February i8, 1909] 



NA TURE 



479 



a firm stratum of cfialk, suitable for builders' lime, was 

 found under the Thanet sand, it would pay the excavators 

 better to make fresh shafts through the sand than to 

 tunnel in the ordinary way and hoist the material excavated 

 through a single shaft. The cones of sand usually found 

 at the bottom of a dene-hole were explained as the result 

 of the refuse of a new shaft being deliberately thrown down 

 an old one. 



Mathematical Society, February ii.-Sir W. D. Niven, 

 president, in the chair. — The conformal transformations of 

 a space of four dimensions and the generalisation of the 

 Lorentz-Einstein principle : H. Bateman and E. 

 Cunningham. — A certain family of cubic surfaces : W. H. 

 Salmon, — Some fundamental properties of a Lebesgue 

 int<gral in a two dimensional domain : Dr. E. W. 

 Hobson. — The relation between Pfaff's problem and the 

 calculus of variations : Prof. A. C. Dixon.— (i) Implicit 

 functions and their differentials ; (2) indeterminate forms : 

 Dr. \\. H. Young. — Modular invariants of a general 

 system of linear forms : Prof. L. E. Dickson. 



Dublin. 

 Royal Dublin Society, fanuary 26. — Prof. H. H. Dixon, 

 l-'.R.S., in the chair.— The colours of Highland cattle; 

 Prof. James Wilson. Four colours go to the making of 

 Highland cattle. These are : — (i) the original black 

 colour ; (2) a brownish-black or blackish-brown, called 

 ionn in Gaelic ; (3) red, introduced by ,\nglo-Saxon cattle ; 

 and (4) light dun, a lighter or silvery-grey, probably intro- 

 duced from Scandinavia. These four colours by intercross- 

 ing produce five others. Black is dominant over red, and 

 so no new colour is produced ; but light dun crossed with 

 red produces the hybrid yellow, and crossed with blacl< 

 the hybrid dun (registered as dun and dark dun), while 

 brownish-black or donn produces hybrid brindles with 

 black, red, and light dun. — Note on the tensile strength of 

 water : Prof. H. H. Dixon. By using Berthelot's method 

 tensions in water were obtained amounting to more than 

 11)0 atmospheres. The range of temperature over which 

 these tensions were observed lay between 25° C. and 80° C. 

 The water used contained large quantities of air dissolved 

 in it. From the nature of the experiments the tensions 

 obtained form a minor limit for the cohesion of air-contain- 

 ing water, its adhesion to the conducting tubes of plants, 

 and its adhesion to glass and copper. — A new process of 

 contact photography : E. E. Fournier d'Albe. Photo- 

 graphs are obtained by this process of any full-toned pic- 

 ture, letter-press, or diagram without the use of a camera. 

 The picture is laid on a table with its face upwards, and 

 a sensitive plate, film, or paper is placed upon it, with the 

 film in contact with the picture. Exposure is made by 

 means of light from above through the back of the plate 

 or paper. The result is a faint negative, much fogged. 

 The negative is developed with a view to the utmost " hard- 

 ness," so as to minimise the fog and bring out the design. 

 This principle is also applied to the positive printed from the 

 negative, and the result is a good reproduction of the 

 original. If necessary, the remaining fog can be cleared 

 by two more reversals, preferably with " photomechanical " 

 piates. The final result is a reproduction in bold black and 

 white, perfectly free from fog and free from defects in- 

 separable from all work done with a lens. It is proposed 

 to call the process " anastatic " photofjraphy, by analogy 

 with a di^u^|■<i lithographic process of the same name. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, February i. — Prof. A. Crum Bmwn, vice- 

 president, in the chair. — Magnetic quality in the homo- 

 geneous hexagonal arrangement of molecular magnets : 

 Prof. VV. Peddle. This was a continuation along the 

 same lines of results already given for cubical arrangements 

 of magnetic molecules. — An improved form of mag- 

 netoineter for the testing of magnetic materials : J. G. 

