clusively constructed to pass the whole of their lives in trees that they can move along the ground only with difficulty-such is the case with the sloths. Porcupines, which in the old world have short tails, in the new world have long and prehensile ones. An animal allied to the Badger -the Kinkajou (Cercoleptes caudivolvulus)-similarly acquires in South America a long and prehensile caudal appendage. Even the Fowl and Peacock Order of Birds becomes in South America more strictly arboreal than elsewhere (being represented by the Curassows), and the very geese find there a congener (Palamedia) specially

adapted to dwell in trees and destitute (like the frog Phyllomedusa before mentioned) of a web-like membrane between the toes. We have now advanced a further stage in seeking a reply to the question, "What is a Frog?" We have now viewed it in the light to be derived from a consideration of the more noteworthy forms of the frog's order.

We may next inquire what are its next nearest allies? What other animals of the class Batrachia constitute an order which approaches nearest to the frog's order Anoura?

Almost every pond in England which harbours frogs, harbours also those little four-legged, long-tailed, soft skinned creatures termed Efts or Newts (of the genus Triton) familiar to every schoolboy.

These Newts which are thus by circumstances placed actually in juxtaposition with the frog are also zoologically his nearest allies outside his own (frog and toad) order. Like the frog they undergo a metamorphosis, at

first appearing as Eft-tadpoles (with elongated external gills, but devoid of limbs), subsequently losing the gills and acquiring limbs. Efts, as is manifest, are widely and strangely different in form from frogs and toads.

Thus is justified the assertion before made as to the far less exceptional form of the human body than that of the frog. For when, amongst Mammalia, we go outside that order to which Man belongs, we find in

his class other creatures (insect-eating, flesh-eating, and of the squirrel kind) which more or less closely resemble some of the lower members of man's order. When, however, amongst Batrachia, we go outside that order to which the frog belongs, we find in his class no creatures whatever which present anything like such an approximation to any members of the frog's order as is presented by the mammals above referred to certain members of man's order.

The Efts (or Newts) with their allies-hereinafter noticed -constitute the second order Urodela of the class Batrachia.

This order is very unlike the first and already described order (Anoura), in that it is composed of creatures which in many respects are strangely divergent; and though most of the species more or less resemble our own Efts (or Newts) in shape, yet the Urodela are very far from constituting such a homogeneous group as are the Anoura.

It will be well now to review some of the more striking forms contained in the order.

The Land Eft (Salamandra), though common in Holland and France (as well as the rest of Europe), is unknown in this country.

Genera allied to the European genera Triton and Salamandra, and to the American genus Amblystoma, may have the body and tail more and more elongated and the legs reduced, as in Spelerpes, Chioglopa, and Edipina, till they attain the condition of Batrachoceps. The greatest excess of this development, however, is found in the North American genus Amphiuma, the minute limbs of which have either three or two toes, according to the species. These creatures are called by the negroes Congo Snake," and are quite erroneously regarded as

venomous.

openings and external gills, the adults are devoid of both. In a North American genus, however (Menopoma), which, though smaller in size, closely resembles Crypto. branchus in figure, there is a permanent gill opening, though the gills themselves disappear in the adult, and the same is the case with Amphiuma. Thus in these animals the metamorphosis is less complete.

In the subterranean caverns of Southern Austria (Carniola and Istria) is found the Proteus. This is an elongated Urodele, with slender limbs, and but two toes

to each hind foot. Passing its whole life in perpetual darkness, it is blind and colourless, except the external gills, which are red. This animal retains during the whole of life not only the gill aperture on each side, but also the external plumose gills which are transitory in the Anoura and in all the Urodela hitherto mentioned. Here then we first meet with an animal which may be said to be a permanent and persistent Tadpole, yet rather like an Eft-tadpole than like that of the Frog.

A North American Urodele, misnamed (for it is silent enough) Siren, also presents us with permanent external gills, and it offers another interesting resemblance to the tadpole of the frog in that it is furnished throughout life with a horny beak. It has also another remarkable character in which it stands alone in its class. Hitherto every relative of the frog has had, like it, four limbs in the adult condition. In the Siren, however, we for the first time make acquaintance with a creature belonging to the class (though not to the order) of frogs and toads, which is devoid altogether of hinder (or pelvic) limbs, being in this respect like the whales and porcupines amongst beasts, and like the little lizard, Chirotes, amongst reptiles.

