The present work forms the first portion of an investigation into the craniological characters of the Australian aboriginal crania at present being conducted by the author, and is part of a general scheme for the osteological investigation of the Australian aboriginal initiated by the Professor of Anatomy in the University of Melbourne.

There are, as is well known, two methods of treating craniometric statistics, and which, for convenience, may be designated (1) The Empirical Method; (2) The Rational Method.

The object aimed at in both is to find numbers that shall be characteristic of the race of any country.

“The Empirical method places very little value on the length and breadth of a skull except as a means of arriving at their ratio—the cephalic index—‘the subdivisions of which,’ says Gray (15), ‘are all arbitrary.’ Some, e.g. Retzius, made use of centres; others, e.g. Welcker, made use of limits, and there appears to be no special reason for fixing the limits of the groups at one index more than another. The analysis of craniometrical statistics by this method becomes comparatively simple: calculate the cephalic index and other indices for each individual, and find the average or mean index for the whole group of people measured. The highest and lowest index is usually stated as indicating the range of variation on each side of the mean. As the range of variation of the cephalic index is usually quite as great as the range of variation of the absolute dimensions, it is difficult to understand the belief in the value of indices of the Empirical school.”

If the marked divergence of ethnological opinion concerning the degree of racial purity or admixture of the Australian aboriginal affords evidence of anything at all, it can only be of the fact that the problems of his origin, as of his degree of racial purity, are not yet solved. Not only are there the most conflicting opinions on these points, but the cognate subjects of the origin, and degree of purity of the Tasmanian, and of his relationship, if any, to the Australian, are equally undetermined, whilst there is lastly the debatable point of the relation of both those primitive peoples to the Papuan.

IN our communication to the Royal Society of Victoria of the 11th March, 1909 (1), describing our recent discovery of forty-two Tasmanian crania hitherto quite unknown to the world of science, we stated that “one of the earliest purposes to which it is proposed to utilise the present material is the determination of the relationship of the Tasmanian to the anthropoids and primitive man on the one hand, and to the Australian aboriginal on the other hand. Schwalbe's study of Pithecanthropus erectus (2) may serve as a basis for the former purpose, and Klaatsch's recent work (3) for the latter, though it must be remembered that innumerable authors have contributed to both subjects.” The present work is the fulfilment of the first part of this undertaking, namely, the determination of the relationship of the Tasmanian to the anthropoids and primitive man.

The present investigation arose in part as an examination into, and an extension of, an attempt by Professor R. J. A. Berry and Dr A. W. D. Robertson at placing the Tasmanian aboriginal in his relation to various other racial types, extinct and existent. It has resolved itself into a numerical calculation of the approximate relative positions of these types in the evolutionary scale, together with a determination of the relative values of various cranial measurements and indices employed by Schwalbe in his “form analysis” of the calvarium, as criteria is assigning these positions.

1. Alloys were prepared containing 14, 16, 18, 30, 38, and 48 per cent, of tin, and the remainder copper and manganese in the ratio 7 : 3.

2. Tests were carried out at different temperatures on the materials as cast, normalised, annealed, and quenched.

3. At 15° C in the normalised condition the six alloys gave I respectively equal to 55, 77, 82, 0·4, 96, and 1, for H = 100.

4. When cooled to −190° C the three alloys poor in tin were much more magnetic.

5. Annealing produced no decided improvement.

6. The susceptibility diminishes with increase of temperature, and the critical temperatures range from 225° to 275−190° C.

8. Reannealing tends to restore the initial susceptibility of the quenched material, but has little influence on the coercive force.

9. The magnetic properties are probably due to the formation of solid solutions of certain definite concentrations.

At the instigation of the late Professor D. J. Cunningham, and at first working upon his material, the present writer has reinvestigated the problems of giantism and acromegaly.

