June 27, 1895] 



NA TURE 



201 



M. Wolf; and Prof. Kowalewsky has been elected lo fill the 

 late M. Cotteau's place as Correspondant in the Section of 

 Anatomy and Zoology. 



Thb French .\ssociation for the Advancement of Science i 

 will meet at Bordeaux, from .\ugust 4 to August 9, under the 

 presidency of M. E. Trelat. .Applications for membership 

 should be addressed to the Secretary of the .Association, 28 

 me Serpente, Paris. 



The third international meeting of Psychologists will be held 

 at Munich from .\ugust 4 to 7. The first meeting was held at 

 Paris in 1889, and the second in London in 1892. Prof. 

 Stumpf, of Berlin, will act as President, and Dr. von Schrenck- 

 Xotzing, of Munich, as General Secretary. 



The second Italian Geographical Congress will be held in 

 Rome next September, under the patronage of the King of Italy 

 and the Uuke of (ienoa. The President of the Congress will be 

 .Marquis (J. Doria, President of the Societa Geographica Italiana. 

 The Secretary is Prof. D. Vinciguerra, and his address is Via del 

 Plebiscito, 102, Roma. 



Dr. T. G. Brodie has succeeded Prof. C. S. Sherrington, 

 F. R.S. , as Lecturer on Physiology at St. Thomas's Hospital. 



Prok. E. Hering, of Prague, has been proposed as successor 

 of the late Carl Ludwig in the chair of Physiology at Leipzig. 



Prof. E. .Mach, of Prague, well known by his book on j 

 Mechanics, and by his experimental researches on Physics, has 

 l)een appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Vienna University. 1 

 X'ienna will, therefore, be the first place where Philosophy will 

 he taught on a modern and scientific basis. 



TiiK Cracow .\cademyof Sciences offers prizes of loooand 500 

 ilorins for the best discussion of theories referring to the physical 

 condition of the earth, and for the advancement of an important 

 point connected with the subject. Memoirs must be sent in 

 liefore the end of 1898. 



The International Conference on the Protection of Wild 

 Birds met at Paris on Tuesday, under the presidency of M. 

 dadaud. Minister of .Agriculture. England was repiesented by j 

 Sir Herbert Maxwell, .Mr. Howard Saunders, and Mr. F. 

 Harford, of the British Embassy at Paris. Belgium, Holland, 

 Germany, Russia, .\ustria-Hungary, Luxemburg, .Switzerland, 

 Italy, Greece, and Spain have also sent delegates. The con- 

 ference meets as the result cjf a resolution passed at the Inter- 

 national .'Vgricultural Congress held at the Hague in 1891. 



.V 1 the recent annual meeting of the Royal Society of Canada, 

 the following ofticers (says Sdeme) were elected for the ensuing : 

 year ;— President, Dr. R. S. C. Selwyn, C.M.G., K.R.S. : 

 \'ice- President, the .Vrchbishop of Halifax, Dr. G'Brien : 

 Secretar)', Dr. J. G. Bourinot, C..M.G. : Treasurer, Prof. J. 1 

 Fletcher. Prof. Bovey, Dean of the Faculty of .Vjiplied Science, ' 

 .McGill University, was chosen President of the Section of 

 Mathematical, Physical, and Chemical .Sciences, Prof. Dupuis, 

 X'ice-I'residcnt, and Captain E. Deville, Surveyor-General of 

 the Dominion, Secretary. In the Section of Geological and 

 Biological Sciences the following choice was made : — President, 

 Prof. Wesley Mills ; \'ice- President, Prof. Penhallow ; Secre- 

 tary. Dr. Burgess. 



-\i the annual general meeting of the Numismatic Society 



of London, held on Thursday last. Sir John Evans, President, 



in the chair, the silver medal of the .Society was awarded to 



I'rnf. Theodor Mommsen, for his distinguished service to the 



NO. 1339, VOL. 52] 



science of Numismatics. Dr. Barclay Head, keeper of coins 

 in the British Museum, in returning thanks on behalf of Prof. 

 Mommsen, drew attention to the fact that quite recently 

 Mommsen had handed over to the Royal Academy of Sciences 

 of Berlin the sum of 25,000 marks, presented to him as a 

 testimonial from his disciples in all countries on the occasion of 

 the jubilee of his Doctorate, with directions that it should be 

 devoted to the compilation and publication, under the auspices 

 of the .'Vcademy, of a complete (orpus of all known extant 

 Greek coins. 



F'ew neighbourhoods offer more features and objects of interest 

 than the district around Clalway. An excursion to this district, 

 arranged by the Irish Field Club Union, will therefore probably 

 be a very successful one. The country west of Galway presents 

 the geologist with a great variety of rocks and rock structures. 

 Some of the most interesting studies in F'thnography afforded 

 in the British Isles may there be found, and the antiquarian 

 and archaeologist are offered exceptional attractions. The 

 party will meet at Galway on Thursday, July 11, and will stay in 

 the neighbourhood until the following Wednesday. The places to- 

 be visited are : The Twelve Bens, Connemara, Ballyvaughan 

 and the Burren district, the .\ran Islands. Oughterard and Lovigh 

 Corrie. -\ programme, containing notes on the topography, 

 geology, botany, zoology, ethnography, and archi^ology of these 

 places has been prepared. During the reunion, a conference 

 will be held for the consideration and discussion of matters 

 relating to the advancement and extension of Field Club work 

 in Ireland. The Secretary of the Union is Mr. R. Lloyd 

 Praegar, National Library, Dublin. 



It has long been known in a general way that the time re- 

 quired for hatching out the eggs of cold-blooded animals is 

 dependent on the temperature at which thsy are kept ; and that 

 in the case of birds " the period of incubition is much related 

 to the size of the bird." Mr. .\. Sutherland (Roy. Soc. of 

 Victoria, December 1894) has recently mide some observations 

 on the relations between hatching-time and temperature, and 

 formulates a law based upon his results. He has further in- 

 vestigated incubation among birds and gestation. Bir<ls and 

 mammals keep at a practically constant temperature — between 

 37° C. and 43' C. ; and it may be assumed that sitting birds 

 keep their eggs at a tolerably definite temperature. Why then 

 should the period of incubation or gestation vary so much ? 

 Mr Sutherland asserts that the time of incubation or gestation, 

 as the case may be, has a certain definite relation to the weight 

 of an animal. He states the two laws he has arrived at in the 

 following words : — (l) " For animals of the same size the time 

 of embryo development is inversely pro])ortional to the scjuare of 

 the temperature, that temperature being reckoned from a definite 

 point." (2) " .\t the same temperature, the period of develop- 

 ment is directly proportional to the sixth root of the weight o 

 the mature animal." 



A I'EW months ;igo, M. de Montessus published an interesting 

 paper on the frequency of earthquakes, of which a summary 

 is given in a previous note (vol. li. p. 540). This he has 

 followed up by another paper of still greater value on the 

 rclaticm between seismic frequency and the relief of the ground 

 (Coniptis rendus, vol. cxx. pp. 1183-1186). The following 

 are the general conclusions at which he has arrived from a study 

 of 348 regions, in which 9700 earthquakes and 5000 volcanic 

 eruptions are known to have occuired. In a group of adjoining 

 districts, the most unstable are those which present the greatest 

 (lift'erences of relief, i.e. those whose average slope is greatest. 

 The unstable regions follow the great lines of folding of the 

 earth's crust. Mountainous countries are generally more 

 unstable than fiat ones, and, in any one mountain-chain, the- 



