March 26, 1908] 



NA TURE 



503 



was demonstrated that the crescent badge had its origin, 

 not in the new moon, as generally supposed, but in the 

 well-known amulet formed of a claw or tusk. These in 

 course of time were placed base to base, with the result 

 that the crescent form arose. The two tushes are joined 

 together by string or by a silver plate, but in later 

 examples the amulet is carved out of one piece of material 

 and all. traces of the joint are lost, except that in some 

 cases a panel of ornament survives to mark where the 

 join was originally. Examples were exhibited from 

 Turkey, Greece, Africa, and \ew Guinea, and Prof. Ridge- 

 way traced the amulet back so far as the dale of the 

 sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, where an example 

 was discovered in the recent excavations. The crescent 

 seen on modern English horse-trappings was also shown 

 to have originated in this amulet. — Some Megalithic re- 

 mains in central France : \. L. Lewis. The paper dealt 

 principally with monuments in the neighbourhood of Autun, 

 including the dolmen at La Rochefort and the standing 

 stones at St. Pantaloon. With these last the author com- 

 pared other lines of stones at Carnac, Gezer, Dartmoor, 

 and in the Khasi Hills. He also dealt with the tw-o types 

 of circle in Scotland, and showed that they had each a 

 definite locality, those with recumbent stones being found 

 only around Aberdeen, while those with great chambered 

 cairns in the middle arc found round Inverness. He was 

 of the opinion that the two types of circle were con- 

 temporary, and that the differences were solely due to 

 local influences. 



Physical Society, March 13.— Dr Charles Chree, F.R.S , 

 president, in the chair. — Thi- distribution in electric fields 

 of the active deposits of radium, thorium, and actinium : 

 S. Russ. The first experiments were made with the active 

 deposit produced from radium emanation. The amount 

 of active deposit directed to a kathode decreases as the 

 pressure in the vessel is reduced, but after a certain 

 pressure is reached the amount going to an anode shows' 

 a corresponding increase under the same conditions. The 

 main feature brought out is that at the lowest pressure 

 reached almost as much activity is obtained on the anode 

 as on the kathode, while at atmospheric pressure the 

 activity of the latter is about twenty times that of the 

 former. Similar experiments conducted in hvdrogen, air, 

 and sulphur dioxide indicate that the collisions between 

 the active deposit particles and the gaseous molecides play 

 an important part in the distribution of the active deposit 

 in electric fields. Experiments on similar lines with 

 thorium and actinium show that while at atmospheric 

 pressure nearly the whole of the active deposit particles 

 of thorium are directed to the kathode, this is not neces- 

 sarily the case with actinium. Other observations indicate 

 that the sign of the electrical charge exhibited by the 

 active deposit particles of actinium is a function of the 

 distance that these particles have travelled through the 

 containing gas before reaching the electrodes. — Note on 

 certain dynamical analogues of temperature equilibrium : 

 Prof. G. H. Bryan, Attention is directed to the follow- 

 ing results of a method described in 1900 (Archives 

 N^erlandaises) under the title of " Energy Accelera- 

 tions " : — (i) In a system of uniformly distributed particles, 

 a stationary state of statistical equilibrium cannot exist 

 under the Newtonian law of force, whether the forces 

 between the particles be attractive or repulsive, except when 

 the particles are at rest in a state of unstable equilibrium. 

 (2) For energy-equilibrium to exist the force between the 

 particles, if repulsive, must vary according to a higher 

 power of the inverse distance than the square ; if attractive, 

 it must vary according to a lower inverse power than the 

 square of the distance. (3) In a system in which the 

 kinetic energy cannot be expressed as a quadratic func- 

 tion of the velocities with constant coefficients, the equa- 

 tions of energy-equilibrium no longer take the form of 

 linear relations between the various components of kinetic 

 energy, so that the commonly assumed analogue between 

 temperature and kinetic energy becomes inapplicable. 



Cambridge. 

