Nov. 2o, 1884] 



NA TURE 



7 J 



plants made in Timor Laut by Henry O. Forbes. Therein a 

 short account is given of the nature of the islands and of the 

 general character of the vegetation, after which comes a 

 technical list of about eighty plants. — Prof. Oliver adds a note 

 that, "This collection, so far as it goes, is made up in great 

 part of the more widely diffused species of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago. The most interesting plants appear to be : one in fruit 

 only, referred to the meliaceous genus Omenta, probably O. 

 cerasifera, Muell., of Queensland ; a fine Mucufia, of the sec- 

 tion Stigolobium ; a Selarbrea, an araliaceous genus hitherto 

 only received from New Caledonia, and a fruit of possibly a 

 Mr. Forbes himself is inclined to regard the Timor 

 Laut flora and fauna as having affinities with the Moluccan 

 (Amboina) region. — A paper by T. II. fotts was read, containing 

 notes on sonic New Zealand birds. This consisted chiefly of field 

 observations on the habits of the quail hawk, harrier, owl, kaka, 

 kea, long-tailed cuckoo, kingfisher, and native wren. — There 

 followed a note on the reproduction of the hetercecismal 

 Uredines by Charles B. Plow-right. Therein the author affirms 

 that, when the reproduction of these fungi takes place without 

 the intervention of Ascidiospores, the resulting Uredospores are 

 far more abundant than in the case when they arise from the 

 implantation upon the host plant of the Ascidiospores, this 

 inference being supported by various detailed observations of the 

 author. 



Zoological Society, November 4. — Prof. W. H. Flower, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — Mr. Sclater exhibited and 

 m kin of a Woolly Cheetah (Felis lanea), 



obtained at Beaufort West, South Africa, sent to him by the 

 Rev. 1,. II. R. Fisk, C.M.Z.S.— The Secretary exhibited, on 

 behalf of Major W. Brydon, B.S.C., C.M.Z.S., an egg of 

 Rlyth's Tragopon ; and on behalf of Mr. J. C. Parr, F.Z.S., a 

 specimen of the chick of the Vulturine Guinea-fowl {Numida 

 Vulturina) hatched in Lancashire. — The Rev. H. H. Sclater, 

 F.Z.S., exhibited a specimen of the Barred Warbler {Sylvia 

 "iithe Yorkshire coast. — Mr. II. E. Dresser, 

 F.Z.S., exhibited specimens of the Barred Warbler {Sylvia 



a "fill'' [cterine Warbler (Hypolais icterind) , killed in 

 Norfolk. — Mr W. B. Tegetmeier, F.Z.S., exhibited a specimen 

 of tlie File-fish (Batistes capriscus), which had been recently- 

 caught off Folkestone. — Mr. F. E. Beddard, F.Z.S., read a 

 paper on the anatomy of a gigantic Earthworm, Microchteta 

 rappii, and pointed out its systematic position. For this very 

 interesting specimen the author was indebted to the Rev. G. H. 

 R. Fisk, C.M./.S., of Cape Town.— Mr. A. G. Butler, F.Z.S., 

 gave an account of a collection of Lepidoptera made by Major 

 J. W. Yerbury at or near Aden. The author looked upon this 

 collection as one of the greatest interest, since it not only con- 

 tained a fine series of the beautiful species of Teracolus recently- 

 described by Col. Swinhoe, but also many remarkable inter- 

 grades between certain long-established species, tending to prove 

 either that hybrids between allied species are fertile, or that in 



ondition of things still exists which in Asia proper and 

 in Africa has long passed away. — A communication was read 

 .-Col. ('. Swinhoe, F.Z.S., containing an account of 

 the Lepidoptera collected by him at Kurrachee between the 

 years 1S7S and 1880. — A communication was read from Mr. 

 Thomas H. Potts, of Ohinitaki, New Zealand, in which he 

 described a case of hybridism between two species of Fly- 

 catchers of the genus Rhipidura. 



Mathematical Society. November 13. — Prof. Henrici, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — Prof. Karl Pearson was 

 elected a member of the Society. — The Chairman in very feeling 

 terms referred to the losses the Society and he himself personally 

 had sustained by the deaths of Prof. Rowe, a member of the 

 Council, and of I'rof. Townsend, F. R. S., during the recess. 

 After a slight pause, he presented the De Morgan Medal to Prof. 

 Cayley. — The Tre surer's report, showing that the financial posi- 

 tion of the S iciety was most satisfactory, and the Secretary's report 

 vn read, the meeting balloted for and duly elected the 

 following gentlemen to constitute the Council for the present 

 session: — Pre-ident: }. W. L. Glaisher, F.R.S. ; Vice-Presi- 

 dents: I'i. Henrici, F.R.S., Prof. Sylvester, F.R.S., J. J. 

 Walker, F.R.S. ; Treasurer: A. B. Kempe, F.R.S. ; Secre- 

 taries: M. lenkins, R. Tucker; other members : Prof. Cayley, 

 F.R.S., Sir J. Cockle, F.R.S., E. B. Elliott, Prof. Greenhill, 

 J. Hammond, H. Hart, Dr. Hirst, F.R.S., S. Roberts, F.R.S., 

 and R. F. Scott. — Mr. Tucker then read abstracts of the fol- 



lowing papers : — On the theory of screws in elliptic space 

 (supplementary note), and on the theory of matrices, by A. 

