May 12, 1881] 



NATURE 



47 



so well as those of the inactive amylamines ; there is also some 

 difference in the boiling.points and specific gravities of these 

 two classes of bodies. — On the action of sodium alcoholates on 

 fumaric ethers, by T. Pnrdie. An acid is formed which is 

 an ethylethermalic acid isomeric with the monethylmalate of 

 Desmondisir. The action of sodium isoliutylate on iso- 

 butyl fumarate w as also studied ; an isobutylojalic acid was 

 formed.— On the products of the action of alkalies on ethylic 

 5 ethylacetosuccinate, by L. T. Thome. An ethylsuccinic acid 

 was obtained by the action of strong potash identical with that 

 obtained from the a succinate ; with weak potash 5 per cent. 

 a-ethyI-/3-aceto-propionic acid was obtained, which on boiling 

 gave off water and formed a body C-Hj^.O^. — On some carbazol 

 compounds, hy C. H. Rennie and VV. R. Hodgkinson. The 

 authors have studied the action of potassium carbazol on ethyl 

 chlorocarhonate ; a new urethane was obtained. 



Geological Society, April 27. — R. Etheridge, F.R.S., 

 president, in the chair. — Samuel Gerrard Kirchhoffer, Arthur 

 Henry shakspere Lucas, and Lieut. Frederick Thomas Nelson 

 Spratt were elected Fellows of the Society. The following 

 communications were read : — On the precise mooe of accumula- 

 tion and derivai ion of the Moel Tryfan shelly deposits ; on the 

 discovery of simdar high-level deposits along the eastern slopes 

 of the Welsh mountains ; and on the existence of drift-zones 

 showing probable variations in the rate of submergence, by D. 

 Mackintosh, F.G.S. — On the correlation of the Upper Jurassic 

 rocks of England with those of the Continent, by the Rev. J. F. 

 Blake, M.A., F.G.S. Part I. the Paris basin. This was an 

 attempt to settle the many questions of correlation arising out of 

 the detailed descriptions given of the various localities in the 

 Paris hasin where Upper Jurassic rocks are developed, by a 

 consecutive survey of them all ; undertaken by the aid of a 

 grant from the " Govern ent Fund fir Scientific Research." 

 In previous papers the names used for the great subdivisions 

 and their boundaries were adopted without material modification ; 

 in the pre ent such modifications were i-iroposed as may bring 

 the English and Conline ital arrangements into harmony. Five 

 distinct arear were considered in this paper: — (i)The southern 

 range ; (2) the Charentes ; (3) Normandy ; (4) the Pays de Bray ; 

 (5) the Boulonnais. From this study it was proposed — that the 

 " Lower Calcareous grit " a' d almost all the Coralline oolite 

 shouH be pliced in the Oxfordim series as the upper division, 

 under the name " Oxford Grit " and " Oxford Oolite " ; that the 

 Corallian C' insists of two parts, the Coral Rag and the Supra- 

 coralline beds ; that the Kimnieridgian should include the 

 Astartian and Virgulian, the Pteiuceriin being a subzone ; that 

 the "Upper KimmeridJe" and the Hartwell clay, with the 

 "Portland -and," should make a new sub-division to be called 

 Bolonian, the northern and southern types being both repre- 

 sented at Boulogne, which may be divided into upper and lower ; 

 and that the true Portland limes'one and the Purbeck be united 

 into one group, as Lower and Upper Portlmdian; the fact of 

 the latter being freshwater being paralleled by parts of the 

 true Portland having that character. — On fossil chilostomatous 

 Bryozoa from the Yarra-Yarra, Victoria, Australia, by Arthur 

 William Waters, F.G.S. 



Anthropological Institute, April 26. — Prof. W. H. Flower, 

 F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair. — Mr. J. E. Price exhibited 

 a collection of b mes of man and other animals discovered by him- 

 self and Mr. Hilton Price at the Roman villa at Brading, Jsle 

 of Wight. The bones hnd been exan.ined by Prof Flower, w ho 

 reported that they were all in much the same state of preserva- 

 tion, ai d probably all contemporanenus. They consisted of (i) 

 Man : fragments probably of one and the same skeleton. From 

 the condition of the bones it is certain that the individual was 

 adult and p'-obably of middle age and about the average stature. 

