jy 



NA TURE 



[February 13, 1896 



Linnean Society, January i6.— Mr. C. B. Clarke, F.R.S., 

 President, in the chair. — Messrs. O. V. Aplin and William 

 Cole were elected Fellows of the Society. — On behalf of Mr. 

 G. H. Adcock, of Geelong, Victoria, Mr. A. B. Rendle 

 exhibited and made remarks iipon some photographs of Hakea 

 grammatophylla, F. Muell, a little-known species of the Pro- 

 teaceae, of local distribution in South Australia. — Mr. G. F. 

 Scott Elliot exhibited specimens of bark cloth from Uganda 

 and the shores of Lake Tanganika, and gave an account of the 

 mode of its preparation from the bark cloth fig, and of the fleshy 

 Euphorbias and Acacias of British East Africa, illustrating his 

 remarks with lantern slides from photographs taken by himself. 

 Mr. Elliot remarked that the native cloth manufactured on the 

 shores of the Tanganika was made on the same sort of rough 

 loom which he had seen employed near Sierra Leone, and that 

 as the Tanganika is ethnologically and botanically part of the 

 west coast, it was interesting to find that the methods employed 

 in countries so far apart were so similar in detail. A discussion 

 followed, in which Messrs. Rendle, Holmes, T. Christy, and W. 

 Carruthers took part.— On behalf of Mr. W. R. Ogilvie Grant, 

 Mr. Harting exhibited some land shells and eggs and skins of 

 two rare Petrels from the Salvage Islands, lying between the 

 Canaries and Madeira. These islands were stated to be of 

 volcanic origin faced with steep rocks from loo feet to 300 feet 

 in height, and covered with loose sandy soil, the vegetation con- 

 sisting chiefly of the wild tomato Lycopersiatni esculentum, 

 the ice-plant Mesembryajitkemum crystallinum, Asparagus 

 scoparius, and Cistanche lutea. Amongst the shells collected 

 ■were Helix usttUata, peculiar to the Salvage Islands, H. pisana, 

 H. Macandrewi, H. polymorpha, Runiina decollata, Uttorina 

 striata, Cerithinm rupestre, and Nassa conspers'a. Helix 

 pauperaila was said to furnish the chief food of the Tarantula 

 spider {Lycosa niaderia7ia), and entire shells oi Helix pisana\\3.A 

 been found in the stomach of a Kestrel hawk shot on one of the 

 islands. The Petrels exhibited with their eggs were Pelago- 

 droma marina, and Oceanodronia cryptoleucura, which were 

 found nesting in burrows after the manner of the Shearwater 

 {Puffinus kiihli), of which great numbers were also breeding 

 there. Mr. Howard Saunders offered some critical remarks on 

 these birds, referring chiefly to what was known of their 

 geographical distribution. — Mr. George Murray exhibited full- 

 grown complete specimens of some giant Laminarians from the 

 Pacific, Nereocystis, Egregia, and Macrocystis, and some very 

 fine specimens of Postelsia, collected by Mr. W. E. Shaw on 

 the coast of California. He made some remarks on the dis- 

 tribution of Californian Laminariece, and illustrated some points 

 in the structure of their reproductive organs. — A paper was then 

 read, by Prof. T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., and Mr. Frederick 

 Chapman, on the relations of the fistulose Polymorphianm and 

 the Ramulinx, with the view of showing the existing evidence 

 for or against the suggestion that several specimens referred to 

 the latter of these two sub-families may really belong to the 

 former. 



Geological Society, January 22.— Dr. Henry Woodward, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair.— Mr. W. W. Watts, in the 

 absence of Prof. Lapworth, called attention to three specimens 

 of sandstone and limestone containing specimens of some species 

 of Hyolithes, which Prof. Lapworth had found in the higher part 

 of the Cambrian quartzite at Nuneaton in Warwickshire.— The 

 following communications were read :— On the Speeton series 

 in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, by G. W. Lamplugh. Further 

 work on the Speeton section, while extending the knowledge of 

 the palseonto logical details, had fully sustained the results of the 

 author's previous investigations. The rapid attenuation and 

 final disappearance of the Speeton series in a westerly direction 

 in Yorkshire was discussed, and though the available evidence 

 was held to be insufficient to demonstrate the exact conditions, 

 it was stated that, contrary to the accepted view, the lower zones 

 were probably the first to die out and were overstepped or over- 

 lapped by the higher divisions, since at Knapton, fourteen miles 

 inland, only the upper zones of the coast-section can be proved 

 to occur. In Mid-Lincolnshire all the palaeontological zones of 

 Speeton were identified and traced, the presence of the leading 

 zonal types of the cephalopoda readily establishing the general 

 correlation proposed by Prof. A. Pavlow and the author. The 

 President said that it was hardly possible when mapping 

 in the field to do more than follow those petrological changes 

 in the character of beds over any given area which are patent 

 to the observer. The point discussed by the author was that 



NO. 1372, VOL. 53] 



