?o8 



NA TURE 



[jANa'AKY 26, 1899 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Memoiii of llu- Kazan Soaety of Naluialisls,\o\. xxxii. I, 2, 

 3.— The fauna of the Eocene deposits on the Volga between 

 Saratov and Tsarilsyn, by A. Nelschaev, with ten plates. 

 These de]>osits were formerly described as Cretaceous. It was 

 Prof. Sintsoff who determined their Pateocene age, and estab- 

 lished their subdivisions, lately confirmed and further studied 

 by Prof. Pavlofi'. The author describes 170 species from his 

 own collections, out of which species no less than 80 are new, 

 or are described as such. Three subdivisions of the deposits 

 are established, corresponding to the following subdivisions 

 previously described : (u) the sands Pg,c of Sintsoff, or Lower 

 Sarmatian, of Prof. Pavloff, which would correspond to the 

 Suessonien of Western Europe, or to ihe Thanet Sands of Great 

 Britain : (A) the Glauconite sandstones, Pg,a' of Sintsoff, or 

 Upper .Syzran of Favloft', and the Glauconite clays and sand- 

 stones, Pg,a of Sint.soff, or Lower Sy/ran of Pavloff, the latter 

 overlying and gr.-idually passing into the Cretaceous strata. On 

 the whole, these Eocene strata bear resemblance to the Anglo- 

 Gaelic deposits of the same age, but totally differ from the 

 Eocene deposits of South-west Russia. The Pakeocene Volga 

 Sea must have been a large sea extending northwards up the 

 present lower Volga, and westwards as far as the meridian of 

 Penza. In the East, it reached the foot of the Southern Urals. 

 This sea was a remainder froiiv a much larger Cretaceous sea, 

 which covered a large part of European Russia. The Middle 

 and Upper Eocene sea which covered South-west Russia must 

 have been independent from the former. — Materials for the 

 flora of the Buzuluk district of Samara, by D. Vanishevsky. A 

 list of 644 phanerogam species is given. — On the deformed 

 skulls found in the Siberi.an burial mounds (A'lirgaiis), by S. 

 Tschugunoff (with one plate). This is the ninth note of the 

 author's " Materials for the Anthropology of Siberia," the first 

 eight notes having been published in the PiOie^diiigs of the 

 Tomsk University, pans vi., vii. and x. The author describes 

 two macrocephalic deformed skulls which were found in the 

 Kainsk district of Tomsk, as well as three others of the same 

 type from the Crimea. 



Hollclliiio dclla Sociela Sismologua Italiana, vol. iii., 1897, 

 No. 5. — Obituary notice of M. S. de Rossi, by A. Cancani. — 

 Principal eruptive phenomena in Sicily and the adjacent islands. 

 January-June 1898, by S Arcidiacono. — Elastic pendulum to 

 act mechanically on the Galli-Rrassarl informer, by C. 

 Guzzanti. The new arrangement consists of a pendulum, the 

 movement of which, magnified by a lever, stops the clock of the 

 informer.— The Turkestan earthquakes of August 15 and 

 September 17, 1897, by G. Agamennone. — List of earthquakes 

 observed in Greece during the year 1895 [first half], by S. A. 

 I'apavasiliou : a list of about 250 shocks, nearly one-half of which 

 were felt in the island of Zante.— Notices of earthquakes 

 recorded in Italy (September 21-October 2, 1897), by G. 

 Agamennone, the most important being the Ancora earthquake 

 of September 21. 



Memoirs of the Society of Naturalists of Si. Petersburg : 

 Mineralogy and Geology, vol. xxiv. — Geological observations 

 in the valleys of the Urukh, Ardon, Malka, and the neighbour- 

 hoods of Kislovodsk, by M. Karakash. The above valleys are 

 occupied in their upper parts by granites and crystalline slates, 

 followed by palauzoic clay slates. Granites crop out next, once 

 more, and are covered with Lower .and Upper Cretaceous 

 deposits, followed further northwards by Tertiary deposits. Near 

 Kislovodsk, Senonian, Albian, Aptian, and Lower Neocomian 

 deposits were found.— The fauna of the Jurassic deposits 

 of Mangyshlak and Tuar Kyr (Transcaspian region), by B. 

 Semenoff, being a study of Ihe fossils collected by Prof. 

