2.^.8 



NA TURE 



[January 4, 1900 



The author discusses at some length the changes of physio- 

 graphy in tropical America, in their bearing on the history of 

 the West Indian Islands. In Jurassic times there is evidence 

 of a great expansion of land from the Rocky Mountains east- 

 wards in North America, and over the north-eastern part of 

 South America. " It is probable that the continental mass as 

 a whole, practically equivalent in area to the present one, 

 occupied a position slightly east of its present locus." The 

 American fossiliferous marine Jurassic belonged to the Pacific 

 area, and may have extended as far to the east as Havana. 

 No evidence is recognised for establishing land connection be- 

 tween the islands and North and South American lands in Post- 

 Jurassic time. The first evidence of Antillean lands is found in 

 eruptive rocks of late Cretaceous time, when it is probable there 

 were marine volcanoes. The land debris constituting the 

 Eocene strata proves the pre- existence of extensive Cretaceous 

 land-areas. In late Eocene and early Oligocene times there 

 was a profound regional subsidence, and 3000 feet of purely 

 oceanic deposits were accumulated. A great uplift occurred in 

 late Oligocene or Miocene times, and subsequently many minor 

 movements of elevation and depression have taken place. 



In an appendix some Cretaceous and Eocene corals from 

 Jamaica are described by Mr. T. ^iVayland Vaughan. 



H. B. W. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Under the will of Mr. James Brown Thomson, of Kinning 

 Park, Glasgow, the University of Glasgow will receive 10,000/., 

 and the Glasgow Technical College, 2000/. 



Mr. W. H. Derriman, assistant lecturer in physics at the 

 Technical College, Huddersfield, has been appointed to a 

 similar post in University College, Liverpool. 



Science states that Dr. Jokichi Takamine, 01 the University 

 of Tokio, Japan, known for his researches on digestive ferments, 

 is at present on a tour of inspection of the larger educational 

 institutions of the United States. He has been sent by the 

 Japanese Government to examine the scientific work and 

 methods of American universities. 



An English Educational Exhibition will be held at the 

 Imperial Institute on January 5-27. The exhibits will comprise 

 students' work, and will refer to primary, secondary, technical, 

 and higher education of both sexes. A series of lectures and 

 conferences on educational subjects and demonstration lessons 

 will be held at the Imperial Institute during the Exhibition. 

 Particulars of the chief science conferences have already been 

 given (p. 189). 



The University Correspondent has published its annual crop 

 of amusing mistakes made by schoolboys in answers to examina- 

 tion questions. The following answers, selected from many 

 similar ones, show how easy it is for pupils to receive inac- 

 curate and confused impressions when given didactic instruc- 

 tion, and also how essential it is that examination questions 

 should be explicit : — When would you expect an eclipse of the 

 sun to take place? In the night. — The sun never sets on 

 English possessions, because the sun sets in the west, and our 

 colonies are in the north, south, and east. — The exports of 

 Ceylon are peculiar to any other part of the world. The 

 chief are piano steamers (sc. P. and O. steamers). —A cubic 

 foot of water weighs 64 lbs. : .-. a squate foot of water weights 

 16 lb., and a foot of water weights 4 lb. — The three principle 

 parts of the eye are the pupil, the moat, and the beam. — A 

 mariner's compass is a little poast stuck up in the sea, and when 

 people want to know the way, the ships go and look at it.— Many 

 other instances might be given, but those quoted are sufficient 

 to show that there is much room for improvement in the teach- 

 ing of scientific subjects while such hazy ideas exist in the 

 minds of schoolboys. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIAL. 



Symons's Monthly Meteorological Magazine, December, 

 1899. — ^^The aims of meteorology. This is a brief synopsis of 

 a "Report on the Meteorology of Maryland," prepared by 

 direction of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The article on 

 special observations and investigations enumerates twenty- 

 nine heads under which observations are made. While all are 

 useful in different ways, any single service dealing with one- 



third of them would have little energy left for the improve^ 

 ment of the important work of weather prediction. Mr. 

