306 
NATURE 
[Aug. 11, 1870 
the arguments in favour of or against the permanence of species, 
drawn from the observation of living species and from palaonto- 
logy. Following this we have, @ #refos of the war, an article 
on field ambulances and hospitals, by Prof. Champouillon, In 
the number for July 30, we have the rectorial address of yon 
Littrow to the University of Vienna, on the backward state of 
science among the ancients, and the conclusicn of M. Broca’s 
paper on the transformation of species, in which the subject is 
treated from a philosophical point of view, and the professor 
sums up strongly against the idea of permanence. The hypo- 
thesis of Natural Selection is then discussed, but a much less 
certain conclusion arrived at. The number for August 6 opens 
with a report of the discussion on the nomination of Mr. Darwin 
as corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, to which 
we have referred in another column. This is followed by a 
singularly able and exhaustive review by M. Claparede, of 
Geneva, of Mr. A. R. Wallace’s Essays on Natural Selection, 
in which he points out that while Mr. Wallace demands the 
intervention of a superior force to explain the foundation of the 
human races, and to guide man in the path of civilisation, he 
altogether denies the existence of such a force as assisting to 
produce the inferior races of animals and plants, which he attri- 
butes entirely to the operation of Natural Selection. In the 
same remarkably interesting number of the Revue, we have 
oe Mr. Marey’s extremely important paper on the Flight of 
irds. 
THE current number (No. Xxx1x.) of the Quarterly Journal 
of Microscopic Science is an unusually rich one, containing several 
papers of great importance. Amongst them we may draw atten- 
tion to one of considerable length by Dr. Beale, entitled 
“*Bioplasm, and its degradation,” with Observations on the 
Origin of Contagious Disease. He introduces and defends the 
use of the term Bioplasm, which we think is admissible enough, 
andserves very wellasa distinguishing appellative for actually living 
matter, as opposed to protoplasm, which has been rather vaguely 
used to designate organic matter whether dead or alive. The 
application, however, of the new term is sufficiently wide, since 
Dr. Beale appears to consider them in a special form for each 
separate structure in the body originating in the primary mass 
of bioplasm of the egg. From each subdivision of the latter 
“in pre-ordained order, and with perfect regularity more are 
produced, no doubt according to laws, but laws which we know 
nothing about, except that they are not physical.” This last 
assertion indeed seems open to question, for if we know nothing 
about them, how can it be said with certainty that they are 
not physical, as it is certain we are not acquainted with all the 
physical laws of the world. = Dr. Beale procceds to describe the 
Bioplasm of the Ameeba, the principal forms of that of man, and 
its relations to such morbid products as pus and infectious 
poisons. An interesting paper follows, by Dr. Macdonald, of 
H.M.S. Fisgard, on the minute anatomy of some of the parts 
concerned in the function of accommodation to distance. Dr. 
Caton describes the means he has found best adapted for studying 
transparent vascular tissues in living animals. To this succeeds 
acapital résumé of Prof. Stricker’s ‘‘Studien aus der Institut 
fiir experimentelle Pathologie in Wien aus dem Yahre 1869,” 
and the part devoted to original communications terminates with 
two essays, one by Mr. E. Ray Lankester, on the Migration of 
Cells, and one by A. M. Edwards, on Diatomacee. 
The Transactions of the Linnean Society, yol. xxvi., pt. 4, is en- 
tirely occupied by two papers on Fossil Cycads. The first, by 
Prof. W. C. Williamson, is descriptive of the remarkable Zamza 
gigas Lindl. and Hutton, or Williamsonia gigas Carr., found in 
considerable abundance in the Lias at Whitby. He believes 
it to have bore a strong resemblance to existing Cycads with 
dicecious flowers. In Mr. Carruthers’s valuable monograph of 
Fossil Cycadean stems from the Secondary rocks of Britain, he 
shows that these fossils are, as far as is at present known, entirely 
confined to Secondary strata, the so-called Cycadee of the coal- 
measures and other paleozoic strata being rather referable to 
cryptogamic Zefidodendra, and the few specimens reported from 
Miocene beds being very imperfect and uncertain. In his des- 
cription which follows, Mr. Carruthers describes four new genera 
from British rocks, Yadesta, Fittonia, Welliamsonia, and Lennet- 
nies. Both papers are illustrated by excellent plates. —Vol. xxvii., 
part 2, is of more varied interest. Mr. John Miers contributes 
two botanical papers ; a description of three new genera of Ver- 
benacea, Rhaphithamnus, Phelloderma, and Diostea, from Chile 
and the adjacent regions ; and a paper on the anomalous genera 
Geizia and Espadea, the position of which is very unsettled, and 
which he proposes forming into a new order. Dr. Birdwood 
describes and figures three new species of Zoswellia, natives of 
the Soumali country, all of which yield frankincense, and one of 
them, he believes, the bulk of the olibanum of commerce. Dr. 
