January 14, 1904] 
NATURE 
A oye 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
Lonpon. 
Royal Society, November 19, 1903.—‘‘ On the Physiological 
Action and Antidotes of Colubrine and Viperine Snake 
Venoms.”” By Dr. Leonard Rogers. Communicated by 
Dr. A. D. Waller, F.R.S. 
The actions of various venoms have been studied by means 
of respiratory and circulatory tracings, &c. Firstly, the 
poisonous colubrine Indian snakes were dealt with. The 
Loia bungarus or hamadryad, the largest poisonous snake 
in India, was found to cause death by paralysing the re- 
spiratory centre, quickly followed by the motor end plates 
of the phrenic nerves, just as in the case of cobra. The 
Bungarus coeruleus, or common krait, also produced the 
same effect, only the end plate action was less marked. The 
Bungarus fasciatus, or banded krait, produced similar 
symptoms to the above in small doses, with the addition 
of marked circulatory failure, and in large doses also intra- 
vascular clotting like the vipers, and its venom was found 
to be a mixture of colubrine and viperine elements. The 
haemolytic action of the above three venoms was much less 
marked than in the case of cobra venom, and has no lethal 
importance. The physiological action of the above and of 
the sea snakes having been found similar to that of cobra 
venom (with the exception of the added viperine element 
in the Bungarus fasciatus), Calmette antivenin was 
tested against them all, and found to be effective in varying 
degrees in each with the exception of the Bungarus 
fasciatus, in the case of which the colubrine element alone 
is neutralised, but the viperine one proves fatal. The serum 
is not, however, strong enough to be of the greatest value. 
Secondly, the two true vipers, the Dabota russellii and 
the African puff adder, and two pit vipers, the Crotalus 
horridus and the Trimenurus anamallensis, were examined, 
and it was found that the one essential action common to 
all four was a paralysis of the central vasomotor centre pro- 
ducing a marked fall of blood pressure, followed sooner or 
later by secondary respiratory failure, but counteracted in a 
marked degree for a time by adrenal extract. In the case 
of the true vipers, large doses produce intravascular clotting, 
but by giving small preliminary doses, .fatal vasomotor 
paralysis can readily be induced without any clotting what- 
ever, while the venom of the rattlesnake readily produces 
the same effect without clotting in a single large dose, and 
also marked hemorrhages, which are not caused by the 
Daboia. 
December 3, 1903.—‘‘ On the Fructification of Neuropteris 
heterophylla, Brongniart.’’ By Robert Kidston, F.R.S. 
Royal Microscopical Society, December 16, 1903.—Dr. 
tiy. Woodward, F.R.S., president, in the chair.—Mr. F. W. 
Watson Baker exhibited under microscopes a series of 
slides, sixteen in number, illustrating the development of 
an ascidian from the fertilisation of the ovum to the larval 
stage.—Dr. G. J. Hinde read a paper on the structure and 
affinities of the genus Porosphera. 
MANCHESTER. 
Literary and Philosophical Society, December 1, 1903. 
—Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, president, in the chair.—The 
president directed the attention of the meeting to the fact 
that, although the rainfall during the last six months had 
been unusually heavy, the water in the deep springs had 
not increased proportionally, but was still below the average 
quantity for the last ten years.—Dr. W. E. Hoyle exhibited 
a model of the mole’s nest, prepared by Mr. Lionel E. 
Adams, who read a paper on the subject before the Society 
some time ago. The model is in three parts, and shows the 
construction of a typical nest of the male mole very clearly. 
—Mr. F. F. Laidlaw read a paper entitled “‘ Suggestions 
for a Revision of the Classification of the Polyclad 
Turbellaria,’’ in which he considered more especially the 
acotylean genera, and based his classification of them on 
the characters of the prostate gland. 
