To appreciate the present position of biological science, it is necessary to have a clear conception of the history. For this, abundant historical materials are indeed available, and reach their highest level in the standard works of Sachs and Carus. Such detailed histories, however, produce, by their very completeness, a measure of embarrassment. Moreover, the existence of numerous distinct lines of research, often equally prominent at the same time and in the same work, is apt to obscure the fact that the science has really had a simple and natural evolution. What the student demands is not so much any detailed chronological survey, but rather a sketch which will show how the whole system of modern biology, with its increasingly exhaustive analysis of detail, lies within a few essential lines of research, as laid down by a definite succession of original thinkers.

For many years past some little amount of isolated work has occasionally been accomplished in photographing certain of the brighter stars. But lately, stellar photography has gone forward with leaps and bounds; so that at a dozen different Observatories in Europe, America, South Africa, and Australia, so much is now being done in that line, that there is a speedy prospect of, in a manner, the whole sidereal heavens being photographed, and after a fashion that would not only have astonished Hipparchus, but been equally surprising to either Sir William Herschel, or Argelander or Struve up to within a very few years ago.

The Indians, to whom the preparation of these heads is traced, are scattered over a wide tract of country on the eastern side of the Andes. They are known under the general designation Macao, the name of the region they inhabit—a designation which includes the Jivaros, Pastazas, Mendes, Tumbas, and more than twenty other tribes. Early brought into contact with the first Spanish invaders, they suffered much at their hands. Many references to them occur in the history of the Spanish settlers. Their appearance, social habits, and superstitious practices have much prominence given to them in the recent literature of South American travel. At present I limit my remarks mainly to the specimens of “shrunk” or reduced heads now before us. They are from several points of view remarkable, and raise several questions of great ethnological interest, but trustworthy references to them are comparatively few. Indeed, the only sources of information worth mentioning are a communication by Mr William Bollaert, F.R.G.S., to the Ethnological Society of London, 1860, and another, by Sir John Lubbock, to the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain in 1873. The former is entitled “On the Idol Human Head of the Jivaro Indians in Ecuador;” the latter, “Note on the Macas Indians.” In Mr Bollaert's paper special attention is given to a specimen obtained by M. José Felix Barriero, of the Secretariat of the Provincial Government, Quito, and sent by him to Don R. de Silva Ferro, Chilian Consul, London. This specimen was placed in the Ecuador Court of the International Exhibition, 1862. Sir John Lubbock's paper is devoted chiefly to a general description of the Macas Indians.

The lacquer tree (Rhus vernicifera) is indigenous to Japan; it supplies a valuable timber, and its fruit yields vegetable wax, but it is chiefly cultivated on account of its juice–lacquer (Urushi)–which forms the basis of the famous Japanese varnishes. The juice is obtained by making incisions in the tree, and it is made into a varnish by simply stirring in the sun in order to drive off an excess of moisture. Different colours may be imparted to the varnish by the addition of various metals, oxides, and sulphides; and after it has been applied to an object it must be hardened by exposure to a moist atmosphere at a moderately high temperature.

The purpose of this paper is to give rules for the construction of knots Mn of n crossings, having each one or more linear sections PR, such that by unkissing at P and at R, shall be obtained two unifilar knots of n – 1 crossings. See my paper “On the Twists of Listing and Tait,” page 363 of the Proc. R.S.E. The knot Mn is always made by a section ffc, i.e., by uniting the P's and R's of two 2-gons (PR) on Ke+2 and Ln-e, after cutting away the four edges PR.

The design and construction of the instrument now to be described was undertaken on the suggestion of General Walker, of the East Indian Trigonometrical Survey. At the Aberdeen Meeting of the British Association in 1885, General Walker obtained the appointment of a committee to examine into the whole question of the present methods and instruments for the measurement of gravitational force, and to promote investigation, having for its object the production of gravitation measuring instruments of a more reliable and accurate character than those now in use.

In the figure 1 following, the knot 9Aj has a triangular section Prr cutting away on each side of it a (3 + r)-gonal mesh, and 9Ar2 has such a section Rpp, through one crossing only. Make in these knots creases at rr that approach to meet at R in 2, and creases pp that meet at P in 2. In 3, 2 is prepared for a rotation through two right angles about the fixed axis PE, through the crossing P and the crease-kiss R, or, as a more learned man would say, through the decussation P and the plicatorial osculation R–taking 2 for 9Aj: exchange here P and R if 2 is 9Ar2.

Dr Albrecht of Brussels has recently traversed the well-known and generally accepted theory originally advanced by Goethe, that in the alveolar form of cleft palate the fissure lies in the plane of the suture between the intermaxillary and superior maxillary bones, and has suggested, in substitution for this theory, that in the early embryo each intermaxilla is divided into an inner mesial bone (endognathion) and an outer lateral bone (mesognathion), and that the alveolar cleft is an open state of the suture intervening between these two divisions.