J. B. Hicks points out a singular resemblance between the genus 
Draparnaldia, and the conferyoid filaments of mosses. We 
have descriptions of new Agarics and Lichens from Ceylon, the 
former by the Rey. M. J. Berkeley, the latter collected by Mr. 
Thwaites, and named by the Rev. W. A. Leighton, who also 
contributes notes on the Lichens of St. Helena, and a descrip- 
tion of a new British Fungus, Spheria tartaricola, Nyl. The 
longest paper in this part is an important monograph by Messrs. 
Henry Brady, Parker, and T. Rupert Jones, of the genus Po/y- 
morphina, an attempt to rescue this difficult genus of Foramini- 
fera from the almost inextricable confusion into which it has 
fallen. Dr. A. Rattray contributes a paper on the anatomy, 
physiology, and distribution of the /iro/:d@, forming the section 
of Heteropoda with a straight and elongated form, and either 
wholly naked or furnished with a very small shell, and including 
the genera Carinaria, Carinaroides, Firola, and Fireloides, Sir 
John Lubbock proceeds with his Notes on 7hysanura, part iv. ; 
and from Dr. Edward Moss we haye an account of the genus 
Appendicularia, with its remarkable appendage, or ‘‘ haus,” the 
object of which in the vital economy has not been ascertained. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LonDON 
Entomological Society, July 4.—Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, 
president, in the chair. The Rey. F. A. Walkerand Mr. Edward 
Mackenzie Seaton were elected members. Numerous objects 
of interest were exhibited by or on behalf of Mr. Meek, 
the Hon. T. De Grey, Mr. F. Moore, Mr. Blackmoor, Mr. 
Albert Miiller, Mr. Jenner Weir, Sir J. C. Jervoise, Bart., Mr. 
Tegetmeier, and others.—Prof. Westwood made some observa- 
tions on a group of very minute four-legged Acari, and the 
Presicent mentioned instances of protective mimicry in insects, 
recently observed by Mr. Everitt in Borneo.—The following 
papers were read :—‘‘ Further observations on the Relation 
between the Colour and the Edibility of Zefidoptera and their 
Larvee,” by Mr. J. Jenner Weir; ‘On a Collection of butter- 
flies, sent by Mr, Ansell from South-Western Africa,” by Mr. 
A. G. Butler; ‘‘Contributions to the Insect Fauna of the 
Amazons” (continuation, Coleoptera longicornia, Fam. Ceram- 
bycide), by Mr. H. W. Bates; ‘‘List of the AHymenoplera 
captured by Mr. J. K. Lord in Egypt and Arabia, with De- 
scriptions of New Species,” by Mr. Francis Walker. 
EDINBURGH 
Scottish Meteorological Society, July 21.—Half-yearly 
general meeting, Mr. Milne Home in the chair. The following 
report from the Council was read :—‘‘ The Council have to report 
that the number of the Society’s stations is now ninety-one, there 
being an addittion of one since the last general meeting, in con- 
sequence of the seryices of an observer haying been obtained for 
Leith. At the last half-yearly general meeting, reference was 
made to a renewed application by the Council to Government 
for pecuniary aid. ‘the application was so far favourably re- 
ceived that the Board of Trade a second time recommended the 
Council to prefer to the committee of the Royal Society their 
claim, with a view to an allowance being made from the annual 
Parliamentary grant of 10,000/. for meteorological purposes, of 
which grant that committee have charge. The Council regret to 
say that the Royal Society committee have stated that they are 
unable to make or promise any allowance out of the grant, as 
the whole of it has been appropriated to other objects; for 
which objects the grant is, as the committee state, even too small 
in amount. ‘The Council have in these circumstances been in- 
duced to renew their application to Government for a special 
grant to the Society. ‘The Council have requested Mr. Buchan 
to prepare a report on the monthly temperature of the British 
islands, and to state to this meeting a few of the results obtained 
by him, The subject is one which it is believed has not been 
thoroughly investigated by any other society, or indeed by any 
meteorologist except Professor Dove; and Professor Dove’s 
charts, which are now ten years old, were based on observations 
not only necessarily scanty, but in several cases unavoidably in- 
correct. The first chart which this Society prepared of the 
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