5o6 



NAIURE 



[March 22, 1900 



—On the presence of inverlase in plants of the Gramineae (I.), 

 by J. O'Sullivan. — lodonium compounds of the type IR'R"R"' 

 and the configuration of the iodine atom, by F. S. Kipping and 

 H. Peters. The authors have prepared phenylparatolyl- 

 iodonium hydroxide 



CsH, 



I.OH, 



CgH^Me- 



and, since they could not resolve it into enantiomorphous com- 

 ponents, they conclude provisionally that the three iodine 

 valencies are arranged in one plane. — Note on the decomposi- 

 tion of semicarbazones. by F. S. Kipping. On heating benz- 

 aldehyde semicarbazone it yields the azine 



C6H5.CH:N.N:CH.CeH5; 

 the formation of azines from aromatic semicarbazones is a fairly 

 general reaction. 



Geological Society, February i6.— Annual General Meet- 

 ing.— W. Whitaker, F.R.S., President, in the chair.— The 

 reports of the Council and of the Library and Museum Com- 

 mittee having been adopted, the medals and other awards 

 already announced (p. 279) were presented. The President 

 then proceeded to read his Anniversary Address, in which he 

 first gave obituary notices of several foreign members, foreign 

 correspondents, and fellows deceased since the last annual 

 meeting. He then referred to the great advance in geological 

 science in his own time, an advance that consisted largely of 

 the arising of new lines of work and not merely of progress in 

 old ones : thus petrology was a new branch of the science. 

 Palceontology had been affected by the growth of the theory of 

 evolution. In physical geology, such subjects as nietamorphism, 

 mountain-structure, and erosion had entered into new phases. 

 In stratigraphy the geological series had been extended down- 

 ward below the Cambrian, and, at the other end of the scale, 

 our knowledge of the Drift had greatly developed, largely owing 

 probably to geological discoveries connected with the antiquity 

 of man. He then treated of the advance in our knowledge of 

 underground geology, especially in the south-east of England, a 

 subject in which comparatively little was known forty-five years 

 ago ; and he described in some detail the underground extension 

 and thickness of various formations, particularly of those below 

 the Chalk, under the heads Upper Greensand, Gault, Lower 

 Greensand, Wealden and Purbeck, Jurassic, Lias and Trias, 

 and Older Rocks, referring to the amount of knowledge which 

 we possess in the London Basin, and its southern border in the 

 Wealden district, as compared with the Hampshire Basin. 



February 26.— J. J. H. Teall, F.R.S., President, in the 

 chair. — "The Bunter Pebble-Beds of the Midlands and the 

 Source of their Materials," by Prof. T. G. Bonney, F. R.S. 

 The author states the results of occasional work in the Bunter 

 Conglomerate of Staffordshire. After a sketch of matter 

 already published, he gives additional particulars of the lithology 

 of the pebbles, more especially of the felstones and of some 

 rather compact dark rocks. The mode of transport and source 

 of the pebbles are next considered. The reasons, already 

 published, for a fluviatile, as opposed to a marine, origin are 

 briefly summarised. — " Further Evidence of the Skeleton of 

 Euiycarpus Oweiii," by Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.R.S. The 

 original specimen from which this species was named was ob- 

 tained from the Sneewberg (South Africa) in 1876, and after 

 being doubtfully referred to Dicynodon was described and 

 figured in 1889. From a sketch the author is able to give some 

 account of the skull, including its dimensions. From other 

 material he gives new facts with regard to the vertebral column, 

 the ribs, the shoulder-girdle, the fore-limb, the hind-limb, and 

 the armour, which was present upon the limbs and the fore part 

 of the body. The locality from which the animal was obtained 

 appears to be one of the chief localities for the Lycosaurian 

 types of Theriodontia, and to be on the horizon of the Dicy^todoti- 

 beds. The recovery of the missing half of the Murray slab, with 

 the evidence of the skull and pelvis which it would give, is to 

 be desired in completion of our knowledge of this fossil animal. 



Royal Microscopical Society, February 21.— Mr. Wm. 

 Carruthers, F. R.S. , the President, in the chair. — Mr. E. M. 

