448 



NA TURE 



[February io, 1910 



transplantation of cancer. The present paper records ex- 

 periments in which cancerous or normal tissues, after 

 mechanical disintegration at — i8o° or o° C, have been 

 inoculated into mice. The experiments show that a com- 

 plete disintegration of the cells entirely robs them of their 

 immunising properties against a subsequent transplantation 

 of cancer. There is no difference between tumour cells 

 and normal cells in this respect. The absence of immunis- 

 ing power does not seem to be a question of dose of intro- 

 duced material, because relatively enormous doses of dead 

 material do not induce any resistance. In the same way 

 the press-fluid, obtained from tumours and normal tissues 

 by Buchner's press, is devoid of immunising properties. 

 The immunising property is not bound up with the protein 

 of the cell, but depends on a different principle. Living 

 cells are necessary to induce resistance to transplantation 

 of cancer. It seems necessary that these cells must not 

 only remain alive, but also even grow for a certain time ; 

 without the fulfilment of these conditions the reaction in- 

 ducing active resistance is not set up. The same conse- 

 quences follow autol3'sis, the action of heat, radium, &c., 

 upon tumour tissue and normal tissue. The reaction which 

 the introduction of disintegrated cells calls forth is not 

 only quantitatively different from that induced by living 

 tissues, but also qualitatively different. Far from inducing 

 any increased resistance, inoculation of disintegrated cells 

 only seems to manure the soil for a subsequent growth of 

 tumours. The failure to elicit the reactions of immunity 

 to the transplantation of cancer by devitalised tissues reveals 

 an important difference from the immunity reactions 

 obtained against bacteria and their products and foreign 

 proteids in general, in which cases the immunising proper- 

 ties are independent of the vitality of the organisms or 

 cells. 



Royal Microscopical Society, January Ip. — Sir E. Ray 

 Lankester, F.R.S., president, in the chair. — The President 

 gave the annual address, in the course of which he referred 

 to such work as he thought could be carried out by the 

 fellows with reference to the action of light upon proto- 

 plasm, the differentiation and specific effects of a, 0, and 

 1 rays emanating from radium, and the part actually 

 played by bacteria in the processes of digestion. Medical 

 science wanted their assistance in these investigations, 

 which he thought could be, in some directions, better 

 followed up by naturalists than by physiologists. Attention 

 was also directed to an organism (Clathrocystis aeuru- 

 ginosa) found by Henfrey in 1852, in a pond in Kew 

 Gardens, and so named by him, as worthy of their 

 attention. 



Institution of Minint; and Metallurgy, January 20.— 

 Mr. Edgar Taylor, president, in the chair. — A. L. Simon : 

 Copper leaching plant in the Ural Mountains. A resumed 

 discussion on this paper, which deals with the plant at 

 the Gumeshevsky Copper Mine. The paper contained 

 figures dealing with the installation and the cost of pro- 

 duction, and a detailed description of the plant installed 

 and the methods employed in operating it. — A. T. French : 

 Some analvses of copper blast-furn.-ice slags and deter- 

 mination of their melting points. The author gives tabu- 

 lated results of a series of experiments, from which he 

 deduces that slags may vary in composition to a consider- 

 able extent with very little change in the melting point. 

 — Bede Colline:ridere : Errors due to the presence of 

 potassium iodide in testing cyanide solutions for protective 

 alkalinitv. — A. R. Andrews : The detection of minute 

 traces of gold in country rock. 



Challenger Society, January 26.— Sir John Murray in the 

 thair. — L. W. Byrne : A remarkable fish, apparently a 

 new generic type, belonging to the family Stomiatidje, 

 taken from a trawl lowered to 700 fathoms eff south-west 

 Ireland. — James Murray : Life under .'\ntarctic conditions. 

