482 



NA TURE 



[March 15, 1900 



lecture experiment. The effects of surface tension were ex- 

 hibited by placing water between two pieces of microscope 

 cover glass. When the glasses are circular they set in any 

 position, and one can be made to rotate upon the other. If the 

 plates are square or elliptical they set in a definite position, to 

 which they immediately return if displaced. Mr. Phillips 

 pointed out how two circular discs with liquid between could be 

 used from which to suspend the moving system of a galvano- 

 meter. Mr. Cochrane suggested the use of some liquid which 

 would evaporate less quickly than water. Mr. Blakesley asked 

 what accuracy could be obtained with such an arrangement, and 

 what weight it would be possible to support without squeezing 

 out the water. — ^The meeting then adjourned until March 23. 



Zoological Society, March 6.— Dr. W. T. Blanford, 

 F.R.S., Vice-President, in the chair.— Mr. G= A. Boulenger, 

 F.R.S., described eight new species of reptiles and batrachians 

 from Borneo, which had been forwarded to him by Mr. R. 

 Shelford, the curator of the Sarawak Museum. One of them 

 formed the type of a new genus proposed to be named Lepturo- 

 phis.—Mr. F. E. Beddard, F.R.S., read a description of the 

 brain of the Siamang {Hylobates syndactylus), based upon a 

 specimen taken from an animal which had recently died in the 

 Society's Gardens. The form of the brain did not appear to 

 differ materially from that of other species of Hylobates. — A 

 communication from Miss E. M. Bowdler Sharpe contained a 

 list of twenty-nine species of butterflies, of which specimens 

 had been collected by Mr. J. Lewis Bonhote in the Bahama 

 Islands in 1898. Of these, one species, viz. Papilio bonhotei, 

 was described as new. — A communication was read from Mr. 

 J. Lewis Bonhote, containing an account of the mammals col- 

 lected by Mr. T. H. Lyle in Siam. The collection comprised 

 specimens of twenty species, one of which, viz. Petaurista lylei, 

 was described as new, and the others were enumerated in the 

 paper. A large series of specimens of a squirrel {Sciurus Jin- 

 iaysoni) \ja.s contained in the collection, and from an examina- 

 tion of them the author was able to corroborate Mr. Thomas's 

 remarks {P.Z.S. 1898, p. 245) that, so far as our present know- 

 ledge is concerned, the variations met with in this species follow, 

 apparently, none of the ordinary laws which are usually supposed 

 to govern such cases. — Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton con- 

 tributed a paper on a small collection of mammals brought 

 home by Captain H. H, P. Deasy from Central Asia. The 

 most interesting specimens were three examples of the rare 

 Euchoreutes naso, a novelty to the collection in the British 

 Museum, and specimens of new species of Vole and Jerboa. — 

 Mr. Martin Jacoby read a paper on new species, one hundred 

 in number, of Phytophagous Coleoptera from South and Central 

 Africa. 



Cambridge. 

 Philosophical Society, February 19. — Mr. Larmor, Pre- 

 sident, in the chair. — The President announced that the ad- 

 judicators of the Hopkins Prize for the period 1891-1894 have 

 .awarded the prize to W. D. Niven, F.R.S., formerly Fellow 

 of Trinity College, for his memoir on ellipsoidal harmonics 

 {Phil. Trans. 1891) and other valuable contributions to applied 

 mathematics. The following communications were made to the 

 Society :— A suggestion as to a possible explanation of the 

 origin of some secondary sexual characters in animals as 

 afforded by observations on certain salmonids, G. E. H. 

 Barrett- Hamilton. Attention was directed to the phenomena 

 attendant upon the spawning of the anadromous salmonids of 

 the genus Onchorhynchus, which, it was suggested, would be 

 found to throw light on the origin of secondary and other sexual 

 characters in animals. — On supernumerary teeth, W. L. H. 