 Gray and A. D. Ross. When the usual cast-west 

 arrangement of a magnetising coil with auxiliary coil 

 is used for compensating the direct action of the solenoid 

 on the magnetometer needle, it is very difficult to ensure 

 the accurate alignment of the axes of the two coils so as 

 to be absolutely certain that there is no tran.sverse resultant 

 magnetic force in the north-south direction. In delicate 

 work it is important to get rid of this possible inexact com- 



pensation, and at the same time to be sure that when the 

 compensating coil is clamped in position the clamping does 

 not bring in any change. The latter desideratum was 

 attained by using two compensating coils at different dis- 

 tances frorn the magnetometer, the nearer one being set for 

 rough adjustment, and the more distant one being then used 

 for the fine and exact adjustment for balancing of the east- 

 west fields at the position occupied by the magnetometer 

 needle. The second adjustment was made after the nearer 

 coil was clamped, and the sensitiveness was such that the 

 second coil could be shifted through an appreciable distance 

 without affecting the adjustment. The next step was to 

 test for the existence of a north-south residual force. This 

 was effected by first deflecting the magnetometer needle by 

 means ot a small permanent magnet suitably placed. On 

 reversal of a powerful current through the magnetising and 

 compensating coils, which had already been adjusted for 

 east-west balancing, there was in general a change in the 

 deflection, indicating the presence of a north-south com- 

 ponent. A third coil was then suitably introduced either 

 north or south of the rnagnctometer needle, and set in 

 circuit with the other coils. By adjustment of the position 

 of this third coil the change of deflection of the deflected 

 needle, due to reversal of the current, could be wiped out. 

 The small permanent magnet was then removed, and the 

 magnetometer was in accurate adjustment for the purposes 

 of testing magnetic quality. All the essential parts of the 

 apparatus were mounted on a cross-shaped mahogany 

 board, analogous in its broad features to an optical bench. 

 Details were also given for facilitating testing from the 

 temperature of liquid air up to high temperatures.— On the 

 conditions for the reversibility of the order of partial dif- 

 ferentiation : Dr. \V. H. Young. 

 Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, Keb.uaiy 8.— M. Kmile Picard in 

 the chair.— Observations of the sun, made at the Lyons 

 Observatory, during the fourth quarter of igo8 : J. 

 Guillaume. The observations arc summarised in three 

 tables, giving the number of spots, their distribution in 

 latitude, and the distribution of the faculae in latitude. 

 There was a much smaller total area of sun-spots visible 

 compared with the previous quarter (3401 against 7893). 

 Two spots were large enough to be visible to the eye un- 

 assisted.— Observations of the conjunction of Jupiter with 

 V Leo (4-8), made with the Brunner equatorial of the 

 Lyons Observatory : J. Guillaume.— The integration of 

 linear systems with a skew determinant : E. Vessiot. — 

 The representation of a function with a real variable by a 

 series formed with polynomials figuring in successive 

 differential coefficients of the function c-»- : M. Galbrun. 



A new radio-active product of the uranium series : 



Jacques Danne. In the separation of uranium X from 

 20 kilos, of uranium nitrate, a new radio-active substance 

 was found, apparently the immediate parent of uranium X, 

 for which the name radio-uranium is proposed.— The stna? 

 of oscillating sparks : Andr^ Leaute. If a condenser is 

 discharged through a coil carrying two layers of wire, the 

 current passing through the coil has been shown by the 

 author in a previous paper to be the sum of two sinusoidal 

 currents. The frequency of the first is practically identicM 

 with that resulting from the application of Thomson s 

 formula ; the second has a greater frequency, and its exist- 

 ence furnishes a complete explanation of all the facts 

 observed relating to striaj in induction sparks.— The mass 

 of the negative ion of a flame : Georges Moreau. In a 

 flame at a temperature of 2000° C. absolute, the mobility 

 of the negative ion was found to be 1170 cm. /volt : sec, 

 and the velocitv 2-5 X 10° cm. : sec, the numbers being 

 probablv accurate to about 10 per cent. This leads to a 

 value (i-ixio-") gr. as the mass of the negative ion, 

 intermediate between the atom of hydrogen, (i.4X 10- = ') gr., 

 and a corpuscle, (075x10--"), according to Perrin.— 

 The role of the dissociation of the carbonophosphates in 

 nature : A. Bar-ille. It has been shown in an earlier 

 paper that carbonic acid combines with the phosphates of 

 metals that are capable of forming bicarbonates, giving 

 rise to easilv dissociable compounds, the carbonophosphates. 

 The intervention of these compounds is discussed as regards 

 the formation of certain calculi, the absorption of carbon 

 dioxide by the blood, sediments in urine, and as affecting 



NO. 2051, vol.. 