 Nelson, in presenting a "'Jones' most improved combined 

 microscope and apparatus," said the Society had not hitherto 

 possessed an example of this instrument in its collection. The 

 exact date of the instrument was a little uncertain, but he 

 believed it to be about the last improvement in the non-achro- 

 matic microscope. The first published description of this micro- 



NO, 1586, VOL. 61] 



scope with a figure is to be found in Adams' "Essays on the 

 Microscope," 1798. — Dr. J. W. Measures exhibited the photo- 

 micrographic and projection apparatus made by Carl Zeiss, of 

 Jena. The apparatus was very complete, sufficing both for 

 photo-micrography and for projection. The camera was fitted 

 with a bellows divided into two parts, and though carried upon 

 a stand separate from that which carried the microscope and 

 illuminating apparatus no inconvenience had been found to arise 

 from vibration. An arc light was used supplied by a continuous 

 current of 65 volts and 30 amperes. The condenser, water- 

 chamber, iris diaphragm, and other parts required for illumina- 

 tion were fitted upon saddles sliding upon a /^-shaped rail in 

 front of the lamp, so that when once they had been accurately 

 centred they could be moved along the rail to any required 

 position without getting out of the centre. The first part of the 

 exhibition illustrated the use of the arrangements for projecting 

 the images of opaque objects upon the screen. This was followed 

 by the exhibition of microscopic slides, comprising insects, plant 

 sections, marine polyps, and preparation of animal tissues 

 chiefly by means of the Zeiss microplanar objectives. The last 

 portion of the exhibition consisted of lantern-slides of plants, 

 animals and landscapes, and some fine photo-micrographs of 

 diatoms, lent for the occasion by Dr. Spitta. The apparatus is 

 constructed so as to render the transition from tnicro to macro 

 projection, and the reverse, rapid and easy, the rearrangement 

 of parts being effected in from one to three minutes. 



Linnean Society, March i. — Dr. A. Giinther, F.R.S., 

 President, in the chdr. — Mr. W. Saville Kent exhibited lantern- 

 slides of several British flowering plants to show the remarkable 

 advances which have been recently made in colour photography. 

 — Mr. C. B. Clarke, F. R.S., read a paper on botanic nomen- 

 clature. He showed that the new rule adopted at Berlin — not 

 to disturb names that had fifty years' user on the ground of 

 priority alone — resulted in a practical uniformity with the 

 system of naming adopted by Mr. Bentham and Sir J. D. 

 Hooker. The Old World, he said, had thus reached a fair 

 general agreement in nomenclature. The American botanists 

 follow a new system which aims at finality on a so-called " non- 

 shifting basis " in which the genus or species, as the case may 

 be, is established on a type-specimen. Mr. Clarke's paper was 

 devoted mainly to showing by selected instances that this 

 system did not ensure finality ; that the errors in determining 

 what should be ranked as the type are enough to discredit the 

 system ; and the author commented on the disputed question 

 whether a plant should be given the oldest specific name 

 bestowed upon it, or the oldest specific name it bears in the 

 genus in which it is now placed. — Mr. F. Chapman read a paper 

 on some foraminifera of Tithonian age from the limestone of 

 Nesseldorf. 



Entomological Society, March 7.— Mr. G. H, Verrall, 

 President, in the chair.— -Mr. H. Rowland-Brown was elected 

 into the Council and as joint-Secretary in the place of Mr. J. J. 

 Walker, R.N., who had resigned. — Mr. C. G. Barrett exhibited 

 a series of varieties of Spilosoina dorsalis from South Africa, 

 showing variation in some degree parallel with that of S. 

 hibricipeda in Great Britain. — G. W. Kirkaldy exhibited 

 several Rhynchota of economic interest, among them Aegaleus 

 bechuana, Kirk., from Africa, which attacks coffee, and Farla- 

 toria victrix, Ckll., from Phcenix, Arizona, found on date 

 palms. The last-named Coccid was originally introduced from 

 Egypt, and all attempts at eradication had hitherto failed. He 

 also showed a series of thirteen colour-varieties of the oriental 

 Scutellerine Cantao ocellatus (Thunb.), and examples of Dis- 

 tantidea vedda from Ceylon, in which the rostrum was very 

 long, extending as far as to the apex of the abdomen. — Papers 

 were communicated by Mr. W. L. Distant on " Unde.scribed 

 genera and species belonging to the Rhynchotal family Penta- 

 to/m'dae,'" and by Mr. G. J. Arrow " On Pleurostict Lamelli- 

 corns from Grenada and St. Vincent (West Indies)." Mr. 

 C. J. Gahan read a paper on ' ' Stridulating organs in Coleop- 

 tera," in which he remarked that one of the best accounts of 

 them was to be found in " The Descent of Man," but since 

 that work was written several additional instances of their 

 occurrence had been made known, showing that these organs 

 were less uniform in structure and even more wonderlully 

 diversified in position than Darwin considered them to be ; 

 while their discovery in the larvae of certain forms would lead 

 to some modification of the view that they have originated in 

 connection with sex and primarily serve the purpose of attract- 

 ing the sexes to one another. 



