Nov. 27, 1884] 



NA TURE 



95 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Anthropological Institute, November n. — Prof. Flower, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — The election of Horatio Hale, 

 D. II. Talbot, Dr. F. A. Colby, and Mrs. E. A. Smith was 

 announced. — Mr. Francis Galton described the object, method, 

 ami appliances of the late Anthropometric Laboratory at the 

 International Health Exhibition, reserving the statistical results, 

 which were nut yet fully worked out, for another occasion. He 

 established it to show with li"» little expense an elaborate course 

 of measurements might be made, and how popular such a system 

 of measurements would be. The result was that 9344 persons 

 passed through the laboratory, each of them being measured in 

 seventeen distinct particulars for the sum of 3/., in a compart- 

 ment only 6 feet wide and 36 feet long. The popularity of the 

 j was so great that its door was besieged by far more 

 applicants than could be admitted, and many persons made 

 repeated attempts and waited long for their turn, but at last gave 

 up their attempts as hopeless. So many applications have been 

 made abroad and at home for duplicates of the instrumental 

 outfit that it was advisable that any suggested improvements 

 in them should be considered before they became established in 

 use. The present paper was to invite discussion. An identical 

 set of instruments to those used at the Exhibition have been set 

 up by Mr. Gammage, optical instrument maker, at 172, 

 Brompton Road, assisted by Mr. Williams, who, between them, 

 conducted all the measurements at the Healtheries ; they make 

 a moderate charge for measuring and keeping a register of the 

 results. — Mr. H. O. Forbes read a paper on the people of the 

 island of Buru. 



Edinburgh 



Royal Physical Society, November 19. — Ramsay II. 

 Traquair, M.D., F.R.SS.L. and E., President, in the chair. — 

 The President delivered the opening address, in which, after 

 referring to the loss which the Society had sustained in the 

 dea'h of Dr. J. A. Smith, for many years its secretary, aid 

 subsequently one of its presidents, he called attention to the 

 proceedings of last session as showing that the prosperity of the 

 Society appeared not only in the increase of membership and 

 ingathering of fees, but in scientific work accomplished. — Dr. 

 Traquair then proceeded to discuss the subject of " Biological 

 Nomenclature." Having shown the necessity for a nomenclature 

 intelligible to all scientific men as distinguished from the 

 common names of plants and animals, which varied in different 

 countries, he referred to the introduction by Linnaeus of the 

 binomial system, under which each form received a generic and 

 a specific name, and to the action taken by the British Associa- 

 tion in 1842, and again in 1865, with the view of securing uni- 

 formity. Their rules and recommendations had, he said, worked 

 well for the benefit of science, but they had not been in every par- 

 ticular followed by naturalists abroad, while even in this country 

 there were often heard ominous notes of dissent as to their 

 sufficiency for the wants of the science of the present day. They 

 must, however, form the basis for all subsequent attempts to 

 rectify the subject. Proceeding to discuss those rules, he urged 

 the necessity of strict adherence to priority, and said he agreed 

 with the rule that publication should mean the insertion of the 

 description in a printed book, with the addition that such book 

 might be had on sale. He also expressed concurrence in the 

 recommendation which deprecated the propounding of harsh 

 names, but he could hardly agree with the denunciation of what 

 were called nonsense names, that was, names coined at random 

 without any derivation whatever. The difficulty of devising 

 generic names, not preoccupied, was immense : and if a person 

 with a musical ear invented a nicely sounding word of classical 

 form, surely it was as good as s >me cacophonous "jaw-breaker," 

 whatever its derivation. Touching next on the comparative 

 value of binomirl, trinomial, and quadrinomial systhms, he 

 hardly thought the time had come for any radical interference 

 with the binomial, which, notwithstanding all its defects, had 

 worked so well from the time of Linnaeus to our own. While 

 condemning the practice adopted by some writers of coining 

 new English names, he was in favour of appending the common 

 names, where such really existed, to the scientific ones for be- 

 hoof of the unscientific. — On the motion of Prof. Duns, a vote 

 of thanks was accorded to the retiring President for his address 

 and for his services ih the chair. 



