May 21, 1903 



NATURE 



71 



M.P., Sir Arthur Riicker, and Sir Thomas Higham, 

 K.C.I.E., with Mr. J. E. Ferard, of the India Office, as 

 -ccretary. 



Fhe new science rooms of the Colston's Girls' School, 

 Hristol, were opened on Friday last. May 15, by the Right 

 Hon. Henrv Hobhouse, M.P. The new building com- 

 prises three rooms, about 30 feet by 26 feet, and one 

 ^mailer. The lecture room will be largely used for the 



udv of botany, and is provided with a small conservatory, 

 window box, in which experiments, such as those show- 

 ,A-^ the process of germination, will be carried out. In 

 the chemistry laboratory benches are provided at which girls 

 will work in sets of two, and each set will have a balance 

 (>n side benches close at hand. The physics laboratory is 

 on verv much the same plan as the chemistry room. Mr. 

 Hobhouse, in the course of his speech, remarked that tne 

 .ducation of girls was of the highest importance, not only 

 in order to fit them for their domestic duties, but also to 

 provide good women teachers. Prof. Armstrong hailed the 



.)ining of the new science rooms as a proof that science, 



re almost neglected, was now considered a necessary 



,rt of a liberal education. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, March 26.— " On the Cytology of Apogamy 



1 Aposporv. (i) Preliminary Note on .Apogamy." By 



H. Farmer, F.R.S., J. E. S. Moore, and Miss L. Digrby. 



The phenomenon of apogamy is exhibited when the young 



fern-plant springs directly from the tissue cells of the 



prothallium generation, instead of arising as the result of 



segmentation of the egg within the archegonium. It has 



been regarded as a " short cut " in the life-cycle, and some 



hf-ontiVal importance has been attached to it in connection 



Fig. I.— Group of prothallial cells with migrating nuclei. 



with the relationships believed to exist between the gameto- 

 phyte and the sporophyte, that is, between the prothallium 

 and the fern-plant. Now it has been known for some years 

 that the nuclei of these two generations exhibit a constant 

 difference inter se of such a nature that each sporophyte 

 nucleus contains twice as many chromosomes as do the 

 individual nuclei of the gametophyte. 



Evidence is brought forward to show that this nuclear 



change is brought about, in the apogamous development, 

 by the migration of a nucleus to an adjacent cell, and its 

 subsequent fusion with the nucleus of that cell. .\ consider- 

 able number of instances were observed in which single 

 cells contained two nuclei, and when this was the case, one 

 of the contiguous cells was always seen to be destitute of 

 a nucleus. Instances of the transit of the nuclei through 

 the walls were also seen. Further, the nuclei of some of 

 the cells in the region where these occurrences were dis- 

 coverable could occasionally be met with in stages at which 

 it was found possible to estimate the number of chromo- 

 somes. In such cases these were double the number of 

 those of the ordinary prothallial nuclei. 



These facts lead to the inference that we are dealing 

 with an irregular kind of fertilisation, or, at any rate, with 

 a mechanism for doubling the nuclear chromosomes that 

 is practically identical with what is seen in normal fertilisa- 

 tion. In the latter case the double number is arrived at by 

 the addition of the chromosomes of the sperm-nucleus to 

 those of the nucleus of the egg. 



The annexed figure illustrates (1) two cells in which the 

 nucleus of the one is passing through the parti-wall, and 

 apparently fusing directly with the other nucleus ; (2) a cell 

 with two nuclei, one of which has been derived from the 

 ceil at the top right-hand corner of the figure. 



May 7. — " Preliminary Note on the Discovery of a 

 Pigmy Elephant in the Pleistocene of Cyprus." By 

 Dorothv M. A. Bate. Communicated bv Henry Wood- 

 ward, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., V.P.Z.S.,' late Keeper of 

 Geology, British Museum, Natural History. 



The elephant described was discovered* by the author in 

 iqo2 during a search for bone-caves in the Kerynia Range 

 in the north of the island. The collection obtained chiefly 

 consists of a series of teeth, all procured from a single de- 

 posit, which also contained a very much larger quantity of 

 the remains of Hippopotamus minutus. 



The teeth of the Cypriote elephant are considerably 

 smaller than those of Elcphas mnaidriensis, the largest of 

 the Maltese forms, and are also slightly inferior in size to 

 those of E. melitensis. As a general feature it may be said 

 that the molars from Cyprus are more simply constructed 

 than those of the last-mentioned species, showing a slighter 

 tendency to " crimping " in the enamel and in being less 

 inclined to develop the mesial expansion of the plates of 

 dentine so characteristic of those of E. ajricanus. Taking 

 into consideration the several characters in which the teeth 

 if the Cyprus form differ from those of all hitherto de- 

 -ribed dwarf species (putting on one side E. lamarmorae, 

 ho teeth of which are unknown to science), as well as the 



Istinct habitat of the animal, it is believed to be specifically 



i^tinct, and it is therefore proposed to name it Elephas 

 Cypriotes. The discovery of this pigmy species is interest- 

 ing in comparison with those from Malta and Sicily, and 

 I he occurrence of these different, though apparently closely 

 related, small races of elephants in widely separated islands 



t the Mediterranean lends probability to the theory that 

 this is a case of independent development along similar 



nos, the result of similar conditions of existence. 



Physical Society, May 8.— Dr. R. T. Glazebrook, F.R.S., 

 president, in the chair. — Mr. T. H. Blakesley exhibited 

 and described a spectroscope of direct vision, of one 

 kind of glass, and of minimum deviation for every 

 ray that comes into the centre of the field of view. The 

 refracting angles are such that the cosines of half the 

 refracting angles are equal to half the index of refraction 

 fo;- the ray which is to have no deviation. The first prism 

 is right-angled, and has one angle equal to the refracting 

 angle calculated by the above rule. The second prism and 

 the third possess the refracting angle so obtained, and the 

 fourth is similar to the first. The plan adopted can be 

 extended by employing more than one of the arrangements 

 described, in sequence. — Prof. J. D. Everett read a paper 

 on the mathematics of bees' cells. — Mr. W. A. Price read 

 a note on the coloured map problem. He referred to the 

 fact that only four colours are required to colour a map 

 on the surface of a simply connected region, such as a 

 sphere, in such a way that two countries marching on a 

 boundary line are coloured differently, and exhibited two 

 models of anchor rings the surfaces of which were divided 

 in each case into six sections, o:\rh of which marched with 



NO. J 75 1. VOL. 68] 



