454 



NATURE 



{April ^, 1872 



amongst them we must notice Young's catalogue of the bii^lit 

 lines observed in the chromosphere of the sun, «-hich have 

 already reached a goodly number. Under Civil and Mechanical 

 Engineering there are several useful and interesting articles, such 

 as " On Woodworking Machinery," " On the Flow of water in 

 rivers and canals," &c. — Prof. Cooke contributes the first of a 

 series of papers"on the chemical theory of the Voltaic Battery." 

 The present communication, however, deals with preliminary 

 matters ; it discusses molecules, atoms, and the quantivalence of 

 elements. The paper which follows is "On some improvements 

 in reflecting Telescopes," by J. A. Hill. The author proposes, 

 in the first instance, to reflect the light from a movable plane 

 mirror placed in the axis of the spi-culum, which receives the 

 reflected rays ; the convergent beam from the speculum passes 

 through an aperture in the centre of the plane mirror, and can 

 be received in a suitable eye-piece; no tubes are used, so that by 

 this method it would be as easy to handle a mirror of 1,000 feet 

 focal length as one of the same size of 50 feet focal length. The 

 observer, too, would remain stationary, and need not be hoisted 

 into mid-air. — Prof. Young continues his Spectroscopic Notes ; 

 this month's contribution is "on the construction, arrangement, 

 and best proportion of the instrument, with reference to its 

 efficiency." Under this head come the best angle and material 

 for the prisms, the means of testing for flatness of sur'ace 

 and homogeneity of substance, and the number and arrange- 

 ment of the prisms; there are also two other sections, "on 

 dispersive efficiency and on luminous efficiency." A sugges- 

 tion of a new form of chemical spectroscope is given, the 

 dispersive part of this consists of two prisms, which are each 

 concave on one side, and are cemented to the convex object- 

 glasses of the collimator and observing telescope. By this it is 

 hoped to save both material and light. 



The Gcclogiial Jlfagaziiie for March (No. 93) opens witli a 

 new species of Rosfelhria (R. Pricn) from the Grey Chalk of 

 Folkestone, by the editor, Mr. H. Woodward. — Mr. A. H. 

 Green communicates a paper on the method of formation of the 

 Permian beds of South Yorksliire, in which he discusses the 

 general arrangement and paleontology of these beds, and de- 

 duces from them a confirmation of Prof Ramsay's theory that 

 the Magnesian Limestone and associated beds of this part of 

 England were formed in part by chemical precipitation in an 

 inland sea. — Pri)f H. A. Nicholson records the occurrence of 

 the Cephalopod Emioceras frotcij'orme Hall, in Britain; the 

 specimen described and figured was discovered by the author in 

 the mudstones of the Coniston series near Ambleside, a set of 

 rocks in which scarcely any fossils, except Graptolites, have 

 hitherto been (ound. — Mr. James Geikie gives a fourth paper on 

 Changes of Climate during the Glacial Epoch, in the conclusion 

 of which he sums up his views as to the sequence of climates 

 at this time as follows: — i. A succession of alternate glacial 

 and temperate conditions, but associated with the great Con- 

 tinental ice-sheets ; 2, a temperate climate, with removal of the 

 ice-sheets from low grounds ; 3, a period of subsidence, with tem- 

 perate climate, and much denudation of moraines ; 4, a period 

 of emergence, with arctic conditions, floating ice dispersing 

 erratics, and deposition of clays with arctic moUusca ; and, 5, a 

 period of local glaciers in Britain and Ireland, with gradual 

 amelioration of climate. In future papers the author proposes 

 to discuss the cave-deposits and older river-gravels of England. 

 The post-glacial geology and physiography of West Lancashire 

 and the Mersey estuary, form the subject of an interesting paper, 

 by Mr. T. Mellard Reade ; and Prof. T. Rupert Jones and Mr. 

 W. K. Parker give us the corrected nomenclature of the Fora- 

 minifera from the English Chalk, figured by the Rev. Henry 

 Eley in 1859. — The number also contains an abstract of an 

 address on subsidence as the effect of accumulation, read before 

 the Liverpool Geological Society, by Dr. Charles Ricketts. 



The Journal of Botany for March contains only one original 

 article bearing specially on British Botany, Notes on the British 

 Ramaliihc (a genus of Lichens) in the Her'^>arium of the British 

 Museum, by the Rev. Jas. Crombie. We find also, " On Symea," 

 a new genus of triandrous Z;7/i!(-£Vi- from Chili, by Mr. J. G. Baker, 

 with a plate ; recent researches into Dialomacdz, by the Rev. 

