94 



NA TURE 



[May 24, 1906 



Royal Meteorological Society, May 16.— Mr. Richard 

 Bentley, prrsidpnt, in the chair. — kn instrument for test- 

 ing and adjusting the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder ; 

 Dr. W. N. Shaw and G. C. Simpson, e.xperience has 

 shown the necessity of an instrument for testing the shape 

 and dimensions of recorders, and for verifying their adjust- 

 ment when installed. But it is not at all easy by mere 

 inspection or simple measurements with ordinary measur- 

 ing instruments to check the adjustment, nor is it possible 

 rn a sunless day, without some special instrument, to 

 check the orientation, and so the time-scale of the sunshine 

 recorder. The authors have devised an instrument for this 

 purpose, w^hich thev fulh' described in the paper. — The 

 development and progress of the thunder-squall of February 

 8, iqo6 : R. G. K. Lempfert. This squall was first noted 

 at Stornoway soon after midnight, and the last station in 

 England to feel its effects was Hastings, over which it 

 passed at about 4 p.m. The rate of progress was nearly 

 uniform, though it increased somewhat in the south-east 

 of the country, where the thunder and hail storms were 

 most intense. The average speed of advance of the line of 

 squall was about thirty-eight miles per hour. The most 

 marked feature of this squall was the sudden shift of the 

 wind in the course of a few minutes from south-west to 

 north-west, and it was during this period that the thunder- 

 storm occurred, accompanied by a rise of barometric pres 

 sure and a fall of temperature. 



Society of Chemical Industry (London Section), May 7. — 

 .Mr. \. Gordon Salamon in the chair. — Notes on the Gut- 

 zeit test for arsenic : J. .\. Goode and Dr. F. Mollwo 

 Perkin. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining zinc free 

 from arsenic, the authors used an ammonium salt — prefer- 

 ably the chloride — and metallic magnesium. Numbers are 

 given showing the solution potential of magnesium in 

 ammonium chloride and sulphuric and hydrochloric acids, 

 also the difference produced by the addition of cadmium 

 salts. The potential found was always lowered bv the 

 addition of the cadmium salt. .Attempts to obtain a per- 

 manent stain w'ere unsuccessful. The authors, how'ever, 

 do not consider that this is a matter of great importance, 

 because as the test is so readily carried out it is easy to 

 conduct several experiments simultaneously, one to pro- 

 duce a standard stain, one a blank, and the other with 

 the substance under examination. The authors found that 

 mercuric bromide is more delicate than mercuric chloride, 

 and the stain is more intense. With mercuric bromide it 

 is possible to detect 1/2000 mg. of arsenic. .-Mthough 

 magnesium and ammonium chloride were employed by the 

 authors, they also used zinc and acids, and obtained results 

 equally as good. In fact, they consider that zinc and acid 

 is fractionally more sensitive than magnesium and an 

 ammonium salt. — The separation of brucine and strvch- 

 nine by nitric acid ; influence of nitrous acid : W. C. 

 Reynolds and R. Sutcliffe. The authors have examined 

 (he processes proposed by Keller (Zcit. Oesterr. Apoth, 

 Vcr., 1893, S42). Stoeder (Ned. Tydschr. Pharm., 1899, 

 xi., 1-5), and Gorden (Arch. Pharm., 1902, ccxi., 641-4), 

 and show under what conditions brucine can be completely 

 oxidised with the minimum loss of strychnine. Thev have 

 also investigated the part played by nitrous acid in the 

 oxidation, and the action of alkalis on the products. — 

 .Absorption of gallic acid by organic colloids : VV. P. 

 Dreaper and .\. Wilson. The absorption of gallic acid 

 by silk and hide powder is shown to be of a similar nature 

 to its absorption by gelatin or albumin. The influence of 

 general reagents and the curves obtained indicate that the 

 reactions are due to absorption. The precipitation of these 

 colloids by tannic and gallic acids indicates, when studied 

 in detail, that the .solution state is a determining factor in 

 the production of these coagula. The influence of gallic 

 acid on the nature of a tannic acid gelatin coagulum is 

 also observed. The results confirm the pseudo solution 

 theory of dyeing, and indicate the nature of tanning. 

 Cambridge. 



