July 15, 1909] 



NA TURE 



89 



The new laboratories of St. Paul's School, built to cele- 

 brate the quatercenteuary of the foundation, were opened 

 on Wednesday, July S, by Lord Curzon. In his address, 

 Lord Curzon said he noticed how the school had kept pace 

 with the spirit and reforms of the day, how during the 

 last hundred years its numbers had increased from 153 to 

 5oo ; how the modern side had grown to equal the older 

 side in numbers and importance ; and he told how great 

 had been the achievement of the school under the late high 

 master, Dr. Walker, one of the great school-masters of the 

 nineteenth century. Lord Curzon went on to say that we 

 lived in an age of self-depreciation, of a too great self- 

 depreciation. Foreign critics were always coming to our 

 public schools to learn how, having their superior equipment 

 and their excellent organisation, they might obtain also 

 " that training in character, that sense of moral responsi- 

 bility, that spirit of civic patriotism, that ordered sense of 

 personal liberty which were among the chief and most 

 honourable characteristics of our public school system." 

 So while content to learn from others we were not to 

 forfeit that in our educational system which had done so 

 much in the civic government of the country and the empire. 

 The Bishop of Manchester referred to the conditions, so 

 different from those obtaining now, under which he had 

 learnt at St. Paul's School ; yet he had learnt there that 

 most valuable of lessons, to think. The high master. Dr. 

 HiUard, said that St. Paul's had taken its full share in 

 all those changes in educational method which began with 

 Arnold's life at Rugby. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Geological Society, Jsne 16. — Prof. W. J. SoUas, F. R.S., 

 president, in the chair. — The Carboniferous Limestone of 

 County Clare : James A. Douglas. The district forms 

 ihe westernmost limit of the central Carboniferous Lime- 

 stone plain of Ireland. The area, for the purposes of 

 description, is divided into two main districts. The 

 northern region is formed by an elevated plateau of Vis^an 

 Limestone, which rises on the north and east in terraced 

 cliffs, but to the south-west dips below the " Coal- 

 measure " series. The surface is of bare rock, devoid of 

 vegetation. The southern district is not formed of lime- 

 ^tone ; the high ground on the east is of Old Red Sand- 

 stone and Silurian rocks, that on the west of Coal- 

 neasures. The older formations appear as two anti- 

 clinal fle.xures, forming the mountains of Slieve Aughty 

 and Slieve Bernagh. The margin of the syncline is formed 

 by Tournaisian shales and limestone, while the Vis^an 

 limestones occupy the core. The limestone fauna show 

 that the Geological Survey boundary between the Upper 

 and Lower Limestones corresponds with the transition 

 from a Tournaisian to a Vis^an fauna, and the iVIiddle 

 Limestone contains a fauna distinct from that of the 

 Upper, although they are not separable on lithological 

 grounds. The Old Red Sandstone is succeeded by a series 

 of sandy shales containing brachiopods characteristic of 

 the Cleistopora zone ; at the base are found modioliform 

 lamellibranchs. The Zaphrentis zone is well developed. 

 The most remarkable portion of the whole sequence is 

 included in the Syringothyris zone. These beds show 

 evidence of deposition in shallow water. The fauna is 

 compared with that of the Waulsortian phase of Belgium. 

 The incoming of a Vis^an fauna is well marked at the 

 base of the Seminula zone ; in the middle of this zone 

 occurs an important bed of oolitic limestone, vifith 

 abundant gasteropods. The Dibunophyllum zone attains a 

 thickness equal to that of the Midland area. — The Howgill 

 Fells and their topography : J. E. Marr, F.R.S., and 

 W. G. Fearnsides. The Howgill Fells form a mono- 

 clinal block, from which the Carboniferous rocks have 

 been denuded. The northern slope probably corresponds 

 with the sloping plane of unconformity between the 

 Carboniferous rocks and Lower Palaeozoic strata. On the 

 south the slope to the Rawthey is along a block-fault. 

 The chief drainage was originally north and south from 

 the watershed at the summit of the block. The tract was 

 glaciated by its own ice, but " foreign " ice was con- 

 terminous with the local ice on all sides. The rocks are, 

 from the point of view of erosive effects, nearly homo- 

 geneous. The chief erosive effects of glaciation were the 

 NO. 2072, VOL. 81] 



truncation of spurs, the formation of conchoidal scoops 

 in the concavities of the valleys, a general widening of the 

 valleys, and but slight deepening. A feature of interest 

 is the contrast in this small area between these glaciated 

 valleys and others of V-shaped cross-section, which are 

 typical water-carved valleys unaffected by glacial erosion. 

