November iS, 1922] 



NA TURE 



687 



chloride to the latex of Hevea increases the rapidity 

 of the coagulation and also the total weight of rubber 

 obtained. The causes of these results are discussed. 

 — Emile F. Terroine and H. Barthelemy : Avita- 

 minosis and inanition. Two views of the action of 

 vitamins have been put forward, one regarding these 

 substances as indispensable for nutrition, the other 

 as affecting the secreting power of glands and the 

 diastatic properties of the digestive juices. Accord- 

 ing to the latter view, the nerve troubles and death 

 resulting from feeding on polished rice are due to 

 starvation caused by the inability of the intestine 

 to assimilate the food. The authors use as a test 

 for death by starvation the percentage of fats and 

 lipoid substances in the animal, and find that in 

 cases of avitaminosis neither the nerve troubles nor 

 death can be wholly attributable to inanition. — 

 M. Marage : Phonation and telephonic audition. 

 The author's results are in agreement with those 

 of Fletcher, although the methods employed are 

 absolutely different. — A. Policard : The working of 

 the adipose tissue. Researches on the nuchal gland 

 of rodents. — M. Vila : Separation of the globulins of 

 horse serum. The globulins are removed from the 

 diluted serum by treatment with three volumes of 

 cooled acetone, and these can be separated into 

 fractions by treatment with dilute hydrochloric 

 acid. — Y. Manouelian and Jules Viala : A case of 

 hydrophobia in a lioness. — Rend Zivy : An un- 

 published method of preparing vaccine. Sterilisa- 

 tion is produced by repeated freezing at — 18° C. 

 and thawing. Pneumococcus was the most readily 

 sterilised (two freezings), while enterococcus, the 

 most resistant, required six. — Marcel Leger and A. 

 Baury : Healthy carriers of the plague bacillus. A 

 proof that negroes in Senegal, quite free from any 

 clinical signs of plague, carried the Yersin bacillus 

 and could act as plague carriers. 



Sheffield. 



Society of Glass Technology (York Meeting), October 

 18. — Prof. W. E. S. Turner, president, in the chair. — 

 J. A. Knowles : Processes and methods of medieval 

 glass painting. Medieval window glass differs from 

 modern glass in that whereas the ancient material was a 

 potassium-calcium-silicate, modern glass is a soda- 

 lime glass. The northern school of glass-painting 

 situated at York in the middle ages obtained glass 

 from the northern Continental glass-making districts 

 of Hesse and other Rhenish provinces. The London 

 school drew it from Lorraine, Burgundy, and Nor- 

 mandy. The uncoloured glass used in the north was 

 much whiter than that employed in the south, 

 probably due to the use of English-made white glass 

 from the works at Chiddingfold. The present-day 

 glass maker can produce colours with a certainty 

 and in a far greater range of tints than the medieval 

 craftsmen could. With the exception of the red or 

 " ruby " glass, the medieval coloured glasses were 

 those which were most easily produced. Being made 

 from native oxides which contained other metals as 

 impurities, the resulting colours were not pure or 

 always harmonised. The colours such as red, blue, 

 and green were contained in the glass itself, but 

 details such as the face, folds of drapery, and orna- 

 mental work were painted on with a brown vitrifiable 

 pigment, formed of a metallic oxide such as red 

 oxide of iron or black oxide of copper, mixed with a 

 soft glass known as " flux." In the kiln the flux 

 melted before the glass itself, and attached the black 

 oxide to the surface. — H. J. Powell : Modern develop- 

 ments in the making of stained and painted glass. 

 The substance of much medieval window glass decays 

 though many pieces of ancient Roman glass are 



NO. 2768, VOL. I io] 



sound. Some medieval glass has become partly 

 or wholly opaque, and crumbles to powder. The 

 most defective glass belongs to the fourteenth 

 century. All the forms of decay originate from 

 the excessive proportion of alkali in the glass mixture 

 which causes the glass to be hygroscopic. 



Washington, D.C. 



National Academy of Sciences (Proc, Vol. 8, No. 

 io, October 1922). — H. Blumberg : New properties 

 of all real functions. Descriptive and metric pro- 

 perties of planar sets and real single-valued functions 

 of two real variables, with some generalisations, are 

 discussed. — C. N. Moore : Generalised limits in 

 general analysis. A proof is given of a generalisation 

 of a theorem in the theory of divergent series. — 

 Martha Bunting : Preliminary note on Tetramitus, 

 a stage in the life cycle of a coprozoic amceba. 

 Coprozoic amoeba; in csecal material from a rat were 

 cultivated on an artificial medium. Amceba; contain- 

 ing at least one large contractile vacuole emerge 

 from cysts, commonly spherical, the walls of which 

 apparently dissolve. Prior to division, the amceba 

 becomes homogeneously refractive ("gel" state). 

 After division, individuals may become amceba; or 

 develop flagellar. The flagellate form is thought 

 to be identical with Tetramitus nostratus Perty ; it 

 reproduces by longitudinal fission after passing through 

 a " gel " state. Eventually the amceboid form is 

 reassumed. Reproduction of both forms appears to 

 be indefinite but the amceba; finally encyst. — Raymond 

 Pearl and T. J. Le Blanc : Further note on the age 

 index of a popidation. The numerical index of the 

 age distribution of a population previously proposed 

 by Pearl has been used successfully employing six 

 to eight age groups covering the life span. Statistics 

 from the 191 5 census of Iowa show that it is also 

 trustworthy, using only three age groups ; there is 

 high correlation between the values of the index for 

 coarse and fine age groupings. — A. A. Noyes and H. A. 

 Wilson : Thermal ionisation of gaseous elements at 

 high temperatures ; a confirmation of the Saha 

 theory. It has been shown that the conductivity 

 of flames into which salt solutions are sprayed is (a) 

 independent of the acidic constituent of the salt ; 

 and (b) changes with the concentration of the salt in 

 accordance with the equilibrium constant obtained 

 when the substance, its ions and electrons, as re- 

 presented by the equation M = M + + E~, are regarded 

 as perfect gases. Substantially, the whole con- 

 ductivity is due to the electrons present. From (b) 

 relative values for the ionisation constants of five 

 alkali elements are calculated ; the series is closely 

 parallel to that obtained from thermodynamical 

 equations utilising ionisation potentials as employed 

 by Saha. — E. H. Hall : An electron theory of electric 

 conduction in metals. It is assumed that an ion 

 is formed from a metal atom by loss of an electron 

 from the outer shell, leaving a pit in the ion which 

 renders it unsymmetrical. An imposed electric 

 field turns the ions so that the pits move as a positive 

 charge would do, giving the effect of an electric 

 current. Ohm's law can be justified, and an explana- 

 tion is offered of the variation of metallic resistance 

 with temperature. Rise of temperature probably 

 directly increases resistance rapidly, while the in- 

 creased number of ions produced tends to reduce it. 

 C. Barus : Static deflection, logarithmic decrement 

 and first semi-period of the vacuum gravitation 

 needle. These three quantities are similar time 

 functions with a period of one day ; they are largest 

 in the morning and least at night. Static deflection 

 and logarithmic decrement appear to be nearly 

 proportional, while the latter and the first semi- 

 period also form a definite curve. 



