46o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



In 1912 the proposita gave birth to four girls in the month of March, 

 and in December of the same year she had a miscarriage at about five months' 

 time caused through a severe burn. In April 1913 the proposita had 

 another miscarriage of three girls. 



It will be seen that the proposita has averaged nearly three children at a 

 birth, and has had thirty pregnancies within twelve years in the last mating, 

 in addition to eleven by the two former matings. The foregoing remarkable 

 case is by no means unique, but accords very well with similar cases that 

 are reported by Gould and Pyle in Curiosities of Medicine. 



Special efforts are being made in Australia to cope with many of the 

 injurious parasitic animals. We notice in Science and Industry for June 1920 

 an account by Prof. T. Harvey Johnston of the Bionomics of the Cattle Tick and 

 of certain parasites of horses in Australia. There are several ticks which may 

 infest cattle, but one especially, Boophilus australis, is particularly identified 

 with cattle. The tick pest obtruded itself upon public notice in Australia 

 about forty years ago in the Northern Territory. It then spread to Queens- 

 land, and in 1906 it had reached the New South Wales border. Its most 

 southern limit is marked by the Richmond River. It is also found in the 

 north-west of Western Australia. It has been estimated that during the six 

 years from 1894 to 1900 Australian cattle breeders lost ^3,500,000 sterling. 

 As is well known, the cattle-tick Boophilus causes bovine Piroplasmosis. 



The British Thomson-Houston Company has decided to establish two 

 scholarships, one of which will be allotted to Cambridge. It proposes to 

 select from the engineering graduates of that university who have worked 

 with the firm for not less than six months a scholar who will be sent to their 

 American associates, the General Electric Company. The company proposes 

 to allow for the student's expenses for one year an equivalent of $1,800 

 dollars. After a year's study in America he will be expected to return to the 

 British company. 



Dr. C. C. Little, of the Carnegie station for experimental evolution, in a 

 recent paper on the Journal of Genetics, 1919, has contributed an interesting 

 paper on colour inheritance in cats, with special reference to black, yellow, 

 and tortoiseshell. He criticises the hypotheses of Doncaster, Ibsen, Whiting, 

 and Wright which have been brought forward to explain the occurrence of 

 tortoiseshell males. He considers that the genetic constitution of the normal 

 colour varieties of cats is as follows : B = factor producing black pigmentation, 

 Y = factor which restricts black from the coat, y = factor allelomorphic to Y 

 and hypostatic to it, allowing black pigment to extend to the coat. 



Sterile tortoiseshell males may possibly be, according to Little, " near 

 males " formed as a result of non-disjunction of the X chromosome and there- 

 fore YBX in constitution. 



We have received the annual report of the Director of the Department of 

 Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. In some 

 interesting researches by Dr. E. C. MacDowell data have been collected on the 

 intelligence of alcoholised rats. It is of some interest to note that Dr. 

 MacDowell believes that the alcoholised strains are mentally inferior, but he 

 states that much detailed study will be required before any generalisation 

 can be drawn. In the same Report Dr. Ezra Allen, of the Wistar Institute, 

 has found that in alcoholised rats there is more testicular degeneration than 

 in normal rats. The type of degeneration found is much the same as that 

 produced by the X-ray, 



We are sorry to hear of Prof. Leonard Doncaster's untimely death, 

 which could only be referred to very briefly in the last number of Science 

 Progress. 