 Philosophical Society, March Q — Dr. Hobson. presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — (i) The formation of lactic acid and 

 carbonic acid during muscular contraction and rigor 

 mortis ; (2) the complete hydrolytic decomposition of egg- 



NO. 2004, VOL. 77! 



albumin at 180° C, and on the constitution and synthesis 

 of dead and living albumin : Dr. Latham, — (i) The 

 formation of 7-pyrone compounds from acetylenic acids ; 

 (2) the action of mustard oils on the ethyl esters of malonic 

 and cyanoacctic acids : S. Ruhemann. — The absorption 

 spectra of some compounds obtained from pyridine and 

 coUidine : J. E. Purvis. — The limitations of the copper- 

 zinc couple method in estimating nitrates : J. E. Purvis 

 and R. M. Courtauld, — A double sulphate of guanidine 

 and aluminium ; F. Ferraboschi. — The property of a 

 double-six of lines, and its meaning in hvpergeometry : 

 H. W. Richmond, — Energy accelerations and partition of 

 energy ; C. W. Foiiett. 



F.-VRIS. 



Academy of Sciences, March l6. — M. H. Becquerel in 

 the chair. — The extension of the theorem of Clausius : 

 E. H. Amagat, — The characters of tuberculous infection 

 in their relations with the diagnosis of tuberculosis : S. 

 Arioing; and L. Thevenot. In a ^osi iuoytcin examina- 

 tion the absence of macroscopic lesions is no proof of the 

 absence of tuberculous infection, and this is the explana- 

 tion of the occasional want of agreement between the 

 experimental diagnosis (sero-agglutination or application 

 of tuberculin to the skin or conjunctiva) and the post 

 mortetn examination. — Report by the committee on the 

 application of the metric system to French coinage. The 

 views of various commissions dealing with this question 

 from the date of the foundation of the metric system are 

 reviewed, and the question of the advisability of intro- 

 ducing a 25-centime piece considered, and reported on 

 unfavourably. To preserve the unity of the metric system 

 the committee conclude that the only coins should be 

 I, 2, and 5 centimes, i, 2, and 5 decimes, i, 2 and 5, 10, 

 20, 50, and 100 francs, and this view is confirmed by the 

 academy. — The dispersion of light in celestial space. The 

 history of the question and the first results : G. A. 

 Tikhoff. — The presence of water vapour in the atmosphere 

 of the planet Mars : P. Lowell. Photographic observa- 

 tions made at the Flagstaff Observatory, .Arizona, U.S., 

 during January of this year, establish the presence of 

 water vapour in the atmosphere of Mars. The plates used 

 were rendered sensitive to the extreme red rays, and with 

 an exposure of two to three hours were capable of photo- 

 graphing the spectrum in the neighbourhood of the band a, 

 the most intense band due to water vapour. Photographs 

 of the spectrum of Mars clearly show this band a, whilst 

 the spectrum of the moon taken on the same plate shows 

 no trace of this band, thus eliminating the effects of the 

 earth's atmosphere (see Nature, March 12, and p. 497 of 

 the present number). — The series of Taylorian polynomials : 

 .\. Buhl. — The general solution of the problem of equil- 

 ibrium in the theory of elasticity, in the case where the 

 forces are applied at the surface : A. Korn. — The electrolysis 

 of solutions of hydrochloric acid : Th. Guilloz. In a recent 

 note on this subject M. Doumer, on the basis of his 

 experiments, raises objections to Hittorf's theory of electro- 

 lysis. In the present note the author directs attention to 

 recent work by Noyes and Sammet on the mobility of 

 H and CI ions in dilute solutions of hydrochloric acid, 

 and points out that these researches afford an experimental 

 proof that the disturbances due to the evolution of oxygen 

 during electrolysis are without effect on the transport 

 numbers. — The velocity of evaporation and a method of 

 determining the hygrometric state : P. Vaillant. The 

 liquid the evaporation of which is being studied is placed 

 on a balance, and the rate of evaporation deduced from 

 ten oscillations of the beam. The formula Q = B(F— /), 

 where Q is the quantity evaporated in a given time, F the 

 pressure of the saturated vapour, and / the pressure of 

 the water vapour in the atmosphere surrounding the 

 balance, was shown to be valid experimentally. By using 

 pure water and pure sulphuric acid successively the method 

 can be applied to give /, the determination being reduced 

 to two weighings. — The hydrates of arsenic acid : M. 

 Augrer. — The pseudomorphoses of the microclines in 

 microgranitcs from the valley of the Meuse (Ardennes) : 

 Jacques de Lapparent. — The magmatic parameters of the 

 volcanic series of .Anglona and Logudoro (Sardinia) ; M. 

 Deprat, — Asymmetry of the figure and its origin : Rich.ard 

 Liebreich. From the examination of several thousand 