 Sketching the difficulties of zoological research at high 

 latitudes, the author described some unsuccessful experi- 

 ments as a guide to fellow-workers. Between tide-marks 

 no marine animals were found, the lower limit of this 

 barren zone being the average depth of one year's ice: 

 below that were always animals, protected by the ice, and 

 living under singularly unvarying conditions. The land 

 was extremely barren : the vegetation consisted of dwarfed 

 mosses and lichens ; the microscopic animals were rotifers, 

 NO. 2102, VOL. 82] 



tardigrades, &c., which are permanently frozen through 

 the ten months of winter, and in the summer thaw by day 

 and freeze by night. The smaller ponds, which sometimes 

 reached 60° F. in the summer owing to melted snow flow- 

 ing over warm rocks, contained very little plankton, blue- 

 green algas, bacteria, and infusoria ; the rotifers, &c., were 

 found at the bottom on a plant of which nothing is known, 

 perhaps lichenous in nature. The larger lakes were not 

 melted through in three summers ; a few animals were, 

 however, obtained by boring. The rotifers lived under 

 normal conditions at anything between 60" and —4° F. ; 

 they survived under experiment the temperatures of boiling 

 water on the one hand, and on the other of a mixture of 

 solid CO. and alcohol of about — 172° F. While these 

 fresh-water forms can bear such enormous temperature 

 differences, the marine animals died if heated or cooled to 

 a few degrees from their normal. 



Dublin. 

 Royal Dublin Society, January 25. — Prof. J. A. McClelland, 

 F.R.S., in the chair. — Prof. S. Young : The vapour 

 pressures, specific volumes, heats of vaporisation, and 

 critical constants of thirty pure substances. The deter- 

 mination of the vapour pressures, specific volumes, and 

 critical constants of a number of pure liquids was com- 

 menced in 1888 in order to test the validity of the general- 

 isations of Van der Waals regarding " corresponding " 

 temperatures, pressures, and volumes. The data have 

 been published at various times in several scientific journals. 

 New or improved methods of experiment or calculation 

 have been devised or adopted in the course of the work, 

 and some of the data have required correction from time 

 to time ; it happens, consequently, that complete data for 

 any one substance are not to be found in a single paper. 

 The whole of the data, including the values obtained before 

 :88S by Ramsay and Young for ethyl ether, three alcohols, 

 and acetic acid (up to 280°), have now been revised and 

 collected, and are tabulated in this paper, which also con- 

 tains a brief account of the methods of preparation and 

 purification of the thirty liquids, and a description of the 

 apparatus and methods employed for the determination of 

 the physical constants. The heats of vaporisatir t have 

 been calculated by Dr. J. E. Mills by means of the 

 Clapeyron-Clausius formula, and he has very kindly sup- 

 plied the data. The author is also indebted to Dr. Mills for 

 some of the other calculated data. — Prof. J. Wilson : The 

 inheritance of coat colour in horses. Having stated that 

 Mr. C. C. Hurst had already shown (Proc. Royal Society, 

 vol. Ixxvii., iqo6) chestnut to be recessive to bay and brown 

 — the two talcen as one — the author proceeded to show where 

 some other colours fit in. Much uncertainty exists among 

 breeders in distinguishing bay from brown, and dark brown 

 from black. .Allowing for this, the five main colours form 

 a series in which those towards one end are recessive to 

 all towards the other. Chestnut is recessive to black, bay, 

 brown, and grey; black to bay, brown, and grey; bay to 

 brown (probably) and grey ; and brown to grey. The 

 position of two other colours can be fixed only approxi- 

 mately, for want of sufficient data. Dun is dominant to 

 all to the left of brown, that is, to chestnut, black, bay, 

 and brown. Roan is also dominant to chestnut, black, 

 bay, and brown, and perhaps also to dun and grey; but it 

 has this peculiarity, that the roan does not blot out the 

 other colours, but the white hairs of the roan mingle with 

 coats of the other colours. This implies that there are 

 chestnut roans, bay roans, and so on. 



P.'iRIS. 



Academy of Sciences, lanuary 24.^ — M. Emile Picard 

 in the chair. — Ch. Andre : The Johannesburg comet. 

 This was seen by M. Guillaume on January 21. It was 

 very brilliant, its nucleus having a brightness a little greater 

 than that of Arcturus. — .\lfred Grandidier : The inter- 

 national map of the earth on the scale of 1/1,000,000. 

 At the Geographical Congress held at Vienna in 1S91 Prof. 

 Penck suggested the production of a uniform map of the 

 earth on the scale of i in 1,000,000, and an account is 

 given in the present paper of the progress that has 

 been made with this map, and the difficulties owing 

 to lack of uniformity in the conventional signs employed. 

 The total cost of this work is estimated at 5,000,000 



