February io, . -o] 



NA TURE 



447 



the income of the Gordon Wigan fund at the disposal of 

 the special board for biology r .d geology: — (a) i2i. loj. 

 to Dr. D. Sharp ; (6) 50/. to Prof.' Langley, for the purchase 

 of a Sandstrom kymograph and accessory apparatus : 

 (c) 50;. to Mr. ..A. G. Tansley, that the botanic garden 

 syndicate may continue to offer facilities for plant-breeding 

 experiments ; (d) 50!. to Mr. H. Scott, for the care and 

 development of the collection of insects ; (e) 25!. to Mr. 

 H. H. Thomas, for collecting fossil plants in east York- 

 shire with the view of a thorough investigation of its 

 Jurassic flora. 



Oxford.— Dr. Henry Wilde, F.R.S., has offered the 

 University the sum of boo/, for the foundation of an 

 annual lecture on astronomy and terrestrial magnetism, in 

 honour and memory of Edmund Halley. 



A DEP.4RTMF.-N'T of experimental biology has, says Science, 

 been organised in the Rockefeller Institute. Prof. Jacques 

 Loeb, of the University of CaHfornia, has been elected 

 head of the department. 



The total amount received and promised up to the 

 present for the building and endowment fund of Bedford 

 College (University of London) is 47,700?. ; a further 

 12,300/. is required before the buildings can be begun. 



The twelfth annual dinner of the Central Technical 

 College Old Students' .Association will be held at the 

 Trocadero Restaurant, Piccadilly, W., on Saturday, 

 February 12. Among the guests will be Sir Philip 

 Magnus, M.P. 



It is announced in Science that the late Mr. D. Ogden 

 Mills,_ of New York City, bequeathed 20,000/. to the 

 American Museum of Natural History, 10,000/. to the 

 New York Botanical Garden, and 5000/. to the .American 

 Geographical Society of New York City. From the same 

 source we learn that Mr. J. S. Huyler, of New York, has 

 given 4000/. to Syracuse University! 



In the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society for 

 January Dr. W. Garnett discusses briefly the statistics of 

 certain scholarship examinations of the' London County 

 Council. Returns of marks were available for about 

 10,000 boys and 10,000 girls, in round numbers, in the 

 subjects of arithmetic and English, and Dr. Garnett has 

 drawn up diagrams and formed models illustrating the 

 correlation between the marks in the two subjects for each 

 sex. Some interesting points are brought out verv clearly 

 in quite an elementary way, the distributions of frequency 

 m the two cases presenting some conspicuous differences 

 as well as some general similarities. In both sexes, for 

 example, the weaker candidates on the whole did better 

 in English than in arithmetic, and the stronger candidates 

 better in arithmetic than in English ; but while boys gain- 

 ing more than half-marks on the entire examination began 

 to do better as a whole in arithmetic than in English, the 

 same could only be said of the girls attaining 67 per cent. 

 of the total marks or more, i.e. it was only the com- 

 paratively exceptional girls who did the better in arithmetic. 



SOCIETIES A\D ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Roval Society, February 3.— Sir Archibald Geikie, 



K.C.B president, in the chair.— F. D. Thompson : The 



Miyroid and parathyroid glands throughout vertebrates. 



Prof. E. A. Minchin and J. D. Thomson : The trans- 

 mission of Trypanosoma lewisi by the rat-flea (Cerato- 

 Phylhis fasciatus). The experiments that form the subject 

 i J communication are concerned essentially with the 

 method oi transmission and with questions connected there- 

 with. Incidentally, the jact of transmission is confirmed. 

 All e.xperiments were arranged so as to eliminate the possi- 

 bility of_ infection other than by fleas, and to separate 

 direct from "cyclical" infection. When preliminary 

 experiments showed that infection, not " direct," had taken 

 place, further experiments were arranged to determine if 

 fleas once infective retain infection so as to be capable 

 of infecting a series of healthy clean rats without them- 

 selves being again exposed to "infection, and at the same 

 time to determine by direct observation and within narrow 

 liniits (I) the length of the incubation period in the flea 

 and (2) the length of the multiplication period in the rat' 

 NO. 2102, YOL. 82] 