In the course of the work a group of facts persistently presented themselves which appeared to indicate the existence of a definite antagonism between growth and sexual activity. Side by side with these, and in apparent contradiction of them, was the undoubted fact that the state of pregnancy does not in the young female impede growth, but, on the contrary, favours it. These are not new discoveries. The fact that sexual activity is inimical to growth has not infrequently been demonstrated, more especially by Pirsche (1), Launois and Roy (2) Poncet (3), and Lortet (4). Indeed Pirsche, in the Thèse de Lyon, “De l'lnfluence de la Castration sur le DéVeloppement du Squelette,” 1902, might almost be said to have established beyond reach of question the fact that castration in youth is followed by abnormal growth of the long bones.

Although much literature has been published on the minute anatomy of the ovary, there are many controversial points remaining, and therefore the publication of the results of the examination of various mammalian types adds additional proof to the facts already staged by embryologists. Three years ago this work was taken up by me as a preliminary to an investigation into the distribution of the chromatic substance in cells which show malignant degenerative changes. The work has occupied so much time that the publication of the results has been necessarily delayed. In a paper on “Primary Cancer of the Ovary,” published in 1906, I stated, as the result of a somewhat limited observation on the later stages of the development of the human ovary, that the cells of the stratum granulosum were mesoblastic in origin. This view I have modified by the more thorough and extensive investigation of the present paper.

The simple “submerged bulblet” apparatus for determining vapour pressures, previously described in these Proceedings (vol. xxx. p. 437), may be modified to assume the form shown in fig. 1. The substance, solid or liquid, is placed in the bulb A of this dynamic isoteniscope. The advantages gained are, that the new apparatus may be used for high pressures, that the confining fluid (bulb B) is reduced in amount, and that the thermometer is inserted directly in the bath and its bulbis, is therefore, no longer in a region of varying pressures (Proc, p. 436).

The vapour density of calomel vapour corresponds to the formula HgCl or Hg + HgCl2. Odling showed, by amalgamation of gold-leaf, the presence of free mercury. Harris and V. Meyer separated mercury from the vapour by diffusion, and also showed that solid potassium hydroxide turned yellow (HgO) when plunged into the vapour. Diffusion might naturally increase the dissociation, and even a pure mercurous salt would certainly give mercuric oxide at 240–260°, since at that temperature mercurous oxide is unstable. The quantitative conclusion of these observers, namely, that the vapour is completely dissociated, therefore, was not in any way justified by their qualitative experiments, although it has been accepted by many chemists.

The results of the investigations on four metals, viz. steel, iron, copper, and platinum, form the subject of my two first papers. In Parts I. and II. the effects on the modulus when the wire was stretched with a small load, and also with a much greater load, were examined. In this, my third paper, the investigation of these metals has been extended in several directions. The scope of the whole work has also been widened by subjecting nickel and cobalt to examination.

As the question of temperature still seemed doubtful, and as the justification given near the beginning of the second paper might not be altogether convincing, I thought it better to put the matter beyond all question. I therefore adopted the following method. Using the doublewalled tube already described, the wires were passed through it and over the wheel in the same way as in the main experiments.

The inheritance of complexes is of great interest. The manner in which this arises on a Mendelian hasis can he most easily seen by the consideration of a simple case. Let two races of different stature mix in equal numbers. Let for simplicity stature depend on two elements (a, a), (c, c) in one race, and on (b, b), (d, d) corresponding elements in the other. Then the permanent race obtained by free mating without any special selection of one parent or another will consist of the following proportions:—

Now two factors may come into play: either dominance may not exist and the hybrid be a blend, or, on the other hand, dominance may determine the result of the mating. If dominance does not exist we may rearrange the elements according as they contain one or more element from each original race.

This paper is published at length in the Transactions of the Society, vol. xlvii., part iv., p. 619, and describes observations in the Madiisee, Pomerania, made by Professor Halbfass and Mr Wedderburn, with the view of testing the latter's theory of temperature seiches in lakes, arrived at from a consideration of the observations of the Scottish Lake Survey.