Another North American Urodele, Menobranchus, possesses throughout the whole of life both gill openings and external gills. But it is furnished with four limbs, and in other respects more or less resembles in appearance, as it does in size, the genus Menopoma before noticed.

Finally there is a genus of this order (Urodela) which has of late presented circumstances of peculiar interest. This is the Axolotl of Mexico, which was long considered by Cuvier to be a large Eft-tadpole, possessing as it does permanent gills and gill-openings, with some other characters common to the Eft-tadpole stage of existence. At length, however, its mature condition was considered to be established by the discovery that it possesses perfect powers of reproducing its kind.

For some years, individuals of this species have been preserved in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and a few years ago one individual amongst others there kept was observed, to the astonishment of its guardian, to have transformed itself into a creature of quite another genus the genus Amblystoma, one rich in American species, Since then several other species have transformed themselves, but without affording any clue as to the conditions which determine this change-a change remarkable indeed, resulting as it does not merely in the loss of gills and the closing up of the gill-openings, but in remarkable changes with respect to the skull, the dentition, and other important structures.

There is, moreover, another and very singular fact connected with this transformation. It is that no one of the individuals transformed (although we must suppose that by such transformation it has attained its highest development and perfection) has ever yet reproduced its kind, and this in spite of every effort made to promote reproduction by experiments as to diet and as to putting together males and females both transformed, also transformed males with females untransformed, and males untransformed with females transformed. Indeed, the sexual organs seem even to become atrophied in these transformed individuals. Moreover, all this time the untransformed individuals have gone on bringing forth young with the utmost fecundity, no care or trouble on the part of their guardians being required to effect it.

its observers). This latter fact affords abundant evidence how obscure and recondite may be the conditions whic determine the transformations of specific genesis, at how utterly futile are observations as to an apparent homs geneity of readily appreciable conditions. They are since it seems to be just such recondite ones which re determine the changes just referred to, and probabi therefore, other changes analogous to them.

It may be a question whether the genus Menobras... may not also be a persistent larval form, and one whi now never attains its once adult form. If so, it is mos probable that its lost state was similar to that of the clusively American genus Spelerpes, the larva of which Menobranchus much resembles. With respect to Prot and Siren no conjecture of the kind can yet be made.

Individuals belonging to the common English speci (Triton cristalus) occasionally retain some of the exter characters of immaturity, in spite of having attained to productive capability; and a European species I alpertris) often matures the generative elements while st as to external appearance, more or less in its tadpole stag of existence. The adult condition, however, is normal. and generally at ained by it.

The geographical distribution of the Urodel is ver remarkable. North America is the head-quarters of the order, and, with rare and trifling exceptions, the what are confined to the Northern hemisphere. The exceptions are certain forms which extend down the Andes South America, and one or two species of AmblystTM-2. which similarly descend along the highlands of South Eastern Asia. Urodeles are absolutely wanting Hindostan, Africa south of the Sahara, the Indian Arch pelago, Australia, and New Zealand. As might be ex pected, that part of Asia which is nearest to Nort America, namely China and Japan, is the region of the old world most richly peopled by species of Urodela. A together the world's surface may be divided according to its Urodele population into three regions. The first will comprise Europe, Africa north of the Sahara, and North Western Asia. The second will include Japan Eastern Asia. The third will be formed by North America, with a slight extension southwards into South America-a division which by no means coincides with that indicated by the Anoura.

The above two orders (Anoura and Urodela) comprise all the animals most nearly allied to the common frog, of all those outside its own order. There is, however, another small ordinal group of animals which remains to be here noted, because of all existing creatures they come nearest to the frog, after the Urodela.

(To be continued.)

