94 
NATURE 
[May 27, 1886 
University. After considerable discussion, resolutions were 
passed approving of the admission of certain educational institu- 
tions having one, or more than one, faculty of University rank 
as constituent Colleges of the University, of the establishment 
of a Council of Education, and of certain changes in the consti- 
tution of the Senate. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
THE most important paper in the Youwrnal of Botany for 
April is the commencement of a Synopsis of the Rhizocarpez, 
by Mr. J. G. Baker, another of the series of this writer’s ex- 
haustive monographs of the families of Vascular Cryptogams 
outside the Ferns. The present instalment includes the genus 
Salvinia, in which three new species are described, and a por- 
tion of Azolla. In the May number we find a continuation of 
Mr. W. B. Grove’s paper on new and noteworthy fungi, in 
which several new species are described, and one new genus of 
Spheeroideze, Collonema. Mr, W. H. Beeby gives further par- 
ticulars respecting the distribution of his newly discovered 
Sparganium neglectum, and Mr, Arthur Bennett an account of 
the distribution in Britain of the various species of Potamogeton, 
in addition to those contained in the second edition of ‘* Topo- 
graphical Botany.” 
This research is an extension of a former one on “‘ Transfer- 
Resistance in Electrolytic and Voltaic Cells,” communicated to 
the Royal Society, March 2, 1885. Further evidence on the 
same subject has been published by the author in the PAz/o- 
sophi al Magazine, 1886, vol. xxi. pp. 130, 145, 249. 
“©A Study of the Thermal Properties of Ethyl Oxide.” By 
William Ramsay, Ph.D., and Sydney Young, D.Sc. 
A year ago a paper was communicated to the Society on the 
behaviour of ethyl alcohol when heated. A similar study of the 
properties of ether has been made, in which numerical values 
have been obtained exhibiting the expansion of the liquid, the 
pressure of the vapour, and the compressibility of the substance 
in the gaseous and liquid conditions ; and from these results, the 
densities of the saturated vapour and the heats of vaporisation 
have been deduced. The temperature range of these observa- 
tions is from — 18° to 223° C. 
It is the authors’ intention to consider in full the relations of 
the properties of alcohol and ether; in the meantime it may be 
stated that the saturated vapour of ether, like that of alcohol, 
possesses an abnormal density, increasing with rise of tempera- 
ture and corresponding rise of pressure ; that at o° the vapour- 
density is still abnormal, but appears to be approaching a 
normal state; and that the apparent critical temperature of 
ether is 194° C.; the critical pressure very nearly 27,060 mm. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LONDON 
Royal Society, May 20.—‘‘ Relation of ‘ Transfer-Resist- 
ance’ to the Molecular Weight and Chemical Composition of 
Electrolytes.” By G. Gore, L.L.D., F.R.S. 
In the full paper the author first describes the method he 
employed for measuring the “resistance,” and then gives the 
numerical results of the measurements in the form of a series of 
tables. 
He took a number of groups of chemically related acids and 
salts of considerable degrees of purity, all of them in the pro- 
portions of their chemical equivalent weights, and dissolved in 
equal and sufficient quantities of distilled water to form quite 
dilute solutions. The number of solutions was about seventy, 
and included those of hydriodic, hydrobromic, hydrochloric, 
hydrofluoric, nitric, and sulphuric acids ; the iodides, bromides, 
chlorides, fluorides, hydrates, carbonates, nitrates, and sulphates, 
of ammonium, cesium, rubidium, potassium, sodium, and 
lithium ; the chlorides, hydrates, and nitrates, of barium, stron- 
tium, and calcium ; and a series of stronger solutions, of equiva- 
lent strength to each other, of the chlorides of hydrogen, ammo- 
nium, rubidium, potassium, sodium, lithium, barium, strontium, 
and calcium. A series of similar liquids to those of one of the 
groups of acids, of equal (not of equivalent) strength to each 
other, was also included. 
As electrodes, he employed pairs of plates of zinc, cadmium, 
lead, tin, iron, nickel, copper, silver, gold, palladium, and 
platinum ; and separate ones formed of small bars of iridium. 
He took each group of solutions, and measured in each liquid 
separately, at atmospheric temperature, the ‘‘ total resistance ” 
at the two electrodes, and the separate ‘‘ resistances’ at the 
anode and cathode respectively with each other, and thus ob- 
tained about seventy different tables, each containing about thirty- 
six measurements, including the amounts of ‘‘ total,” ‘‘ anode,” 
and ‘‘ cathode” resistance of each metal, and the “averages ”’ of 
these for all the metals. 
