94 



NA TURE 



[May 28, 1903 



On Tuesday the Bill passed through Committee, but the 

 third clause was greatly modified. In its altered form the 

 clause provides for a body or bodies of management in each 

 borough, constituted so as to include one-fourth members 

 nominated by the County Council, and three-fourths by the 

 borough council. The measure, as passed, does not include 

 the clause giving the borough councils the power of appoint- 

 ing and dismissing teachers. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 

 iv. No. 2 (April). — G. H. Darwin, approximate determin- 

 ation of the form of Maclaurin's spheroid. — H. S. White, 

 on twisted cubics that have a directrix. — L. Heffter, line- 

 integrals in n-dimensional space. — E. Kasner, the general- 

 ised Beltrami problem concerning geodesic representation. 

 — G. A. Miller, on the holomorph of a cyclic group. — J. L. 

 Coolidge, quadric surfaces in hyperbolic space. — A. Loewy, 

 on the reducibility of real groups of linear homogeneous 

 substitutions. — W. B. Ford, on the possibility of differenti- 

 ating term by term the developments of an arbitrary function 

 of one real variable in terms of Bessel functions. — E. J. 

 Wilczynski, on a certain congruence associated with a given 

 ruled surface. — J. Westlund, on the class-number of the 

 cyclotomic field k{e-'"'l''"). 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (2) vol. 

 ix. No. 8 (May). — E. H. Moore, presidential address on 

 the foundations of mathematics. — C. J. Keyser, concerning 

 the axiom of infinity and mathematical induction. — E. R. 

 Hedrick, review of R. Fricke's treatise on the differential 

 and integral calculus. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, May 7. — " Experiments in Hybridisation, 

 with Special Reference to the Effect of Conditions on 

 Dominance." By L. Doncaster, B.A., King's College, 

 Cambridge. Communicated by Dr. S. F. Harmer, F.R.S. 



Describes experiments on hybrid Echinoid larvas, made to 

 determine whether the dominance of a character is influenced 

 by the condition of the genital cells at the time of fertilisa- 

 tion. It is concluded that there is no evidence that this is 

 the case, and that the seasonal changes observed in the 

 larvfe are due to difTerence in temperature. 



May 14. — " A New Class of Organo-Tin Compounds 

 containing Halogens." By William J. Pope, F.R.S., Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry, Municipal School, Manchester, and 

 Stanley J. Peachey. 



Chemical Society, May 7.— Prof. H. McLeod, F.R.S., 

 vice-president, in the chair. — It was announced that the 

 council at its meeting that day had awarded the Longstaff 

 medal to Prof. W. J. Pope, F.R.S., for his researches on 

 the stereochemistry of compounds of elements other than 

 carbon. — The following papers were read : — The action of 

 ammonia and organic bases on ethyl esters of olefine- 

 dicarboxylic and olefine-jS-ketocarboxylic acids, part ii., by 

 S. Ruhemann. — -Spontaneous decomposition of nitro- 

 camphor, by T. M. Lovvry. A quantity of nitrocamphor, 

 prepared in 1898 and purified by recrystallising once from 

 alcohol, was found to have undergone spontaneous change 

 into a sesquicamphorylhydroxylamine, identical with that 

 prepared from camphoryl chloride and camphoryloxime. — 

 /3-Bromo-o'-nitrocamphor- and j8- and ir-bromocamphoryl- 

 oximes. The influence of impurities in conditioning 

 isomeric change, by T. M. Lowry. ;8-Bromo-o'-nitro- 

 camphor exists in two forms ; the pseudo-form, 



.CH.NO2 

 CsHjjBry I , 



\co 



separates from solutions of the nitro-compound in benzene 

 or ethyl acetate. The normal form was not isolated. A 

 mixture of the two forms, obtained by crystallising from 

 hot alcohol or acetic acid, softened at 100°, melted without 

 decomposition at about 114°, and remelted sharply at 100°; 

