Heating of Electrodes 155 



-was an indication of the rate at which this occurred. Mr. 

 Busk remarked on its resemblance to the Biflustra of the 

 East Anglian Coralline Crag. 



Professor Miller referred to Schroeder's experiments on 

 fermentation, which led to the conclusion that, if all living 

 germs are strictly excluded, this cannot take place, even 

 when the liquid is one easily susceptible of that change. 



Mr. Gassiot described his experiments on the heating of 

 electrodes. He had noticed, twenty-two years ago, that 

 the positive pole became hot, the negative one remaining 

 cool. This Mr. Grove had attributed to the oxidation 

 of the metal employed in the electrodes. But he had found 

 that, with an induction coil and thin wires for the electrodes, 

 the negative pole was the hotter, and that this held good 

 whether the clischarge was passed through air or through a 

 vacuum. When he used a powerful Grove battery and 

 solid brass balls as electrodes, the negative ball became 

 heated, and this ball, with an intermittent discharge from 

 the battery, first exhibits a white glow round it, and soon 

 becomes red-hot. But on substituting a continuous dis- 

 charge the negative ball suddenly cools, and the positive one 

 becomes red-hot. He thought the resistance offered to the 

 passage of the electric current was the most ready explanation 

 of these phenomena. 



Dr. Bence Jones said that, as Professor Briicke had 

 informed him, his experiments showed that pepsin does 

 not act as a ferment, but forms definite chemical compounds 

 with alimentary substances. 



Oct. 3ist, I32nd meeting. Mr. Gassiot exhibited photo- 

 graphs of the recent solar eclipse taken in Biscay by Sefior 

 Novara with the Madrid equatorial. 



Dr. Hooker read a communication from the Rev. M. J. 

 Berkeley x about a human skull, found in the drift at 

 Nottingham, together with bones of the elk, 18 feet below the 

 surface of the ground. 



Joseph Berkeley (1803-1889), F.R.S., Hon. Fellow of Christ's 

 College, Cambridge, and ultimately Rector of Sibbertoft, Northamptonshire, 

 was author of Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany and other works on Fungi. 



