BIOMETRIKA.

A JOURNAL FOR THE STATISTICAL STUDY OF BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. Edited, in Consultation with FRANCIS GALTON, by W. F. R. WELDON, KARL PEARSON, and C. B. Davenport.

Now Ready. Vol. III., Part IV. November, 1904. Price 10s. net. Contents:

I.

Merism and Sex in Spinax Niger. By R. C. Punnett, M A., Fellow
of Gonville and Caius College and Demonstrator of Comparative
Anatomy in the University of Cambridge. (With 1 Plate.)

Note on Mr. Punnett's Section on the Inheritance of Meristic
Characters. By Karl Pearson.

II. On the Measurement of Internal Capacity from Cranial Circumfer ences. By M. A. Lewenz, M A., and Karl Pearson, F.R.S. (With 2 Plates and 2 Figures in text.)

III. Étude biométrique sur les Variations de la Fleur et sur l'Hétérostylie de Pulmonaria officinalis L. Par Edmond Gain, Professeur adjoint à la Faculté des Sciences de l'Université de Nancy. (With 63 Figures in text.)

Miscellanea. (i) On the Correlation between Hair Colour and Eye Colour in Man. By Karl Pearson. (ii)

On the Correlation between Age and the Colour of Hair and Eyes in Man. From Notes by Dr. Ginzo Uchida. (iii) On the Contingency between Occupation in the Case of Fathers and Sons. By Emily Perrin.

ANNALS OF
OF BOTANY.

Edited by ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., of the University of Edinburgh, D. H. SCOTT, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., of the Royal Gardens, Kew, W. G. FARLOW, M.D., of Harvard University, U.S.A., assisted by other Botanists. Vol. XIX. No. LXXIII. royal Svo, paper covers, with 5 Plates and 1 Figure in the Text, 145. CONTENTS:

H. M. WARD. Recent Researches on the Parasitism of Fungi. -J. ERIKSSON. On the Vegetative Life of some Uridineae.A. J. MASLEN. The Relation of Root to Stem in Calamites.F. CZAPEK. The Anti-ferment Reaction in Tropistic Movements of Plants.-G. J. PEIRCE. The Dissemination and Germination of Arceuthobium occidentale, Eng.-Miss E. SARGANT and Miss A. ROBERTSON. The Anatomy of the Scutellum in Zea Mais. E. S. SALMON. Further Cultural Experiments with Blologic Forms" of the Erysiphaceae.-S. H. VINES. The Proteases of Plants (III.).-Notes.

Scales. By G. Udny Yule. (With 2 Figures in text.)

(v) Albinism in Sicily-A Correction. By W. Bateson.

"Biometrika" appears about four times a year. A volume containing about 400 pages, with plates and tables, will be issued annually.

The Subscription price, payable in advance, is 30s. net per volume (post free); single numbers 10s. net. Volumes I., II. and III. (1902-4) complete, 30s. net per volume. Bound in buckram, 34s. 6d. net per volume. London: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, Ave Maria Lane, C. F. CLAY, Manager,

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Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. XIV. On the General Theory of Skew Correlation and NonLinear Regression. By KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. Price 4/TECHNICAL SERIES. III.

On the Graphics of Metal Arches, with Special Reference to the Relative Strength of Two-Pivoted, Three-Pivoted and Built-in Metal Arches. By L. W. ATCHERLEY and KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. Price 5/

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THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL.

PRICE 25. CONTENTS.-FEBRUARY.

On a New Genus of Alga, Clementsia Markhamiana. By George Murray, F.R.S. (with Plate).

On Certain Recent Changes in the Crater of Stromboli. By Tempest Anderson, M.D., D.Sc. (with Sketch-Map and eleven Plates).

The Mountains of Turkestan. By Ellsworth Huntington (with seven Illustrations).

South-Western Abyssinia. By B. H. Jessen (with five Illustrations and Map).

Notes on an Irish Lake District. By O. J. R. Howarth (with Sketch-Map). Lieut. Byd Alexander's Expedition through Nigeria.

Jomokangkar. By Major C. F. Close, C.M.G., R.E.

The Submarine Great Cañon of the Hudson River. By J. W. Spencer, A.M., Ph.D., F.G.S. (with Sketch-Map and six Sections).

On the Method of Studying I halassology. By Prof. Ludovico Marini. The Indian Census Report.

Reviews.

The Monthly Record.

Obituary:-Sir Erasmus Ommanney and Sir James Donnet. By Sir Clements R. Markham, K.C. B. Colonel C. E. Stewart, C.B., C.M.G., C.I.E. Edward John Payne. Captain Claud Alexander. Charles H. Allen.