Manchester 



Literary and Philosophical Society, October 7. — A paper 

 was communicated by Alfred Brothers, F.R.A.S., on the pink 

 sun-glow which he had noticed at midday as early as January this 

 year, and again on July 5 and at the end of August. On the evening 

 of October 3 he observed the same phenomenon by clear moon- 

 light, and attributed it, therefore, to our atmosphere, and not to 

 its being a real appendage of the sun, as had been given out. 



October 21. — Joseph Baxendell, F. R.S., communicated a 

 note on the visibility of the moon during total lunar eclipses, in 

 which it was sought to show that the visibility in question might 

 in no inconsiderable measure be clue to the outer corona, which 

 extended to a much greater distance on each side of the sun 

 than the semi-diameter of the earth as seen from the moon. — 

 Prof. H. E. Roscoe, F. R. S., contributed a paper on the dia- 

 mond-bearing rocks of South Africa. Two shafts sunk in the 

 Kimberley Mine — one in the "pipe," the other in the shale near 

 it — passed thiough the following strata : — 



(1) " Pipe" 



Red Sand 



Tufaceous Limestone 



Soft yellow earthy dia- 

 mond rock 



Soft blue diamond rock 

 proved to 



3 feet 

 15 ,. 



Total excavated ... 330 feet 



(2) " Outside the Pipe 



Red Sand 



Tufaceous Limestone .. . 



Yellow Shale 



Black carbonaceous do. 

 Two thin bands of black 



dust in Shale 



Black Shale 

 Dolerite 



3 feet 

 5 .. 



1 foot 

 236 feet 



Total excavated ... 277 feet 



The diamonds were found in the yellow and blue " Stuff" along 

 with garnets, mica, bronzite, ilmenite, pyrite, &c. , and were 

 separated by washing the broken-up earth in sluices similar 

 to those used in gold-mining. The annual value of the diamonds 

 from Kimberley was said to be 3,750,000/., and the total 

 amount raised since 1870, to reach the enormous sum of 

 40,000,000/. Five different specimens of the strata were then 

 produced and their analyses given. — Notes on envelopes and 

 singular solutions (continued), by Sir James Cockle, F. R.S. 



Paris 

 Academy of Sciences, November 17. — M. Rolland, Pre- 

 sident, in the chair. — On the breathing-bags of the Calao 

 rhinoceros, by M. Alph. Milne-Edwards. The specimen of the 

 species of hornbill forming the subject of the paper was brought 

 to Taris last summer by M. P. Fauque, head of the scientific 

 mission recently sent to Sumatra by the Minister of Public 

 Instruction. Owing to the peculiar disposition of its breathing 

 apparatus the Calao rhinoceros is a remarkably light bird, its 

 weight scarcely exceeding 1500 grms., although it is about the 

 size of a turkey. — On the anaesthetic action of the chlorhydrate 

 of cocaine, by M. Vulpian. So powerful is this anaesthetic, 

 which is at present the subject of numerous experiments by M. 

 Roller and other physiologists, that an aqueous solution of one 

 part salt of cocaine and ninety-nine parts of water inserted under 

 the eyelids produces complete insensibility of the conjunctiva and 

 cornea in the human eye. But the effect, obtained in three or 

 four minutes, lasts only a few minutes. Experiments made 

 on the dog, frog, and other animals, have been attended 

 with like results. — Contribution to the study of the deposits of 

 phosphates (lime, iron, &c. ), in the Departments of the Drome, 

 Isere, and other parts of South-East France, by M. P. de 

 Gasparin. — Experimental demonstration of the inversion of the 

 electromotor force produced by the contact of iron and copper at 

 a high temperature, by M. F. F. Le Roux. From the results 

 of several series of experiments, conducted under varying condi- 

 tions, the author concludes that at 'about the temperature of 

 1000° an electric current passing from the copper to the iron 

 heats the point of contact, while cooling it at the ordinary tem- 

 perature. A knowledge of this fact, now for the first time 

 demonstrated, may affect not only the theory of thermo-elec- 

 tricity, but also that of certain chemical phenomena. — Experi- 

 ments made as a contribution to the study of the phenomena 

 produced in man by the ingestion of the diarrhceic liquid of 

 cholera into the stomach, by M. Bochefontaine. From these 

 experiments, made on himself, as well as on the dog, guinea- 

 pig, and other animals, the author feels justified in concluding 

 that the reception in the stomach of the diarrhceic liquid 

 containing the comma-bacillus of cholera does not neces- 



