3/' 



NATURE 



[November 28, 1912 



indices a i'55g8, ^ i"5648, 7 I'S694 — whicli agree 

 closely with the position of the felspar in the plagio- 

 clase series given by its chemical composition, which 

 is approximately represented by the formula 

 33Ab50r62An. — Dr. G. F. H. Smith : Apparatus for 

 preparing thin sections of rocks. A description was 

 given of the apparatus recently made for the Mineral 

 Department of the British Museum. — Russell F. 

 (jwinnell : Calcite crystals from a water tank. The 

 crystals, which were deposited during the dry summer 

 of 1911 from water derived from a spring -in the 

 marlstone of Belton Park, near Grantham, Lines., 

 averaged o'l mm. in greatest diameter, and showed 

 the unusual unit rhombohedron form loi i. 



Zoological Society, November 12. — Dr. .A. Smith 

 Woodward, F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair. — 

 H. R. Hogg : Some Falkland Island spiders. The 

 paper was based on a small collection of spiders 

 formed by Mr. Rupert Vallentin durmg a two years' 

 stay in the Falkland Islands. Of some of the species 

 there were a fair number of specimens, but they 

 comprised only six species of spiders and one of the 

 allied suborder Opilio. The species were all ap- 

 parently new, but the genera were all to be found 

 either in Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, or the islands 

 about Cape Horn. The ancestors of the spiders might 

 all have been transported aerially at an early period, 

 and therefore afforded no evidence for or against a 

 former land-connection, but in the event of the latter 

 there should be many more species. The Opilio 

 might have been conveyed under the bark of floating 

 trees. — G. .'\. Boulenger : Descriptions of three new 

 fishes discovered by Dr. .Spurrell in the vicinity of 

 Bibianaha, near Dunkwa, Gold Coast, and presented 

 by him to the British Museum. — Dr. H. Lyster 

 Jameson and Dr. William Nicoll : Some parasites of 

 the scoter duck (Ocdcinia nigra), and their relation to 

 the pearl-inducing trematode in the edible mussel 

 (Mytihts cdulis). — F. F. Laidlaw : Dragon-flies from 

 Borneo belonging to the subfamily Corduliinje, and 

 to the genera Disparoneura and Amphicnemis of the 

 subfamily .'XgrioninjB, with an account of a number 

 of new species. 



Royal Meteorological Society, November 20. — Dr. 

 H. N. Dickson, president, in the chair. — Dr. H. R. 

 Mill : The unprecedented rainfall in East Anglia on 

 .'\ugust 26 last. Tlie rain commenced in London be- 

 tween I and 2 a.m. on .August 26, but the hour of 

 commencement grew later towards the northward, 

 rain not beginning to fall in Lincolnshire until after 

 7 a.m. The intensity of the fall increased rapidly 

 over the whole area, the maximum being reached in 

 a fall of 4 in. in four hours from 1 1 a.m. in the 

 neighbourhood of Norwich. In the central area the 

 rain fell without intermission for more than twenty 

 hours, and at some points probably for twenty-four. 

 The distribution of the rain was somewhat remark- 

 able. There were two foci of maximum fall, both in 

 Norfolk : the northern central south of Cromer with 

 more than 7^50 in. ; the larger central east of 

 Norfolk culminating in about twenty square miles 

 with more than 8 in. of rain in the twenty-four hours. 

 About 1940 square miles in Norfolk and .Suffolk had 

 more than 4 in. of rain ; the area with more than 

 2 in. of rain was at least 5800 square miles. The 

 general rainfall of each of the counties was cal- 

 culated for this day, and also for the various river- 

 basins, and it appeared that during the twenty-four 

 hours as much water was deposited on the land as 

 would fall in normal circumstances in two or three 

 months. .Several very heavy falls of rain in one or 

 two days which had been recorded in different parts 

 of ihe country were considered, and it was shown that 

 NO. 2248, VOL. go] 



although more than 8 in. had fallen at Seathwaite, in 

 the Lake district, on more than one occasion as the 

 result of one or two days' rain, there was no instance 

 of so large an area having more than b in. of rain 

 in two days as occurred in East Anglia on August 26. 

 — .A. P. Jenkin .A three-year period in rainfall. 



Ca.mbridge. 

 Philosopbical Society, October 28. — Dr. Duckworth in 

 the chair. — Dr. Duckworth ; Anthropometric data col- 

 lected by Prof. Stanley Gardiner in the Maldive 

 Islands. The anthropometric data collected by Prof. 

 J. Stanley Gardiner during his expedition to the 

 Maldive Islands and Minikoi relate to si.\ty-nine indi- 

 viduals. .'\nalysis of the data shows that the islanders 

 are very variable as regards their pfiysical develop- 

 ment. The men of Minikoi are on the whole more 

 variable than the rest. They are shorter and their 

 heads are rounder than is the case elsewhere. Addu 

 Atoll, the most southern islet, is in contrast with 

 .Minikoi in this respect. The highest caste in Male 

 has the greatest stature and the largest head-dimen- 

 sions. High caste seems to be associated with a 

 broader nose, though this relation is contrary to ex- 

 pectation. No trace of a genuine pygmy element can 

 be detected in any of the groups measured. Three 

 main sources of immigration into the Maldives and 

 Minikoi are considered briefly. — R. H. Compton : Pre- 

 liminary note on the inheritance of self-sterility in 

 Reseda odorata. As discovered by Charles Darwin, 

 certain individuals of mignonette are self-fertile, others 

 self-sterile. Breeding experiments, though as yet in- 

 complete, indicate that self-fertility is a Mendelian 

 character, behaving as a simple dominant to self- 

 sterility. — J. Gray : The effects of hypertonic solutions 

 upon the eggs of Echinus. It was shown that the 

 abnormalities which are invariably found in the first 

 segmentation, division of tlie iiybrid Echinui acutus 

 9 X £. escnlentus d can be induced in the normally 

 fertilised eggs of E. acutus by treatment with hyper- 

 tonic sea-water after fertilisation ; similar solutions, 

 however, do not affect the normally fertilised eggs of 

 E. esculentits to anything like the same extent, such 

 eggs being practically normal. On these results was 

 based an explanation of the fact that whereas the eggs 

 of E. acutus 9 X £. esculentits d show irregular 

 mitoses, those of the reverse cross are normal. — G. R. 

 Mines : Pulstis alternans. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, November 18. — M. Lippmann in 

 the chair. — E.-L. Bouvier : Dugastella marocana, a 

 new primitive shrimp of the family of the Atyideffi. 

 A representative of a new fresh-water genus found in 

 Morocco ; it corresponds most closely to the Califor- 

 nian Syncaris. — M. Imbeaux was elected a corre- 

 spondant for the section of rural economy, in .the place 

 of the late M. Arloing. — Paul Montel : Some general- 

 isations of the theorems of M. Picard. — Th. de 

 Donder : The invariants of the calculus of variations. — 

 M. Lemeray : The principle of relativity and the law 

 of variation of central forces. The law of variation 

 with the square of the distance for the action between 

 heavy points at rest may bg deduced as a necessary 

 consequence of the principle of relativity. — Ch. Fery : 

 A dead-heat galvanometer with a moving needle. 

 Each pole of the magnet is suspended between two 

 pairs of flat bobbins so close togetlier as to constitute 

 practically one solenoid. The sensibility of a galvano- 

 meter mounted in this way was i mm. deflection at 

 one metre for a current of 8 x 10- '° ampere; the resist- 

 ance of the four bobbins in series being 2 ohms, and 

 the time of oscillation fifteen seconds. — G. Deniges and 

 L. Chelle : . A new- reagent for free and combined 



