Aug. 31, 1876I 



NATURE 



369 



regularity, and constituting along each gill a kind of grating 

 bearing a close resemblance to the teeth of a comb. The laminae 

 of which this grating is composed become gradually narrower 

 from their fixed to their free extremities ; they are of a dark 

 olive colour, of a hard texture, and highly elastic, but at the 

 same time brittle, and easily snapping off when urged beyond a 

 certain point. 



" The office which Mr. AUman assigned to these branchial 

 appendages was that of strainers, by which the water before 

 coming in contact with the branchioe is freed from extraneous 

 bodies, which would otherwise interfere with the functions of 

 respiration. The objection which might be urged to this view, 

 namely, that the other sharks are without any such arrangement 

 appeared to him of no weight, as we know but little of the habits 

 of the Basking Shark, and as those which we do know would 

 lead us to believe that the structure just described is admirably 

 adapted to the fish's peculiar mode of life. The Basking Shark 

 must be entirely free from the voracious disposition so charac- 

 teristic of the allied genera. Its teeth are little more than 

 tubercles, and quite unfit it for the life of carnage led by other 

 sharks. Its food must accordingly be found among the less 

 resisting inhabitants of the ocean ; and as the Basking Shark 

 will therefore be driven to feed near the bottom and among sea- 

 weeds the existence of the branchial appendages will admit of an 

 easy explanation. We must thus at once perceive the admirable 

 adaptation of this interesting arrangement to the habits of an 

 animal which would otherwise be subjected to the constant 

 annoyance of having its branchiae clogged with the floating 

 fronds of sea- weeds, a circumstance which the anatomical struc- 

 ture alone would otherwise render more liable to occur in this 

 than in the other sharks, as the openings to the branchiae in the 

 Selachus maximus are of enormous size, and the branchiostegous 

 membranes particularly loose." Geo. J. Allman 



The Birds of Kerguelen Island 

 f" My attention has been called to a review of Dr. Kidder's 

 " Report on the Ornithology of Kerguelen Island," in Nature 

 of the loth instant (p. 317, supra). Will you kindly permit me 

 to express regret that the reviewer should have alluded to pri- 

 ority of publication of the results of the American and English 

 expeditions to that island ? To many persons his remarks on this 

 point will appear to be ungenerous and needlessly sarcastic to the 

 foreign naturalists. The subject is a delicate one, and I am 

 sorry to have occasion to mention it, especially as an Englishman 

 should be the last to approach it. 



The reviewer will doubtless admit that when three naturalists 

 are simultaneously sent to work independently of one another 

 in the same neighbourhood, it is almost inevitable that one will 

 anticipate the work of the others, and yet that there is nothing to 

 boast of if he does. In the present instance, being bound 

 to regard the interests of my employers in my collection, 

 I hastened the issue of preliminary diagnoses of the novelties 

 contained in it, to secure their types from alienatian to 

 foreign museums. The result of this was the acquisition by 

 the English of the types of all the new species in my collec- 

 tion excepting those of one bird (which has recently been de- 

 scribed as new by the Germans), and those of two Annelids, and 

 three lichens, and perhaps a moss pre-occupied by the Americans. 

 We could well have afforded to lose nine or ten times as many, 

 and should still have retained a fair proportion of the whole 

 number for English museums. The reviewer, therefore, might 

 have done well if he had censured the rapacity of the English in 

 grasping the lion's share of the type-specimens ; but it was rather 

 too bad of him to attribute to my fellow- workers small feelings of 

 jealousy with reference to the Americans being the first in the 

 field with their final reports, of which they are not conscious. 

 The Americans have kept us fully informed as to the progress of 

 their reports during the period of their preparation, by letter and 

 by the transmission of advance sheets; and the English final 

 reports will no doubt be ready at the time appointed by the 

 Royal Society. If the Germans publish their results in the 

 meanwhile, we shall have the advantage of including references 

 to their work among our citations. 



The reviewer is perhaps unaware of the publication of another 

 Bulletin by the Americans, containing, amongst other informa- 

 tion relating to Kerguelen Island, further ornithological parti- 

 culars. It was issued more than a month ago. 



