Oct. 30, i« 



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NA TURE 



651 



ston, J. P., F.R.S. ; Council: T. W. Danby, M.A., F.G.S., 

 J.J. Dobbie, D.Sc, L. Fletcher, M.A., Prof. W. J. Lewis, 

 M.A. ; Treasurer : R. P. Greg, F.G.S., &c. ; General Secretary : 

 R. H. Scott, M.A., F.R.S. ; Foreign Secretary: T. Davies, 

 F.G. S. — The President delivered an address, in which he con- 

 gratulated the Society on the satisfactory character of the Report 

 just presented by the Council. This mentioned three topics, all 

 for congratulation : First, it announced that the fusion of the 

 Society with the Crystallological, thanks to the good offices of 

 the Honorary Secretary, had been accomplished. Next, it 

 announced that the finances of the Society, which three years 

 ago were in a condition far from satisfactory, were now restored 

 to a healthy tone. Lastly, it spoke of the great success which 

 had attended the meeting held in Edinburgh last June. He 

 trusted that in future one of the meetings of the Society 

 would always be held in Scotland. He then proceeded 

 to criticise two defects which in his opinion existed in 

 systematic mineralogy as set forth by many authors. To 

 some extent these were questions of nomenclature, but in his 

 opinion they involved questions of principle. The one was 

 the extreme proneness of mineralogists to give distinctive names 

 to slight and often very ill-defined varieties of existing species, 

 thus leading students to mental habits of dissociation rather than 

 of correlation. The other at first sight appeared exactly the 

 converse of this, namely, the laxity with which certain substances 

 were classed as minerals. For instance, obsidian, pitchstone, 

 &c, were often placed in text-books under the head of ortho- 

 clase feldspar, but they could not be brought under any received 

 definition of a mineral. He pointed out how, in consequence 

 as he believed, of the defective habits of reasoning thus en- 

 gendered, the contributions to petrology, even of skilled mine- 

 ralogists, were sometimes of little value. — Mr. R. H. Solly read 

 a paper on five specimens of lilac calcite from Tankerville Mine, 

 Salop. — Mr. Semmons read some further notes on " Euargite." 

 — M. Guyot de Grandmaison exhibited a very fine crystal of 

 " Parisite." — Mr. Rudler and Mr. T. Davies also exhibited 

 several interesting minerals. 



Sydney 

 Linnean Society of New South Wales, August 27. — 

 C. S. Wilkinson, F.G.S., F.L.S., President, in the chair.— Dr. 

 Otto Finsch was introduced as a visitor. — The President 

 announced that, at the last meeting of the Council, F. Jeffrey 

 Bell, M.A., Professor of Comparative Anatomy at King's Col- 

 lege, London, had been elected a Corresponding Member of the 

 Society. — The following papers we're read : — New fishes in the 

 Queensland Museum, No. IV., by Charles W. De Vis, M. A. 

 The families Gobiidae and Blenniidae form the subject of this 

 paper ; thirty-one new species are described. — Notes on the 

 eyes of deep-sea fishes, by Dr. von Lendenfeld. In this paper 

 the author combats the views expressed by Mr. Archer of New 

 Zealand, in opposition to his (Dr. Lendenfeld's) theory as 

 regards the eyes of Lepidotus caudatus. — The insects of the 

 Maclay coast, by William Macleay, F.L. S. The " Maclay 

 Coast," so named after the distinguished traveller Baron N. de 

 Mikluho-Maclay, who resided there for nearly three years, is a 

 portion of Astrolabe Bay, on the North Coast of New Guinea, 

 and the insects collected there, and now enumerated, are of 

 interest as being the only ones ever received from that portion of 

 the island. The collection is veiy small, and the species have 

 been for the most part previously described from Dorey and 

 New Ireland. — Notes on the zoology of the Maclay Coast, New 

 Guinea : (i.) on a new sub-genus of Peramelidce, by N. de 

 Mikluho-Maclay. Baron Maclay gives to the bandicoot here 

 described the name of Brachymelis garagassi. The sub-genus is 

 characterised by having four upper incisors instead of five (in 

 which character it resembles Perameles doreyanus i Quoy and 

 Gaimard, and P. cockerelli, Ramsay), in having very short limbs 

 and in having the hair on the back very bristly. A stuffed 

 specimen was exhibited, which Dr. Otto Finsch pronounced to 

 be distinct from his New Britain species. — Descriptions of Aus- 

 tralian Micro-lepidoptera, No. XL, by E. Meyrick, B.A. 

 Mr. Meyrick continues the CEcophorida?, describing in detail 

 over 100 species, bringing the number of that family up to nearly 

 400- — Critical list of Mollusca from the north-west coast of 

 Australia, by John Brazier, C.M.Z. S.,&c. Fifty species are here 

 enumerated, with the geographical range and synonymy of each 

 correctly defined. — Synonymy of some New Guinea land shells, 

 by John Brazier, C.M.Z S., &c. Mr. Brazier accompanied the 

 reading of this paper with the exhibition of the fallowing species 

 of Helicidse : — Helix broadbenti, Braz. ; H. (Obba) goldiei, Braz. ; 

 //. (Geotrochus) zeito, Braz. ; H. (Geotrochus) tapperonii, Smith ; 



H. {Geotrochus) tayloriana. Ad. and Reeve ; H. (Sphcercspina) 

 gerrardi, E. A. Smith ; //. (Planispina) corniculum, Hombr. 

 and Jacq. ; Nanina (Xesta) citrina, Linn. — The time of the 

 Glacial period in New Zealand, by R. von Lendenfeld, Ph. D. 

