Societies and Academies

Abstract

PARIS Academy of Sciences, August 6.—M. Peligot in the chair. Conditions for the principal normals of a curve to be principal normals of a second curve, by M. Serret.—New considerations on the localisation of cerebral centres regulating the coordinated movements of articulate and written language, by M. Bouilland. A case described in which a young man lost the power of writing, though there was no indication of a morbid state either in the hand or other parts of the right arm, and which would commonly be called one of writer's cramp, M. Bouilland attributes it to a like cause to that in aphasia, viz., lesion of a cerebral centre regulative of the movements involved. And if the co-ordinating centre for oral language is (as is thought) in the third circumvolution of the left anterior lobe of the brain, it is considered likely that either in this circumvolution or in the nearest part of another, resides the regulative power for the co-operating movements of written language.—Experimental researches made with gases produced by explosion of dynamite on various characters of meteorites and bolides (continued), by M. Daubrée. The angularity of the fragments in many cases indicates that they have been subject to strongly-heated and compressed gases only during a very short time, probably less than a second, having been separated near the end of the bolide's course. Small quantities of gas may give great effects, and M. Daubrée shows that the encounter of a bolide with air in the higher regions of the atmosphere is a fact of the same order with some of his experiments.—Tertiary strata of Vicentin (concluded), by MM. Hebert and Munier-Chalmas.—M. Thenard presented (from M. Videau, of Blanzy) a remarkable specimen of crystallised glass, obtained in a Siemens furnace, acting eight months and a half.—Spherical refraction; exposition of the laws, and formulae of Gauss, starting with the principle of the equivalence of physical forces, by M. Giraud Teulon.—On the formula 22n + 1, by M. Pepin.—Observations on a memoir of M. Haton de la Gonpilliere, entitled “Direct and Inverse Developpoids of Various Orders,” by Abbé Aoust.—Observations of the planets 170, 171, and 172, at the observatory of Marseilles; discovery of the planet 173 by M. Borrelly, by M. Stephan.—Elements and ephemerides of the planet 148 Gallia, by M. Bossert-Reply to some of the objections formulated by M. Cosson against the project of formation of a Saharan sea, by M. Roudaire.—Comparative influence of leafy woods and resinous woods on rain and the hygrometric state of the air, by M. Fautrat. If vapours dissolved in the air were apparent like fogs, we should find forests enveloped by a large moist screen, and for pine forests the envelope would be greater than for others. The forest, too, receives more rain than the neighbouring land, and the fact is more pronounced in the case of pine forests than in others. Pines retain in their branches more than half of the water poured on them, while leafy trees let 58 per cent go to the ground.-On the catechines, by M. Gautier.—Oil the ovary during pregnancy, by M. De Linety.—On the quantity of hæmoglobin in red blood corpuscles, by M. Malassez. With a new colorimeter he estimated the quantity of hæmoglobin in a cubic millimetre of blood; then, dividing this by the number of corpuscles in the same volume, he arrived at the average quantity of hæmoglobin per corpuscles. In Parisians in the prime of life the number got was 27.7 to 31.9 μμ gr. (or millionths of a millionth of a gramme). In health the “richness in hæmoglobin” varies little in an individual; but in disease it is otherwise. In anæmic persons, the quantity varied between 10 and 25 μμ gr. Birds which have fewer corpuscles than mammalia, have more hæmoglobin in each. The same holds for fish, reptiles, and batrachians, but in these, the increase of haemoglobin does not as in birds, compensate the diminution in number of corpuscles. Variations in volume (of corpuscles) may explain variations in richness in hæmoglobin among animal species little apart; but for those far apart one must take account of the presence of a nucleus, and suppose also modifications of the globular substance.—Experiments demonstrating that chloroform has not any action either on septicity or on the vibrionians of putrefied blood, by M. Feltz. Chloroform, then, cannot serve for separating in septic putrefied blood the diastasic from the organic ferments.—On a new larval form of Cestoides (second note), by M. Villot.—M. Perez made some observations on M. Fol's opinions regarding fecundation of the egg in the star-fish and sea-urchin.