 the latter is therefore the temperature at which the solid 



NO. 1752, VOL. 68J 



pseudo-form is in stable equilibrium with the liquid mix- 

 ture. Freshly prepared solutions of ;3-bromo-o'-nitro- 

 camphor exhibit the phenomenon of mutarotation. A solu- 

 tion in benzene of the ^se«do-form is at first almost inactive, 

 but in the course of two or three days the specific rotatory 

 power becomes constant and equal to —80°. The change 

 of rotatory power is not spontaneous, but is conditioned by 

 the presence of traces of impurity. This fact shows that, 

 even when both isomerides are present in solution, equi- 

 librium between them is only established in presence of a 

 trace of a catalytic agent, probably an alkali. These 

 phenomena are closely analogous to Baker's observation* 

 on the union of hydrogen and oxygen, and are directly 

 opposed to Laar's hypothesis of " tautomerism." — The 

 electrolytic reduction of pheno- and naphtho-morpholones, 

 by F. H. Lees and F. Shedden. Attempts were made by 

 electrolytically reducing aromatic morpholones in sulphuric 

 acid solution to produce aromatic morpholines possessing 

 physiological properties similar to those of morphine ; the 

 morpholone ring, however, usually undergoes secondary de- 

 composition. — The coloured constituents of Butea frondosa, 

 by E. G. Hill. The dried and fresh flowers of Butea 

 frondosa, used in India for the preoaration of a somewhat 

 fugitive yellow dye, contain fisetin and different anhydrides 

 of a tannic acid. — Butein. A preliminary notice by (the 

 late) J. J. Hummel and A. G. Perkin. Butein, the colour- 

 ing matter of the flowers of B. frondosa, described by 

 Hummel and Cavallo in 1894, probably exists in two 

 modifications which, on fusion with alkali, giye resorcinol 

 and protocatechuic acid. The tinctorial properties of 

 butein closely resemble those of benzylideneanhydroglyco- 

 gallol, to which it is possibly allied. — The relative affinities 

 of polybasic acids, by H. M. Dawson. — The chemical 

 dynamics of the reactions between chlorine and benzene 

 uiider the influence of different catalytic agents and of light, 

 by A. Slator. With a large excess of the hydrocarbon, the 

 relative amounts formed of the two chief products chloro- 

 benzene and benzene hexachloride depend on the conditions 

 of the experiment. The velocity of these reactions, 

 especially under the influence of different catalytic agents, 

 has been measured under various conditions. Under the 

 influence of light without catalysts, the addition reaction 

 alone occurs ; under conditions of equal illumination, the 

 velocity of this change is found to be proportional to the 

 square of the chlorine concentration. — The diazo-reaction in 

 the diphenyl series. Part i. On dianisidine and 3 : 3'- 

 dichlorobenzidine, by J. C. Cain. On heating aqueous 

 solutions of the diazonium salts prepared from dianisidine 

 and 3 : 3'-dichlorobenzidine, dark -coloured, insoluble, _ in- 

 fusible compounds which appear to be quinones are obtained 

 instead of the expected dihydroxy-derivatives. 



Linnean Society, April 16.— Rev. T. R. R. Stabbing, vice- 

 president, in the chair. — Dr. G. Henderson exhibited a 

 coloured sketch of a withered leaf of Quercus incana. 

 Roxb., and of slugs found amongst the dead leaves. The 

 drawing of the mollusc and leaf was to show their strange 

 resemblance in colour and outline. These slugs are common 

 at Dalhousie in the Punjab, on ground which is always 

 covered with these withered leaves. A few black slugs were 

 to be found with the light-brown specimens, and whilst the 

 latter escaped the notice of birds, the former were taken. — 

 On some points in connection with the ordinary develop- 

 ment of Vaucheria resting-spores, by Dr. H. C. Bastian, 

 F.R.S. In 1891 the author had some spores of Vaucheria 

 under observation in a bottle loosely covered with a screw- 

 cap, and after a few weeks these spores were found to be 

 germinating and emitting filaments. In 1902 the experi- 

 ments were repeated on Vaucheria racemosa ; material was 

 kept in a shallow dish, and a few days later the spores were 

 transferred to a stoppered bottle ; another portion was put 

 into a tumbler, loosely covered to exclude dust. Within 

 seven weeks the bottled specimens germinated, a process 

 which did not take place in those in the tumbler for some 

 time later. Special attention was drawn to the pigment- 

 granules, to be regarded as refuse-products left over during 

 the molecular transformation that the spore has undergone 

 in becoming decolorised ; they are heaps of fine granules, 

 without any bounding membrane. These pigment-heaps pass 

 into the filament as spheres with a sharply-defined outline, 

 or else press together in compressed forms. Slight to-and- 

 fro movements were detected in them. One pigment sphere 



