8o6 



NA TURE 



December i. 192, 



Research Items. 



Hi;d Pkkr prom thk IIoldf.rness Prat. — Two 

 <Ii»coveric8 of the remains of red dew in the peat of 

 Holderness are recorded by Mr. T, Sheppard in the 

 November issue of the Naturalist. The first was 

 found in l)cd!^ cxp<Med on the shore near Skipsca, 

 East Yorks. The entire skeleton with the exception 

 of a few small bones was recovered and is now exhibited 

 in the Municipal Museum at Hull. The antlers 

 measure 2 ft. 3 in., and 2 ft. 2 J in., one having seven 

 and the other six points. The second discovery was 

 made in the peat on the shore at Withemsea at very 

 low water during the spring tides. Consequently 

 little time was available for excavation and only the 

 antlers were secured. The right antler measured 

 33 in. in length and y in. in diameter at the skull. The 

 left antler was unfortunately broken in the course of 

 excavation and only a part recovered. 



Geographical Work in Egypt. — The Ministry of 

 Public Works, Egypt, publishes the report on the 

 work of the Physical Department for the year ending 

 March 31, 1923. In the Hydrological Service, rainfall 

 observations were received from 281 stations in Egj'pt 

 and surrounding lands, an increase of ten compared 

 with the previous year. The Nile basin is fairly well 

 supplied with stations except Abyssinia, where there 

 arc only six. River discharge measurements were 

 taken on all the main branches of the Nile. A dis- 

 charge station at Nimule, on the borders of the Sudan 

 and Uganda, will give a measure of the amount of 

 water available for storage in Lake Albert which is 

 essential in any project for controlling the waters of 

 that lake. Among numerous other researches it may 

 be noted that experiments were made with hydrogen 

 drift balloons carrying a magnesium flash mixture, in 

 order to connect, by the help of a camera, the European 

 and African triangulations by way of Crete. The 

 Meteorological Service now receives observations 

 from twenty-four stations in Egypt and twenty-nine 

 in the Sudan. A station in the Sinai peninsula at 

 Bir Abu Tif, founded two years ago by a commercial 

 company, was closed. 



Flora of the Tibetan Marshes. — The ecologist 

 will find an interesting description of a little-known 

 region in Mr. F. Kingdon Ward's account of the flora 

 of the Tibetan marshes in the Journal of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society, volume 48, parts 2 and 3, 

 issued September 1923. He describes the glaciated 

 limestone plateau east of the Yangtze, a country of 

 wide Alpine valleys and numerous small lakes with 

 frequent lofty escarpments overlooking the rivers 

 running from north to south. This country appears 

 to be magnificently rich in herbaceous alpines, which 

 are unaffected by the seasonal droughts occurring 

 in their non -growing season, while these conditions 

 prevent the vigorous development of woody plants. 

 As opposed to the country to its west, it is a land of 

 primulas rather than of rhododendrons. Mr. Ward's 

 account of the vegetation is none the less interesting 

 because it is written with a special reference to the 

 plants which are of horticultural interest when 

 transferred to the amateur's garden. Many students 

 of rock gardens will be interested by his pertinent 

 remarks, based upon the study of the rock flora in 

 Nature, as to the places where certain plants should 

 appear in the garden. Thus he suggests that plants 

 with translucent flowers, such as a species of Onosma, 

 are intended to grow on a level with the eye so that 

 the light reaches the obsers'er through the petals of 

 the flower, while others, like some of the dwarf 

 Campanulas, are intended to hang downwards from 

 the crevices in the cliff. 



Lignite in Nigeria. — The Bulletin of the Imp< 

 Institute, volume 21, No. 2, 192V contains an 

 portant article upon the lignite deposits of 

 which are to be found on both banks of the N 

 seem likely to afford a practicable fu' 

 value for lx>ats navigating the Niger. 'I 

 relations of the lignite deposits in f 

 l*rovinces of Nigeria are discussed and tli- 

 of the beds indicated so far as it is known, 

 of the chemical composition of samples from 

 seams are presented and trials reported 01 

 suitability of the lignite for manufacture 

 briquettes. A large scale trial of t)-'- ^ •"-'■■ • '•- 

 was made by making up a consid' 

 the material into briquettes through ...> ... 

 of a factory in Saxony ; these bricks were t: 

 in locomotives on the railways in both the nort 

 southern provinces of Nigena with results tha' 

 that they will provide cjuite a satisfactory' t 

 view of the cost of imported coal in British W* 

 the subject would seem to be of considerable • 

 importance. 



New Oligocene Toothed Ch..^. . .x.^ . ,^w..i . 

 Carolina. — Mr. R. Kellogg figures and descr 

 (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 1\ 

 No. 7) an apparently new toothed Cetacean from t 

 probably of Oligocene age in Berkeley County, S( ■ 

 Carolina. The fos.sil consists of a skull 371 i 

 ( =i4i in.) in length. In some respects it resem: 

 Agorophius and Archaeodelphis, but is considere<i 

 represent a new genus and species and hns ! 

 named Xenorophus sloanii. 



Italian Earthquakes IN 1911. — ^w i..^ 

 since the War, the Central Office of Meteoro 

 Geodynamics at Rome has issued its " Nu..... : 

 Earthquakes observed in Italy." The present volume 

 of nearly 600 pages deals with the earthquakes of the. 

 year 191 1 and forms an appendix to vol. xviii. (1914M 

 of the Bollettino of the Italian Seismological Society^ 

 One advantage of late publication is that the result 

 obtained at foreign observatories can be incorporated, 

 The total number of earthquakes recorded in 191 1 

 about 800, of which one-fifth were of external origin 

 Of the latter, one in every three is described as 

 " distant earthquake," the position of its origin beinj 

 apparently undetermined. 



The Cheiropterygium in Amphibia. — Cope's gem 

 Er>'Ops, an early Labyrinthodont from the Permiai 

 of Texas and New Mexico, has been much discussed 

 but new light is now shed on it by a paper on it 

 carpus, by W. K. Gregory, R. W. ^liner. and G. IS 

 Noble (Bull. Amer. Museum of Nat. Hist., vol. 48 

 p. 279, Oct. 17, 1923). The authors point to th( 

 primitive characters revealed by their research, am 

 come to the far-reaching conclusion that, while al 

 known fossil and existing amphibia have four digit 

 in the manus, the most primitive forms had 

 prepoUex, five digits, and a postminimus " in the han< 

 and similar features following a prehallux in the foot 

 The cheiropterygium was thus at least seven-rave ' 

 with a tendency to reduction in the two marginal ray? 

 It is pertinent to the recent discussion in Nature a 

 to the spelling of names derived from Greek tha 

 " cheiropterj'gium " in this pajjer is not only docke 

 of its first " i," but, when broken at the end of 

 line, has the hyphen placed between the " p " an<3 

 the " t." 



Coral-reefs AND CoastalPlatforms. — The paper 

 on coral-reefs recently read by W. M. Da\-is before th 

 National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., an< 



NO. 2822, VOL. I 12] 



