1 36 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



with Araucarian ovules and pollination apparatus. Sinnott and 

 Bailey, in the fifth paper of their series on the phylogeny of 

 Angiosperms (Amer. Journ. of Bot. 2), deal with the evidence 

 afforded by the leaf as to the ancestry and early climatic environ- 

 ment of the Angiosperms, bringing together, as in their earlier 

 papers, a large mass of data and concluding that the primitive 

 Angiosperm leaf was palmate and provided with three main 

 bundles arising separately from the stem-node, that transitions 

 from the palmate type to all other leaf-forms can be readily 

 traced, and that the Angiosperms probably sprang from a 

 coniferous (palmate) rather than a cycadean (pinnate) stock and 

 first appeared in a climate more temperate than tropical— a 

 climate which in the Mesozoic was doubtless found only in the 

 uplands, a fact which would explain the scarcity of fossil Angio- 

 sperms in rocks of that age. 



In ecology we may note three papers dealing with the vegeta- 

 tion of high altitudes. Rydberg {Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 42) 

 describes the forests of the subalpine and alpine zones of the 

 Rocky Mountains ; Smiley {Bot. Gaz. 59) the alpine and subalpine 

 vegetation of the Lake Tahoe region, Nevada ; and Gates {Journ. 

 of Ecol. 3) the somewhat unusual occurrence of a typical and 

 well-developed Sphagnum bog in the tropics, in this case on the 

 summit of Mt. San Cristobal, Philippine Islands. 



ZOOLOGY. By C. H. O'Donoghue, D.Sc, University College, London. 



Protozoa. — One of the most interesting and useful contributions 

 to zoology during the quarter under review is undoubtedly the 

 paper by Minchin and Thomson on " The Rat Trypanosome, 

 Trypanosoma leivisi, in its Relation to the Rat Flea, Ceratophyllus 

 fasciatus" (Quart. Jour. Micro. Sci., vol. 6o, pt. 4, January). It 

 is the result of five years' study on the part of the authors, and 

 in it we have an account of the life history of a Trypanosome 

 very nearly as complete as that of the malarial parasite. The 

 importance of this is obvious. The problems have been attacked 

 from the experimental as well as the morphological point of 

 view, and it is interesting to note that the " direct transmission " 

 of the parasite does not occur, but that, on the other hand, it 

 is necessary for it to undergo a developmental cycle in the 

 alimentary canal of the flea before the flea can infect another 

 host. Smith (Ann. and Mag. No. 87) treats of the Forams in 

 the Upper Silurian formations of Gothland. 



