2874
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
DECEMBER, 19EO
French. (4) The style and manner of versifying are not in the manner of Jean de Meun. (5) The poem refers to Raymond Lully as an alchemist although the alchemical books attributed to him did not appear until after the death of Jean de Meun.
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I n bringing this .paper to a conclusion the author wishes to nuke a n acknuwledgment of his indebtedness to Prof. Tenney L. Davis and Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis. The first suggested that this paper should be written for publication and kindly assisted in the proof rending; the second very graciously su.p.plied information concerning the Paris home of Jean de Meun. Bibliography "Le Roman de la Rose," edition of M. MPon, Paris, 1814. "Le Roman de la Rose," modern French prose translation by AndrP Mary, Paris, 1928. DU FRESNOY, "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermetique." The Hague, 3. LENCLET 1742, vol. 1, pp. 193-8; vol. 3, p. 234. 4. FERDINAND HOEPER,"Histoire de la Chimie," Paris, 1843. 5. "Musaeum Hermeticum," Frankfort. 1625, pp. 195-241. "Enstehung und Aushreitung der Alchemic," Berlin, 1919, 6. ..?I 0. V. LIPPMANN, pp. 501-3. 7. A. E. WAITE,"Raymund Lully: Illuminated Doctor, Alchemist, and Christian Mystic," London, 1922, pp. 4740. Lo~ovrco,"Poesie alchimistiche attribuite a Jean de Meun," Archivum 8 FRATO Romanicum Nuoua, Geneva, 1919, vol. 3, pp. 3 2 1 4 . 9. TENNEY L. DAVIS, "The Autobiography of Denis Zachaire," Isk, 8,394 (1926). 10. ALBERT POISSON, " N i d a s Flamel," Paris, 1893, p. 149.
1. 2.
Nitrogen Fixation by Bacteria. The question as t o whether or not the nodule bacteria of leguminous plants can fix atmospheric nitrogen independently of their host has always been a vexed one, the results previously obtained by a large number of workers being decidedly conflicting. It is, therefore, of particular interest that three papers have recently appeared on this subject within a few weeks of each other by independent workers, all of which are unanimous in their conclusion that no fixation of nitrogen occurs apart from the host plant. F. E. Allison (I.Agr. Research. 39, p. 893). working with 31 strains of legume-nodule bacteria, grown in a large number of media, under a variety of conditions, has obtained consistently negative results. His conclusions were based on nearly a thousand analyses determined by the Kjeldahl method. E. W. Hopkins ( S dScience, 28, p. 433) gives a useful tabulated summary of all previous investigations, results, and working conditions. He also obtained no evidence of nitrogen fixation from any of the five hundred analyses camed out with the DavissonParsons method. M. E. G h n i s (Soil Science, 29, p. 37) has also obtained a negative answer t o the question, employing in some experiments the Gunning-Arnold and in others the ter Meulen micro-method for the nitrogen determinations. It would seem particularly convincing that all three workers have secured similar results although each used entirely different methods.-Naturc (London)
