Nov. 25, 1869] 
NAL ORE 
117 
Pfaundler has recently reconsidered this subject, and states the 
question as follows :—“ Can a piece of ice, surrounded by water 
at O°, preserve its shape if the water undergo no disturbance ?” 
So far as we know at present, both weight and figure remain 
unchanged. LEither, then, a part of the ice must melt, or a part 
of the water freeze, or both of these phenomena happen together. 
Such alterations involve certain mutations of the amount of heat 
contained in the surrounding water, or, at least, of the equili- 
brium of temperature in different parts of the liquid. New, 
Clausius’s researches into the constitution of liquids show that, 
in the case of individual molecules, such an equilibrium does not 
exist. Moreover, the conditions of molecular movement at the 
free surface of the ice are evidently different from those that are 
within. Hence, the piece of ice must grow, in certain places 
and in certain directions, at the expense of other of its parts ; 
the increment at one spot corresponding to the decrement at a 
different one. Two pieces of ice in contact, or even in close 
proximity, are therefore likely to freeze together. 
By freezing water in a flask under a pressure of a decimetre of 
mercury, solidification was invariably promoted ; and it not un- 
frequently took place in a direction which was definitely related 
to what may be called a great circle of the flask. 
Pressure, however, is not the only source of regelation. Ac- 
cording to the author’s theory, the phenomenon may result from 
any molecular disturbance. 
PHYSIOLOGY 
Coagulation of Blood 
Progr. MANTEGAZZA cuts the Gordian knot of the cause of the 
coagulation of the blood, by attributing it to an action of the 
white corpuscles of the blood. Admitting Schmidt’s theory 
of fibrin being the product of fibrinoplastin and fibrinogen, he 
puts forward the idea that normal plasma of the blood contains 
fibrinogen only, but that the white corpuscles have the power, 
when irritated, of emitting, or we might almost say secreting, 
fibrinoplastin, and thus of causing coagulation. The shedding 
of blood, any contact with foreign substances, are causes of 
irritation to the white blood corpuscles, and hence these things 
become in turn causes of coagulation. In support of this theory he 
insists on the complete coincidence of the power of coagulation 
with the presence of white blood (or lymph) corpuscles ; and on 
the fibrinoplastic properties of tissues, such as cornea, &c., which 
abound in cells similar at least in nature to white blood 
corpuscles.—(Ann, di Chim., July 1869.) 
THE Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, No. 5, November 
1869, contains many valuable papers, ¢. g. on the Muscles of 
the Limbs of the Anteater, &c., by Professor Humphry; on the 
Movements of the Chest, by Dr. Arthur Ransome; on the 
Chemical Composition of the Nuclei of Blood Corpuscles, by Dr. 
Brunton; an abstract of Mr. E. Ray Lankester’s Report on the 
Spectroscopic Examination of Animal Substances; and a long 
paper by Dr. T. A. Carter, on the Distal Communication of the 
Blood-vessels with the Lymphatics. The abstracts of Anatomy 
and Physiology are still continued with the completeness, ac- 
curacy, and critical intelligence which render them the best 
things of the kind to be found anywhere. Dr. Moore, the in- 
defatigable translator from Dutch and other unusual tongues, 
supplies a translation of a very interesting paper by Engelmann, 
on the Periodical Development of Gas in the Protoplasm of 
Living Arcellz. We may congratulate ourselves on the fact 
that the journal is able to make its way, in spite of the difficulties 
with which in this country Anatomy and Physiology have to 
contend, 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LONDON 
Royal Geographical Society, November 22.—Sir Roderick 
Murchison in the chair. A paper was read detailing the results 
of an exploration of the new course of the Hoang-Ho, or Yellow 
River, made in 1868, by Mr. Elias, a young merchant of 
Shanghai, illustrated by a map, the positions in which had been 
carefully laid down from observations taken by that gentleman. 
The Chinese records, which are very copious in relation to this 
turbulent river, mention nine changes of its course, dating from 
602 B.C. to the last in 1853, during which its outlet has shifted 
from 34° to 40° north latitude, the present being the former 
mouth of the river Tsa-Tsing, in the Gulf of Pecheli. The gradual 
elevation of the bed of the river caused the waters to press 
against the upper portion of the embankments, and as neither 
the dykes were raised, nor the bed deepened, the waters 
effected a breach in 1851, which was enlarged in the following 
year, till in 1853 the whole stream flowed through the mile-wide 
breach, in a north and east direction, leaving the old course dry. 
