From the commencement of the meteorological researches on Ben Nevis, a double set of observations have been carried on—one set on the top of the Ben, and the other at a station at Fort William near the level of the sea. It is not so much from the observations made on the top considered by themselves, as to their relations to those made at the base, that we may hope to arrive at a better knowledge of the atmosphere, and particularly at a better understanding of the principles of weather forecasting. Accordingly, both stations were from the first fitted up with the best instruments.

“Go to the quality of the active principle; abstract it from the material, and contemplate it by itself. Then determine the time; how long, at furthest, this thing, of this particular quality, can naturally subsist.”—Marc. Aurel., Book ix. sect. 25.

In the course of the autumn of this year (1885) I have taken several occasions to determine the distribution of temperature in the water of Loch Lomond. The results of these observations are interesting, as indicating the march of temperature in the different layers at different localities in the lake, and also the gain and loss of heat with the changing seasons.

The majority of recent investigations have concluded that the thickening of the rim of the blastoderm, and the new layer which is derived from it, is brought about by a true invagination of the segmented blastoderm. On the other hand, Klein and Kupffer hold that the newly formed layer is not derived from the segmented blastoderm (archiblast), but is mainly produced from an unsegmented portion of the blastoderm (parablast), which is intermediate in position between the archiblast and the yolk.

The second, only, of two short papers which I communicated to the Society a month ago, on points connected with the Kinetic Theory of gases, took account of the greater probability of collision between two particles as their relative speed is larger. I propose now to calculate the effect of this consideration on the results of my first paper.

The recent extensive therapeutic use of cocain has naturally aroused great interest with regard to its chemical constitution. As is well known, when heated with dilute mineral acids, it takes up two molecules of water, and becomes decomposed into benzoic acid, methyl alcohol, and another alkaloid ecgonin. When cocain, however, is simply heated in watery solution for some hours, a less complete decomposition ensues, the solution depositing on evaporation a crystalline substance, which is benzoylecgonin.

My object in this paper is to call attention to a few observations which occurred to me during a recent scientific survey of part of Central Africa, regarding the larger economy of tropical nature. And I wish especially, and with much deference, to attempt to supplement a well-known theory of Mr Darwin's, by bringing forward another claimant to the honour of being, along with the earth-worm, the leading organic agricultural and geological agent in nature.

In January I read a paper on the salinity of the Firth of Forth, in which the law governing the distribution of salt in that estuary was pointed out. It appeared that in the eastern or seaward part of the Firth the change in mean salinity per mile was very slight, and the tidal range was small, while both decreased gradually as the sea was approached. On the other hand, the riverward half of the Firth showed a rapid alteration in density along its length, and a correspondingly great range between high and low tide.

In the case of a metallic conductor the resistance may be got at once by means of Ohm's Law. But when the conductor, the resistance of which is to be determined, is an electrolyte, the electromotive force acting along the circuit is only partly employed in producing the current.

A very considerable number of earthworms have been referred to the genus Lumbricus, and its immediate allies Dendrobœna, Allolobophora, &c, which have in reality no marked affinities with any of these genera. Such are, for example, Lumbricus corethrurus of Fritz Müller, which Perrier has shown to belong to a distinct generic type described by him under the name of Urochœta, and Lumbricus microchœta of Rapp, which is also the type of a new genus, widely differing from Lumbricus proper. On the other hand, a very large number of species have been referred to the latter genus, concerning which there is little or no knowledge, so that it is impossible to speak with any certainty as to their exact systematic position.

From the synthetic outline of the history of biology contained in a previous paper, the practical corollary was deduced, that it was now legitimate, if not indeed urgent, for the biologist to reverse the usual order of investigation, and instead of merely adding inductively to the categories (therein enumerated) of accumulated fact, boldly to set about interpreting these in terms of their fundamental secret, that of constructive and destructive metabolism—anabolism and katabolism.

The forms of the uniaxial systems may be regarded as derived from forms, or parts of forms or combinations, of the regular system by uniform expansion or contraction in a direction parallel to the axis of the uniaxial system, i.e., normal to a face of the cube for the tetragonal, and normal to a face of the octahedron for the hexagonal system. Faces, therefore, which are, in the regular form or combination, at right angles to or parallel to such axis, retain their relative angular position unchanged in the uniaxial form or combination, and can be represented by means of indices referring to the rectangular axes of the regular system, whatever be the amount of the deformation (expansion or contraction). These faces are prism faces, parallel to the axis, and basal faces at right angles to it. All other faces have their angular position affected by the deformation.