 — A new species of Sthenurus : L. Glauert. — Some 

 reptilian remains from the Trias of Lossiemouth : D. M. S. 

 Watson. The fore-limb of Orniihosuchus woodiaardi is 

 shown in a specimen in the Manchester Museum. 

 Ornithosuchus is restored as an animal walking on all 

 fours, with the head carried rather low. The proportions 

 are identical with those of ^tosaurus. A description is 

 given of the skeleton of a very small reptile, interesting 

 as recalling ./^Jtosaurus in its armour. — Some reptilian 

 tracks from the Trias of Runcorn (Cheshire) : D. M. S. 

 Watson. Four types of tracks which occur on the slab 

 of sandstone from Weston Point, described in 1840 by 

 Dr. Black, are discussed in this paper. It is suggested 

 that some of these prints may quite well belong to such 

 thecodonts as Ornithosuchus. — The anatomy of Lcpido- 

 phloios laricinus, Stcrnb. : D. M. S. Watson. 



Linnean Society, June 17. — Sir Fiank Ciisp, vice-presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — The growth of a species of Battarea : 

 J. G. Otto Teppar. — The deposits in the Indian Ocean : 

 Sir John Murray. — The Sealark Penaeidea, Stenopidea, 

 and Reptantia : L. A. Borradaile. — The Sealark Lepido- 

 ptera : T. B. Flotch«r. — Report on the Porifera collected 

 by Mr. C. Crossland in the Red Sea, part i., Calcarea : 

 R. W. H. Row. — The African species of Triumfetta, 

 Linn. : T. A. SpraKue and J. Hutchinson. — New species 

 of Malesian and Philippine ferns : Dr. H. Christ. — The 

 acaulescent species of Malvastrum, A. Gray : A. W. Hill. 



Dublin. 

 hoyal Dublin Society, June 22. — Dr. J. M. Purser in 

 the chair. — The fossil hare of the ossiferous fissures of 

 Ightham, Kent, and on the recent hares of the Lepus 

 variabilis group : M. A. C. Hinton. The paper describes 

 the fossil remains of Lepus variabilis. Pall., obtained from 

 the rock fissures at Ightham, and deals with the osteology 

 of the recent and fossil hares of the L. variabilis group. 

 The Pleistocene hare of England is referred to a new' 

 subspecies, L. variabilis anglicus, which is to be regarded 

 as the immediate ancestor of L. variabilis hibernicus, its 

 relationship with the existing Scotch form not being so 

 close. The subspecies anglicus and hibernicus are shown 

 to be the most primitive members of the variabilis group. 

 The most important conclusion reached is that, contrary 

 to the prevalent view, the variabilis group of hares has 

 originated in temperate latitudes, and not in the high 

 north. — The value of benzidine for the detection of minute 

 traces of blood: Prof. E. J. McWeeney. The author 

 began by explaining the chemical nature of benzidine, 

 which is a di-/>-diamino diphenyl. This substance, when 

 dissolved in acetic acid and brought into contact with blood 

 in presence of HjO,, at once undergoes o.\idation with 

 formation of a brilliant blue colour. The reaction is in 

 principle the same as that with guaiacol, the old-fashioned 

 Van Deen's or Schonbein's guaiacum test. The colour 

 base from guaiacol differs from the benzidine colour-base 

 in the same way as an amine (aniline) differs from a 

 phenol, or an aurine from a rosaniline dye. The test is 

 ten-fold more delicate than that with guaiacum, and detects 

 blood in solution as weak as 1/500,000; but for medico- 

 legal purposes it is preferable to bring particles of the 

 suspected matter into contact with the reagent, when 

 each granule, if blood, at once strikes a most brilliant blue. 

 The reaction can be observed under the microscope. The 

 test worked well with blood-stains many years' old, and 

 seemed to be independent of the nature of the substratum. 

 Controls, and a time limit of about a minute, were essen- 

 tial, and the sensitiveness of each batch of benzidine had 

 to be worked out beforehand. Of all the substances tested, 

 none gave the typical blue colour so speedily as blood, 

 save fresh vegetables and fruit, which at once struck an 

 intense blue, at first limited to the fibro-vascular bundles. 

 Boiling deprived them of this power, owing to the destruc- 

 tion of the oxydase, whereas blood solutions gave the blue 

 reaction at once after five minutes' boiling. The author 

 recommended this test to the attention of medical jurists. 