 Duckworth and D. H. Eraser. The observations which were 

 brought before the notice of the Society dealt with the occur- 

 j-ence of supernumerary teeth in adult human crania. The 

 essential fact demonstrated was the frequent presence of small 

 dental masses in a particular position on the alveolar margin of 

 the upper jaw, viz. between the second pre-molar and the first 

 molar teeth. The authors thought they were justified in the 

 conclusion that some of these masses are to be regarded as 

 vestiges of what would be third pre-molars, and inferred that 

 the condition is consequently to be considered as constituting an 

 approximation to the Platyrrhine type of primate dentition. — 

 On the physical characteristics of some Eskimo from Labrador, 

 W. L. H. Duckworth and B. H. Pain. The subjects of this 

 <!ommunication are a party of Eskimo, some twenty-five in 

 mumber, who were exhibited in the " Eskimo encampment " at 



"Olympia," in London, at the latter end of last year and in 

 January of the present year. The observations dealt with the 

 external characters of these people ; measurements were 

 obtained which conveyed an idea of their physical proportions, 

 and some of their words were recorded by means of the 

 phonograph. The measurements bear an interesting relation to 

 those obtained from the skeletons of Eskimo from Labrador 

 presented by Dr. Curwen, of St. John's College, to the Uni- 

 versity Anatomical Department. — On the zoological position of 

 Palaeospondylus , J. Graham Kerr. Evidence was brought 

 forward which suggested the possibility of Palaeospondylus 

 being really a young Dipnoan fish. — On the extraction of gases 

 from small quantities of blood, J. Barcroft. The principle of 

 the apparatus demonstrated is the ordinary one of extracting the 

 gases from measured quantities of blood in vacuous receivers 

 with an air pump. The leading feature of the apparatus is that 

 the measuring burette, the vacuous receivers and the gas pump 

 are in one piece, so that there is no opportunity for the blood or 

 the gases to be contaminated with air.— On the separation of a 

 pure proteid from egg-white, F. G. Hopkins. A process was 

 described by means of which a crystalline albumen can be 

 obtained from egg-white, which upon repeated fractional 

 crystallisation shows complete constancy of rotatory power and 

 of percentage composition. It yields therefore satisfactory 

 evidence of being a chemical individual, and should form satis- 

 factory material for chemical study. 



Edinburgh. 



Royal Society, February 5. — Prof. Duns in the chair. — 

 Prof. J. Gibson and Mr. A. W. C. Menzies exhibited their form 

 of thermostat, which is heated and regulated by electricity. The 

 heating is effected by means of four or five ordinary incandescent 

 electric lamps, set below the jacketed tank containing the water, 

 whose temperature is to be kept steady. After the temperature 

 has been raised to the desired point, a simple form of automatic 

 cut-out is arranged to work an electric relay, which puts out the 

 electric lamps when the temperature rises slightly above the 

 desired temperature, and allows them to be re-lighted when the 

 temperature falls slightly below that point. One important 

 practical advantage of the method lay in the fact that the 

 operator was rendered quite independent of the gas supply. By 

 its means they had been able to keep the temperature steady 

 within a range of a tenth of a degree for months, and at com- 

 paratively little cost. — Dr. W. Peddie read a paper on the law of 

 elastic fatigue. In a former paper on the torsional oscillations 

 of wires it was pointed out that the empirical formula, which 

 very accurately represents the relation between amplitude of 

 oscillation and the number of oscillations that have taken place 

 since the wire was left to itself, indicates the existence of a con- 

 dition in which elastic fatigue is diminished by previous oscilla- 

 tions of the wire. But the truth of this result depended, in the 

 series of experiments then discussed, upon the formula applying, 

 with unmodified parameters, to a range outside that dealt with 

 in the experiments. It was now shown that, with one exception, 

 fatigue had been induced by previous oscillations in all series of 

 experiments hitherto made upon both steel and iron wires. In 

 the exceptional case the reverse may be true in part of the experi- 

 mental range. The angle of oscillation (provisionally called the 

 critical angle in the former paper), which separates the two con- 

 ditions, occurs well within the experimental range. At larger 

 angles fatigue is induced by previous oscillations ; at smaller 

 angles it seems to be increased. —In a note on magnetic screening, 

 Dr. C. G. Knott gave an account of a new method of explor- 

 ing the field inside a hollow tube or sphere of magnetic metal, 

 specially applicable to cases in which the interior is very narrow 

 or difficult of access. The idea had been in his mind for many 

 years, but only recently, in connection with an investigation 

 on magnetic strains in small iron and nickel spherical 

 shells, had he found occasion to test the method experimentally. 

 The method consisted in comparing the twist produced in 

 a nickel wire carrying a given current and magnetised longi- 

 tudinally in various fields : (i) when the nickel wire alone occu- 

 pied the heart of the magnetising coil ; (2) when either the iron 

 or nickel shell was introduced so that the nickel wire lay wholly 

 within it. This required the nickel wire to be shorter than the 

 diameter of the spherical shell. It was found, for example, 

 that it required a field 660 when the iron shell surrounded the 

 wire to produce the same twist effect as was produced by field 

 200 when the nickel shell surrounded the wire ; and that the 

 same effect was produced by field 50 when the wire was sur- 



NO. 1585, VOL. 61] 



