March 23, 1905] 



NA TURE 



50- 



in a simple manner, and that by a process of continuous 

 approximation tlie period and the type of the vibration may 

 be determined,' in a large number of cases, with great 

 accuracy. 



Royal Meteorological Society, March 15. — Mr. Richard 

 Bentley, president, in the chair. — The growth of instru- 

 mental meteorology ; President. After briefly touching 

 on the historic and non-instrumental era of meteorology, 

 reference was made to the seven great weapons of meteor- 

 ology — the thermometer, and of later years the heliograph, 

 for temperature, the hygrometer and rain-gauge for moisture, 

 the barometer for pressure, and the anemometer and kite 

 for the study of the upper air — and of the great foundation 

 of instrumental meteorology laid by Galileo, Torricelli, Wren 

 and Hooke. The president, in dwelling upon our indebted- 

 ness to Italy in science (as well as in art) from Galileo to 

 Marconi, pointed out that the theory of rainfall was 

 correctly enunciated as early as the beginning of th 

 fourteenth century by Dante. He also dwelt on the great 

 services rendered to the community by meteorologists, 

 largely by volunteers at their own e.xpense, and referred to 

 the close observation kept by rain-gauges on the steadily 

 diminishing water supply of the country, by aneinometers 

 protecting the traffic over some of our lofty and more ex- 

 posed railway viaducts, by the use of the barometer for 

 storiTi warnings and for the safety of miners in our pits, 

 by the heliograph with relation to the ripening of fruits 

 and crops, and regretted how much of the immense mass 

 of information daily accumulating had still to be analysed 

 and put to use. It was disappointing to find in so wealth} 

 a country as this, and where the results could not fail to 

 be of the greatest practical utility to the nation, that the 

 means of digestion of this vast data are so meagre, and 

 the aid given by the Government is so slender as to be a 

 constant source of reproach when compared with the large 

 provision made for the same purpose in other countries for 

 their own benefit. 



Dublin. 



Royal Dublin Society, February 21. — Dr. W. E. Adeney 

 in the chair. — (i) On the transmissibility of tuberculosis of 

 the monkey to the o-x and goat; (2) on the use of tuberculin 

 in the detection of tuberculosis : Prof. \. E. Mettam. 

 (i) The tuberculous material was obtained from a drill 

 monkey. After passage through guinea-pigs, emulsions of 

 the organs of the latter were inoculated into a bull and into 

 a goat. Both animals have been infected with tuberculosis, 

 though free froin the disease prior to injection, local lesions 

 having been established and reaction to tuberculin being 

 pronounced. (2) Experiments were carried out with the 

 object of determining if an increased dose of tuberculin 

 would reveal tuberculosis in an animal which had already 

 a short time previously received a dose of tuberculin, and 

 if any immunity to tuberculin was established as to how long 

 it lasted. It was shown, as Valine maintains, that a double 

 dose of tuberculin would reveal tuberculosis even if the 

 animal had received a prior dose a few days before, and 

 that the immunity to an ordinary dose was evident for ten 

 days to a fortnight after injection. — Secondary radiation and 

 atomic structure : Prof^ J. A. McClelland. Every substance 

 gives off a secondary radiation of particles when acted upon 

 by the ?> rays of radium. The intensity of this secondary 

 radiation, in the case of elementary substances, depends on 

 the atomic weight ; the greater the atomic weight the 

 greater is the secondary radiation. This very general law 

 has been found to hold true for all the elements tested, which 

 were twenty-one in number. The paper further discusses 

 this result froin the point of view that all atoms are groups 

 of similar electrons. 