 The results of the author's survey in the New Zealand Alps, 

 partly corroborating and partly extending the results of Dr. von 

 Hnast's surveys, showed that the present glaciers are as large 

 and extend down as far as those in Norway, where the mean 

 annual temperature is 3 C, whilst in New Zealand it is II" C. 

 The greater expanse of water in the southern hemisphere and 

 the consequently greater amount of humidity in the air, and 

 more copious rain and snowfall are considered to be the cause 

 of this. The sounds in the south-west coast are similar to the 

 fjords in Norway, and the alluvial deposits at their upper ends 

 are small. Scooped out originally by flowing water, these 

 sounds remained unchanged during the period of subsidence of 

 the land, and were not filled up with debris, because large 

 glaciers occupied them during that time. As soon as these 

 glaciers disappeared, the formation of the alluvial deposits com- 

 menced, and from the fact that the latter are small and increas- 

 ing rapidly in size from year to year, the author considers that 

 the Glacial period in New Zealand must have been very recent- 

 — List of papers and works relating to the mammalian orders 

 Marsupialia and Monotremata, by J. J. Fletcher, M.A., B.Sc. 

 The aim of this catalogue, which contains the titles and refer- 

 ences of several hundred papers, &c, is to do for the student 

 of these two interesting and peculiarly Australian orders of the 

 Mammalia what Etheridge and Jack's Catalogue has done for 

 the student of Australian geology. It includes all papers dealing 

 with the anatomy of these groups, all descriptions of new species 

 since the publication of Gould's work, and a few papers on 

 palaeontology, omitted from Etheridge and Jack's Catalogue, 

 together with a few published since that appeared. Mr. Fletcher 

 exhibited a number of the rarer papers enumerated in the list. — 

 On two new birds from the Austro-Malayan region, by E. P. 

 Ramsay, F.R.S.E. The species here described are: (1) Pitta 

 finschii, sp. nov., allied to Pitta macklotii, but distinct in having 

 no red nape patch, and the whole of the upper surface except 

 the head blue, instead of green. (2) Halcyon alb, aetata, sp. nov. 

 This species comes under the sub-genus Cyanalcyon ; it is 

 allied to Halcyon maclcayi and H. diops, but differs from all in 

 having the whole of the back and upper tail-coverts white. 



Paris 

 Academy of Sciences, October 20. — M. Rolland, Presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — Note on the conditions of the existence of 

 equal roots in Hamilton's equation of the second degree, and on 

 a general method of resolving a unilateral equation of any 

 degree in matrices of any order, by Prof. Sylvester. — On the 

 alkaline hydrates, third memoir : hydrates of potassa and soda,, 

 by M. E. J. Maumene. — Note on the effects of tar-wash on 

 vines attacked by Phylloxera, by M. Balbiani. A decisive 

 experiment recently made by the author on a young plantation 

 near Montpellier showed the possibility of utterly destroying the 

 winter eggs deposited in any given vineyard by the application 

 of a coal-tar wash. But all the plants subjected to this treat- 

 ment arrived at maturity a fortnight or three weeks later than 

 any others. This result was attributed to the obstacle opposed 

 to the evaporation by the coating thus formed round the stem of 

 the plant. — Occultation of stars by the moon observed at 

 Toulouse during the recent lunar eclipse, by M. Baillaud. — 

 Observations of the same eclipse made at the Observatory of 

 Bordeaux, by MM. Doublet, Flamme, and Courty. These 

 observations, made under rather favourable atmospheric condi- 

 tions with the 8-inch and 14-inch equatorials, were directed 

 chiefly to some of the stars indicated in M. Struve's list. It was 

 ascertained that none of the stars disappeared at the exact 

 moment of its occultation, almost implying that the edge of the 

 lunar disk is transparent. — Observations of Wolfs comet (18S4), 

 made with the meridian circle of the Observatory of Bordeaux, 

 by M. Courty. The brightness of the comet appears to have 

 slightly increased since the first observations, although the 

 nucleus still remains comparable to a star of the ninth magnitude. 

 ■ — Observations of the new planet 244, made at the Observatory 

 of Algiers (C50 m. telescope), by M. Rambaud. — Observations 

 of the late total eclipse of the moon at Orgeres (Eure-et-Loir), 

 M. Edm. Lescarbault. — Note on the determination of the orbits 

 of heavenly bodies by three observations, by M. R. Radau. — 

 Observations made on the intensity of terrestrial magnetism in 

 European Russia, by Gen. A. de Tillo. — Note on the ele- 

 mentary force of solar induction, whose periodical duration 



