Mav 13, iyo9j 



NA TURE 



329 



in detail, the injection being intracerebral, intravenous, 

 intraperitoneal, or subcutaneous. The question of infection 

 was of importance in regard to the Maltese goat, and it 

 was established by experiment that the micrococcus 

 appeared in the milk of an infected goat. It was thus not 

 improbable that the infection might be cutaneously carried 

 from goat to goat by the act of milking. -Man is suscep- 

 tible to infection by subcutaneous inoculation, to infection 

 through apparently intact mucous membranes, and the 

 administration of infective food. Several cases of 

 accidental laboratory infection, leading to acute and sub- 

 acute attacks of melitensis septicaemia, were described. — 

 Life and chemical work of Archibald Scott Couper : Prof. 

 Richard Anschiitz. Translated by Prof. Crum Brown. 

 In this paper Prof. Anschiitz gives a critical account of 

 Couper 's two e.xperimental communications on benzene and 

 on salicylic acid, and of his "new chemical theory." 

 These papers were originally published in the Comptcs 

 rendtis of the French Academy of Sciences within a period 

 of less than twelve months. Couper was unfortunate with 

 both his chief pieces of work. The presentation of the 

 new theory to the academy was delayed, by no fault of 

 Couper's, so that it did not appear until after the publi- 

 cation of KekuM's famous paper, in which substantially 

 the same theory was propounded. There is no doubt, as 

 is conclusively proved by Prof. Anschiitz, that Couper's 

 work was quite independent of Kekul^'s, but the delay 

 in its publication necessarily threw it into the shade. 

 Couper's experiments on salicylic acid were repeated by 

 several eminent chemists, but none of them obtained 

 Couper's results, and the general opinion was that Couper 

 had made a mistake in the matter. It was not until 

 twenty-seven years had elapsed that the investigations of 

 Prof. Anschiitz proved that Couper was right, and showed 

 how his successors had failed. Couper's work was all done 

 within one year, and nothing was heard of him by any 

 of his fellow-chemists after 1S5S. Indeed, none of them 

 knew whence he came, many supposed that he was a 

 Frenchman, and none knew what had become of him. 

 Prof. ,\nschiitz and his friends made diligent search, and 

 at last Prof. Crum Brown came upon a clue which led 

 him to Kirkintilloch. There Dr. Whitelaw introduced him 

 to Couper's cousins, and from them and from Mr. T. A. 

 Dollar, London, the eminent veterinary surgeon, also a 

 cousin, he obtained much information as to Couper's 

 history. By a strange concurrence of circumstances Prof. 

 Crum Brown made the acquaintance of an old friend of 

 Couper, Geheimrat Berring, of Coblenz, who had studied 

 with Couper at Berlin. From him much interesting matter 

 was obtained. Couper was born on March 31, 1S31, at 

 Kirkintilloch, where his father was a manufacturer. He 

 studied classics and philosophy in the universities of 

 Glasgow and Edinburgh, and, along with his friend 

 Alexander Hamilton, paid several visits to the Continent. 

 In 1S55 and 1856 he studied chemistry in Berlin, and in 

 August, 1856, went to Paris to work in Wurtz's labora- 

 tory. He remained there until the autumn of 1858, when 

 he returned to Scotland, and in December, 1S5S, accepted 

 the post of second laboratory assistant in Playfair's 

 laboratory in the University of Edinburgh. Near the end 

 of that winter session his health broke down, and although 

 he somewhat recovered, he remained an invalid, unable to 

 undertake any kind of work, until his death on March 11, 

 1892. For the last thirty years of his life he lived at 

 Kirkintilloch with his widowed mother, who survived him, 

 dying in 1895 at the age of ninety-three. Prof. Anschiitz 

 says : — " In the history of organic chemistry the sorely 

 tried Archibald Scott Couper deserves a place of honour 

 beside his more fortunate fellow-worker, Friedrich .August 

 Kckul^." 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, Mav ^. — M. Emile Picard in the 

 chair. — The internal pressure of fluids and the law of inter- 

 molecular attraction : E. H. Amagrat. The conclusion is 

 drawn that the intermolecular attraction varies inversely 

 as the fourth power of the distance. — A hsemogregarian 

 of Python sebai : A. Laveran and A. Pettit. Nine 

 diagrams accompany the paper, showing the parasite in 

 various states of development. The species appears to be 

 new, and the name H. schai is proposed for it. — Singular 

 systems of associated O networks : C. Guichard. — The 

 NO. 2063, VOL. 80] 



application of Stefan's law in astronomy : Ch. Fery. 