Correspondence:-Results of the British Occupation of Minorca. By
Frederick Sternberg.

Meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, Session 1904-1905.
Geographical Literature of the Month.

New Maps.

EDWARD STANFORD, 12, 13, 14 Long Acre, London, W.C.

ANTLITZ DER ERDE). By EDUARD SUESS,
Professor of Geology in the University of Vienna.
Translated by HERTHA B. C. SOLLAS, Ph.D.,
Heidelberg, under the direction of W. J. SOLLAS,
Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. With
a special Preface for the English Translation by Professor
SUESS. Vol. I. With 4 Maps and 50 other Illustrations.
25s. net.

STANDARD.-" English students are deeply indebted to Miss Hertha Sollas, who, under direction of her father, Prof. Sollas, is translating the Antlitz der Erde.' So well have they executed this difficult task that we frequently find ourselves forgetting the book was not originally written in English. Prof. Suess has accumulated, by his unwearied labours, a vast store of facts, has marshalled them with a master's hand, and has given all who make a study of this planet's history a work exceptionally valuable, if only for its suggestiveness."

of the planet is an incandescent mass which is slowly cooling and consolidating from the surface inward, and is enclosed within a comparatively thin solid crust. Some distinguished physicists, however, have contended that the first formed crust would break up, sink down, and be re-melted; and thus that permanent consolidation would begin at the centre, and would gradually extend outwards, until eventually the whole globe became practically solid, with only here and there large vesicular spaces whence active volcanoes are supplied. The densest and least fusible materials would thus tend to accumulate towards the centre, and the lightest and most fusible towards the outside. The geological belief rests upon a large body of evidence from the structure of the terrestrial crust, which it is difficult or impossible to explain except on the supposition of an internal mass which at least in its outer parts is sufficiently liquid to emerge at the surface as molten lava. The physical argument rests on certain mathematical assumptions the validity of which has been contested. One of these assumptions is that if the interior were liquid, tides would be set up in its mass, and the crust would rise and fall with the passage of the internal tidal wave. Another objection is based on the supposition that huge mountain-chains could not possibly be supported by a thin crust, but would sink down into the interior. More recently the idea has been suggested that the internal core of the earth is gaseous. At the high temperatures and enormous pressures in the interior of the planet, gaseous iron or lava must be more incompressible than steel is at the surface. On the outside of this gaseous mass it is believed that the materials pass into the liquid form or magma which extends as a comparatively thin envelope round the gaseous core, and shades off outward into a solid crust which may not be more than twenty-five or thirty miles in thickness. The most recent earthquake observations have been quoted in support of this view. Messrs. Loewy and Puiseux approach the subject impartially from a study of the phenomena presented by the surface of the moon as recorded in a series of photographs. They accept the general belief that our satellite was once a liquid globe, and that traces of its passage from that condition to its present state of consolidation can be clearly recognised. They cannot say whether its temperature increases with depth from the surface, or if there is any variation in density, but they find in their photographs various particulars which, in their opinion, show that the solidification started from the surface.

The differences of level on the surface of the moon are relatively greater and more abrupt than those on the surface of the earth, and they display in many ways the dynamic effects which a liquid when in movement exerts on its solid containing walls, such as the superficial outpourings which have covered twofifths of the visible lunar surface and have turned these tracts into continuous plains, round the margins of which numerous remains of the previous relief have been left. Other effects are seen in the traces of instability in the mountain ranges, the fractures, sharply-defined terraces and marginal fissures often observable. The neighbourhood of a great sheet of liquid material is required to account for the undulations and horizontal displacements which have affected large tracts of the surface, such as the breaking down of the crest of the Apennines, the separation of the rectangular blocks of the Caucasus, and the formation of the rectilinear valleys of Rheita, the Alps, and Ariadæus.

