Societies and Academies

Abstract

PARIS. Academy of Sciences, October 11.—M. Ed. Perrier in the chair.—The President announced the. deaths of Edouard Prillieux and Philippe Hatt, members of the academy.—L. Lecornu: The deformation of a cylindrical tube.—Henryk Arctowski: The solar faculae. An account of a statistical study of Greenwich heliographic observations. From measurements of the areas of the spots and faculae, the maximum for the latter is nine days behind the maximum for the spots. The author, from his researches on the Greenwich data, considers the phenomenon of the variation of the frequency of the sun-spots as being only a manifestation subordinate to the phenomenon of the variation of, the faculæ.—Marcel Brillouin: Certain problems of mathematical physics in the case of hollow bodies.—Pierre Lesage: Salted plants and the transmission of acquired characters. Plants watered with salt water show differences, more or less marked, from plants of the same species watered with pure water. Starting with seeds of Lepidium sativum arising from plants watered with weak salt solutions in 1911, it is shown that some of the acquired characters are transmitted by the seeds,- although the plants arising from the latter had been watered with soft water only.—E. Demoussy: The localisation of the acids and sugars in fruits..Various species of fruit, both ripe and partially ripe, were subjected to gradually increasing- pressure, and the juices expressed collected in fractions and analysed separately. In some cases the amounts of acid arid sugar vary considerably with the pressure. These variations are marked with apricots and grapes, small for peaches, and do not appear in strawberries and melons. The cause of this variation is discussed from the point of view of the osmotic pressures in the cells. The localisation the dissolved matter in fruits is regarded as affording an explanation of the marked difference in the taste of certain fruits in the raw and cooked states.