 Buchheim ; on sphero-cyclides, by H. M. Jeffery, F.R.S. ; 

 results from a theory of transformation of elliptic functions, by 

 J. Griffiths ; on the limits of multiple integrals, by H. MacColl ; 

 on the motion of a viscous fluid contained in a spherical vessel, 

 by Prof. H. Lamb, F.R.S. ; on certain conies connected with 

 a plane unicursal quartic, by R. A. Roberts ; note on elliptic 

 functions, on an integral transformation and a theorem in plane 

 conies, by Asutosh Mukhopadhyay. He then stated that he 

 had found that the six Simson-lines corresponding to the angular 

 points of the pedal and medial triangles of a given triangle with 

 reference to the medial and pedal triangles respectively, the 

 circum-circle being in this case the nine-point circle, co-intersect 

 in a point which lies on the axis connecting the circum-centre 

 and the Symmedian-point, midway between the circum-centre 

 and the ortho-centre of the pedal triangle, and is also the centre 

 of Mr. II M. Taylor's circle —The President (Prof. Henrici 

 taking the chair) brought the meeting to a close by reading a 

 paper on certain systems of (/-series in elliptic functions, in 

 which the exponents in the numerators and denominators are 

 connected by recurring relations. 



Geological Society, November 5. — Prof. T. G. Bonney, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — The Secretary announced the 

 gift to the Society of a water-colour picture of the hot springs of 

 Gardiner's River, Wyoming Territory, U.S. — The following 

 communications were read : — On a new deposit of Pliocene age 

 at St. Erth, fifteen miles east of the Land's End, Cornwall, by 

 S. V. Wood, F.G.S. The deposit in question, about five miles 

 north-east of Penzance, consisted of a tenacious blue clay with 

 shells, resting on sand, and passing upwards into a yellow un- 

 fossiliferous clay, overlain unconformably by the earth with 

 angular fragments, under which were buried the ancient beaches 

 of the British Channel. Of over forty species of Mollusca 

 obtained by the author some appeared to be wholly new, others 

 characteristic species of the Red Crag, some not known alive, 

 some still living. Most interesting of all, six species of Nassa 

 were, all but one (N. granulata, Sow., or granifera, Dujardin), 

 unknown from any formation of Northern Europe, and occurring, 

 living or fossil, only in the southern half of Europe. Of these 

 Nassa mutabilis, Linne, lived in the Mediterranean, but other- 

 wise not north of Cadiz, while two others were new species of 

 this southern mutabilis group. In the opinion of the author the 

 bed was Pliocene, and newer rather than older, coeval with the 

 Red Crag, but having more affinities with the Pliocene of Italy 

 than with that of the North Sea region, a fact which seemed 

 to indicate that during its deposition the only communication 

 between the Atlantic and the North Sea was round the coast of 

 Britain, a passage unavailable to the Italian group of Nassa on 

 account of the refrigeration of its 9 of latitude. The bed was 

 the deposit of a strait connecting the present St. Ives Bay with 

 Mount's Bay, and detaching the high ground of the Land's End 

 district from the rest of Britain. The shell-bearing part of the 

 clay was oS feet above mean-tide mark in Hayle Estuary. Dr. 

 Gwyn Jeffreys, in a discussion on the paper, recognised among the 

 fossils of the St. Erth deposit forty-four or forty-five species, eleven 

 or twelve recent, thirty-three or thirty- four extinct. A bed near 

 Antibes, in the south of France, seemed to resemble the St. 

 Erth deposit, and the Mollusca of the two should be critically 

 compared. — On the Cretaceous beds at Black Ven, near Lyme 

 Regis, with some supplementary remarks on the Blackdown 

 beds, by the Rev. W. Downes, F.G.S. The cliff section mea- 

 sured 300 feet in height, the Lias occupying 200 feet and the 

 Cretaceous beds 100 feet, of which the lower 25 feet were a 

 black loamy clay, and the upper 75 feet yellowish-brown non- 

 calcareous sands. From one point in the clay the author ob- 

 tained a few fossils, the most abundant being Lima parallela, 

 and 50 feet above that point was a small patch of fragmentary 

 silicified fossils. In the author's opinion the fauna of the sands 

 approached the Blackdown fauna, and from all the evidence he 

 had found, concluded that the conditions of deposition rend-red 

 it impossible to recognise in the Cretaceous beds of the West 

 of England the subdivisions of Gault and Upper Green and 

 so well marked to the eastward. — On some recent discoveries in 

 the submerged Forest of Torbay, by D. Pigeon, F.G.S. The 

 submerged forest rested on clay, the soil in which the forest 

 grew, which, again, rested on Trias, a breccia of Devonian 

 fragments intervening in places. During the gales of 1883-84, 

 two aggregations of rolled trap pebbles were found, these 1 bbles 

 having probably served as smelting-hearths. In their neighbour- 