INAUGURATION OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY'S NEW ROOMS

OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT

IT is now seventeen years since the Government first recognised the claims of our Society to encourage ment and assistance on the part of the State, as one which devoted itself to scientific pursuits unremunerative to its members, but tending directly or indirectly to public benefit; and since then a sense of the justness of such claims on the part of pure natural science has become gradually more general. We are no longer in the days when a Peter Pindar could turn the Royal Society and its president into ridicule as boiling fleas to ascertain whether they turned red like lobsters. The Times, instead of a short leader dismissing the British Association meetings in a similar strain of banter, devotes daily, during the time of its session, half a dozen columns to the details of its proceedings. And our own department natural science is now admitted to be one of the most im

* The young of the Frog or Eft is called a larva.

in

portant branches of general science, specially important in its relation to our material prosperity. Our food and raiment, the essentials of life, are derived exclusively from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and biological products contribute largely to many of our luxuries, whilst on the other hand some of the greatest calamities with which we are afflicted are due to the rapid development of animal or vegetable life. Many are the associations, under Government as well as individual patronage, devoted to the improvement and increase of useful animals and plants; and of late attention has been also devoted to the arrest of the ravages of the noxious ones, the balance of natural selection being disturbed by the interference of agriculture and animal education. The due study of the means of restoring this balance, of turning it more and more in our favour, of calling in to our aid more and more of the hitherto neglected available species, or of the hitherto latent properties of those already in use, of checking the progress of blights and mutrains, requires a thorough knowledge of the animals and plants themselves, and that thorough knowledge can only be obtained by that scientific study not only of particular animals and plants supposed a priori to be useful or noxious, but of all animals and plants, which it is the special province of our Society to promote. And in this respect I think it will be generally admitted that we have not been neglectful of our duty, and that we have done our part in rendering effective the support we have of late years received from Government as well as from individuals, and in establishing a sound claim for its increased continuance. Besides the aid afforded to scientific researches by our largely augmented library, the great value of the papers published in the recent volumes of our Transactions and Journal has been acknowledged abroad as well as at home. It is in our Society, for instance, that the great Darwinian theories were first promulgated; and it must be recollected that the five or six hundred copies of our publications regularly sent out, place the researches they exhibit at once at the disposal of the leading followers of the science in all parts of the world. It is true that these great additions to our efficiency are not entirely due to Government patronage, but are the direct results of the reforms introduced by Dr. Hooker in 1855. Those reforms, however, would have lost much of their effect had we remained confined to our old quarters in Soho Square. Cramped for space in those obscure and dingy rooms, it required a strong devotion to science to induce an adequate attendance at our meetings; and saddled with a heavy rent, we could neither purchase books for our library nor find room on our shelves for those presented

to us.

In the spring of 1856, however, an opening was made for our obtaining rooms in Burlington House. I was then on the Council, and joined heartily in the conviction of the importance of availing ourselves of the opportunity, notwithstanding the heavy expense it might entail, which I felt confident we could cover by a subscription amongst our fellows. Our President undertook the preliminary negotiations, and at the meeting of our Council on June 1 a letter was officially communicated to us addressed by the Secretary of the Treasury to the President of the Royal Society, allowing the temporary location in Burlington House of the Linnean and Chemical Societies with the Royal Society, upon certain conditions ; those which affected us being, that the Royal Society should be put in possession of the main building of Burlington House on the understanding that they would, in communication with the Linnean and Chemical Societies, assign suitable accommodation therein for those bodies, and that the Fellows of the three societies should have mutual access to their three libraries for purposes of reference. Our Society, at a special general meeting held on the 17th of the same month, authorised the Council to take the necessary steps for carrying out the proposal of the

Government, and in the following February 1857 the Royal Society assigned to us the rooms which we have since occupied under the above conditions. A subscription was organised which ultimately amounted to nearly 1,100, sufficient to defray all expenses of parting with our old rooms and fitting up the new ones, with a very small surplus, which was carried to the general account. In the same month of February I was associated with our then active and zealous President and Secretary, and with Mr. Wilson Saunders as a Removal Committee, and on Tuesday June 2 the Society was enabled for the first time to meet in their new rooms.

