130 
NATURE 
[APRIL 4, I912 
the number between five and twelve rose by 32,169, 
and the net decrease of pupils of all ages was 7482. 
During 1910-11 the average number on the registers 
decreased by o-11 per cent., the average attendance 
increased by 0-09 per cent., and the percentage of 
regularity rose to 89-15. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, March 28.—Sir Archibald Geikie, 
K.C.B., president, in the chair.—Dr. G. J. Burch: 
A confusion test for colour blindness. A sheet of 
perforated zinc is fixed in the focal plane of a convex 
lens of about eight diopters, through which the 
observer looks. On a card six in. or so farther off 
is painted a design in confusion colours, e.g. red and 
blue letters on a dark-green ground. The red-blind 
can distinguish the blue letters but not the red, 
though these are far more conspicuous to the normal. 
The letters being out of focus, brush marks are in- 
visible, and new designs can be easily drawn. Other 
colours are: Geranium red with French grey; emerald 
green with yellow ochre; lilac with blue—this last 
being a test also for the green-blind.—Clifford Dobell : 
The systematic position of the Spirochzts. The paper 
is a brief summary of certain results obtained from 
a detailed study of the morphology of a large number 
of Spirochets and related organisms. It is main- 
tained that the Spirochzets cannot be regarded as 
Protozoa, but that they must be classified among the 
Schizophyta, and that in the latter group they must be 
placed among the Bacteria and not among the Cyano- 
phyceze.—E. C. Snow: The influence of selection and 
assortative mating on the ancestral and fraternal cor- 
relations of a Mendelian population. Using the 
simple hypothesis of Mendel, the author investigates 
by analytical methods the numerical effect on the 
ancestral and fraternal correlations of dealing with 
samples (a) which are not true random samples of the 
general population and which mate with no sexual 
selection; (b) which are perfectly random samples of 
the general population but mate with certain intensity 
of assortative mating; (c) which are selected samples 
showing assortative mating. So far as numerical 
results are concerned, the-investigation supports the 
view that the Mendelian hypothesis can be employed 
to give confirmation to results which have at first 
sight appeared paradoxical (e.g. the closeness of the 
resemblance between first cousins) and to give a rough 
mdication of the probable results in cases for which 
actual statistical data are inadequate (e.g. the inquiry 
into the effects on the offspring of inbreeding of 
various degrees).—T. Lewis and M. D. D. Gilder : The 
human electrocardiogram; a preliminary investigation 
of young male adults, to form a basis of pathologicai 
study.—C. Revis: The production of variation in the 
physiological activity of Bacillus coli by the use of 
malachite-green. Bacillus coli can be trained to grow 
in nutrient broth containing malachite-green. By 
gradually increasing the percentage of the malachite- 
green the organisms will develop readily in presence 
of o'10 per cent. In most cases the organism at the 
same time undergoes a profound change in its physio- 
logical activity towards sugars and polyhydric alcohols, 
acid only being produced in certain of these, from 
which the organism originally produced both acid and 
gas, the power of gas formation being permanently 
lost. In one instance this change in physiological 
activity was accompanied by equally profound morpho- 
logical and cultural changes, the resultant organism 
being quite different from that from which it had 
been produced. The change brought about by mala- 
NO. 2214, VOL. 89] 
chite-green indicates a connection between the typhoid 
and coli groups and the possibility of development of 
organisms of the one into those of the other.—Murie} 
Robertson ; Notes on some flagellate infections found 
in certain Hemiptera in Uganda.—Muriel Robertson : 
Notes on certain aspects of the development of T. 
gambiense in Glossina palpalis——Dr. H. L. Duke: 
Antelopes and their relation to trypanosomiasis.— 
F. P. Knowlton and Prof. E. H. Starling: The 
nature of pancreatic diabetes (preliminary communi- 
cation). 
Zoological Society, March 19.—Dr. S. F. Harmer, 
F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair.—E. W. Shann : 
Observations on some Alcyonaria from Singapore, 
with a brief discussion on the classification of the 
family Nephthyide. All the specimens had been 
obtained in shallow water, from low water-mark to 
a depth of about 10 fathoms, and of the eleven species 
dealt with in this paper, representing six different 
families, four. were described as new.—Sir George H. 
Kenrick: A list of moths of the family Pyralidz 
collected by Felix B. Pratt and Charles B. Pratt in 
Dutch New Guinea in 1909-10, with descriptions of 
new species.—T H. Withers: Some early fossil cirri- 
pedes of the genus Scalpellum. Attention was 
directed to the form of the carina of the geologically 
older species of Scalpellum, and it was shown that 
the earliest forms known resembled more closely the 
carina of Pollicipes, from which Scalpellum is con- 
sidered to be derived. 
Royal Meteorological Society, March 20.—Dr. H. N. 
Dickson, president, in the chair.—Prof. Otto 
Pettersson: The connection between hydrographical © 
and meteorological phenomena. Experiments carried 
on during the last four years at Bornoe, in Sweden, 
have shown that the inflow of the undercurrent from 
the North Sea into the Kattegat—which brings the 
herging shoals in winter to the Swedish coast—is 
oscillatory, the boundary surface of the deep water 
rising and sinking from 50 to 8o ft. about twice a 
month. The phenomenon is governed by the moon’s 
declination and proximity to the earth. From astro- 
nomical data, Prof. Pettersson concludes that the in- 
fluence both of the sun and of the moon upon the 
waters of the ocean in winter about the time of the 
solstice must have been greater 600 to 700 years ago 
than at the present time. This must have caused a 
more intense circulation, of which we have conclusive 
evidence in the fact that the migrations of the herring 
—which now only reach as far as to the Kattegat— 
in those centuries extended into the Baltic. The 
hypothesis first proposed by A. W. Ljungman in 1879 
that the periodicity of the great secular herring fishery 
of Bohusland should agree with that of the sun- 
spots is by no means incompatible with the pheno- 
mena here described, since the fourteenth century is 
noted in Chinese annals as an epoch of maximum 
solar activity, and since the sun-spot frequency curve 
of Wolfer can be reconstructed by harmonic analysis, 
using the moon’s apsides and nodal period as the 
basis of the analysis. 
Royal Microscopical Society, March 20.—Mr. E. Heron- 
Allen, vice-president, in the chair.—C. F. Rousselet : 
Four Rotifera from the Devil’s Lake, a large braclish- 
water lake in North Dakota. The point of interest was 
that all four species lived in brackish water only. 
One, Pedalion fennicum, was first found in Finland; 
another was a new species, Brachionus spatiosus; 
the third, Brachionus satanicus, Rousselet, lnown 
only from this locality, and the fourth was Asplanchna 
silvestrii, Daday, ¢ 92, showing dimorphism in the 
female.—F. Enock: Fairy flies and their hosts. 