 (2) Dog : Nriijierous remains of at least three individuals, all of 

 nearly the same a:;e and size, not more than half grown, having 

 only the milk teeth in place. (3) Ox : Young. (4) Hor-e : One 

 incisor tuoih. -Mr. A. L. Lewis read a paper on some archaic 

 structures in Somerset-hire and Dorsetshire. The author, in 

 speaking of the great stone circles at Stanton Drew, near Bristol, 

 mentioned ihe elaborate as ronomical theories which had been 

 propounded concerning them by antiquaries of the last century, 

 and said that, while he had m belief in them, he thought 

 that the larger .st >i e circles, of which this group was a speci- 

 men, had been u ed as places for solar worship ; there wis in 

 nearly all o| them some special reference to the north east, the 

 quarter in which the sun rose on the longest day; in some, 

 however, there w ere outlying stones towards the south, and this 



was the case at a circle at Gorwell in Dorsetshire ; these stones, 

 whether to the south or the north-east, were evidently so placed 

 for some special object, as the number of instances in which 

 they occurred was too great for their position to be merely 

 accidental. The paper was illustrated by the exhibition of plan, 

 model, and some worked flints, &c., found by the author at 

 some of the monuments mentioned by him. — Mr. G. M. Atkin- 

 son read a paper on a new instrument for determining the facial 

 angle. A needle is inserted into each optic foramen, and fixed 

 at a point in the centre of each orbit ; the needles are connected 

 by an axle with flat ends which slide on the needles ; an index- 

 pointer is attached to the axle in the middle, and is in the same 

 visual horizontal plane as the needles. A bar, carrying a semi- 

 circular protractor, is constructed to be aflixed at the centre point 

 of the protractor, and to have free movement in a vertical plane 

 alongside the index-pointer. If this bar-protractor be placed in 

 position on the skull so as to touch the ophryon and alveolar 

 points, the number of degrees in the facial angle, by this 

 method, will be indicated by the index-pointer on the pro- 

 tractor. — The Rev. W. S. Caiger read a paper on Thomas of 

 Aquinum and anthropology. 



Royal Microscopical Society, April 13.— Prof. P. Martin 

 Duncan, F.K.S., president, in the chair. — A paper by Mr. W. 

 H. Shruhsole and Mr. F. Kitton, on the diatoms discovered by 

 the former in the London clay, was read. Also one by Dr. 

 Anthony, on sliding stage diaphragms. — The other subjects 

 discussed were E. Ilallier's view of the cause of the movements 

 of diatoms, the "Society" standard screw, AmfthipUuya pellii- 

 cilia illuminated by the vertical illuminator, and the structure of 

 wood-sections exhibited by Mr. Stewart. — Mr. Powell exhibited 

 an oil-immersion J -inch objective of the exceptionally large 

 aperture of i"47 N.A. (i-o = iSo° in air). 



Edinburgh 

 Royal Society, April 17. — Sir William Thomson, honorary 

 vice-]iresidcnl, in the chair. — Prof. Helmholtz, in an interesting 

 communication on electrolytic conduction, stated that the experi- 

 ments he was about to describe were a continuation of experi- 

 ments he had formerly made in connection with certain objections 

 that had been urged again-t Faraday's law of electrolysis. He 

 had already shown that a feeble galvanic current could be passed 

 throuijh an electrolytic preparation of acidulated water, even 

 though the electromotive fjrce was not sufticient to decompose 

 the water. The action of such a current would be, in the first 

 place, to coat the electrodes, the one with hydrogen; the other 

 with oxygen. The hydrogen however speedily combined with 

 the free oxygen in the air and liquid to form water, while the 

 oxygen on the positive electrode as speedily dissipated itself. In 

 this way the polarisation in the electrolytic cell was kept down, 

 so that the original current was never wholly destroyed. In the 

 later exp-riments Prof. Helmholtz had completely removed the 

 air from the neighbourhood of the electrolyte. This was effected 

 '•y an ingenious use of the property possessed by palladium of 

 holding lai-ge quantities of hydrogen gas in its pores. With this 

 specially-prepared cell he found that a feeble current passed 

 through it fell down to zero in a very short time, the difference 

 of potential due to the polarisation of the electrodes quite 

 balancing the original eKclromotive force. On throwing off the 

 battery the polarised electrolytic cell showed on a delicate gal- 

 vanometer a reversed current, which rapidly fell to zero from an 

 intensity equal to that of the original current before polarisation 

 set in. Another result to which his researches had led him was 

 that there were no chemical forces acting between the molecules 

 of an electrolyte other thm those that existed in virtue of what 

 might be called their electric charges — a result which cannot fail 

 to have nn important bearing upon the question of chemical con- 

 stitution. — Sir William Thomson communicated a short paper 

 on the average pressure due to impulse of vortex-rings on a solid. 

 When a vortex-ring is apiiroaching a plane large in comparison 

 to the dimensions of the ring, the total pressure over the surface 

 is nil. When a ring approaches such a surface it begins to 

 expand, sti that if we consider a finite portion of the surface the 

 total pressure upon it due to the ring will have a finite v.ilue 

 when the ring is close enough. In a closed cylinder any vortex- 

 rn.g approaching the plane end will expand out along the sur- 

 face, lising in speed as it so does, untd it reaches the cylindrical 

 boundary, along which it will crawl back, on rebounding, to the 

 other end of the cylinder. As it approaches, i' will therefore 

 exert upon the plane surface a definite outward pressure, whose 

 time-integral is equal to the original momentum of the vortex, and 