Our position, however, although so great an improvement upon Soho Square, was not yet quite satisfactory. It was provisional only, and under the wing, as it were, of the Royal Society, and liable at any time to be exchanged for a worse or a better one as the case might turn out. This uncertainty is now removed. The Government, rightly understanding the relations which ought to prevail with the scientific societies judged to be deserving of their support, obtained from Parliament adequate means for providing ample accommodation to the six societies here located, without reserving any right of interference with or control over their scientific operations. Thus our new quarters have assumed a permanent and independent character, the rooms have been built and fitted up expressly for four Society, and, having followed out all the arrangements, I feel bound to acknowledge the effective manner in which the liberal intentions of Government have been promoted and carried out in detail by the architects, Mr. Barry and the late Mr. Bankes. When the plans for the new building were first being prepared, some six or seven years since, we were applied to for particulars of the accommodation we should require for our library and meetings, for the transaction of the business of the Society and for the residence of our librarian and porter. We were not consulted, it is true, about the general arrangements in relation to the other societies, and we have to regret the cessation of that close juxtaposition and intimate intercourse with the Royal Society which was so agreeable to us, but in all other respects our requisitions were fully complied with in the plans prepared and sent to us for approval, and the only alteration since made has been the curtailment of a portion of the basement premises in favour of the post-office, which rather inconveniently limits the stowage room for our stock of Transactions. With this sole exception we have the space we asked for, and the bookshelves and such other fittings as have been provided by Government have been worked out in the most satisfactory manner.

Our removal here has necessarily been attended with considerable expense, the precise amount of which cannot yet be calculated, but it will probably exceed 60ɔl. The Council have, however, not thought it necessary to call for any special subscription. The investments made during the past year have been partially with a view to the present occasion, and the gradually increasing sale of our publications and general appreciation of the value of our labours has been so far adding to our receipts that we closed last session with a much larger balance in hand than usual, and we hope to clear ourselves of the liabilities we are incurring, without reducing our invested funds much below 2000/. At the same time, we must not conceal from ourselves that we shall be called upon for a considerable increase in our expenditure. Our enlarged accommodation, combined with high prices, will add much to our household expenses. We are threatened with a repeal of the Act which exempts us from parochial rates. Nearly the whole of our library having within the last three weeks passed through my hands, I have become convinced that it will require a large outlay in binding, as well as in filling up gaps to render it really efficient. And, above all, we must bear in mind that the chief means we have of promoting the scientific objects for

such signal success by the chemists. If it does not do so, but allows itself to be left behind, it must soon see many of the most important papers sent to the Chemical or to such of the other societies as may choose to provide the means of properly illustrating them.

It may be urged that if papers are to be experimentally illustrated, all cannot possibly be read. We can only say so much the better. Why should not a society's council exercise a wise discretion, and relegate some classes of papers at once to the "Journal," the proper place for many a mass of numerical data now perforce read, but of which discussion is impossible?

NOTES

F. C. S.

We regret to announce the death, on the 10th inst., of Mr. B. F. Duppa, F.R.S., well known for his numerous and important researches in organic chemistry. He was educated at Cambridge, and was afterwards, in the year 1857, a pupil in the Royal College of Chemistry. Within a period of eleven years he published, partly alone and partly in conjunctton with Mr. W. H. Perkin and Dr. Frankland, no less than twenty papers, most of which appeared in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society. The most important of these researches related to the action of bromine and iodine on acetic acid, the artificial production of tartaric acid, the formation of organic compounds containing mercury, and the synthetical production of numerous acids of the fatty and acrylic series. Mr. Duppa was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1867. Being a man of independent means, he never applied for, nor held, any scientific appointment, but formed one of that small band of enthusiastic and disinterested amateur workers of whom England may justly feel proud, and to whom she is so much indebted for a very large proportion of the contributions which she has made to the progress of science.

MR. MITCHELL, of Old Bond Street, is, we believe, about to publish a portrait of the late Dr. Bence Jones, engraved by Holl from the beautiful drawing by Mr. George Richmond, R.A.

THE following awards have been made by the French Geographical Society:-2,000 francs to M. Dournaux-Dupéré, who has just set out for Timbuctoo; this gentleman has also received a similar sum from the Minister of Public Instruction; 2,000 fr. to M. Francis Garnier, to aid him in his explorations along the Blue River in China, and which have Yun-nan and Tibet for their objects; 1,500 fr. to MM. Marche and Compiègne, who have already proceeded a considerable distance along the course of the Ogowe with the design of penetrating as far as the great African lakes, and joining Livingstone.

