August 17, 1905] 



NA TURE 



391 



senate decided to accept the offer, to devote the whole of 

 the 700/. a year as salary to the professor, and to set 

 aside a further sum of 200/. a year to defray the cost of 

 assistanis and laboratory expenses in connection with the 

 chair." 



A n.w higher commercial department is to be opened 

 at the end of September next in connection with the City 

 of London College. The object of this department is to 

 provide a higher education for those who have already 

 had an ordinary secondary education. Hitherto there has 

 been some basis for the charge that higher education 

 has not generally induced students to regard business 

 sympathetically, nor has it exhibited a commercial career 

 attractively. Those engaged in higher education have 

 seldom attempted to show that the study of science, 

 language, and of other subjects is, or can be, related to 

 the conduct of commerce, and that a commercial man will 

 understand his business better if he starts with a ground- 

 work of knowledge which has been deliberately exhibited 

 to him in its relation to the conduct of ordinary business. 

 Those responsible for the new scheme at the City of London 

 College believe that, other things being equal, a youth who 

 has been trained to see the principles which lie behind 

 the facts of commerce, to know how far nature has been 

 controlled by commerce, and commerce by nature ; to know 

 the commercial methods of his own and other nations and 

 the reasons for their existence, will make a better busi- 

 ness man than one who has had no such training. They 

 believe that there is a mass of experience a judicious selec- 

 tion from which, if assimilated, will save an English vouth 

 on his actual entry to commercial life from errors and 

 waste of time. The experiment will be watched with great 

 interest by all who are interested in the various sides of 

 higher education. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, June S. — "The Morphology of the Ungu- 

 late Placenta, particularly the Development of that Organ 

 in the Sheep, and Notes upon the Placenta of the Rlephant 

 and Hvrax." Bv R. Assheton. Communicated bv 

 A. Sedgwick, F.R.'S. 



The formation of the placenta of the Ungulata vera 

 is founded on a system of foldings of the subzonal mem- 

 brane (or of the trophoblast only), which fit into corre- 

 sponding grooves in the walls of the uterus, without 

 thickening of the trophoblast layer of the blastocyst, and 

 without destruction of maternal epithelium or other tissue 

 (Sus). Certain parts of the crests of the ridges are pro- 

 duced by local amplification into true villi, into which the 

 splanehnopleure of the allantois subsequently extends 

 (Equus, Bos, &c.). 



For this type of placentation, which is caused funda- 

 mentally by the folding of the trophoblast, the term plicate 

 is used (placenta plicata), and to this type of placentation 

 it is suggested thSt the Cetacea, Sirenia, and Proboscidea 

 conform, as well as the Lfngulata vera, and possibly the 

 Edentata and Prosimia. 



The term placenta cumulata is used for the type of 

 placentation in which the placenta is formed by the heap- 

 ing up or thickening of the trophoblast layer, among the 

 cells of which accumulation extravasated maternal blood 

 circulates. Destruction of the maternal epithelium prob- 

 ably always occurs. To this type belong the Rodentia, 

 Insectivora, the Hyracoidea, Primates, and Chiroptera. 

 The Carnivora are perhaps intermediate, but, according to 

 Strahl's account, they would be distinctly plicate, while, 

 according to the account of other authors, they are slightly 

 cumulate. 



The morphological position of the sheep's placenta, a 

 full account of the development of which is given in the 

 paper, is at that end of the series of plicate forms which 

 closely approximates to the cumulate type. 



The placentation of the Ungulata shows that that order 

 is more closely connected with the Proboscidea. and the 

 Sirenia and Carnivora, than with other groups of 

 mammals, w-hilst the placentation of the Hyracoidea 

 suggests no connection at all with those groups, but is 

 of the cumulate type, and resembles more closely the form 

 found in certain of the Insectivora. 



NO. 1868, VOL. 72I 



Elunburch. 



Royal Society, July 10. — Dr. R. H. Traquair in the chair. 

