August 21, 1890] 



NATURE 



399 



partly coagulated at the positive pole. At the cathode 

 they are partly changed into alkali-albumin. 



Eile and urine were taken as further examples of 

 animal liquids. 



(4) The effect of electrolysis in the living body. 



Pithed frogs and anaesthetized rabbits were used. This 

 part of the work is still incomplete. 



G. N. Stewart. 



W 



LOBSTER CULTURE IN THE ISLE OF MULL. 



E have been favoured with a circular, issued by 

 Mr, George Brook, Lecturer on Embryology in 

 the University of Edinburgh, and Mr. W. L. Calder- 

 wood, late of the scientific staff of the Fishery Board 

 for Scotland, expressive of an intentention to establish 

 at Lochbuie a small marine laboratory. The pro- 

 moters have set themselves to restore our shell fisheries 

 to their former condition ; and a leading item in 

 their programme is the proposal to construct a lobster 

 pond, with suitable apparatus for hatching and rearing 

 lobsters. The cost of the entire laboratory, with 

 pond and plant, is estimated at ^400, that of mainten- 

 ance at ;^i5o per annum — exceedingly moderate sums, 

 for which an appeal is made to the public. The con- 

 dition into which our lobster fisheries have lapsed is 

 shown by the fact that' a lobster ground in the far west of 

 Ireland is worked by a South of England boat. Our 

 import lobster trade is yearly increasing, and the fact 

 that our markets are not home-stocked is discreditable 

 in the extreme. The problem of artificial culture neces- 

 sary for the purpose in view has many times been 

 attacked by I3ritish naturalists. Savilie Kent had it 

 constantly in mind while officiating at our several aquaria ; 

 he made it a primary object in his schemes for the estab- 

 lishment of marine stations in Jersey and at Brighton, 

 and he meanwhile attempted to raise interest in it in 

 a paper read at the International Fisheries Exhibition 

 held at South Kensington. All this notwithstanding, 

 the matter has, with us, not yet passed beyond the ex- 

 perimental stage, and we are behind in the international 

 race. At Lochbuie the conditions should be favour- 

 able ; and as Mr. Brook, in the preparation of his Chal- 

 lenger Report, has shown himself capable of perform- 

 ing a difficult task under exceptional conditions, we have 

 full confidence in his ability to carry out his project. The 

 promoters of this scheine propose in other respects to 

 pursue a course of scientific study of the marine fauna 

 of the west coast of Scotland, but their chief aims are 

 unmistakably economic. We sincerely hope that they 

 will confine their attention to the one or the other branch, 

 for nothing can be plainer than that the extraordinary 

 successes which have placed the fishery work of our 

 American cousins foreinost in that of the world, have 

 been largely, if not wholly, due to their having kept pure 

 science and economics scrupulously apart. The Lochbuie 

 scheme is a modest though an ambitious one, and Messrs. 

 Brook and Calderwood signify their intention of giving 

 their services as superintendents. Recent proceedings 

 in Parliament have shown that there is disaffection on 

 the Scottish Fishery Board ; and it would be an interest- 

 ing circumstance should private enterprise, which has 

 done so much for science in Britain, solve the difficulty 

 in hand, while the State-aided body fritters away a hand- 

 some endowment. 



THE FRENCH ASSOCIA TION FOR THE 

 AD VANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



''THE nineteenth meeting of the French Association for 

 ■*■ the Advancement of Science opened at Limoges 

 on the 7th inst. 



NO. 1086, VOL. 42] 



After some remarks on the learned societies of Linioges* 

 and some references to Gay-Lussac, the inauguration of 

 whose statue took place on the nth inst.. Prof. A. Cornu, 

 the President of the Association for the year, delivered a 

 discourse on the part played by physics in the progress ot 

 the sciences. It is impossible in the space at our dis- 

 posal to do justice to this interesting address, but the 

 following will give an idea of its character. 



Beginning with chemistry. Prof. Cornu pointed out 

 that the introduction and use of the chemical balance by 

 Richter, Wenzel, Dalton, and Lavoisier led to the substi- 

 tution of the laws of multiple and equivalent proportions, 

 and the indestructibility of matter, for the vague hypo- 

 theses held by the alchemists. 



Two other physical instruments introduced into chemical 

 methods are the calorimeter and barometer. By means 

 of the first, Dulong and Petit's law, that the same quantity 

 of heat is required to heat an atom of all simple bodies 

 to the same extent, was discovered ; and but for the second, 

 Gay-Lussac could not have made his researches on 

 vapour density, which, with the work of Ampere and 

 Avogadro, led to the determination of the numerical re- 

 lation between the temperature density and pressure of a 

 gas and the notion of atomic volume. 



Another common physical instrument, the thermometer, 

 has furnished organic chemistry with the means of dis- 

 covering important laws of organic series ; and recently, 

 with the calorimeter, it has enabled M. Rault to determine 

 molecular weights by the freezing of dissolvents, and has 

 furnished Thomson, Berthelot, Sarrau, Vielle, and other 

 workers in thermo-chemistry with the means of arriving at 

 the new mechanics of the affinity of atoms according to 

 their size, like the universal law of gravitation. 



The introduction of the spectroscope into the chemical 

 laboratory for purposes of analysis, by Bunsen and Kir- 

 choff, marks an important epoch in the history of chem- 

 istry. This instrument has been entirely created by the 

 labours of physicists ; the prism of Newton, the telescope 

 of Fraunhofer, and the collimator of Babinet marking 

 stages in its evolution Bunsen and Kirchoff demon- 

 strated the power of their method of analysis by the 

 discovery of rubidium and caesium ; in fact, it is only 

 necessary to observe an unknown line in the spectrum of 

 a substance to establish the existence of a new element. 



It appears therefore that each time chemistry has 

 borrowed from physics some new method it has entered 

 into a prolific field of investigation, conceptions have 

 been extended and given a more precise meaning, and 

 chemical knowledge advanced in a manner proportional 

 to the power of the adopted methods. 



The other natural sciences have benefited in the same 

 way. Up to the seventeenth century astronomers had no 

 means of assisting their vision, and therefore they could 

 only make observations of the movements of the heavenly 

 bodies. In spite, however, of the simplicity of the means 

 of observation, the work of Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Coper- 

 nicus, Tycho-Brah^, and Kepler contained a considerable 

 amount of information with respect to celestial motions, 

 but nothing was known of the constitution of the bodies 

 observed. With the refracting telescope of Galileo and 

 Newton's reflector, astronomy underwent a transformation : 

 the sun was found to have spots and faculae ; the plains, 

 mountains, and craters of the moon were observed : 

 Venus was shown to go through phases in the same 

 manner as our satellite ; Jupiter's belts and satellites 

 were seen ; and the beauty of Saturn and his rings 

 revealed. 



Later, Herschel's large mirrors, worked by his own 

 hands, enabled him to discover double and multiple star 

 systems ; to prove that many stars are suns like our own, 

 inasmuch as they have other bodies revolving round 

 them. 



Such was the revolution produced in astronomy by the 

 employment of the first optical instruments. The intro- 



