38 



NA TURE 



[May 12, 1904 



A LETTER received from Mr. W. Comery, Llandilo, 

 Carmarthenshire, gives an account of variations noted in 

 the parts of the flower of the primrose during the current 

 year, and provides data for comparison with the observ- 

 ations recorded by Mr. T. G. Hill in the Annals of Botany, 

 June, 1902. According to our correspondent, variation in 

 the number of parts was confined to 4 and 6, except in the 

 cases where one flower had 8 sepals, 7 petals, and 6 stamens, 

 two were decamerous, and one was trimerous. The corolla 

 showed the greatest amount of variation ; of ninety-four 

 irregular flowers, 79 per cent, showed reduction in the 

 number of petals, and the proportion of long styled to 

 short styled was nearly 7 : 3, but of twenty flowers showing 

 increase in the number of petals the proportion was exactlv 

 inverse. 



An extensive series of observations on the number of 

 fungus spores present in the air has been made by Mr. 

 K. Saito (Journ. of the College of Science, Imp. Univ., 

 Tokyo, Japan, xviii., art. 5). The observations were made 

 in the Botanic Garden, streets, operating theatre of the 

 hospital, and certain rooms. It was found that the spores 

 were more numerous in warm and damp than in cold and 

 dry weather, and that rain and snow diminished while a 

 strong wind increased their number. The commonest 

 species were Cladosporium herbaruw, Penicillium glaucum 

 and Epicoccum purpurascens. Three new species are de- 

 scribed. The article is illustrated with charts and a number 

 of figures ; the latter would prove useful in the identification 

 of the species of fungi that might be met with in labor- 

 atories, &'C. 



With the exception of one on field-practice with the 

 aneroid, and a second on the moths of the family Geo- 

 metrida;, the articles in the second part of vol. xvi. of the 

 Proceedings of the Royal .Society of Victoria are devoted 

 to palaeontological and geological subjects. Three of these 

 are communicated by Mr. F. Chapman, who describes 

 Jurassic Foraminifera and Ostracoda from W. Australia, 

 Palaeozoic and Mesozoic invertebrates from W. Australia 

 and Queensland, and various Palaeozoic fossils from Victoria. 

 Mr. C. M. Maplestone discusses the fossil Selenariida; of 

 the last named colony. 



According to the report for last year, the hatching of 

 sea-fish at Piel has been most successful, nearly 15,000,000 

 fry having been obtained from about 17,000,000 eggs. This 

 gives a total loss of rather less than 11 per cent, for the 

 whole operations, which is almost certainly vastly below 

 what occurs in nature. It is incidentally mentioned by 

 Prof. Herdman that plaice in the closed Scotch waters have 

 been found to run much larger than on the over-fished 

 Lancashire coast. The feature of the report under con- 

 sideration — namely, that on the Lancashire Sea-Fisheries 

 Laboratory — is, however, undoubtedly Dr. J. H. Ashworth's 

 elaborate and beautifully illustrated account of the life- 

 history and structure of the lug-worm, which is the result 

 of several years hard and careful work. 



Amo.ng recent inathemalical papers published in the 

 United States may be noticed the following : — L. E. 

 Dickson, determination of all the subgroups of the known 

 simple group of order 25920 {Trans. Amer. Math. Soc, 

 v. p. 126) ; C. N. Haskins, on the invariants of quadratic 

 differential forms (ibid., p. 167) ; C. Arzelk, note on a series 

 of analytic functions {Ann. of Math. (2), v., p. 51); A. G. 

 Greenhill, the mathematical theory of the top {ibid., p. 67) ; 

 H. A. Converse, on a system of hypocycloids of class three 

 (p. 105) ; E. B. Wilson, projective and metric geometry 

 NO. 1802, VOL. 70] 



(p. 145) ; W. F. Osgood, on a gap in the ordinary present- 

 ation of Weierstrass's theory of functions (Amer. Math. Soc. 

 Bull., March). The first number of vol. xxvi. of the 

 .imerican Journal of Mathematics is accompanied by a 

 portrait of Prof. Noether ; its principal contents relate to 

 the theory of groups, but there is a paper by Prof. Bromwich 

 on caustics which is of a less abstract character. 



Messrs. J. and A. Churchill have published a sixth 

 edition of " A Manual of Dental Anatomy : Human and 

 Comparative," by Mr. Charles S. Tomes, F.R.S. 



Messrs. Iliffe .\nd Sons, Ltd., have published sixth 

 editions of " Photography for All," by Mr. W. Jerome 

 Harrison, and of " Practical Enlarging," by Mr. John .\. 

 Hodges. The price of each book is is. net. 



A sixth edition of " A Treatise on Hydromechanics. 

 Part i. Hydrostatics," by Dr. \V. H. Besant, F.R.S., and 

 Mr. A. S. Ramsey, has been published by Messrs. George 

 Bell and Sons. For the present edition the text has been 

 carefully revised, and considerable additions have been 

 made to some sections of the book. 



A SECOND edition of Mr. T. W. Cowan's " The Honey 

 Bee: its Natural History, Anatomy, and Physiology," has 

 been published by Messrs. Houlston and Sons. The first 

 edition was reviewed at length in our issue of April 23, 

 1891 (vol. xliii. p. 578). It is consequently only necessary 

 to add that the present edition has been revised and 

 corrected. 



The delegates of the Clarendon Press have taken over 

 the series of geographical memoirs known as " The Regions 

 of the World," which is under the general editorship of 

 Mr. H. J. Mackinder, and in future this series will be 

 published by Mr. Henry Frowde. Two new volumes will 

 be issued this year — " North America," by Prof. Israel 

 Russell, of the University of Michigan, at the end of this 

 month, and " India," by Sir Thomas Holdich, K.C.I.E., 

 in the earlv autumn. It is hoped that " The Far East," 

 bv Mr. Archibald Little, will soon be in the press. 



In the March number of the Journal of Physical 

 Chemistry, Messrs. H. E. Patten and W. R. Mott describe 

 experiments on the electrolytic deposition of metallic lithium 

 from solutions of lithium chloride in ethyl, propyl, butyl 

 and amyl alcohols. By the use of organic solvents the 

 electrolytic separation of metals not obtainable from aqueous 

 solutions seems possible in many cases. 



In the April number of the .American Chemical Journal 

 Messrs. H. C. Jones and F. H. Getman discuss the nature 

 of concentrated solutions of electrolytes. As the result of 

 an extended investigation of the freezing points, boiling 

 points and conductivities of such solutions, the authors 

 arrive at the conclusion that combination takes place between 

 the solvent and the dissolved substance. As a consequence 

 of this, such solutions are really more concentrated than 

 they would appear to be from the amount of dissolved sub- 

 stance present in them, and many of the discrepancies ex- 

 hibited by concentrated solutions are explainable. 



The April number of the New Philosophy, published by 

 the Swedenborg Scientific Association, contains some 

 interesting notes in reference to Swedenborg's work in 

 chemistry. Whilst Prof, van 't Hoff acknowledges it as 

 the first work which anticipated the modern science of 

 stereochemistry, others regard Swedenborg's work as having 

 had absolutely no influence upon chemical thought or dis- 

 covery. Prof. F. W. Clarke recently described it as " the 



