mercuric 

 iodide. Hence the reaction is reversible, and the same state of 

 equilibrium results if mercury and mercuric iodide are taken and 

 heated together. — The absorption of light by solutions of indo- 

 phenols, by MM. Bayrac and Ch, Camichel, A quantitative 

 study of the absorption spectra of homologous indophenols in 

 various solvents. Relations are indicated between the positions 

 of the absorption bands, concentrations, and molecular weights. 

 One compound, obtained by the general method of preparation 

 of indophenols from mono-methyl-resorcinol and /-nitroso- 

 dimethyl-aniline hydrochloride, gives quite anomalous results, 

 and hence the conclusion is drawn that this body is not an indo- 

 phenol. — Combinations of aluminium chloride with phenols and 



NO. 1 37 1, VOL. 53] 