 — On the bathymetry, deposits, and temperature of the 

 south-western Pacific : Sir John Murray, K.C.B. The 

 region discussed lay to the cast and south-east of 

 .A.ustralia. Seven of the soundings were in depths exceed- 

 ing 4000 fathoms and three in depths exceeding 5000 

 fathoms. Interesting comparisons were made between the 

 bathymetric charts and the temperature charts, and inform- 

 ation was also derived from the study of more than 1000 

 samples of deposits. Globigerina ooze covered about 48 per 

 cent., and red clay about 44 per cent, of the bottom, the 

 remaining 8 per cent, being covered by other deposits. 

 The percentage of carbonate of lime was low in very deep 

 water and in shallow water near islands not bordered by 

 coral reefs. In moderately deep water and in shallow 

 water where the deposit was coral mud. the percentage 

 of carbonate of lime was high. The evidence seemed to 

 point to a continent in the making rather than to a sunken 

 continent. — The varying form of the stomach in man and 

 the anthropoid ape: Prof. D. J. Cunningham. The 

 paper was a detailed discussion of the anatomy of the 

 stomach, its changes of form and position at various 

 stages of digestion, the functions of the different parts, and 

 the movements by which digestion was carried out. — The 

 evaporation of musk and other substances : John Aitken. 

 The question was as to the nature of the exhalation or 

 emanation which produced the characteristic odour : was 

 it solid or vapour? The test applied was the cloud-pro- 

 ducing power in a region saturated with water vapour ;ind 

 suddenly cooled. Experiment showed that when the .^ir 

 was purified of dust particles, but full of musk eman- 

 ations and w ,.v?r vapour, a sudden cooling produced no 

 cloud. Therefore the emanation must itself be vapour 

 and not solid. The same result was obtained with many 

 other substances, such as spices, chemicals, herbs, and 

 flowers, not one of them giving off solid particles. 

 Evidence was adduced that the dusts of these substances 

 affected the branch of the fifth nerve which serves the 

 noslrils, while the olfactory nerve was sensitive to matter 

 in the gaseous form. 



July 17. — Lord McLaren in the chair. — On some points 

 in the geometry of reflecting telescopes with graphical 

 solutions : Dr. James Hunter. The real problem in the 

 construction of an efficient reflecting telescope is to find 

 the best size of small mirror and the best position for it. 

 so that the maximum of light and of definition is gained. 

 This the paper discussed in detail, and gave a simple 

 graphical construction by which the required data could 

 be obtained to an approximation sufticient for practical 

 purposes. — .Some general principles of absorption spectro- 

 photometry, and a new instrument : James R. Milne. 

 The necessary conditions for the photometric comparison 

 of two patches of light, of which one is produced by a ray 

 passing through an absorbing medium, were fulfilled as 

 follows : — (i) By use of a small hole instead of a slit in 

 the collimator a' strictly parallel beam of light was .secured.. 

 (2) Bv use of a naked flat acetylene flame, the beam was 

 obtained of equal intensity across a normal section, a 

 condition unrealisable by electric arc or lime-light unless 

 heavilv screened. (3) By means of a double image prism 

 replacing the ordinary eye-piece of the spectrophotometer 

 telescope it was found possible (a) to bring the two patches 

 of light presented to the eye accurately edge to edge, 

 (b) to have these patches of some width, namely, that of 

 the telescope objective, (c) to secure the coplanarity of 

 the two " faces " of rays which proceed from each point 

 of the edge common to'the two patches. The instrument 

 constructed on these lines could also be used as a spectro- 

 meter or as a spectropolarimetor for measuring optical 

 rotations. — Note on some generally accepted views regard- 

 ing vision : Dr. \V. Peddie. The note referred to some 

 observations on the effect of fatigue in the eye in relation 

 to its power of judging of colour. — On the opacity of 

 aluminium foil to the ions from a flame : George A. 

 Carse. The experiments were made in the Cavendish 

 Laboratorv. and showed that the aluminium foil was 

 quite opaque to the ions, a result not in agreement with 

 results described by Lebon. — On deep sea-water waves : 

 Lord Kelvin. This was a continuation of a paper read 

 last Januarv. Bv use of Lord Rayleigh's method of 