In all the experiments tame rats and fleas bred in captivity 

 were used. The general arrangements and a detailed 

 account of each experiment are given, but cannot be sum- 

 marised briefly. .A few observations on fleas dissected are 

 recorded, and reference is made to Nuttall's experiments 

 and conclusions. The following conclusions are drawn 

 from the results of the e.xperiments : — (i) The rat-flea 

 (Ceratophyllus fasciatus) transmits T. lewisi from infected 

 to non-infected rats. (2) Transmission takes place by the 

 '■ cyclical " method. (3) Transmission by the " direct " 

 method did not take place. (4) The incubation period in 

 the flea has a minimum length of about six days, but may 

 be longer. (5) The length of the multiplication period in 

 the rat is about twelve days. (6) In the developmental 

 cycle the establishment of the trypanosome in the flea 

 begins with multiplication of Crithidia-like forms in the 

 I rectum. No flagellates have been found by the authors in 

 any fleas which had not fed on infected rats. — Dr. F. 

 Medigrreceanu (Bucharest) : The relative sizes of the 

 organs of rats and mice bearing malignant new growths. 

 The effects have been determined for rats and mice of the 

 growth of transplanted carcinomata and sarcomata upon 

 the weights of the principal organs of the body. The 

 weights of the different organs of normal animals bear a 

 relatively constant ratio to the total weight of the body. 

 Weighing experiments on 200 mice and rats bearing trans- 

 planted tumours, and on four mice with spontaneous 

 turnours, have shown (i) no disturbance of the normal 

 ratio for the alimentary canal ; (2) hypertrophy of the liver 

 in all cases, and up to a certain point proportional to the 

 weight of tumour ; (3) hypertrophy of the heart, also in 

 proportion to size of tumour ; (4) no disturbance of normal 

 ratio for the kidneys except in the case of a spindle-celled 

 sarcoma, which induced hypertrophy; (5) varying ratios 

 for the lungs. The most important result has been the 

 discovery of an enlargement of the liver in animals bearing 

 carcinomata and sarcomata, whether transplanted or 

 naturally arising.— Dr. E. F. Bashford and Dr. B. R. G. 

 Russell : Further evidence on the homogeneity of the 

 resistance to the implantation of malignant new growths. 

 The principal object of the paper is to adduce further 

 evidence that the resistance which animals already bear- 

 ing transplanted tumours may offer to a second transplanta- 

 tion is identical in nature with the resistance offered by 

 animals without tumours, after immunisation with normal 

 or tumour tissue of the same species. A study of the 

 processes at the site of the second implantation shows that, 

 concomitantly with the establishment of the tumour develop- 

 ing from the first inoculation, an active resistance may be 

 induced bv the absorption of tumour tissue. Then the 

 cancer cells implanted at the second inoculation fail to 

 elicit the supporting connective tissue and vascular scaffold- 

 ing necessary to their development into a tumour, and the 

 process of resistance is exactly analogous to that previously 

 described, when tumour tissue is implanted into mi.;c after 

 a prelirninary immunisation with tumour or normal tissue 

 of the same species. The assumption of a distinct form 

 of resistance, " atreptic immunity," is thereby rendered 

 superfluous when tumour-bearing animals are resistant to 

 a second inoculation. Prevailing conceptions of what con- 

 stitutes immunity to cancer sensu strictiori are simplified 

 further by e.xperiments demonstrating that the active 

 imniunity to cancer which follows in rats after a pre- 

 liminary inoculation of mouse cancer is not an immunity 

 against cancer, but against the protein of a foreign species. 

 Therefore hypotheses of cancer immunity, based upon a 

 study of the behaviour of tumours in strange species, have 

 at most only an indirect bearing upon the immunity to 

 cancer of the same soecies. By actual observation of the 

 processes occurring in animals immunised against the 

 inoculation of cancer of their own species, only one form 

 of induced resistance has been demonstrated to exist, con- 

 sisting, so far as elucidated, in an inhibition of the 

 chemiotactic powers the cancer cells normally exercise upon 

 the^ connective tissue and vascular scaffolding of the host. 

 This single explanation harmonises all the observed facts 

 .-ind rids the experimental study of cancer both of confusing 

 hypotheses and of errors. — Dr.' M. Haaiand : The contrast 

 in the reactions to the implantation of cancer after the 

 inoculation of living and mechanically disintegrated cells. 

 Inoculation of living tumour of normal tissue of the same 

 species has been shown to induce resistance to subsequent 