The most decisive argument in favour of the gradual cooling of the moon from the outside towards the interior appears to be furnished by some facts which are brought out with great clearness by the

recent photographs. Thus the two French astronomers have satisfied themselves that after the first establishment of a thin crust the inward retreat of the liquid took place gradually, until the fatal moment arrived when it partly lost connection with the overlying solidified crust, so that an intermediate vacant space was left between them. This temporary interval, being filled with gas at a high pressure, formed a cushion which was sufficiently elastic to prevent any falling-in, but was too limited in extent to affect isostatic compensations, so that the internal tides might be developed without endangering the external figure of the moon. When, for some unknown reason, as happens also on our globe, the lunar eruptive forces assumed special vigour, the crust, yielding to the pressures along its least resisting parts, was overflowed by the liquid interior. Such local subsidences gave rise to the great cirques and various other features in the polar region, where the cooling was most rapid, and where, for easily intelligible reasons, the crust reached a considerably greater thickness. But in the equatorial zone, where the tides and the centrifugal force are most powerful, these violent perturbations led to vast subsidences which now form the lunar "seas. The survival of remains of the earlier topographical relief, still visible along the borders of these tracts, bears witness to the nature of the gigantic changes. Each eruptive movement has marked, by the level bottom of the formations, the height of the level of the subjacent liquid. Five such stages in the subsidence of the molten matter are displayed in the photographs. We can understand that the process would be repeated with diminishing energy until the gradually thickening crust presented too great an obstacle to the eruptive action. Various striking examples are cited by the authors; in particular one where the five platforms are separated from each other by a step-like interval of several thousand metres. Had the consolidation begun at the centre of the moon, it is contended, the result would have been altogether different, for then only the latest level should have been seen, and the eruptive forces would have had neither an opportunity of manifesting themselves nor the means of leaving permanent traces at very different stages.

MM. Loewy and Puiseux examine the argument from the tides in favour of the consolidation of a planet from the centre outwards, and remark that it must be considered as doubtful, because we do not know how far the coefficient of viscosity or internal friction, which has been employed in the calculations, agrees with the reality. They suggest that as the materials in the interior are under enormous pressure they may quite possibly have such viscosity, and yield so slowly to planetary influences, which are continually changing in direction in consequence of the diurnal movement, that no appreciable tidal deformation may result. In the case of the moon it is admitted that the tides in the still liquid mass would for a long time delay the formation of an outer crust, which before its final establishment must have undergone many violent disruptions, when its brokenup sheets were overflowed by the molten matter from within. But in the course of time it has ended by attaining a great thickness in consequence of continual cooling and the contraction of the outer layers.

The argument that on the supposition of a comparatively thin crust the existence of mountainous masses would be impossible is less applicable to the moon, where the force of gravity is six times less than on the earth. But in the opinion of the two French astronomers the argument need not be seriously considered, either for our planet or for our satellite, inasmuch as it depends on a problematic theory which is entirely based on an inaccurate

WE regret to announce that Prof. G. B. Howes, F.R.S., died on Saturday last, February 4, at fifty-one years of age.

It is proposed to erect a monument at Laibach, in Austria, to the memory of Vega, author of the well-known table of logarithms, which is now in its eightieth edition.

FROM the American Mathematical Bulletin for January we learn of the death of Dr. Francesco Chizzoni, professor of geometry at Modena, and of Prof. Achsah M. Ely (Miss Ely), head of the department of mathematics at Vassar College, U.S.A.

THE Wilde medal of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society has been awarded to Prof. C. Lapworth, F.R.S. The medal will be presented on February 28, when the Wilde lecture of the society will be delivered by Dr. D. H. Scott, F.R.S., on “The Early History of Seedbearing Plants, as recorded in the Carboniferous Flora."

FOR the past year, a station for solar research has been maintained on Mount Wilson, California, by the Yerkes Observatory, with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. This station has now been replaced by a new solar observatory which has been established by the Carnegie Institution, and the following staff, formerly of the Yerkes Observatory, has been appointed :Prof. G. E. Hale (director), Prof. G. W. Ritchey, Mr. F. Ellerman, and Mr. W. S. Adams.

PROF. VALDEMAR STEIN, leader of a well known Copenhagen analytical and chemical laboratory, where for a number of years official and private tests and investigations in Denmark have taken place, died on February 1, aged 69 years. He took over in 1863 the laboratory founded by H. C. Örsted and altered it to its present shape, making it a valuable public institution. Beside his work there Stein was Government adviser in chemical agriculture, and wrote many scientific articles on chemical and agricultural subjects.

THE Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, at the last annual meeting, awarded the Lomonosoff prize of 100l. to Prof. N. A. Menschutkin for his well-known and extensive researches in the domain of theoretical chemistry. The Ivanoff prize was awarded to Prof. P. N. Lebedeff, of Moscow, for his remarkable experimental researches on the pressure of light. At the same meeting, Prof. S. Th. Oldenburg declared, in his yearly review of the work of the academy, that the Polar Committee had given up all hope of the return of Baron Edward Toll, F. G. Seeberg, and their two companions. The party was probably lost during the Arctic night while trying to cross the ice-fields lying between Bennett Island and the New Siberian archipelago.