 Symons considers that the perusal of the work, consisting of 

 about a hundred pages, is not merely instructive as a guide 

 to the future, but also very useful as a record of past pro- 

 gres.s. — Kites and meteorology, by W. A. Eddy. This is a 

 statement, in chronological order, of the various occasions on 

 which kites have been used in meteorological investigations,, 

 from those in 1749, by Wilson and Melvill, near Glasgow, 

 and in 1836 by Admiral Bach in Hudson Strait, in sending 

 up thermometers, to those very successful experiments made 

 in recent years at the Blue Hill Observatory, by means of 

 the Eddy and Hargrave kites. — The same number also con- 

 tains some interesting notes on damage by lightning, injurious 

 effects of fog on plan ts, and unusual snow crystals. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, December 19, 1899.— Pro,. Duns in the 

 chair. — Dr. J. Souttar McKendrick, of Glasgow, read a paper 

 on the zymolysis of tissues, physiological and pathological. 

 After a short bibliographical sketch of the nature and action* 

 of enzymes as they exist in the digestive juices, with their 

 methods of extraction, and mention of the observations of 

 Nasse, Brucke, and others who had attempted to demonstrate 

 the presence of ptyalin and pepsin in muscle, the author de- 

 scribed in detail his method of procedure. He made glycerine 

 extracts of between sixty and seventy tissues of the rabbit, child, 

 adult, and those obtained post-mortem, and with each tissue 

 extractive he endeavoured to demonstrate the presence or 

 absence of enzymes similar in their action to ptyalin or amyl- 

 opsin, pepsin, trypsin, inversin and rennin. A series of ex- 

 tractives were also made from certain pathological tissues, 

 namely, carcinomata, sarcomata, tissues from an eclamptic, &c 

 The results pointed to the presence of pepsin, or a substance- 

 analogous to it, in all the tissues, physiological and pathologi- 

 cal ; to the presence of a diastatic ferment in most of the 

 tissues; to the absence of tripsin except in the pancreas ;^ to 

 the absence of a milk curdling ferment except in those tissues 

 in which it is known to exist ; to the absence of an inversiv e 

 ferment. Malignant tissues were found to have proteolytic 

 and diastatic properties. Though rabbit's blood contained no 

 diastatic enzyme, eclamptic blood contained such an enzyme 

 in large amount ; and all eclamptic tissues yielded extracts 

 with markedly diastatic properties. The author in conclusion 

 advocated the similar examination of the blood in all obscure 

 diseases and of carcinomatous and sarcomatous growth. — Prof. 

 Mitchell communicated a paper on the cooling of a body in. 

 a steady blast of air, Part II. In the later experiments the 

 air currents had been varied from 10 to nearly 1000 metret- 

 per minute, and the temperature had been carried up to 

 120° C. Newton's law of cooling under these conditions wasj 

 found to hold with great accuracy, and Newton's original state- 

 ment, imperfectly quoted by most writers, completely verified 

 The rate of cooling was shown to be proportional to the diffei 

 ence of temperature for a given strength of blast, and to be 

 proportional (for a given temperature) to the strength of blasi 

 up to a value of about 450 metres per minute, but to fall off 

 from the law of proportionality for higher values. This was ex- 

 plained as a result of unsteadiness in the air current at these 

 higher values — Dr. Mahalanobis described a new form of 

 myograph, which consisted essentially of a T-shaped lever, 

 pivoted so as to admit of horizontal movements free from the 

 influence of gravity. The instrument was suitable for obtain- 

 ing myograms of isometric and isotonic contractions of muscles, 

 and most of the ordinary experiments on fatigue, tetanus, &c. 

 The momentum of the lever during contraction of the muscle 

 was approximately counterbalanced by the slight increase of" 

 tension in an elastic band, thus securing a fairly isotonic con- 

 dition of the muscle. — Dr. C. G. Knott drew attention to the 

 fact that Prof Swan, of St. Andrews, had in 1859 constructed 

 and used the form of photometer commonly associated with the 

 names of Lummer and Brodhun, who described it in 1889. 

 Swan's own description and figure will be found in the Trans. 

 R.S.E., vol. xxii. , 1861. — Prof. Tait, in a note on the claim 

 recently made for Gauss to the invention of quaternions, showed 

 that what Prof Klein, both in the Mathematische Annalen 

 and in his (and Sommerfeld's) treatise Ueber die Theorie des- 

 Kreisels ascribed to Gauss was not the Hamiltonian quaternion. 



NO. 1575, VOL. 61] 



