April T„ 1884] 



NA TURE 



541 



crystals, or frozen w ater particles under a peculiar form in a rare- 

 fied atmosphere at a low temperature. — On the topaz and asso- 

 ciated minerals found at Stoneham, Maine, by George F. Kunz. 

 — A contribution to the study of the geology of Rhode Island, 

 with map, by T. Nelson Dale. — On the crystalline form of the 

 supposed herderite from Stoneham, Maine, by Edward S. 

 Dana. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 

 London 



Chemical Society, March 20. — Dr. \V. II. Perkin, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — I'he following gentlemen were elected Fel- 

 lows ;— F. W. Brown, II. Cave, F. W. Fleming, E. E. Graves, 

 A. E. Lewis, J. E. London, G. A. Parkinson, S. Smith, G. 

 Tunbridge, T. U. Walton. — The following papers were read : — 

 Note on the preparation of mar>h gas, by Dr. J. H. Gladstone 

 and Mr. A. Tribe. In 1873 I^CItcm. Soc. Jotirn. xi. 682) the 

 authors described a reaction in which pure marsh gas was ob- 

 tained by the action of the copper-zinc couple on methyl iodide 

 in the pretence of alcohol. The loss of the methyl iodide was 

 considerable, 23 to 50 per cent. In ihe present note the authors 

 describe a slight modification by which this loss can be prevented. 

 It consists essentially in passing the gas evolved through a ver- 

 tical tube twelve inches long filled with the copper-zinc couple. 

 — On the action of dibrom-a-naphthol upon amines, by R. 

 Meldola. The author has investigated the action of dibrom-a- 

 napthol upon anilin, orthotoluidin, paratoluidin, and a-napbthyl- 

 amin. With anilin a body was obtained which proved to be 

 3-naphthoquinonedianilide ; similar bodies were obtained with 

 toluidin, &c. This reaction therefore furni-hes a simple method 

 of obtaining these quinoneimides in large quantities. The 

 author aLo di-cu-ses the bearmg of this reaction on the consti- 

 tution of these bodies. — Note on the existence of salicylic acid 

 in the cultivated varieties of pan^y ard in the Violacea? gene- 

 rally, by A. B. Griffiths and E. C. Conrad. The authors state 

 that they have extracted salicylic acid from the leaves, stems, 

 and roots of the pansy ; apparently none exists in the flowers. 



Zoological Society, March iS.— Prof. W. H. Flower, 

 F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Mr. Tegetmeier exhibited 

 specimens showing a variation in the colour of the feet of the 

 piiik-footed goose {Aiiser hrachyrhyiichiis). — A communication 

 was read from Sir Richard Owen, K.C.B., on the extinct birds 

 of the genus Dinoriiis, forming the twenty-fifth of his series of 

 memoirs on the subject. The present paper gave a description 

 of the sternum of Diiiornis elephantopiis . — Mr. J. B. Sutton, 

 F.Z.S., read an account of the results of his investigations of 

 the more important diseases which affect the carnivorous animals 

 living in the Society's Gardens. — Mr. J. W. Clark, F.Z.S., ex- 

 hibited and read an account of three skulls of a sea-lion from 

 the east coast of Australia. The largest, that of an adult male, 

 had been exhibited, together with the stuffed skin, at the Fisheries 

 Exhibition last year, where it had been named Arctoccphaliis 

 cinereus. Gray. The object of the paper was to trace the history 

 of the sjecies for which the r.ame 0:aria cincrea had been sug- 

 gested by Peron in 1816, and to show, by comparison with the 

 type skull at Paris, that these specimens had been rightly referred 

 to. — A communication was read from the Rev. O. P. Cambridge, 

 in which he gave descriptions of two new genera of spiders 

 proposed to be called Forbesia and Regilhis. 



Physical Society, March 22. — Prof. Guthrie, president, in 

 the chair. — The President announced that a meeting of the 

 Scciety would be held on May 10 at Birmingham, by invitation. 

