July 26, 1S94J 



NA TURE 



309 



Colonel Kyd probably, as was the fashion of the day, had a 

 town house in Calcutta. But he appears to have passed a good 

 deal of hij liaie at Shalimar ; and in his will he directed that 

 he should be buried in his garden there. Tlie part of the 

 I Botanic Garden nearest to Colonel Kyd's house was devoted to 

 ' the planting of teak trees, in accordance with the Company's 

 ■ earnest desire to supply themselves with timber for ship-build- 

 ing. The experience of thirty-four years having shown that 

 , good teak timber cannot be successfully raised on the muddy 

 soil of the Gangetic delta, this part of the garden (extending 

 to about forty acres) was in the year 1820 given up by Govern- 

 ment to the Lord Bishop of Calcutta (IJr, Middleton) as the 

 site for a Christian college. The Garden was thus reduced to 

 its present area of 270 acres.' 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society, vol. iii. 



No. 9, June 1894. (New York: Macmillan.l — Prof. E. \V. 



Brown, under the heading "The Lunar Theory " (pp. 207-215) 



gives an admirable abstract of vol. iii. of Tisserand's " Theorie 

 I de Mccanique Ctleste, Perturbations des Planetes d'apres la 

 Methode de Hansen; Theorie de la Lune. " Herein he opens 

 I with the remark : " It is somewhat strange that a subject like the 

 I lunar theory, which has received so much attention since its 



first principles were given by Newton, should be allowed to 



pass its second centenary before the appearance of a treatise like 

 |the present one." His opinion is that, notwithstanding a few 

 [defects, the book will take a high rank aoiongst the many 

 |classic treatises on celestial mechanics, — Suidents of the Theory 

 |of Numbers have recently been gratified by the publication 

 1(1892) of Bachmann's " Die Elemente der Zahlentheorie." An 

 janalysis of its contents, with a brief consideration of the parts 



which call for special remark, is given by Dr. J. VV. A. Young 

 ,(pp. 215-222). — Prof. Conant (pp. 223-224) calls attention to 



a work which occupies a unique place among translations, viz. 

 ["Memoirs on Infinite Series." These are classic memoirs by 

 iLejeune-Dirichlet (2), .-Vbel, Gauss, and Kummer. The book 

 I s brought out, under the auspices of the Tokio .Mathematical 



in 1 Pnysical S:)ciety, by Japanese professors. 



In the numbers of the Journal of Botany for June and July, 

 A. B. Rendle describes new species of Asclepiadeae and 

 volvulaceie from Tropical .-Vfrica, including a new genus of 

 ihe former order Odontostelma, which is also figured. — A new 

 JBritish Rubus, R. Rogersii, n. sp. , is described by .Mr. E. F. 

 ILinton. — Mr. F. J. llanbury contributes "A Tentative List of 

 British Hieracia," numbering upwards of loo species. 



In Nos. 5-7 of the BtilUttino delta Societa Botanica Italiana 

 ire two papers on fungus diseases of cultivated trees, by Sig. 

 Baccarini. The " petecchia " or " vaiolo " (pock) of the 

 orange has been ascribed to various causes. It is always ac- 

 companied by a number of fungi, but these are apparently 

 aprophytic, and not pathogenic. The true cause appears to 

 oe a bacillus. The " mal nero " of the vine is also attributed 

 to a microbe. Bacillus vitivorus, n. sp. — Sig. S. Sommier has 

 two papers on the little-known flora of the Island of Giglio, 

 lear to Elba. — Sig. A. Jatta completes his paper on the lichens 

 jf Italy, of which he enumerates 1407 species. 



The number of the iVuoiv Giornate Botanico Italiano for 

 [uly is occupied by three papers: — "On the Roman Flora," 

 )y Sig. A. Terracciano ; " On the Flora of SicUy," by Sig. L. 

 Micotra ; and "On the Disease of the Strawberry caused by 

 Spharella Fragaria:," by Sigg. E. Baroni and G. Del Guergio. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, May 24.— "On the Influence of certain 

 ■Natural Agents on the Virulence of the Tubercle- Bacillus. " 

 <y Dr. Arthur Ransome, F. R.S., and Sheridan Delepine. 



June 7. — "The Influence of Intra-Venous Injection of Sugar 

 in the Gases of the Blood." By Dr. Vaughan Harley. 