Royal Irish Academy, February 27. — Prof. R. Atkinson, 

 president, in the chair. — A list of the Irish jelly-fishes, corals, 

 and sea-anemones : being a report from the R.I. A. fauna 

 and flora committee : Jane Stephens. This is a catalogue 

 of all the species of Ccelenterata hitherto recorded for the 

 roast of Ireland. The list, containing about 250 species, 

 includes the fresh-water hydroids. In a prefatory note a 

 short account of the Irish Coelenterates is given ; there is 

 also a bibliography of the papers (which date back to the 

 year 1755) dealing with the subject. — Notes on the homo- 



taxial equivalents of the beds which immediately succeed the 

 Carboniferous Limestone in the west of Ireland : Dr. Wheel- 

 ton Hind. The counties of Clare and Limerick contain the 

 Carboniferous sequence of the west of Ireland in the fonn 

 of a basin, the western side of which has been cut off by the 

 sea, and consequently the geological structure is well seen 

 in the line of cliffs from Black Head, co. Clare, to Bally- 

 bunion, CO. Kerry. In the north of Clare the beds dip 

 gradually at 5°, and there are few or no faults. In the south 

 of the county and in co. Limerick there have been stronger 

 earth movements, and faulting is more frequent. The 

 sequence shows Coal-measures (Foynes coalfield), olive 

 grits, flags and sandy shales, black shales with bullions, 

 Carboniferous Limestone without shales or detrital beds. The 

 whole series is conformable and fossiliferous. The Car- 

 boniferous Liinestone is characterised by the same fossils 

 as occur in the Carboniferous Limestone and Yoredale 

 rocks of England, and at the top of this series is a great 

 faunal change. The black shales with bullions, which overlie 

 the Carboniferous Limestone, contain Posidoniella laevis, P. 

 minor, Posidonomya mcmbranacea, Pteriiiopecten papy- 

 raceus, Glyphioceras diadema, G. spirale, G. davisi, G. re- 

 ticiilaium, Dimorphoceras gilbertsoni, G. dcscrepans, Noiiiis- 

 inoccras spirorbis, and many others which characterise the 

 Pendleside series and the Lower Culm of England. The 

 marine bands intercalated in the olive grit and flag series, 

 and the shales, recall the marine bands in the Millstone Grits. 

 Hence it is interesting to find the same faunal sequence in 

 the west of Ireland as exists in the midlands of England, 

 and it is erroneous to classify the beds which succeed the 

 Carboniferous Limestone in the west of Ireland as either 

 Yoredales or Coal-measures, but they are the homotaxial 

 equivalents of the Pendleside series and Millstone Grits. 



P.\RIS. 



Academy ot Sciences, March 13. — M. Troost in the chair. 

 — On surfaces applicable to the paraboloid of revolu- 

 tion ; Gaston Darboux. — On the laws of sliding friction . 

 Paul Painleve. A discussion and extension of a paper 

 on the same subject by M. Lecornu.^On the pressures 

 developed at each instant in a closed vessel by colloidal 

 powders of different forms : R. Liouville. The work of 

 M. Vieille on the explosion of gun-cotton powders in a closed 

 vessel led him to conclude that the speed of combustion is 

 proportional to a power of the pressure, about 2/3. On 

 account of the difiiculty introduced into ballistic calculations, 

 it is usual to consider the speed of combustion as pro- 

 portional to the pressure. An investigation is given show- 

 ing the accuracy of Vieille 's exponent, and indicating where 

 further experimental work is required. — On the explosive 

 wave : E. Jouguet. The numerical data given in a pre- 

 vious note were calculated on the assumption that the 

 combustion was total in the explosive wave, and that the 

 dissociation could be neglected. In the present paper the 

 dissociation is taken into account, the formula of Gibbs 

 being adopted. Figures are given for mixtures of oxygen 

 with acetylene, cyanogen, and methane, and it is shown that 

 the dissociation may be considerable without seriously affect- 

 ing the velocity of the explosive wave.-r-On the emptying of 

 systems of reservoirs ; Ed. Maillet. — On the dangers of 

 atmospheric electricity for balloons and the means of 

 remedying them : A. Breydel. — On halation in photo- 

 graphs : Adrien Guebhard. — On the atomic weights of 

 hydrogen and nitrogen, and on the precision attained in 

 their determination : A. Leduc. The value obtained by the 

 author for the atoinic weight of nitrogen from his density 

 measurements was 14005, but the figure still adopted by the 

 International Committee on Atomic Weights is 1404. It is 

 pointed out that the lower number is confirmed by the 

 recent experiments of Guye and Bogdan, and Jaquerod and 

 Bogdan. — On dextrorotatory lactic acid : E. Jungfleisch 

 and M. Godchot. The preparation of d-lactic acid in a 

 pure state from its salts is complicated by the tendency to 

 pass over into the inactive acid and by the formation of 

 lactyl-lactic acid. The precautions necessary to avoid both 

 these changes are given in detail, and the properties of the 

 pure acid described. — The action of magnesium amalgam 

 upon dimethylketone : F. Couturier and L. Meunier. 

 The chief product of the reaction is pinacone. By the dry 

 distillation of the magnesium compound there is produced 



NO. 1847, VOL. 71] 



