October 2 1, 1909] 



NATURE 



507 



Beach, a spit running nortliwai'ds from the east end of 

 the south shore of Boston Harbour. This beacli consists 

 of sand, gravel, and cobbles deposited by wave action 

 between several drumlins which formerly existed as islands, 

 and with the aid of a series of lantern-slides the reader of 

 the paper showed how the form of tlie beach ridges and 

 their relation to abandoned marine cliffs on the drumlins 

 prove the former existence of several drumlin islands now 

 entirely destroyed by the sea. The second of these papers 

 was by Dr. F. P. Gulliver, secretary to the geographical 

 and geological section of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, and dealt with what he called 

 the Wauwinet-Coscata Tombolo, Nantucket, Mass. The 

 term tombolo, the Italian for a "pillow," applied in Italy 

 to the low ridges or necks connecting Mt. Argentario with 

 the mainland. Dr. Gulliver proposes as a general designa- 

 tion for such necks. The paper described and illustrated 

 by lantern-views the opening of the neck referred to by a 

 storm in December, 1896, when a channel navigable by 

 small boats was formed, and the closing of this channel 

 by waves and cm-rents nearly twelve years later — 

 November, 190S. 



Some of the most interesting papers read in the section 

 during the meeting were reserved for the last day, Wednes- 

 day, September i, which was so far fortunate that the 

 winding up of several other sections on the previous day 

 allowed of the gathering of a larger audience in this section 

 than was present on most of the other mornings. The' 

 first two papers were by Mr. James White, of Ottawa, 

 one of them on the progress of the geographical knowledge 

 of Canada from 1497 to 1909, the other on the economic 

 development of Canada from 1S67 to 1909. The subject 

 treated of in the first of these two papers, which will 

 appear in full in the Geographical Journal, was illustrated 

 by a number of maps for different dates, for the most part 

 at intervals of fifty years, illustrating for the earlier years 

 the extent of exploration within the territory of the present 

 dominion, and for the later years the extent of territory 

 that remained unexplored. The subject of the second was 

 illustrated mainly by means of statistical diagrams. These 

 were followed by a very interesting paper by Mr. J. B. 

 Tyrrell, formerly of the Geological Survey of Canada, on 

 a remarkable forgotten, or nearly forgotten, geographer, 

 Mr. David Thompson, a native of London but of Welsh 

 parentage, who, in the latter part of the eighteenth and 

 the early part of the nineteenth century, travelled more 

 than fifty thousand miles in the western wilds of 

 Canada, making surveys wherever he went, and producing 

 a map which was for many years the only one available, 

 and was distinguished by such accuracy as to induce the 

 reader of the paper to claim for its compiler the designa- 

 tion of the greatest practical land geographer who had 

 ever lived. This paper also will appear in full in the 

 Geographical Journal. Dr. L. A. Bauer, director of the 

 department of terrestrial magnetism at the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, then gave a brief general 

 account of the progress of the general magnetic survey of 

 thp earth in recent years, a subject dealt with more fully 

 in a paper read by the same author to Section A. It may 

 here be mentioned, however, that the author stated that 

 since .April i, 1904, the declination and dip of the mag- 

 netic needle and the intensity of the magnetic current had 

 been determined at some 900 land stations in different parts 

 of the world, and a general magnetic survey of the Pacific 

 Ocean had been made, in the course of which the non- 

 magnetic cruiser Galilee had made cruises amounting 

 to about 60,000 nautical miles. The last paper read 

 before the section was by Mr. Allorge, of the Oxford 

 School of Geography, on the eastern (Tunisian) Atlas 

 Mountains, their main structural and morphological 

 fi'ature=, a paper embodying the results of a journey 

 made by Mr. Allorge and a companion in Tunis last 

 spring. 



It m.ay be mentioned, in conclusion, that a somewhat 

 dramatic incident marked the close of the meeting of this 

 section. The last paper had been read, the audience had 

 withdrawn, and the two secretaries, after winding up the 

 work of the meeting, were just about to leave also, when I 

 they were summoned to the telephone to be informed of ] 

 the reported reaching of the North Pole by Dr. Cook. I 



^o. 20S6, VOL. St] 



PHYSIOLOGY AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 



'THE president's address on "The Physiological Basis of 

 Success," as distinguished from simple survival, has 

 already appeared in N.ATURE (September 2j, p. JS4J. 