THE subject for the Le Bas Prize (Cambridge) for the present year is "The Respective Functions of Science and Literature in Education." Candidates must be graduates of the University of not more than three years' standing from their first degree when the essays are sent in, which date is fixed before the end of the Easter Term, 1874. The essays must each bear some motto, and be accompanied by a sealed paper bearing the same motto, and enclosing the name of the candidate and that of his college. The successful candidate is required to publish the essay at his own expense.

MESSRS. TRÜBNER AND CO will publish, n about ten days, Mr. George Henry Lewes' new work, entitled "Problems of Life and Mind."

WITH reference to the paragraph in last week's NATURE on the discovery of the conversion of spherical into plane motion, Prot. Sylvester writes: "I feel it an act of simple justice to, another to say that I should never have hit upon the instrument which effects this, had it not been for the previous,

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wholly original and unexpected, discovery made nine years ago, by M. Peaucillier, of the conversion of circular into rectilinear motion, with which I was recently made acquainted by M. Tchebicheff, and which seems to have been little noticed in the discoverer's own country, and to have remained wholly unknown in this. M. Peaucillier has succeeded by the most simple means in solving a kinematical problem which had baffled the attempts of all mechanicians, from our James Watts downwards, to accomplish, and a simple Captain of Engineers in the French army has actually accomplished by a stroke of inspiration the mathematical solution of a question which many of the most profound and sagacious mathematicians of the age have been long labouring, but necessarily (as it is now obvious) in vain, to prove to admit of none. The conversion of circular into rectilinear motion before M. Peaucillier's discovery was gradually growing to be classed in the same category of questions as the quadrature of the circle, and by a great number of mathematicians was actually deemed to be equally impossible in the nature of things. A working model of Peaucillier's machine constructed by my friend M. Garcia, the brother of Malebran and the inventor of the laryngoscope, is in my possession at the Athenæum Club, and several copies of it have been already made by its admirers, which term comprises all who have seen it. The wonderfully fertile kinematic and mathematical results which I have succeeded in educing from the simple conception involved in this machine may form the subject of another communication to NATURE.”

PROF. JELINEK, of Vienna, writes us that the death of Prof. Donati is the only unhappy event connected with the Meteorological Congress of Vienna, which in all other respects has proved successful. The fact of all countries of Europe (France exce pted) and the United States of North America being represented at the Congress, and the conciliatory spirit in which all the proceedings were held, the general desire to arrive at an uniform system of observation and publication

make us hope, he thinks, that further decisive steps in this direction will be taken. The Congress has expressed the wish, that another Congress of Meteorologists shall meet in three years, and it has appointed a permanent Committee under Prof. Ruys Ballot of Utrecht, as President, and with Prof. Bruhns of Leipzig, Cantoni of Pavia, Jelinek of Vienna, Mohn of Christiana, Director Scott of London, and Director Wild of St. Petersburg, as members to prepare the solution of certain questions especially relative to the best form of publishing meteorological observations and to the extension of the existing system of meteorological observations. The permanent Committee has been also charged with the preparatory steps towards the convocation of a second Maritime Conference (the first having been held at Brussels in 1853). There will be three editions of the proceedings of the Congress. The one German, the other French, the third under the care of Mr. Robert Scott, in English.

RATHER an unusual incident has recently occurred in the Belgian Academy of Sciences, about which, according to the two gentlemen most concerned, erroneous statements have been made in the Belgian papers and La Revue Scientifique. The common statement is that at the séance of June 7 last M. E. van Beneden, son of the well-known Professor of Zoology at the Catholic University of Louvain, and himself Professor of Zoology at Liége, by appointment of the present Catholic Ministry, read a paper on the results of a voyage which he had recently made to Brazil and La Plata Speaking of the difficulty of obtaining a dolphin on account of the superstitions of the Brazilian fishermen, he is reported to have referred to the ancient belie' in Europe that dolphins were in the habit of bringing dead bodies on shore, and to have said, "The fable of Jonah is an embodiment of this belief." Thereupon, it is said, M. Gilbert, Professor