By comparing the numbers thus obtained, and by general 
logical analysis of the whole of the results, he has arrived at 
various conclusions, of which the following are the most im- 
portant :—The phenomenon of ‘ transfer-resistance’’ appears 
to be a new physical relation of the atomic weights, attended by 
inseparable electrolytic and other concomitants (one of which is 
liberation of heat, Phz/. Mag., 1886, vol. xxi. p. 130). In 
the chemical groups of substances examined 7 varied inversely 
as the atomic weights of the constituents, both electro-positive and 
electro-negative, of the electrolyte, independently of all other cir-um- 
stances ; and in consequence of being largely diminished by 
corrosion of the electrodes, it appeared to be intimately related 
to ‘“‘surface-tension.” He suggests that corrosion may be a 
consequence, and not the cause of small ‘‘ transfer-resistance.”’ 
The stronge-t evidence of the existence of the above general 
law was obtained with liquids and electrodes with which there 
was the least corrosion and the least formation of films; those 
liquids were dilute alkali-chlorides, with electrodes of platinum. 
= 35°61 atmospheres; and the volume of 1 gramme of the 
substance at 184° between 3°60 and 4 c.c. 
Mathematical Society, May 13.—J. W. L. Glaisher, 
F.R.S., President, in the chair.—Mr. F. W. Watkin was 
admitted into the Society.—The following communications were 
made :—On Cremonian congruences contained in linear com- 
plexes, by Dr. Hirst, F.R.S.—Solution of the cubic and bi- 
quadratic equation by means of Weierstrass’s elliptic functions, 
by Prof. Greenhill.—On the complex of lines which meet a uni- 
cursal quartic curve, by Prof. Cayley, F.R.S.—n Airy’s solu- 
tion of the equations of equilibrium of an isotropic elastic solid 
under conservative forces, by W. J. Ibbetson.—Conic note, by 
H. M. Taylor.—On the converse of stcreographic projection 
and on contangential and coaxal spherical circles, by H. M. 
Jeffery, F.R.S. 
Zoological Society, May 18.—Prof. W. H. Flower, 
F.R.S., President, in the chair.—Mr. C. W. Rosset exhibited 
a series of photographs taken during his recent visit to the Mal- 
dive Islands, and made some remarks on the zoological collec- 
tions obtained during his expedition.—Mr. Philip Crowley, 
F.Z.S., exhibited some pupz of nocturnal Lepidoptera which 
had been sent to him from Natal; and read some notes from 
his correspondent, which proved that they were subterranean.— 
Mr. Joseph Whitaker, F.Z.S., exhibited a specimen of Wilson’s 
Phalarope, said to have been obtained at Sutton Ambian, near 
Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire.—A communication was 
read from Dr. A. B. Meyer, C.M.Z.S., containing an account 
of the known specimens of King William the Third’s Bird of 
Paradise (RAipidornis cuglielmi-tertit), and remarking on a fourth 
specimen which had been recently obtained by the Dresden 
Museum.—Mr, Frank E. Beddard read a paper on some new 
or little-known Earthworms, together with an account of the 
variations in structure exhibited by Perionyax excavales.—Mr. 
Sclater read a paper on the species of Wild Goats and their 
distribution. Mr. Sclater recognised ten species of the genus 
Capra, distributed over an area extending from Spain to Southern 
India, and from Central Siberia to Abyssinia. 
Royal Meteorological Society, May 19.—Mr. W. Ellis, 
F.R.A.S., President, in the chair.—Mr. L. T. Cave and Rey. 
C. Malden, M.A., were elected Fellows of the Society.—The 
following papers were read :—The severe weather of the past 
winter, 1885-86, by Mr. C. Harding, F.R.Met.Soc. The 
author showed that the whole winter was one of exceptional 
cold, not so much on account of any extremely low tempera- 
tures experienced, but more from the long period of frost and 
the persistency with which low temperature continued. In the 
South-West of England there was not a single week from the 
commencement of October to March 21 in which the temperature 
did not fall to the freezing-point. In many parts of the British 
Islands frost occurred in the shade on upwards of 60 nights 
between the beginning of January and the middle of March, and 
during the long frost which commenced in the miadle of 
February and continued until March 17 the teimperature {fell 
below the freezing-point in many places on more than 30 con- 
secutive nights. At Great Berkhamsted, in Hertfordshire, frost 
( (i is ines 5 « 
