April 19, 1883] 
NATURE 
595 
and to Mr. Henry Blair Mayne, Brantridge Park, Balcombe. 
The scholarship, open to first-year students, was awarded to 
Mr. Robert Alan Benson, Clifton. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LONDON 
Mathematical Society, April 12.—Prof, Henrici, F.R.S., 
president, in the chair.—The Chairman annoanced that Prof. 
Rowe, of University College, London, had been elected a Mem- 
ber of the Council in the room of the late Prof. Henry Smith, 
F.R.S.—The following communications were made :—Equa- 
tions of the loci of the intersections of three tangent lines and 
of three tangent planes to any quadric « = 0, Prof. Wolsten- 
holme.—Investigation of the character of the equilibrium of an 
incompressible heavy fluid of variable density, Lord Rayleigh, 
F,R.S. —On the normal integrals connected with Abel’s theorem, 
Prof. Forsyth.—Spherical functions, Part 1, Rev. M. M. U. 
Wilkinson. —Calculation of the equation which determines the 
anharmonic ratios of the roots of a quintic, Prof. M. J. M. Hill. 
—On simultaneous differential equations, with special reference 
to (1) the roots of the fundamental determinant, (2) the method 
of multipliers, Mr. E. J. Routh, F.R.S. 
Chemical Society, April 5.—Dr. W. H. Perkin, president, 
in the chair.—It was announced that a ballot for the election of 
Fellows would take place at the next meeting of the Society 
(April 19).—The following papers were read :—On the estima- 
tion of hydrogen sulphide and carbonic anhydride in coal-gas, by 
L. T. Wright. The coal-gas, dried and freed from ammonia, 
is passed through two weighed U-tubes, the first containing 
precipitated cupric phosphate dried at 100° and calcium chloride, 
the second, soda lime, slightly moist, and calcium chloride. 
Three cubic feet of clean coal-gas are first passed through the U- 
tubes to ‘‘ saturate” the reagents. The increase of weight of the 
first U-tube, after the passage of the crude coal-gas, then gives 
the hydrogen sulphide, and the increase in weight of the second 
the carbonic anhydride.—Some compounds of antimony and 
bismuth containing two halogens, by R. W. Atkinson.—On the 
theory of a molecular combination, when antimonious chloride 
is mixed with potassium bromide and antimonious bromide with 
potassium chloride, two distinct compounds should be produced. 
The author finds that but one is formed, the two compounds 
being identical in composition as well as in colour, crystalline 
form, and other physical characters. This body has the formula 
Sb,Cl,Brg,K, + 3H,O. An attempt to form the corresponding 
bismuth compound was not successful.—Contribution to the 
chemistry of the cerite metals, by B, Brauner. The author has 
determined the atomic weight of didymium with the greatest 
care, and fixes it at 145°4; the higher numbers previously 
obtained were due to the presence of a metal having a higher 
atomic weight ; this metal is proved by the author to be 
samarium, the atomic weight of which he calculates to be 150, 
The author also proves that the principal gadolinite earths— 
ylttria, terbia, erbia, &c.—are present in cerite, but not in large 
quantities. 
Institution of Civil Engineers, April 3.—Mr. Brunlees, 
president, in the chair.— The paper read was ‘‘On the Summit- 
Level Tunnel of the Bettws and Festiniog Railway,” by Mr. 
William Smith, M.Inst.C.E. 
April 10.—Mr. Brunlees, president, in the chair.—The paper 
read was on ‘‘ The Introduction of Irrigation into New Coun- 
tries, as illustrated in North-Eastern Colorado,” by Mr. P. 
O’Meara, M. Inst.C.E. 
