April 6, 191 1] 



NATURE 



189 



In a lecent issue of lire Agricultural News, the journal 

 of the West Indian Department (vol. ix., No. 223), atten- 

 tion is directed to the possibility of growing Castilloa 

 rubber in Jamaica. It is considered that Castilloa guate- 

 vialtica is better suited to the local conditions than 

 r. costaricana, but it is stated that a drought-resisting 

 -tilloa occurs on the Pacific side of Costa Rica which 



i->ht prove useful, and is to be tried. The tree should 

 be planted as a separate crop, and not as a shade crop 

 for cacao, if tlie best results are desired. 



The report on the Local Department of Agriculture at 

 Barbados, 1909-10, deals mainly with sugar-cane and 

 cotton experiments. There has been a falling off in the 

 area planted in cotton owing to various discouragements, 

 which, it is stated, would have been greater but for the 

 efforts of the Department. The production and introduc- 

 tion of useful food crops has been continued, with promis- 

 ing results, and a beginning has been made with an 

 export trade to Great Britain. Bananas have been shipped 

 hfre, and also mangos and Avocado pears, but unfortu- 

 nately some of the two last crops reached London in bad 

 condition. Sweet potatoes and yams were also sent ; from 

 the experience gained it is clear that much has to be 

 learned in regard to time and method of shipment, &c. 



Dr. Theiler, of the Transvaal Agricultural Department, 

 showed some time ago that redwater is caused by Piro- 

 plasma bigenimmn, and devised a system of inoculation 

 that has proved very successful in rendering immune the 

 South African cattle. But both in the Transvaal and in 

 Cape Colony considerable trouble has arisen when imported 

 c.'ittle have been inoculated, so many as 33 per cent, of the 

 animals being lost in the experimental trials. The problem 

 is discussed in a recent issue of The Agricultural Journal 

 of the Cape of Good Hope (No. 4, vol. xxxvii.) by Mr. 

 R. W. Dixon, who recommends that only young animals 

 less than a year old should be imported if possible, as 

 these resist the ill-effects of inoculation better than older 

 animals. It is further recommended that the importation 

 should be in winter or early spring, at which time tick 

 infestation is in abeyance, and redwater, whether natural 

 <>v artificially induced, is always milder in cold than in 

 warm weather. 



The bush-fire problem in thinly populated countries is 

 discussed by Mr. T. S. Marshall in the Journal of the 

 Department of Agriculture of South Australia (vol. xiv., 

 No. 3). Right through Australia, he states, millions of 

 acres of forest country occur in which many of the trees 

 are ring-barked, others are hollow to the core, numberless 

 dead trees, inflammable as tinder, lie on the ground, while 

 the thick grass and undergrowth become very dry. The 

 fires are started through careless throwing down of burn- 

 ing wax matches — surely the most dangerous of all 

 matches in a forest — by neglect of camp and other fires, 

 by sparks from engines, &c. As a safeguard, breaks are 

 prepared round farm holdings by ploughing a strip one, 

 two, or sometimes more chains wide all round, and keep- 

 ing it carefully free from growth. In better settled dis- 

 tricts brigades are organised and provided with specially 

 constructed carts for sprinkling the ground in front of the 

 fire, and so making a break, or putting out logs and 

 fences that have begun to burn. 



The soy bean (Soja hispida or Glycine hispida) has 

 during the last two y<riis nnui- into prominence ris ,1 i.iuir 

 food in England, and a ifrt.-iiii number of ex|i'iimiiu- 

 have been made to comparf it with linseed and wiih 

 cotton-seed cakes, which liav iiitiierto been the stand.ird 



NO. 2162, VOL. 86] 



purchased foods employed here. A report on two experi- 

 ments made by Mr. W. Bruce, of the Edinburgh and East 

 of Scotland College of Agriculture, has recently been 

 issued, and the results indicate that soy-bean cake may be- 

 inferior to linseed cake for purposes of fattening bullocks. 

 As Mr. Bruce points out, however, the result cannot be 

 considered final. Feeding experiments are liable to many 

 sources of error, and it is not unusual to find that a result 

 obtained in one experiment is not confirmed on repeating 

 the trial elsewhere. Whether the spy-bean cake proved 

 less profitable than the linseed cake is not clear ; in one of 

 tlie two experiments it proved the more expensive food for 

 making flesh, but, in the butcher's opinion, the flesh was 

 worth more. 



In The Agricultural Journal of British East Africa (vol. 

 iii., part ii.), published by the Agricultural Department, 

 Nairobi, is an article on the rainfall of Nairobi giving 

 diagrams, but, unfortunately, few or no figures, to illus- 

 trate various phenomena indicated by the records from 

 June, 1899, to December, 1909. The rainfall is at a, 

 maximum in April, when it is 8 inches on the average, 

 though the amount has been so high as 16 and so low- 

 as i^ inches ; it then falls, and during the months July, 

 August, and September it averages less than an inch a 

 month, the variation being from drought to 2 inches. It 

 then rises to November, when there is a second maximum 

 at 5 inches, the variation being from less than 2 to 

 nearly 8. According to a native tradition, the rainfall 

 runs in cycles of nine or ten years, each of which cycles 

 terminates with a drought. The records have not gone 

 on long enough to test the validity of this tradition. In 

 another article attention is directed to the loss of power in 

 internal-combustion engines at high altitudes. The writer 

 states that he is working engines at an altitude of some 

 5000 feet above sea-level, and discusses methods by which 

 the loss, due to diminished atmospheric pressure, may be 

 reduced. 



A CONTRIBUTION to the morphology of the Nyctaginaceae, 

 by Dr. H. Fiedler, published in Engler's Botanische Jahr- 

 biicher (vol. xliv., part v.), is concerned chiefly with the 

 inflorescence modifications and floral diagram variations, 

 from which the author draws conclusions as to the phylo- 

 genetic sequence of the included tribes and genera. The 

 tetracyclic character of the flower with two staminal 

 whorls, characteristic of the Centrosperm?e, is confirmed, 

 and evidence for two or more lines of development in the 

 family is adduced. 



Two useful compilations by Mr. P. C. Standley relative 

 to the botany of New Mexico are published in vol. xiii., 

 part vi., of Contributions from the United States National 

 Herbarium. The first is an annotated list of type species 

 from New Mexico, together with their localities ; to these 

 is added a summary of the itineraries of early collectors, 

 a descriptive list of type localities, and a map of the 

 territory of New Mexico on which the localities are 

 marked. The number of species enumerated is 690, of 

 which one-fifth were collected in the vicinity of Santa Fe, 

 chiefly by A. Fendler in 1847. The second article is a 

 bibliography of New Mexican botany, 



A REPORT by Mr. H. N. Thompson, the conservator of 

 forests in southern Nigeria, on his tour through the 

 western districts of Meko and Shaki, provides the subject 

 of a pLihlic.iiion by the le^lsl.itivr coiim-il <>f tlio colony. 

 The ff)ri -1'. inland are chiefly opm savaniiali or park-like, 

 in whii h deciduous-leaved trees predominate; in moist 

 situations along the banks of streams they become denser. 