December 15, 1903.—Mr. Charles Bailey in the chair.— 
Prof. E. Knecht read a paper on an interesting reaction of 
copper salts. More than fifty years ago, Ebelmen had, in 
describing the properties of titanium trichloride, alluded to 
the property which this substance possesses of precipitating 
gold, silver, and mercury from their salts. The author 
NO. 1785, VOL. 69] 
showed that by using an excess of the trichloride, metallic 
copper could be precipitated from solutions of its salts, but 
pointed out that the reaction was a reversible one, and was 
consequently not complete. With titanous sulphate, how- 
ever, the reaction with copper salts was complete, the copper 
appearing as an extremely fine metallic looking precipitate 
even in very dilute solutions (1 pt. in 1,000,000).—The 
electrolytic method for the detection and approximate estim- 
ation of minute quantities of arsenic in malt, beer, and food 
stuffs, by Mr. W. Thomson. An exhaustive series of tests 
has been made with the electrolytic apparatus devised by 
the committee appointed by the Commissioners of Inland 
Revenue in comparison with those obtained by the Marsh- 
Berzelius apparatus. From the results obtained the author 
lays stress on the importance of destroying the organic 
matter in beer, malt, &c., before introducing into the 
apparatus, and also puts forward the electrolytic method 
with zinc kathode as the most satisfactory for the estimation 
of minute quantities of arsenic. 
fe Dus.in. 
Royal Irish Academy, Dec. 14, 1903.—Prof. R. Atkinson, 
president, in the chair.—Some new relations in the theory 
of screws, by Prof. C. J. Joly. Let A, B, C be any three 
points on the axes of any three screws, (1), (2) and (3) re- 
spectively, of a given three-system. Let B,C, be the pro- 
jection of BC on the axis of (1). Let (23) be the angle 
between the axes of the screws (2) and (3), and let sin (123) 
be the sine of the solid angle determined by the three axes. 
Then 
B,C, cos (23)+C,A, cos (31)+A,B, cos (12) 
sin (123) 
+P, tpbrtp,=atb+c, 
where p,, p., p,; are the pitches of the three screws, and a, 
b, c the pitches of the principal screws of the system. The 
author derived his results by the method of quaternion 
arrays, and showed that many relations similar to that 
given above may be deduced for screw-systems of any order. 
—Mr. John Fraser reduced the equation of a quartic sur- 
face possessing a nodal conic to the sum of squares of the 
five Jacobian quadrics of the systems of quadrics which pass 
through the conic, and which have double contact with the 
quartic surface. He gave explicitly the equations of the 
quadrics, and showed that the same method was applicable 
in the case of binodal quartic curves. 
Paris. 
Academy of Sciences, January 4.—M. Mascart in the 
chair.—Researches on the emission of water vapour by 
plants and on their spontaneous desiccation: M. Berthelot. 
The roots and leaves of the plant investigated were first 
air-dried separately at the ordinary temperature, the 
temperature and hygrometric state varying during the ex- 
periment. After about eight days equilibrium was estab- 
lished, when the plants were further dried at 110°. A 
further loss of water was measured.—Proof of an experi- 
mental law given by M. Parenty on the flow of gases 
through orifices: J. Boussinesq.—The notion of work 
applied to the magnetisation of crystals: Pierre Weiss. 
On osmosis: A. Guillemin. Adopting the theory of 
Halley, and the idea of the existence of a tension of ex- 
pansibility, increasing with the depth below the free 
surface, the law of osmotic equilibrium takes the form 
that osmotic equilibrium exists when the tension of expansi- 
bility is the same on each side of the semi-permeable wall. 
—On the absolute value of the magnetic elements on 
January 1: Th. Moureaux. The absolute values and 
secular variation are given for the Observatory of Val- 
Joyeux, latitude 48° 49! 16” N., longitude 0° 10! 23” W.— 
On the stability of the direction of magnetisation in some 
volcanic rocks: Pierre David. It has been previously 
shown that some volcanic rocks possess a permanent 
magnetisation, which is probably that of the direction of 
the earth’s field at the time when the rock solidified. This 
view has been confirmed by the examination of pieces of 
volcanic rocks taken from buildings dating from the Roman 
period. The inclination of all the pieces examined is 
identical, but the declination is variable-——On the decrease 
of temperature with height in the neighbourhood of Paris, 