the life-line did not follow the line of the same sedimenta- 

 tion, but life-forms may transgress, and did transgress, over 

 sediments of different character when they happened to be 

 accumulated at the same time. It was hoped, however, that the 

 case propounded by the author was exceptional, and that, as a 

 rule, the sediments and the fossils followed one another on the 

 same lines. — On some Podophthalmous Crustaceans from the 

 Cretaceous formation of Vancouver and Queen Charlotte 

 Islands, by Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S. — On a fossil 

 octopus, Calais Newboldi (J. de C. Sby., MS.), from the 

 Cretaceous of the Lebanon, by Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S. — 

 On transported boulder clay, by the Rev. Edwin Hill. The 

 "mid-Glacial" sands of the cliffs between Yarmouth and 

 Lowestoft are overlain at Corton by chalky boulder clay. But 

 farther north than Corton some masses of the same clay occur 

 in the interior of the cliffs, surrounded by the sands in undis- 

 turbed stratification, but passing into them by strings and 

 patches such as suggest the melting off of enveloping ice. They 

 had probably been floated and dropped there. The observations 

 suggest that chalky boulder clay was being manufactured in one 

 locality simultaneously with "mid-Glacial" sands in another. 



Mineralogical Society, February 4.— W. W. Watts in the 

 chair. — Mr. L. J. Spencer gave an account of some of the 

 results he had obtained in the course of an examination of 

 various massive and fibrous forms of calcite and aragonite. — 

 Mr. F. Rutley read a paper relative to associated globular and 

 rhombohedral forms of rhodochrosite and chalybite from Corn- 

 wall. — Mr. G. T. Prior described the microscopic characters of 

 certain rocks, allied to Monchiquite, collected by Mr. Ridley in 

 Fernando Noronha, Brazil. — Mr. W. J. Pope explained a method 

 of determining the optic axial angle for the case where the faces 

 of the investigated plate are oblique to a bisectrix, and demon- 

 strated the phosphorescence of saccharin crystals on fracture. 



Zoological Society, February 4.— Dr. A. Glinther, F.R.S., 

 Vice-President, in the chair.— Mr. G. A. Boulenger, F.R.S., 

 read a report on the second portion of the reptiles and batrachians 

 collected by Dr. A. Donaldson Smith during his recent expedi- 

 tion to Lake Rudolph, the first portion having been already 

 described. In the present report forty-two species of reptiles 

 and five of batrachians were catalogued — of which two lizards 

 were described as new, under the names Agama smithi and A. 

 lionotus. — Dr. A. Giinther read a report on the collection of 

 fishes made by Dr. Donaldson Smith during his expedition to 

 Lake Rudolph. From Lakes Rudolph and Stephanie examples 

 of eight species of fishes had been obtained. Of these, five 

 were species also found in the Nile-basin, and mostly of wide 

 distribution in Africa ; while one {Distichodus rudolphi) was 

 new to science. Two other species were also described as new, 

 and named Clarias smithi and Synodontis smithi, after their 

 discover.— Mr. Martin Jacoby offered some remarks on the 

 system of coloration and punctuation in the beetles of the genus 

 Calligrapha of the family Chrysomelidae. — Mr. F. E. Be^dard, 

 F.R.S., read a paper on the oblique septa in Passerine and 

 other birds, in which he pointed out a new character of Pas- 

 serine birds. — A second paper, by Mr. Beddard, contained a 

 note upon the syrinx and the ambiens muscle of an African 

 stork {Dissiira episcoptcs), and comprised some remarks upon 

 the classification of the Herodiones. — A communication from 

 Mr. R. Lydekker, F.R.S., contained a note on the mode of 

 progression of the sea-otter. — A communication from Dr. St. 

 George Mivart, F.R.S., contained a description of the hyoid 

 bones of Nestor meridionalis and Nanodes discolor. 



Academy of Sciences, February 3. — M. A. Cornu in the 

 chair. — Notice was received from the Minister of Public Instruc- 

 tion of the approval, by the President of the Republic, of the 

 election of M. Rouche.— On the equilibrium of an ellipsoidal 

 envelope, by M. L. Lecornu. The problem of a flexible inex- 

 tensible surface submitted to a given system of forces gives rise 

 to a system of partial linear equations, the integration of which, 

 in general, is not possible. The particular case, however, of an 

 ellipsoidal membrane, which is of considerable practical value 

 on account of its application to the theory of aerostats, can be 

 dealt with by the use of elliptical coordinates, and the results of 

 the integration are given. — The measurement of a section of the 

 Paris base line, with the apparatus of Jaderin, by M. d'Abbadie. 

 By the use of wires of steel and of bronze, of known coefficients 