From, this breach at Lung-Menkau, the river flowed in an 
ancient bed for 52 miles, but from that point a tract 96 miles 
long was inundated to a width of 15 miles. Ruined houses, broken 
bridges in the midst of the waters, and the remains of the banks 
of two canals forming the northern and southern channels, and 
here and there vast stretches of mud—were all that told 
of a once fertile and populous district. The deserted houses 
were in many cases silted up to the eaves by the alluvial de- 
posit. In the dry season fifteen inches of water were scarcely 
found in some places. At Yushan the waters converged into 
the bed of the former river, Tsa-Tsing, now usurped by the 
Yellow River. The Grand Canal crossed this flooded district, 
but its banks have been carried away and its communication to 
the north destroyed. Proceeding down, a broken bridge of 
seventy arches obstructed the stream it could not span. For 
150 miles a fertile and garden-like country was passed through, 
to which succeeded a barren treeless waste, except for the belt 
adjoining the river, which was fertile and cultivated ; the ground, 
however, even with the growing crops, and in one place the 
town wall, was undermined and carried away piecemeal by the 
encroaching river. A barren, marshy tract of reeds, tenanted by 
wildfowl, extended for about twenty miles from the sea. This 
change of course, has, it is said, cost the Chinese Empire fifty 
to sixty millions of its population, the country lying on the old 
course having been ruined by the drying up of the river, and 
that in the new by the floods. The new course is unfit for navi- 
gation. Vessels drawing six feet of water might cross the bar, 
and proceed with difficulty to Yushan, but none beyond.— 
Captain Sherard Osborn remarked that in 1818 the Chinese 
Censors had called the Imperial attention to the impossi- 
bility of effectually controlling the Yellow River; although the 
expense of the maintenance of the dykes had been quintupled. 
The maladministration which had resulted in this calamitous 
change could not, therefore, be chargeable to British interference 
with China. British engineers, if employed, would soon restrain 
the Hoang-Ho within due bounds, and utilise its waters for 
navigation and irrigation, The Chinese water-systems were 
beginning to be better known, and he hoped that the Upper 
Yangtse would soon be opened to our steamers, for every forward 
footstep of Englishmen would, he believed, be a blessing to 
China.—Mr. Wylie, the first Englishman who saw the results of 
the diversion of the river from its course, gave an account of his 
crossing the river bed, then become a sandy highroad covered 
with passengers, and some particulars of a journey made by him 
to the sources of the Han River, in which he identified the pass 
described by Marco Polo as the White Horse Pass. 
Royal Asiatic Society, November 15.—This was the first 
meeting of the Society after the recess) Mr. W. E. Frere 
occupied the chair. A paper was read containing an Account 
of the Bheel Tribes of the Vindhya and Satpura Ranges, by 
Lieut. J. Waterhouse. The writer starts from a popular tradi- 
tion among those tribes, according to which the originator of 
the Bheel race is said to have been a vicious and deformed son 
of Mahadeva, who, on account of his having killed his father’s 
favourite bull, was sent off to the jungle and uninhabited wastes, 
and told to cultivate where he chose. From this tradition, com- 
bined with the well-known legend of the Mahabharata and Shri 
Bhagavata, by which the Nishadas are said to have descended 
from the Rajput king Vena, Mr. Waterhouse concludes that 
the Bheels had originally been settled in Judhpur and Marvar, 
but being driven thence by Rajputs, they emigrated southwards 
and established themselves in the mountains of Malwa and Can- 
deish, in the Vindhya and Satpura ranges, and on the rugged 
banks of the Nerbudda and Tapti, where, protected by the 
natural conditions of the country, they had since dwelt, subsist- 
ing partly on their own industry, but mainly by inroads into the 
surrounding plains. Moreover, it was stated in the history of 
the princes of Judhpur and Oodeypur, that the Rajputs origin- 
ally conquered their country from the Bheels. These are then 
divided by the writer into three classes—the Village, the Culti- 
yating, and the Mountain Bheels. The first are said to consist 
of a few only, who, being scattered over the villages on the 
plains, were generally considered as honest and trustworthy, and 
