205 
NATLORE 
[APRIL 25, 1912 
at Cambridge Observatory. The remarkable changes 
that had taken place in the spectrum of the nova were 
described, and Mr. Stratton further dealt with the 
Cambridge results, no fewer than 200 features having 
been measured upon the plates.—W. E. Curtis: The 
spectrum of the new star in Gemini. Prof. Fowler 
showed the photographs taken by Mr. Curtis.— 
Royal Observatory, Greenwich: Observations of Nova 
Geminorum. The President showed a series of photo- 
graphs of the spectrum of the nova taken at the Royal 
Observatory, and described the changes that had 
taken place. 
the aid of a grating, which was shown to the meet- 
ing. The grating was placed in front of the object 
glass, causing it to give a number of images of the 
star, and much facilitating the observations. Father 
Cortie described the observations of the nova made 
at Stonyhurst, the measurement of the spectra giving 
velocities similar to those shown by Nova Persei. 
Mr. Storey described the spectroscopic observations of 
Nova Geminorum made at the Royal Observatory, 
Edinburgh, and showed photographs taken. Dr. 
Duffield urged that the effects of pressure should be 
taken into consideration in our interpretation of the 
changes in the spectrum of the nova. The Rev. 
T. E. R. Phillips had made visual observations, and 
spoke of the great intensity of the He line. The star 
was an intense crimson at the end of March; its 
brightness had shown fluctuations.—Prof. H. H. 
Turner: A tentative explanation of the ‘‘two star 
streams"? in terms of gravitation. Second paper: 
The position of the centre of our system. In his 
previous paper he had propounded a_ hypothetical 
constitution of our stellar system round a centre of 
attraction, on which view the centre should lie in 
the direction of one of the vertices. A number of 
entirely independent lines of investigation pointed to 
a vertex at 90°+11° It appeared that Boss’s moving 
cluster in Taurus occupied a position near the centre 
of our system; the oscillation period of our sun would 
be about 4oo million years, the sun having passed 
pericentron about a million years ago. 
Royal Meteorological Society, April 17.—H. N. Dick- 
son, president, in the chair.—J. E, Clark and R. H. 
Hooker: Report on the phenological observations for 
1911. The outstanding features of the weather during 
the year were the severe cold of early April; the 
summer of abnormal dryness, heat and sunshine; and 
the continuous rainfall when once the drought 
thoroughly broke about mid-October. After referring 
to the flowering of plants, the appearance of insects 
and the song and migration of birds, the authors 
dealt with the yield of farm crops, and showed that 
potatoes and wheat were above the average, but most 
of the other crops were below the average, especially 
beans, roots, and hay. Throughout Great Britain 
harvest began generally a fortnight to three weeks 
earlier than usual, and the duration was very short, 
the result being that the termination of the harvest 
was fully a month earlier than the average..—R. G. K. 
Lempfert and H. W. Braby: A method of summarising 
anemograms. The tabulation of the hourly values of 
wind velocity and of wind direction as recorded by 
many anemometers in the British Isles forms part 
of the routine work of the Meteorological Office, but 
little has been done hitherto to summarise the tabula- 
tions. The authors have made a preliminary discus- 
sion of a few records, and in this paper they gave 
the results in the form of wind-roses for four stations, | 
which had been selected as being typical of the ex- 
treme north, the extreme south, the east coast, and 
the west coast of Great Britain, viz., Deerness, Scilly, 
Yarmouth, and Holyhead. 
NO. 2217, VOL. 89] 
Photometric observations were made by | 
CAMBRIDGE. 
Philosophical Society, March 11.—Sir George Dar- 
win, president, in the chair.—Prof. Pope and C. S. 
Gibson: The resolution of racemic benzoylalanine. 
An account was given of the resolution ot racemic 
benzoylalanine by the method of Pope and Peachey.— 
Prof. Pope and J]. Read: The optically active hydroxy- 
hydrindamines. ‘The authors described the resolution 
of hydroxyhydrindamine into optically active com- 
ponents by means of a-bromocamphor-z-sulphonie acid 
and the preparation of salts and other derivatives of 
the racemic and active bases.—C. T. Heycock and 
F. E. E, Lamplough: The boiling points of zinc, cad- 
mium, mercury, sodium, and potassium, and their 
alteration with change of pressure. An account was 
given of the more trustworthy previous determinations 
of these data, the wide differences being noted. The 
authors’ experiments, in which platinum resistance 
thermometers were used, were described, and the 
results of many closely agreeing experiments were 
given. At 760 mm. pressure the boiling points were 
found to be as follows :—Zinc, 905°70°; cadmium, 
765°93°; mercury, 357°70°; sodium, 882'6°; potassium, 
762°2°.—F. E. E. Lamplough: The metastable condi- 
tion of undercooling in metals. Investigations have 
been made to determine whether a metastable condi- 
tion of undercooling before solidification exists in 
metals. In no case have positive results been ob- 
tained. Tin, which on solidifying exhibits super- 
fusion in a notable degree, does not show a meta- 
stable undercooling greater than at most half a 
degree.—J. Satterly: The quantities of radium and 
thorium emanations contained in the air of soils. (1) 
The amounts of radium emanation in the air of 
different soils have been measured at intervals ex- 
tending over a year. For depths of from 100 to 150 
cms. in gravelly soil the amount of emanation is, on 
the average, equal to approximately 200x 10~-'* curie 
per litre or 2000 times as much as there is usually in 
atmospheric air. (2) Experiments showed that a litre 
of soil-air was in association with 14,000 gm. of damp 
soil (12,000 gm. when dry), whence the apparent 
radium content of the soil is 17x 10-* gm. per gm. 
of (dry) soil. As the actual radium content is more 
likely to be seventy times this it follows that little 
of the emanation generated in the solid particles of 
the soil can escape into the air around them. (3) The 
proportion of radium emanation to thorium emanation 
in soil-air has been measured for various depths and 
the ratio has been found to increase from 1600 near 
the surface to 26,000 at a depth of 400 cm. At a 
depth of 150 cm. it is 8600, whence, taking the 
radium content of the soil as r1x10-'* gm. per gm., 
the thorium content works out as 14X10~° gm. per 
gm. This is of the right order.—J. A. Crowther : 
A theory of the dissymmetrical distribution _ of 
secondary Réntgen radiation—A. E. Oxley: The 
variation of magnetic susceptibility with temperature. 
A criticism of the conclusions reached by Profs. du 
Bois and Honda concerning the invalidity of the 
Curie-Langevin laws.—H. H. Paine: The coagulation 
of colloidal copper. Rate of coagulation.—R. 
Kleeman: The different internal energies of a sub- 
stance. The author showed that the internal energy 
of a substance can be divided into three parts, viz. : 
(1) the kinetic energy of the molecules due to their 
motion of translation: (2) their molecular internal 
energy; (3) the potential energy due to their attraction 
unon one another. Tt was proved that the kinetic 
energv of a molecule is eaual to that if possesses in 
the gaseous state at the same temperature, that is, it 
>) 
2 TR F 
is equal to — » where T is the absolute tempera- 