 Andrusov in that very little explored region (with plates). The 

 fossils belong to the Callovian age. At Tuar Kyr two new 

 species [^Ma<rc(epltalites Antirusiowi and Peltoceras retrono- 

 slalum) were disc(jvered, as also two Himalayan species 

 (Cosmoceras Thcodorii, Opp., and Peltoceras cf. Kufrechlt, 

 Opp.) This discovery wouki seem to give support to Neumayr's 

 idea as to the Jurassic basins of West Europe and Russia having 

 been connected with the Himalayan sea through a Transcaspian 

 basin. — On geological researches made in 1S95 '" '^^"^ govern- 

 ment o( Baku and on the Eastern coa.st of the Caspian Sea, by 

 N. -Vndrusov. — New data relative to the fauna of Jurassic 

 deposits in Orenburg, by B. Semenoff. They are based on the 

 collections kept at the Si. Petersburg University. Twenty- 



NO. 1526, VOL. 59] 



eight supra - Juras-^ic Ammonites (26 Pcrisphincles and 2 

 Aspidoceras) were studied ; they belong to various ages, from 

 the Upper Oxfordian to the Tithonian age. — All papers arc 

 fully summed up in Erench or in German. 



Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturali : 

 Botany, vol. xxvii. Parts 2 and 3 —These two Parts ai^ 

 almost entirely given to larger works relative to local floras : 

 the flora of the Polyesic (the Woodlands of West Russia), by 

 I. Pachossky, followed by a note on the Woodlands of Volhynia, 

 by S. Eedoseeff; the flora of the government of Pskoff, by N. 

 I. Puring (with map), followed by a note by E. Ispolatoff; 

 and a paper on the flora of Novgorod, by \. 1. Kolmovsky. — 

 A note on the structure of the stem of Gypsophila aretioides, by 

 \'. Dobrovlyansky, with two very interesting photographs. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, December 15, 1898 — "The Preparation 

 and some of the Properties of Pure Argon." ' By William 

 Ramsay, E. R.S., and Morris W. Travers. 



In order to prepare 15 litres of argon, it is necessary to deal 

 with about 1500 litres of atmospheric air, of which approximately 

 1200 litres consist of a mixture ot nitrogen and argon. Toabsorb 

 the nitrogen contained in this quantity of gas by conversion 

 into nitride, 4 kilograms of magnesium would be required 

 theoretically ; liut, in order to cover loss through leakage and 

 incomplete action, 5;kilograms of the metal were employed. The 

 absorption of the oxygen and nitrogen «.is conducted in three 

 stages. In the first, the oxygen «as removed by means of 

 metallic copper : in the second, the nitrogen was passed twice 

 over metallic magnesium ; and in the third, the gas, now rich 

 in argon, was finally freed from nitrogen and hydrogen by passage 

 over a mixture of anhydrous lime and magnesium powder heated 

 to a red heat, Jand subsequently over red-hot copper oxide. 

 The method of preparation is described in detail in the original 

 paper. 



This argon was then liquefied in an apparatus which is repre- 

 in the figure. The argon entered through the tube a into the 



bulb/', of some 25 c.c. capacity, surrounded by liquid air con- 

 tained in a double-walled vacuum jacket. The air was made to 

 boil under a low pressure of a few centimetres of mercury by 

 means of a Eleuss pump attached to the lube < . The argon 

 rapidly and completely liquefied to a colourless mobile liquid : it 

 showed no absorption spectrum. Its volume was about 17-40.0. 

 By turning the lap d it was placed in communication with the 

 first of the scries of mercury gasholders, , ; the reservoir was 

 then lowered so as to remove the lower. boiling portions of the 

 liquid. During this distillation, which took place at constant 

 temperature, the pressure on the boiling air w;is kept as low as 

 possible. This gas subsequently turned out 10 be rich in neon, 

 and to contain helium (A'c)'. Soc. Proc, vol. Ixiii. p. 437)- The 

 remainder of the argon boiled back into the main gasometer 

 until the last few drops were left ; the residue solidified, and 

 finally gave a gas lo which we gave the name nietargon ; it was 

 collected in mercury gasholders {he. cil., \i. 439)- As will be 

 subsequently shown, the krypton and xenon in this quantity of 

 argon are too minute for detection. A similar operation for the 

 purpose of separating the lighter as well as the heavier con- 

 stituents w.as alterwards repeated three limes, the middle portion 

 of argon being always returned lo ihe main gasholder. A fourth 