Although various methods have from time to time been described for determining the molecular weights of dissolved substances by measurement, not of boiling-point elevation, but of the reduction of vapour pressure of a solvent due to the presence of a dissolved substance, none of these methods has come into general use. The method here proposed, operating on this principle, offers the possibility of simply determining the molecular weights of non-volatile solutes in any of the ordinary solvents with an accuracy at least equal to that of the ebullioscopic methods, and in an apparatus at least as easily manageable.

The general theory of epidemic disease I have already considered in a communication to this Society. In that communication I showed that the course of epidemics of all forms of infectious disease obeyed certain very definite laws. In the same paper it was also shown that the distribution of epidemic disease in a uniformly populated area obeyed a law essentially similar. Certain reasons were given why the normal curve of error might be expected to give an approximate solution in both the cases considered, but why the distribution actually found (type iv.) should be the common form was not at all clear. I think, however, I have now arrived at the solution.

§ 1. IT was proved by Gouy and Lord Rayleigh that interference may be observed by the aid of the spectroscope even if the incident light were entirely irregular, consisting, for instance, of an irregular succession of impulses. This means that the “regularity” of the emergent light arising from an impulse is due to the spectroscope itself, and the extent to which interference may be observed is limited only by the resolving power of the instrument used. The greater the resolving power, the more homogeneous is the light in any part of the spectrum. The question regarding the modus operandi of the prism has been further dealt with by Professor Schuster in his paper “On Interference Phenomena” (Phil. Mag., vol. xxxvii., 1894) and, later, in his explanation of Talbot's bands by consideration of group-velocities (Phil. Mag., vol. vii., 1904).

The previous history of Wronskians being not at all lengthy, was included in the chapter on “Miscellaneous Special Forms” (History, i., chap, xvi.), and is to be found there under Wronski 1812, Wronski 1815, Wronski 1816–17, and Schweins 1825 (pp. 472–478, 482–485).

The name dates only from 1882, being first suggested on p. 224 of my Text-book on Determinants.

Like Wronskians, and for the same reason, recurrents were at first dealt with among “Miscellaneous Special Forms”: their previous history is thus to be found under Wronski 1812, Scherk 1825, and Schweins 1825 in the chapter so entitled. (History, i. pp. 472–474, 478–481.)

The name is quite recent, having been first proposed by E. Pascal in 1907 in a paper published in the Rendiconti …. 1st. Lombardo, (2) xl. pp. 293–305.

There now only remain for consideration those special forms which, prior to 1860, had not received any noteworthy attention. These will be found to include: (α) permanents, which are touched on by three authors; (β) determinants with the typical element ars + brsi, which are referred to in four memoirs; (γ) two other forms, which are each dealt with in two papers; and (δ) nine others, which make their appearance only once.

The object of the present investigation is to throw further light upon the differences between the disturbances in the chemical processes in the body in fever caused, on the one hand, by the mere rise of body temperature, and on the other by the action of the micro-organismal poisons on the tissues of the body.

The influence of such micro-organismal poisons has been already studied by several investigators-among others, by Noël Paton, Dunlop, and Macadam in the case of diphtheria (Journ. of Phys., vol. xxiv. p. 331,1899; see also chapter “Fever and Infection,” by Kraus, Von Noorden's Metabolism and Practical Medicine, vol. ii. p. 90); but so far few detailed studies of the metabolism in high temperature due to non-infectious processes have been recorded.

In studying the conditions under which enzymes are produced in seeds at the beginning of germination, two main difficulties have been encountered. The one has been in devising means of maintaining sterility in the material without at the same time interfering with the formation and action of enzymes. Some experiments have been carried out with the object of determining the relative efficiency of some of the more commonly used antiseptics, but, at present, these are not sufficiently far advanced to admit of any general conclusions being drawn. They have, however, shown that saturation with chloroform ensures sterility under the conditions of the experiments which form the subject of this paper. The other difficulty has been in demonstrating small degrees of enzymatic activity. It is with this latter question I wish to deal here.