EDINBURGH 
Royal Society, April 2.—Mr. John Murray in the chair,— 
Dr. Gibson, in a communication on some laboratory arrange- 
ments, described and exhibited a modification of Bunsen’s 
method of filtration. The modification consisted essentially in 
placing the vessel which received the filtrate inside a bell-jar, 
which was connected with the exhausting apparatus and per- 
filtered. By a suitable three-way stopcock arrangement the 
adjusting of the internal partial vacuum was kept quite under 
the control of the experimenter, A contrivance for the more 
convenient use and better preservation of sulphuretted hydrogen 
water was also described and shown.—Prof. Tait, in a short 
note on the thermoelectric position of pure cobalt, described 
recent experiments which fally bore out results formerly ob- 
tained with other specimens. The cobalt line runs nearly parallel 
to the icon line, but far down on the diagram below palladium 
and nickel. Prof. Tait also indicated the solution of certain 
problems of heat conduction in heterogeneous bodies as affected 
by the Peltier and Thomson effects. —Prof. George Forbes read 
a paper on transmission of power by alternate currents, in 
which he pointed out the value of alternate current machines as 
electromotors, especially in cases in which perfect isochronism 
was of importance.—Prof. Herdman, in a paper on the so-called 
hypophysis in the Tunicata, described the structure of the neural 
(hypophysal) gland and the dorsal tubercle in various Ascidians, 
and suggested that possibly the connection of the neural gland 
(and also of the vertebrate hypophysis cerebri) with the pharynx 
might be a secondary modification caused by one or more of a 
series of primitive lateral excretory ducts, opening either upon 
the exterior of the body or into the peribranchial cavity, having 
come to open into a lost sense organ, in the Stomodzeum repre- 
sented by the dorsal tubercle. These lateral ducts are found in 
Ascidia mammillata, in some cases existing along with a median 
duct opening into the pharynx at the dorsal tubercle, and in other 
cases without this connection with the supposed sense-organ.— 
Prof, Tait presented a paper on the quaternion expression for the 
displacements of a rigid system, by Dr. G. Plarr. 
Mathematical Society, April 13.—Mr. A. J. G. Barclay, 
M.A., in the chair.—Mr. J. S. Mackay, president, read a paper 
on the triangle and its six-scribed circles, adding historical notes 
on the discovery of the various properties enumerated. The 
name medtoscribed circle (il circolo medioscritto) was suggested 
for use instead of nine-point circle, as had been proposed twenty 
years ago by G. B. Marsano, ‘‘ Considerazioni sul Triangolo 
Rettilineo,” Genova, 1863, p. II. 
BERLIN 
Physiological Society, March 9.—Prof. Du Bois Reymond 
in the chair.—Dr. Wernicke gave a short sketch of the illness of 
a patient who fell sick, exhibiting all the symptoms of a cerebral 
tumour except epileptic attacks, and who manifested a disturb- 
ance of speech that was characterised by Dr. Wernicke as a 
**sensorial aphasia,” and by others as ‘‘ word-deafness.” A 
sensorial aphasia consists, according to Dr. Wernicke, in the 
fact that the patients, though in possession of a large vocabu- 
lary, no longer understand the meaning of words, that they use 
these confusedly, and so that their speech is quite muddled; more- 
over they do not understand what one says to them at all, so that 
it is impossible to arrive at an understanding with them. The 
patient in question soon succumbed to an intercurrent disease, 
and it was possible to make a thorough dissection of the brain, 
which exhibited a bilateral affection of the cerebral cortex at the 
first temporal convolution. An accurate dissection of the ears 
showed that the deafness that had been observed during life was 
not brought about by any disease of the sound-conducting 
apparatus, but that it was rather to be regarded as a central deaf- 
ness conditioned by the disease of the cortex of the first spheno- 
semporal convolution in which, as Dr, Wernicke made probable 
to long as ten years ago, the terminal expansion of the acoustic 
nerve has its seat. Now the local disease of the brain-cortex 
and the consequent observed disturbances in hearing and speech 
correspond to the manifestations of ‘‘soul-deafness ” that were 
experimentally produced by Dr. Munk in animals by extirpation 
of the auditory sphere (//drsphdare), and consequently establish 
the results of experiments on animals as true for man also. The 
total deafness of the patient had only set in at a later period 
towards the end of the disease, when the affection of the brain 
had passed from the cortex into the deeper structures and had de- 
stroyed the acoustic fibres, The physiological import of the above 
case consists in the clearly proved limitation of the disease to the 
first temporo-sphenoidal convolution in a case where the clinical 
phenomena corresponded accurately to those of ‘‘ soul-deafness.”” 
—Dr. J. Munk had found in previous experiments that the func- 
tion of neutral fats in nutrition can just as well be performed by 
the fatty acids. Animals manifested absolutely no disturbance 
| of nutrition when supplied with fatty acids instead of fats ; the 
forated above so as to admit the funnel through which the liquid ; 
fatty acids were made into an emulsion, and absorbed by the 
| villi in precisely the same fashion as the fats, and afterwards the 
chyle-vessels were found just as densely filled with a milky fluid 
as after a meal of fat. The examination of the chyle had, however, 
shown that the fatty acids that were supplied were no longer to be 
found, but only neutral fats, and hence Dr. Munk had assumed that 
a synthesis of neutral fats took place as the fatty acids passed out of 
the intestinal villi into the chyle, and that the glycerine was sup- 
plied by the animal body, probably by the breaking down of albu- 