A NATIONAL exhibition of brewing materials and products will be held in Paris during March, 1906.

were

AT the meeting of the French Physical Society on January 20, under the presidency of M. d'Arsonval, the following officers elected :-Vice-president, M. Amagat; general secretary, M. Henri Abraham; treasurer, M. de la Touanne. The office of president falls on M. Dufet.

THE Times correspondent at Colombo states that Sir H. A. Blake, Governor of Ceylon, announced at the last meeting of the Asiatic Society that Sinhalese medical books of the sixth century described 67 varieties of mosquitoes and 424 kinds of malarial fever caused by mosquitoes.

Ar the meeting of the Anthropological Institute to be held on Tuesday next, February 14, Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., will exhibit a series of kinematograph pictures of native dances from the Torres Straits, taken by him when in New Guinea. Applications for admission should be addressed to the Secretary of the Institute at 3 Hanoversquare, W.

A LARGE and influential international committee has been formed in Heidelberg, under the presidency of His Excellency Dr. A. Freiherr von Dusch, Minister of Education, &c., of the Grand Duchy of Baden, with the object of honouring the memory of the late Prof. Carl Gegenbaur, who for nearly thirty years was the director of the Anatomical Institute of Heidelberg. The committee has decided upon a life-size bust of Gegenbaur, to be executed in marble by Prof. C. Seffner, Leipzig. The bust will be placed in the vestibule of the Anatomical Institute, probably in the early summer, at a date not yet fixed. The committee invites former pupils of the deceased master, and all those who have benefited from his epoch-making works on human and comparative anatomy, to send monetary contributions, with their addresses and titles, to Prof. M. Fuerbringer, or to Prof. E. Goeppert, both in Heidelberg. Every contributor will receive a picture of the bust, and casts may be obtained, on special application, from Prof. C. Seffner

AFTER an interval of two years the fifth conference of West Indian agriculturists was held at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, from January 4 to 13. It was attended by offi cial, scientific, commercial, and practical representatives from all parts. In his presidential address, Sir Daniel Morris gave an interesting survey of the great economic change which is in progress. Taken in the aggregate. sugar cultivation must still be regarded as the backbone of the colonial industries, but in some of the islands it has already become of comparatively little or no importance. Trinidad is now a cacao-producing island, its exports of this commodity having risen to the value of a million sterling per annum. Grenada's cacao exports are valued at 250,000l., and Jamaica's at 80,000l. Cotton growing. too, has been successfully re-established in several islands. and remunerative prices for the raw cotton are being obtained from Lancashire merchants. The exportations of fruit far exceed in value those of the staple industry. The development of the tobacco, rubber, sisal hemp, fishcuring, and other industries also came under review, and Sir Daniel dwelt upon the importance of agricultural shows and on the provision made by his department for teaching elementary science and the principles of agriculture in the various colleges and elementary schools. Numerous papers were read and discussed, Prof. d'Albuquerque, Dr. Watts, Prof. Harrison, and others supplying valuable information relating to sugar; Mr. Hart, Mr. de Gannes, &r., on cacao; Mr. Bovell, Mr. Sands, &c., on cotton; and so on.

DR. STRONG, the director of the Biological Laboratory, Manila, has published a valuable experimental study of the subject of protective inoculation against Asiatic cholera (No. 16, Bureau of Government Laboratories, Manila). After detailing the various methods of producing experimentally immunity against the cholera microbe, he discusses the use of Haffkine's prophylactic, which has been extensively employed in India with encouraging results, but an objection to which is the marked reaction that follows the inoculation, causing the inoculated person to be somewhat ill for two or three days. To remove this objection, Dr. Strong has obtained a prophylactic fluid by suspending the cholera microbes obtained from agar cultures in sterile water, keeping this suspension at 60° C. for several hours, then incubating at 37° C. for three or four days, and finally filtering through a porous porcelain filter. The fluid so obtained (a product of the autolytic digestion of the cholera microbes) was found to produce a high immunity in animals against cholera, and when injected into man was found to be free from danger, and to produce practically no general or local disturbance.

IN the Victorian Naturalist for November, 1904, it is mentioned that, at the October meeting of the Field Naturalists' Club in Melbourne, a number of collections of wild flowers were sent from State schools in the country, including some so far away as Hawkesdale. Dimboola, and Mansfield. These were of great interest to teachers and children from the schools in Melbourne, who were allowed to take away named specimens for study. Would it not be possible to include in one of the exhibitions, such as the Grand Horticultural Exhibition held last June in the gardens of the Royal Botanic Society, similar collections from country schools for the benefit of schools in the metropolis?