In a previous paper (A'ly. Soc. /'roc. 1893), he showed thai 

 he intra. venous injection m{ grape sugar caused an increase in 

 he lactic acid in the circul.iti >n. It appeared probable that the 

 actic acid had combined with the bases of the carbonates in the 

 ilood, having driven out the cirbonic acid. 



NO. I 291, VOL. 50] 



Experiments were made on dogs to see what changes were 

 produced in the gases of the blood after intra-venous injections 

 of sugar. 



It was found the quantity of carbonic acid was diminished, 

 it being most markedly so during the first hour after the sugar 

 injection, and still somewhat so three to five hours later. 

 These results support the view that the lactic acid drives the 

 carbonic acid from the sodium salts and replaces it. 



In the next place, the changes met with in the quantity of 

 oxygen in the blood were investigated. It was found the 

 oxygen was markedly diminished during the first hour after the 

 sugar injection. During the third and fifth hours the quantity 

 in arterial was that usually found in venous blood. The 

 explanation of this cannot up to the present be explained. 



June 2f. — " Researches on Explosives. Preliminary Note." 

 By Captain Sir A. Noble, K.C.B., F.R S. 



The researches on which I, in conjunction with Sir F. Abel, 

 have been engaged for very many years, have had their scope 

 so altered and extended by the rapid advances which have 

 been made in the science of explosives, that we have been 

 unable to lay before the Society the results of the many 

 hundreds of experiments under varied conditions which I have 

 carried out. We are desirous also of clearing up some diffi- 

 culties which have presented themselves with certain modern 

 explosives when dealing with high densities and pressures, but 

 the necessary investigations have occupied so much time that I 

 am induced to lay a few of our results before the Society, trust- 

 ing, however, that before long we may be able to submit a 

 more complete memoir. 



A portion of our researches includes investigations into the 

 transformation and ballistic properties of powders varying 

 greatly in composition, but of which potassium nitrate is the 

 chief constituent. In this preliminary note I propose to refer 

 to powders of this description chiefly for purposes of com- 

 parison, and shall devote cny attention principally to gun-cotton 

 and to those modern explosives of which gua-cottan forms 3 

 principal ingredient. 



In determining the transformation experienced during ex- 

 plosion, the same arrangements for firing the explosive and 

 collecting the gases was followed as are described in our earlier 

 researches,' and the gases themselves were, after being 

 sealed, analysed either under the personal superintendence 

 of Sir. F. Abel, or of Prof. Dewar, and to Prof. Dewar's 

 advice and assistance I am indebted, I can hardly say to what 

 extent. 



The heat developed by explosion, and Ihe quantity of per- 

 manent gases generated were also determined as described in 

 our researches, but the amount of water formed plays so im- 

 portant a part in the transformation that special means were 

 adopted in order to obtain this product with exactness. 



Numerous experiments were made to ascertain the relation of 

 the tension of the various explosives employed, to the gravi- 

 metric density of the charge when fired in a close vessel, but I 

 do not propose here to pursue this part of our inquiry, both 

 because the subject is too large to be treated of in a preliminary 

 note and because approximate values have already been 

 published '•' for several of the explosives with which we have 

 experimented. 



With certain explosives, the possibility or probability of 

 detonation was very carefully investigated. In some cases the 

 explosive was merely placed in the explosion vessel in close 

 proximity to a charge of mercuric fulminate by which it was 

 fired, but I found that the most satisfactory method of experi- 

 ment was to place the charge to be experimented with in a 

 small shell packed as tightly as possible, the shell then being 

 placed in a large explosion vessel and fired by means of mer- 

 cuiic fulminate. The tension in the small shell at the moment 

 of fracture and the tension in the large explosion vessel were in 

 each experiment carefully measured. 



It may be desirable here to explain that I do not consider 

 the presence of a high pressure with any explosive as necessarily 

 denoting detonation. With both cordite and gun-cotton I have 

 developed enormous pressures, close upon 100 tons per square 

 inch (about 15,000 atmospheres), but the former explosive I 

 have not succeeded in detonating, while gun-cotton can be de- 

 tonated wi:h the utmost ease. It is obvious that if we suppose 

 a small charge fired in a vessel impervious to heat, the rapidity 



1 P/tit. Trans, vol. ctxv. p. 61. 



- N'oblc, "Internal Haliistic^," 1892, p. 33; Ro}' Soc. Proc. vol. Iii - 

 p. 128. 



