June 21, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



973 



erties of the AB system determines the fre- 

 quency of the sun-spot period: the element A 

 escapes (let us say) in gaseous form. As the 

 curves are drawn there is not sufficient ' super- 

 saturation ' to transmute A to B. This would 

 occur at t"d" for instance. 



The relation of the curves td and tp will 

 vary with the solar latitude, for td is a mere 

 graph of temperature and depth while tp is 

 inherently a graph of temperature and pres- 

 sure. On passing from pole to equator tp 

 moves hodily from left to right in diagram. 

 At the poles the region A may thus be perma- 

 nently absent, while at the equator t'd' may 

 never fall below tp. Hence, an intermediate 

 sun-spot zone may be inferred. 



Finally it is clear that the cycle of changes 

 may be reversed as in Fig. 2. Let the transi- 

 tion of A into 5 be a source of heat, and let 

 the ensuing eleven years of the sun-spot 

 period be an interval of cooling. Immedi- 

 ately after eruption, the temperature depth 

 line will have some high position, t'd', and A 

 matter only is in occurrence. As the sun 

 cools superficially, t'd' tends toward td, and 

 between the depths c and c', B matter is poten- 

 tially present. When, after sufficient ' super- 

 saturation,' the transition A to B ultimately 

 does occur, tp is again raised to t'p' ; and so 

 on in turn. The engine works at the expense 

 of atomic energy, supposing that B matter' is 

 continually eliminated from the active region 

 by gravitation, as the t"d" condition is not 

 reached. Carl Baeus 



' If corpuscles leave A to transfer it into B, an 

 absence of these may prohibit the reversed trans- 

 fer BA. 



DOES THE MAMMALIAN HEART OBEY THE LAW FOB 

 CHEMICAL REACTION VELOCITIES AS INFLU- 

 ENCED BY TEMPERATURE? 



In a recent paper' it was shown that the 

 temperature coefficient for the velocity of the 

 heart-beat in mammals is the same as that for 

 ft purely chemical reaction. From the results 

 of previous workers who experimented upon 

 the influence of temperature upon the mam- 

 malian heart this fact was shown in a clear 

 and decisive manner. At that time the writer 

 had not yet seen Herlitzka's paper.' This au- 

 thor takes data out of only three of the fifteen 

 to eighteen tables in Langendorff's paper, and 

 determines a few constants. In one case, 

 table XIV., in a range of temperature from 

 23° to 39° 0., he exhibits only five constants. 

 Between 29° and 35.2° there are no constants 

 shown, but for thesa degrees he finds the con- 

 stants 3.45 and 10.8, and then complains that 

 these constants do not represent the curve of 

 the formula for a chemical reaction velocity 

 for temperature, but rather a straight line. 

 In tables VII. and VIII. ' he says that the 

 values observed correspond well enough with 

 the values of K calculated from the formula, 

 but that one, for 35° (3.74), is too high! 



Herlitzka has looked at a few individual 

 cases of Langendorff's results. On the other 

 hand, the present writer put all of Langen- 

 dorff's results (from fifteen cat hearts) to- 

 gether into one table; put the figures in round 

 numbers and determined the constants from 



' Snyder, Charles D., Amer. Jour, of Physiology, 

 December 1, 1906. 



•Herlitzka, 'Richerche suU' azion* della t«ni- 

 peratura sul euore isolate di Mammifero,' Zeit- 

 schrift f. Allgemeine Physiologie, V., 264, 1905. 