 The next meeting will be on April 26. — Prof. S. P. Thompson 

 then read a paper by himself and Mr. C. Starling on Hall's 

 phenomenon. The authors had not agreed with Hall's explana- 

 tion of his observed effect, and last year undertook experiments 

 to investigate its nature. They employed a strip of tinfoil 

 gummed on a mahogany board with va-eline, which, being soft 

 and a non-conductor, answers well for this purpose. A top- 

 shaped electromagnet with a pointed pole was used on one side 

 of the strip to try the effect of a pointed pole. The current was 

 obtained from accumulators. They found that the equipotential 

 lines in the strip, which before magnetisation ran straight across 

 the strip, were slightly curved on either side of the pointed pole 

 after magnetisation. This curving was interpreted as a reduc- 

 tion of resistance in the strip at the pole, and subsequent 

 tests of the resistance of the strips in a magnetic field confirmed 

 this view. Iron strips, however, showed a slight increase of re- 



sistance. It was also found that an effect similar to Hall's was 

 got by placing the pointed pole so that this change of resistance 

 was not symmetrical with respect to the points in the strip to 

 which the galvanometer was connected. But inasmuch as the 

 effect was not reversible by reversing the magnetism, it was not 

 Hall's effect, w hich they failed to obtain with the narrow pointed 

 pole. In their experiments thermo-electric effects were eliminated, 

 and their results, though different, do not clash with those of 

 Mr. Bidwell. — A paper by Mr. Herbert Tomlinson on the same 

 subject was read by Prof. Reinold. The author drew attention to 

 a similarity between Hall's table of results and one of his on the 

 effects of mechanical stress on electrical resistance. — Mr. Shelford 

 Bidwell read a note on Hall's effect in tin, in which he show ed 

 that a small extension and a greater extension produced opposiie 

 thermo-electiie effects in tin wires. — In answer to Prof. Guihrie 

 and Mr. Walter Baily, Prof. Thompson stated that the change 

 of resistance he had observed was sub-permanent, and died 

 a«ay in about half an hour. He believed it to be producible 

 on the strip when no current traversed it. — Prof. S. P. Thomp- 

 son then read a paper on some propositions in electromaguelic^, 

 giving a connected series of explanations throwing light on ihe 

 laws of electromagnetics, and based on a practical experiment. 



Royal Microscopical Society, March 12. — Rev. H. W. 

 DalUnger, F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Mr. Glaisher intro- 

 duced Mr. DalUnger to the meeting on taking his seat for the 

 first time as president, and the latter made a short address in 

 acknowledgment. — Mr. J. Mayall, jun., described the improved 

 Nelson-Mayall lamp, in which the burner could be brou'^ht 

 down very close to the table ; also Boeckcr's improved freezing 

 microtome. — Mr. Crisp exhibited Scliieck's microscope with fine 

 adjustment made by tilting the stage at one end ; also Watson's 

 rotating stjge, Collin's set of fish-scales, and a slide of a hydroid 

 polyp with extended tentacles, mounted by Mr. E. Ward. — 

 Notes were read : On a multiple eye-piece by Mr. E. H. Griflith, 

 in which eye-lenses of different powers were mounted on a 

 rotating disk ; by Col. O'Hara on some peculiarities in the form 

 of blood-corpascles ; and a communication from a Microscopical 

 Society recently formed at San Francisco, and consisting of 

 ladies. — A paper was read by Mr. T. B. Rosseter describing 

 some peculiar annular muscles in StepJtanoceros ; also by Prof. 

 Keinsch, who stated that he had found bacteria and non-cellular 

 Algre to exist in considerable numbers on almost all copper and 

 silver coins which had been for some time in currency ; also by 

 Mr, G. Massee on the formation and growth of cells in the 

 genus Polysiplwiiia, being a further contribution to the evidence 

 on the continuity of protoplasm through the walls of vegetable 

 cells ; also by Prof. Abbe on the distance of distinct vision, in 

 which he pointed out the erroneous inferences which had arisen 

 from the practice of expressing the amplifying power of a lens 

 by reference to a fixed distance of vi-ion (10 inches, or 250 mm.). 

 — Some neu' f ams of cells devised by Mr, Wilks and made by 

 Mr. E. Ward for mounting without pressure in baLam were also 

 exhibited and described. 



Royal Meteorological Society, March ig. — Mr. R. H. 

 Scott, F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Messrs. W. B'ily, 

 M.A., W. L. Blore, A. L. Ford, H. Leupold, A. F. Linde- 

 mann, F.R.A.S., and Rev. E. B. Smith were elected Fellows 

 of the Society. — The President read a paper entitled brief notes 

 on the history of thermometers. He stated that the subject had 

 been bandied in a comprehensive manner by M. Renou a few 

 years ago in the Aiiiniah-eoi the French Meteorologies! Society, 

 so that he should merely mention some of the leading 

 points. The name of the actual inventor of the in-trument is 

 unknown. The earliest mention of it, as an instrument then 

 fifty years old, was in a work by Dr. R. Fludd, published in 

 1638. Bacon, who died in 1636, also mentions it. The earliest 

 thermometers were really sympiezometers, as the end of the tube 

 was open and plunged into water, which rose or fell in the tube 

 as the air in the bulb was expanded or contracted. Such instru- 

 ments were of course affected by pressure as well as temperature, 

 as Pascal soon discovered. However, simultaneously with such 

 instiuments, thermometers with closed tubes had been made at 

 Florence, and some of these old instiuments were shown at the 

 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington in 

 1876. They are in the collection of the Florentine Academy, 

 and in general principle of constrnction they are identical witii 

 modern thermometers. Passing on to the instrument as we now 

 have it, Mr. Scott said that most of the improvements in con- 

 strucJon in the earliest days of the instrument were due t> 



