August 25, 1904] 



NATURE 



415 



ation last year by Mr. Octave Chanute, contained a general 

 account of recent progress in aerial navigation ; this paper 

 appeared in the Popuhir Science Monthly for March. Still 

 more recently Captain Ferber, of the French Artillery, has 

 brought out reprints of a paper from the Revue d'Artillerie, 

 published by Berger-Levrault, of Paris, dealing mainly with 

 gliding flight. Captain Ferber's own experiments were 

 first conducted with pure gliding machines of the same type 

 as those of the brothers Wright, but for his later experi- 

 ments he has procured a mechanicalh' propelled machine 

 carrying a six horse-power motor, and weighing only 230 

 kilograms. Instead of experimenting in free air, Captain 

 Ferber has adopted the principle of the captive machine, 

 his machine being attached to a revolving arm 30 metres 

 long supported on a pillar iS metres high. This aerodrome 

 is after the designs of MM. Goupil and Bazin. 



Ix the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (xv., 

 Xo. 159, June) Dr. Percy Dawson gives an interesting 

 biography of the Rev. Stephen Hales. The name of this 

 great Englishman is familiar to every student of physiology 

 as the first discoverer of the blood pressure, which he 

 demonstrated by connecting a glass tube, now called the 

 " Hales manometer," with an artery, and noting the rise 

 of the blood within it. In addition. Hales contributed many 

 papers on ventilation and natural history to the Philosophical 

 Transactions of the Royal Society. 



C.'iPT.'HN Geo. Lamb, I. M.S., contributes a second com- 

 munication on the specificity of anti-venomous sera to the 

 Scientific Memoirs of the Government of India (No. 10, 1904 ; 

 see N.4TURE, vol. Ixviii. p. 395). He details experiments 

 performed with tw-o anti-venomous sera, one prepared with 

 the venom of the Hoplocephalus curtus (tiger snake), the 

 other with that of the cobra, these two sera being tested 

 against the poisons of eight other snakes, including the 

 king cobra, two kraits, common Indian sea snake, daboia, 

 green pit viper, and Californian rattlesnake. Against the 

 king cobra venom the cobra anti-serum had a slight 

 neutralising effect, but not marked ; as regards other venoms 

 it had practically no neutralising power. The same holds 

 good for the tiger snake anti-serum ; while powerfully anti- 

 toxic for tiger snake venom, it is practically inactive against 

 other venoms. These results confirm Captain Lamb's, and 

 also Dr. Tidswell's, former observations that anti-venomous 

 sera are strictly specific, and are active only against the 

 venoms used to prepare them. 



Two out of the three articles in the May number of the 

 American Maluralist are devoted to botanical subjects. Prof. 

 Penhallow continuing in the one his account of the anatomy 

 of North American conifers, while in the second Dr. B. M. 

 Davis commences a study of the structure of the vegetable 

 cell. In the one zoological article, Dr. .\. Hrdlicka gives 

 further examples of a division in the malar bone of the 

 skull in man and monkeys. 



I.N the Biologischcs Centralblatt for August Mr. G. Klebs 

 continues his studies of the problem of development, as 

 exemplified by the lowest plants, while Mr. C. Schaposch- 

 nikow offers a new explanation for the presence of a red 

 coloration in the hind-wings of the butterflies of the genus 

 Catocala. The red-winged Catocalas, as the author re- 

 marks, are restricted to the Holarctic region, and this dis- 

 tribution is of itself sufficient to indicate that their peculiar 

 type of coloration is connected with their environment. 



Five out of the six articles in the July issue of the 

 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science are devoted to 

 invertebrate morphology and anatomy. In the first of these 

 NO. 18 I 7, VOL. 70] 



Mr. E. S. Goodrich describes a remarkable arrangement in 

 the branchial vascular system of the worm Sternapsis, by 

 means of which the blood has an alternative path to the 

 normal one, leading from the main dorsal to the main 

 ventral vessel. In a second Dr. E. J. Allen describes the 

 anatomy of the annelid Poecilochaetus, while in a third Dr. 

 Herbert Fowler communicates notes on Rhabdopleura 

 normani, an ally of Balanoglossus. A paper on the anatomy 

 and affinities of the molluscs of the family Trochidce, by 

 Mr. W. B. Randies, and one on a sporozoan parasite found 

 in the mouse, by Mr. H. M. Woodcock, complete the in- 

 vertebrate list. Special interest attaches to an article by 

 Mr. G. Smith on the middle ear and columella in birds. 

 .As the result of observations carried on at a very early 

 stage of development, the author concludes that, while the 

 stapes of birds and reptiles (Sauropsida) represents the same 

 bone in mammals, the other parts of the auditory region 

 have undergone a different development in the two groups. 

 It may be noticed that Mr. Smith makes no mention of 

 Dr. Broom's recent provisional identification of the inter- 

 articular cartilage of Ornithorhynchus with the quadrate. 



Dr. J. P. Thomson, secretary of the Queensland branch 

 of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, contributes 

 a paper on Queensland to the Geographical Journal. Dr. 

 Thomson gives a very clear picture of the geography of 

 r.orth-eastern Australia, and we commend his paper to the 

 notice of teachers. 



We have received a copy of a valuable paper issued by 

 the Norwegian " Gradmaalings-Kommission " on the tides 

 of the Norwegian coast. Analyses and discussion of ex- 

 tended observations at a number of stations are given, 

 chiefly with the view of separating the two different systems 

 of Atlantic and North Sea origin, and treating the complex 

 Interference phenomena observed off the southern extremity 

 (.f Norway. 



In the Bibliotheca mathematica, v. 2, Prof. Gino Loria, 

 of Genoa, gives an account of the life and works of the 

 late Prof. Luigi Cremona, accompanied by a portrait and 

 a chronological list of Prof. Cremona's writings. 



The theory of Maxwell and wireless telegraphy, by Prof. 

 H. Poincar^, form the subject of the twenty-third volume 

 of the physico-chemical series of Scieiitia, published by 

 Messrs. Carre and Naud, of Paris. It appears to be an 

 extension of the first volume of the series by the addition 

 of chapters dealing with the principles and applications of 

 wireless telegraphy. 



We have received a reprint of a lecture delivered by M. 

 Maurice d'Ocagne at the Conservatoire des .Arts et 

 Metiers, having the title '" Les instruments de precision en 

 France." It contains a description of the more refined 

 instruments in use at the Bureau international des Poids et 

 Mesures, in the principal observatories in France, and in 

 the French military survey. 



Under the title of " Malerbriefe," Prof. Ostwald has 

 published through the house of Hirzel, Leipzig, a series of 

 seventeen short and suggestive essays on the theory and 

 practice of painting. Though this slight brochure can 

 scarcely add anything to the reputation of the distinguished 

 author, it furnishes another example of the versatility of 

 his genius. 



.\n instructive series of lantern slides illustrating waves 

 and kindred forms of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and 

 lithosphere has been collected by Dr. Vaughan Cornish 

 for Messrs. Newton and Co. The collection includes the 