The report of the committee on Anaesthetics formed 

 the basis of an interesting discussion. Presented by Dr. 

 Waller, the cliairman, the report gave, in the first instance, 

 a summary of the work done during the year by the 

 members of the committee, each of whom added appendices 

 on the particular branch of the subject they had investi- 

 gated. Appendi.x i. gave the results in clinical practice 

 of Drs. Hewitt and Blumfeld, who employed a mixture of 

 iwo parts of chloroform and three parts of ether; this 

 I hey consider to be safer than chloroform alone when given 

 by the open method. 



Appendix ii. described Dr. Waller's chloroform balance, 

 which shows at a glance the percentage of chloroform 

 given to the patient. .Appendices iii. and iv. summarise 

 Dr. Waller's results on the comparative anaesthetising 

 power of chloroform, ether, and alcohol, and Appendix vi., 

 by Drs. Waller and Symes, gave a method of intra- 

 venous anesthesia which can be used for the basis of 

 a similar calculation. The very important results are 

 reached that i gram of chloroform is equivalent to 8 grams 

 of ether and 32-40 grams of alcohol, according to the 

 method used for the calculation. Further, the effect of 

 mixtures of anjesthetics is that of the sum of the con- 

 stituents. As the anaesthetic action of ether (and still more 

 of alcohol) is so much less than that of chloroform, a mix- 

 ture of ether and chloroform will behave in practice 

 like dilute chloroform, so far as the experiments have 

 gone. 



In the discussion that followed all the speakers expressed 

 their appreciation of the scientific value of the determina- 

 tions that had been made. Dr. N. H. Alcock referred to 

 the excellent results that had been obtained by the adminis- 

 tration of known percentages of chloroform vapour, and 

 summarised the work that had been done on the individual 

 variations in susceptibility to the drug. He regretted that 

 the case of sudden death under a mixture of chloroform 

 and ether (Times, August 5) had supplied such an in- 

 auspicious comment on Appendix i. of the report. 



Prof. .\. R. Cushny considered that the results obtained 

 by Messrs. Buckmaster and Gardiner were of great import- 

 ance to the general theory of pharmacological action. He 

 considered that as the concentration of chloroform in the 

 blood of patients who had succumbed during anaesthesia 

 had not yet been ascertained, it was possible that the 

 concentration was not unduly high. 



Prof. W. T. Porter suggested that the unhappy result in 

 some of these cases could not at present be averted by 

 the most skilful anesthetists, and that the cause might 

 be sought in the hyper-irritability of the heart and vaso- 

 motor apparatus. 



Dr. Webster contributed a paper on the use of atropine 

 and allied drugs in conjunction with anaesthetics, giving 

 the results of numerous experiments. The conclusion 

 reached was not favourable to the use of drugs of this 

 class in conjunction with a general anesthetic. 



Prof. A. B. Macallum read two papers on the inorganic 

 constituents in the blood of fishes, the first dealing with 

 the osmotic pressure and the second with the relations of 

 the inorganic salts to one another. He also read a third 

 paper, on the inorganic composition of the blood in puer- 

 peral eclampsia, in which he pointed out the greater pre- 

 ponderance of magnesium, and especially potassium, in 

 comparison with sodium. 



A group of papers on the tracts in the spinal cord was 

 furnished bv Dr. Page Mav and Prof. Sutherland Simpson. 

 Dr. Page May, who exhibited microscopical specimens and 

 lantern-slides, gave a further description of a descending 

 tract discover'^d bv him. and which he names the " oostero- 

 seotal tract." The origin and course, as determined bv 

 Wallerian degeneration and by retrograde chromatolysis, is 

 from a joint region of the ootic thalamus and corpora 

 quadrigemina along chiefly the mesial fillet into the 

 posterior column of the spinal cord, where it lies symmetric- 

 ally on either side in close contact with the posterior septum. 