It is remarkable how many comparative experiments conducted in tropical countries, with some or all of the established rubber plants, have demonstrated the superiority of Hevea brasiliensis, the source of Para rubber. One of the latest accounts is that by Mr. W. H. Johnson, director of agriculture, Gold Coast, issued as one of the miscellaneous series of Colonial Reports. Experiments in the Botanic Gardens, Aburi, were unsuccessful with the West African vine, Landolphia owariensis, Ceara, Manihot glaziovii, Assam, Ficus elastica, and Central American rubber, Castilloa elastica; fairly satisfactory results were obtained with the indigenous Funtumia elastica, but Hevea excelled in quantity and quality of rubber, in its rate of growth, and has been remarkably free from insect and fungus pests.

THERE seems to be good reason to believe that exploration of the more remote parts of Eastern Asia will add very considerably to the number of botanical species already known. In vol. iv. of the Records of the Botanical Survey of India, Sir Joseph Hooker states that the number of species of Impatiens, the second largest genus of Indian flowering plants, recorded for India has increased from 124 to 200 in thirty years, and that many more may be expected from the less accessible districts of Burma, Nepal, and the Eastern Himalayas. In the hope of inducing forest officers or other officials in India to take up the collection, or better, the study of this genus, Sir Joseph Hooker is publishing in the Records an epitome of the known species, and he also directs attention to two points of interest, the anomalous structure of the flower, and the remarkable details of segregation of the species.

Ir is always of interest to note a distinct novelty in the photographic line, but in the new Lambex system of daylight loading and film and plate changing, which has been introduced by Messrs. R. and J. Beck, Ltd., in a new class of cameras called the Lambex cameras, we have quite a new invention. The makers have sent us for inspection one of these cameras with the so-called Lambex skeleton and its envelope. The method of exposing is most simple and ingenious, and is one that will no doubt find considerable favour among photographers. The skeleton, less than half an inch thick, is the name of the folded strip of paper with a tag attached at each fold; in each of the folds, twelve in number, a film or plate, of any description or make, is held by a flap at the top and two corner slots at the bottom, and an opaque card is attached to the front. This skeleton is contained in a double length opaque envelope, the unexposed films remaining in the lower portion, and the exposed films being pulled one by one into the upper portion by the attached tags. The lower portion of the envelope is provided with an opening to correspond to the size of the film through which the exposure is made, and surrounding this opening is a stiff projecting edge of card into which the envelope with its skeleton is slid into a frame in the camera. The makers claim many advantages for this system, such as daylight loading, any plates or films may be used, the skeletons can be recharged, no scratching of films, no mechanism, &c. The compactness of this system renders it applicable to both folding, pocket, and box cameras, and the makers have now prepared a series of well-made Lambex cameras, constructed in several forms and sizes, and fitted with their well-known lenses. Limitations of space prevent us from entering more into detail, but the handbook of instructions in the form of a neat pocket-book contains all the necessary information.

William Ramsay contributes an article having the title To the February number of the Monthly Review, Sir "What is an Element?" It contains a popular account of the changes introduced into conceptions of the nature of elements owing to the discovery of the inert gases of the atmosphere and of radium and the radio-active elements.

THE remarkable power of aluminium to absorb completely the vapour of mercury even when highly diluted with air, and at the ordinary temperature, is the subject of a paper by N. Tarugi in the Gazzetta for January 14. This property is made the basis of an extremely delicate test for mercury, and of a preventive measure against poisoning by mercury vapour. A species of respirator has been patented in which the air that is inhaled is made to pass through a mass of finely divided aluminium; in this passage every trace of mercury is absorbed, the action being so complete that the dense vapours evolved by heated mercuric chloride may be breathed with impunity. The respirator has already been introduced with good results into the mercury mines of Monte Amiata.

A STRIKING instance of the intimate connection existing between the configuration of chemical substances and their susceptibility to fermentation is to be found in a paper by C. Ulpiani and M. Cingolani in the Gazzetta for January 14. The Bacillus acidi urici, which has the property of decomposing uric acid into carbon dioxide and urea by a process of successive hydrolysis and oxidation, is without action on the closely allied substances a-methyluric acid, guanine, caffeine, and theobromine. On the other hand the bacillus is capable of rapidly and completely oxidising such acids as tartronic, malonic, and mesoxalic acids, which contain the same carbon chain as that constituting the