A. E. Eaton 

 Naturalist accompanying the English 

 Transit of Venus Expedition to 



Aug. 24 Kerguelen Island in 1874 



Antedated Books 



I AM ready to give the Editor of the Zoological Society's 

 Transactions credit for desiring to set a good and not a bad 

 example ; but, since a man seldom thinks that which he does to 

 be wrong, the simple assertion of his opinion that it is the 

 former and not the latter is not enough. Whether the papers 

 in those Transactions are antedated by one month (as he admits) 

 or by several months is merely a matter of detail. The practice 

 of antedating is equally faulty in principle. If their editor would 

 add the correct date of publication on the covers of the several 

 parts, as is done with the Proceedings of the Royal and the 

 yournal of the Linnean Society, he might give whatever date he 

 pleases anywhere else as that of his latest revision. 



Another F.Z.S. 



Earthquake in Nithsdale, Scotland 

 On the morning of the 12th current, at 3 o'clock, Mr. Robson, 

 of the schoolhouse of Penpont, Dumfriesshire, was awakened 

 by a sharp shock of earthquake and heard its detonations. On 

 inquiry the same shock had been felt at the schoolhouse of Tyn^. 

 ron, by Mr. Laurie ; and over an area of several parishes around 

 the upper course of the Nith the shock was felt, causing walls to 

 vibrate and cupboard dishes to tingle. Two concussions of less 

 violence were felt between 11 and 12 o'clock on the previous 

 evening. The morning papers of the 14th report that a severe 

 shock of earthquake had been felt at Athens on the morning of 

 the 12th. It would be interesting to know the exact time when 

 the shock was felt in Greece. On April i6th, 1873, at 9.55 

 P.M., a similar shock to that experienced last week was felt in 

 the same districts of Nithsdale. I recollect communicating a 

 short notice of it to Nature at the time, as I had heard the 

 strange sound, but on this occasion I did not hear it. 

 Tynron Schoolhouse, Aug. 23 James Shaw 



P.S. — Since writing the above I have received confirmation 

 of the event from several other reliable witnesses. It seems to 

 have been most plainly felt in the parishes of Morton, Penpont, 

 Keir, Tynron, and Glencaim, to the west of the Nith. J. S. 



The Cuckoo 



The usual maimer in which the cuckoo in June "alters his 

 tune," is by doubling his first syllable, and the "cuc-cuckoo, 

 cuc-cuckoo " is then usually, if not always, followed by the single 

 This is certainly the case both near London and in the 



Midlands. 



E. H. 



ABSTRACT REPORT TO "NATURE" ON EX- 

 PERIMENTA TION ON ANIMALS FOR THE 

 ADVANCE OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE'- 

 VIL 



THERE occur to me a few other illustrative series of 

 researches, in which scientific and practical medi- 

 cine have been advanced by experimentation on the 

 lower animals. Some of these I will state in terms as 

 brief as possible in the present paper. 



Experime7itation in respect to the Disease called Cataract. 

 Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, in the year 1869, 

 made the original and remarkable observation that if a 

 part of the body of a frog be immersed in simple syrup, 

 there soon occurs in the crystalline lens of the eyeball an 

 opaque appearance resembling the disease called cataract. 

 He extended his observations to the effects of grape 

 sugar, and obtained the same results. He found that ne 

 could induce the cataractic condition invariably by this 

 experiment, or by injecting a solution of sugar with a 

 fine needle, subcutaneously, into the dorsal sac of the frog. 

 The discovery was one of singular importance ini the 

 history of medical science, and explained immediately a 

 number of obscure phenomena. The co-existence of the 

 two diseases, diabetes and cataract, in man, had been 

 observed by France, Cohen, Hasner, Mackenzie, Duncan, 

 von Graafe, and others, and von Graafe had stated that 

 after examining a large number of diabetic patients in 

 different hospitals, he had found one-fourth affected with 

 cataract. Before Mitchell's observation there was not 



^ Continued from p, 341, 