Philosophical Society, April 30 —Mr. I. J. Lister in ihe 

 chair. — Demonstration of new apparatus for psvchological 

 tests : W. H. R. Rivers. — The measurement of the earth 

 air current and the origin of atmospheric electricity ; 

 C. T. R. Wilson. The experiments, so far as they go, 

 yield no support to theories which attribute the positive 

 NO 1908, VOL. 74) 



electrification of the air to effects of its contact with bodies 

 at the earth's surface, e.g. to friction, or to greater loss 

 of negative than of positive ions on account of their greater 

 mobility. In an article in N.ature in June, 1903, it was 

 suggested that the precipitation theory of the origin of the 

 electrical field might have to be abandoned on account of 

 the difficulty of explaining how positively charged air could 

 be carried from wet-weather regions for any considerable 

 distance without losing practically all its charge, and 

 another possible origin of the electrical field was suggested, 

 i.e. the arrival at the earth's surface, from external sources, 

 of negatively-charged particles of the nature of extremely 

 penetrating kathode rays. This hypothesis has been made 

 less unlikely by the recent experiments of Campbell and 

 Wood, which suggest the existence at the earth's surface 

 of rays from cosmical sources. On the other hand, the 

 difficulty in the way of the precipitation theory is removed 

 if the current from the wet- to the fine-weather regions 

 is regarded as due to conduction in the upper atmosphere, 

 and not merely to convection of the positive charge by 

 winds. — A class of integral equations : H. Bateman. — 

 A suggestion as to the nature of the horny teeth of the 

 Marsipobranchii : H. W. Marett Tims. It is difficult to 

 accept the homologies which have been proposed between 

 the horny teeth of the Marsipobranchii and the teeth of 

 higher vertebrates. The published accounts of the develop- 

 ment of the former appear to the writer to harmonise more 

 closely with the development of the teleostean scale, from 

 which it is suggested in the present paper that the horny 

 teeth may have been derived. 



Edinburgh. 

 Royal Society, May 7. — Dr. R. H. Traquair, vice-presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — Vibrating systems which are not sub- 

 ject to the Boltzmann-Maxwell law : Dr. W. Peddie. 

 In this paper the question of the partitioning of energy in 

 a system of mutually influencing masses is considered, the 

 law of action assumed being the generalised Hooke's law. 

 It is shown that equipartition of energy is in general 

 impossible. An infinity of cases with a given number of 

 degrees of freedom in which equipartition holds is possible, 

 but the order of the infinity of cases in which it does not 

 hold is greater. A method of time averages for a single 

 system is used. When equipartition cannot hold in the 

 case of any one system, the same result must be true for 

 the space averages of a large number. In the course of 

 the w'ork a very symmetrical condition for the reality of 

 the roots of an n-ic is found. — The superposition of 

 mechanical vibrations upon magnetisation, and converselv 

 in iron, steel, and nickel : James Russell. The wire under 

 examination was, when required, set into mechanical 

 vibration by means of an electric bell, to the sounding part 

 of which the one end of the wire was fixed. The investi- 

 gation was a systematic comparison of the temporary and 

 residual magnetisations of these materials in various cyclic 

 fields, according as the material was or was not in a state 

 of vibration. The influence also of the condition of the 

 wire, according as it was annealed or " quenched," was 

 carefully studied. Of the many results obtained the follow- 

 ing may be mentioned : — With permanently acting vibra- 

 tions hysteresis loss is increased when the limiting fields 

 are low, increased when thev are high, but alwavs de- 

 creased when the comparison is made with the limits given 

 inductions instead of fields. In the annealed condition of 

 all three metals, vibrations greatly increase the effects of 

 " field on " and " field off." When the vibrations are not 

 maintained permanently, but are superposed upon the 

 magnetised condition at different stages of the cycle, the 

 results are very different. Thus with continuous vibration 

 the slope of the curve decreasing from the same maximum 

 is always greater with vibration than without. On the 

 other hand, when the vibration is superposed an increase of 

 induction always occurs on the down curve as the cvclic 

 extreme is departed from, and this increase passes Into de- 

 crease in the opposite sense as the other cyclic extreme is 

 reached. — Neobyfhites iritcei, Poisson abyssal nouveau 

 recueilli par I'E.xp^dition Antarctique Nationale Ecossaise : 

 Louis Dollo. This is a unique specimen of a new fish (family 

 Brotulida;-) which Mr. W. S. Bruce found in the Weddell 

 .Sea at a depth of 2500 fathoms, 800 feet deeper than the 

 deepest sounding obtained by the Challenger in the same 