 E. O'Meara ; and Castanca 'jiilgaris grown in Southern China, 

 by Dr. Hance. Mr. Carruthers contributes his important Preview 

 of the Contributions to Fos^U Botany published in Britain in 

 187 1 ; and the editor commences in this number a valuable list 

 of the articles contained in the German botanical journals for 

 January. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Royal Society, Feb. 29.— "On the Relative Power of 

 Various Substances in arresting Putrefaction and the Develop- 

 ment of Protoplasmic and Fungus Life : " by Dr. F. Crace- 

 Calvert, F.R.S. 



March 14. — " Contributions to the History of the Opium Alka- 

 loids," part iv. ; by Dr. C. R. A. Wright.—" The Decomposition 

 of Water by Zinc in conjunction with a more Negative Metal ;" 

 by J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S., and Alfred Tribe, F.C.S. 



March 21.— "On some Hetcrc^enetic Modes of Origin of 

 Flagellated Monads, Fungus-germs, and Ciliated Infusoria," 

 by Professor H. Charlton Bastian, F.R.S. In this com- 

 munication Dr. Bastian announces results which, whilst confirm- 

 ing the previous observations of MM. Pineau and Pouchet, 

 considerably extend our knowledge concerning the heterogenetic 

 changes liable to take place in the pellicle (composed of aggre- 

 gated Bacteria) which forms upon an infusion of hay. He de- 

 scribes all the stages by which certain Fungi, Flagellated Monads, 

 and Ciliated Infusoria are produced, as a result of changes taking 

 place in the very substance of the pellicle. Most of the obser- 

 vations w'ere made under a magnifying power of 1,670 diameters, 

 and, although more extensive, are confirmatory of others pub- 

 lished in Nature, No. 35. Dr. Bastian says, " I now wish to 

 describe other allied processes, and the means by which I am 

 enabled to obtain, almost at will, either animal or vegetal forms 

 from certain embryonal areas which are produced in the pellicle." 

 The simplest mode of origin of Fungus-germs and Monads 

 is thus described :—" The pellicle which formed on a filtered 

 maceration of hay during frosty weather (when the temperature 

 of the room in which the infusion was kept was rarely above 55" 

 F., and sometimes rather lower than this) presented changes of a 

 most instructive character. On the third and fourth days the 

 pellicle was still thin, although on microscopical examination all 

 portions of it were found to be thickly doited with embryonal 

 areas. Nearly all of them were very small ; but a few areas of 

 medium size were intermixed. The smallest were not more than 

 ?««" of an inch in diameter, and these separated themselves 

 from the pellicle as single corpuscles ; slightly larger areas broke 

 up into two or three corpuscles ; and others, larger still, into 

 4 — lo corpuscles. In most of these small areas, the corpuscles 

 were formed with scarcely any appreciable alteration in the re- 

 fractive index of the matter of which they were composed ; this 

 simply became individualised, so that the corpuscles separated 

 from the surrounding pellicle and from their fellows, still pre- 

 senting all the appearance of being portions of the pellicle, and 

 exhibiting from 4 to 10 altered Bacteria in then: interior. In 

 some cases the products of segmentation soon developed into actual 

 fligellated Monads in a manner presently to be described ; whilst 

 in others they seemed to remain for a longer period in the con- 

 dition of simple motionless corpuscles. Other solitary corpuscles 

 or small areas began to form in the pellicle in precisely the same 

 manner, though they speedily assumed a highly refractive and 

 homogenous appearance. Why some should undergo such a 

 change, and not others, seems quite impossible to say. One can 

 only assert the fact, and add that these highly refractive ovoid 

 corpuscles were, for the most part, more prone to produce Fungus- 

 germs than Monads. Many of them soon grew out into dis- 

 sepimented fungus filaments, which rapidly assumed the Peni- 

 cilliuin mode of growth. The spores, which were abundantly 

 produced in terminal chaplet-like series, were, however, small, 

 homogeneous, spherical, and colourless. " In other cases Monads 

 and Fungus-germs are produced from the pellicle in precisely the 

 same manner as that by which they arise within the terminal 

 chambers of certain Algre or Fungi — that is to say, they result 

 from the segmentation of a mass of homogeneous protoplasm. 



In speaking of such a mode of origin of Monads, Dr. Bastian 

 says : — " Contrasting with the very pale fawn-colour of the 

 evenly granular pellicle, there were numerous areas of a whitish 

 colour, refractive, and more or less homogeneous. These areas 

 differed very much in shape and size ; some were not more than 

 injVii", whilst others were as much as t^" in diameter. Their 

 shape was wholly irregular. As in the instances previously 

 recorded, the first appreciable stage in the formation of an em- 

 bi7onal area in the pellicle was a local increase in the amount 

 of gelatinous material between the units of this portion of the 

 pellicle, so that they became more distinctly separated from one 

 another than in adjacent parts . Gradually these particles became 

 less sharply defined, and at last scarcely visible, in the midst of 