 Ihe correction term for atmospheric absorption would 

 appear to have been overestimated. A correction of 25 per 

 cent, would appear to be nearer the truth than the 50 per 

 cent, indicated by Crova. — A definition of the number of 

 dimensions of an abstract ensemble : Maurice Frechet. 

 — The uniform analytical functions which remain con- 

 tinuous on a completely discontinuous ensemble of singu- 

 larities : Arnaud Denjoy. — Remarks on the preceding corn- 

 munication : M. Painleve. — The movement of a disc in 

 a fluid : A. de Gramont de Guiche. — The use of the 

 torsion balance as a seismograph : V. Cremieu. — The 

 photographic registration of Brownian trajectories in 

 gases ; M. de Bros'ie. A microscope furnished with a 

 camera is focussed on the gaseous suspension illuminated 

 laterally by the concentrated beam from an arc lamp, and 

 forms 'an image on the plate magnified about forty 

 diameters. For a given size of particles the light diffiised 

 in the direction of the axis of the microscope is sufficient 

 to make a record on very sensitive plates, in spite of the 

 rapidity of the movements. A reproduction of such a 

 negative is given.— The laws of the slope of water in 

 canal of constant length and practically constant depth 

 connecting a tidal with a non-tidal sea of the same mean 

 level. The determination for each point of the canal of 

 the limit of the maximum current, and the time at which 

 the maximum current is produced : Philippe Bunau- 

 Varilla. — The discontinuous discharge in a Geissler tube : 

 H. A. Perkins. — The coefficients of expansion of gases : 

 A. Leduc. A re-calculation of the values published twelve 

 years ago, making use of the recently determined molecular 

 volumes.— The fusibility of mixtures of gold and tellurium : 

 H. Pelabon. The compound Au,Te., is the only one 

 indicated by the curves of fusion of mi.xtures of gold and 

 tellurium ; no indication was obtained of the gold telluride 

 Au.Te described bv Margottet.— The melting point of 

 platinum: W. Waid'ner and G. H. Burgess. The appar- 

 ently close agreement between the values obtained for the 

 melting point of platinum by different observers with the 

 platinum, platinum-rhodium, or platinum, platinum- 

 iridium thermocouples is due to the use of the same 

 empirical extrapolation in each case. A different formula, 

 equally well applving to the actual observations between 

 300° C. and 1100° C, leads to quite a different melting 

 point for platinum. As regards the application of radia- 

 tion methods to this problem, the divergence of the figures 

 found appears to be due in great part to an insufficieiit 

 knowledge of the exact value of the constant C, in Wien's 

 equation J = C,\"^f'"''^/**.— The magnetic dichroism of 

 mineral species : Georges Meslin. — A new automatic 

 mercury pump : P. Klein. A description, with a diagram, 

 of a modified Topler pump. It is worked by means of 

 an ordinary water pump, is made entirely of glass, and 

 works without taps. A pump using about 650 c.c. of 

 mercury gave a Crookes vacuum in a 500 c.c. vessel in 

 fifteen minutes. — The conditions necessary for direct re- 

 actions and the sense of the electric current produced in 

 the attack of metals by sulphur : Albert Colson. _ The 

 heat of formation, the knowledge of which is indis- 

 pensable in the study of chemical equilibrium, has not 

 the same influence upon direct irreversible reactions which 

 t.ake place at a high temperature.— The physicochemical 

 interpretation of differences of potential in living tissues : 

 Pierre Girard. From a consideration of the changes of 

 electromotive force produced in concentration cells by the 

 interposition of an animal membrane, a physicochemicat 

 interpretation of the potential differences in living tissues 

 is obtained.— The freezing of mixtures of water and 

 normal butyric acid : H. Faucon. The acid was ex- 

 amined at twentv-nine different concentrations, and neither 

 'the fusion-point 'curve nor the microscopical examination 

 of the separated crystals points to the formation of a 

 definite hydrate.- The action of some oxidising agents 

 upon silic'ochloroform : A. Besson and L. Fournier. 

 Oxygen gives the known oxychloride SiXl^O, together 

 with viscous oxvchlorides of unknown composition. 

 Silicochloroform re'acts explosively with nitrogen peroxide, 

 even at low temperatures. In solution (carbon tetra- 

 chloride) the reaction can be moderated, and corresponds 

 mainly to SiHCl,-|-2NO,, = SiO, + 2NOCH- HCl, some 

 water' being also formed by a secondary reaction between 



