176 



NATURE 



Dec. 30, 1875 



habroptUus) from New Zealand, a Grey Ichneumon {Hcrpestes 

 griseus) from India, deposited ; a Yellow Baboon {Cynocephalus 

 babouin) from W. Africa, purchased ; a Gavial {Gavialis gange- 

 ticus) from India, presented by Capt. Barnet : a Common Fox 

 ( Canis vulpes) European, presented by Mr. W. SaviUe. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 

 Second Series, No. xxii. — The contents of this number are most 

 attractive. To science is assigned the leading place in the 

 arrangement. The first paper is devoted to the Colorado potato- 

 beetle, and is from the pen ot Mr. Bates, F.L.S., who does not 

 profess to impart any original information, and who is unable to 

 come to any definite conclusion as to the probability of its ap- 

 pearing in these countries. The paper is calculated to confuse 

 rather than to enlighten us on this point. For while in one 

 place the author goes to show that the possibility of living speci- 

 mens arriving here cannot be doubted, he observes elsewhere that 

 the analogies of the case supply ground for confidently believing 

 that there is exceedingly little probability of their propagating 

 and spreading in this country. We are also told that " the creature 

 has developed extraordinary flexibility of constitution and habits 

 since it left its quiet home in the Rocky Mountains, and that we 

 cannot be quite sure what it will eventually do." In another pas- 

 •sage Mr. Bates says : — " The potato-beetle is no insidious enemy, 

 like the majority of insect plagues, but meets the farmer in open 

 fair fight." What does he mean by a fair fight between an 

 insect which destroys whole fields and districts, and the helpless 

 farmer?— Mr. Carruthers, F.R.S., consulting botanist to the So- 

 ciety, contributes a paper and a note on the potato disease. In the 

 " paper" he reports on what he calls the results of the competition 

 for the prizes offered through the Society in 1874 for potatoes which 

 would resist the disease for three years in succession. The "note" 

 gives a brief account of Mr. Worthington Smith's discoveiy of the 

 resting spore of the potato fungus. The paper must have been 

 written before the discovery. The truth is the discovery throws 

 a curious shadow not only on the paper but on the course pursued 

 by the society in connection with the whole subject. We were 

 not quite prepared to find that the consulting botanist of this great 

 society would be permitted to announce, as he has done in this 

 paper, that in investigating this disease we must summarily dismiss 

 the soil from our consideration. " Neither soil, nor methods 

 of cultivation," we are told, " exercise any influence on the pre- 

 valence of the disease." For the present we can only say 

 these statements are as unsound as they are astounding. The 

 Journal contains a long paper on laying down land to permanent 

 pasture, which is a joint production. The bulk of the infor- 

 mation is given second-hand ; that is to say, on information 

 furnished by several agriculturists, a long paper is based by the 

 joint authors. The number contains too much matter of this 

 character. The views of an American naturalist on the Colorado 

 potato-beetle are given in a paper by Mr. Bates. Mr. Carru- 

 thers seeks to enlighten us on the potato disease by information 

 collected from various sources j and a number of scattered facts 

 on one of the most important of agricultural subjects — the pro- 

 fitableness of pasture as compared with arable land — are grouped 

 and reviewed in a great variety of ways, seme of which are cal- 

 culated rather to mislead than to enlighten the reader. There 

 are several passages in the paper which will produce the im- 

 pression that the gentleman to whom has been assigned the chief 

 part of the joint authorship is not intimately acquainted with 

 agriculture as at present practised. We take one passage as an 

 illustration : " There are many persons so enamoured of a special 

 rotation — say the four-course— that to extend the period of arti- 

 ficial grass to two years appears to them a violation of all the 

 true principles of scientific farming. The four-course is their 

 ideal of modern farming. A course of cropping which has 

 been proved highly beneficial on some of our most famous 

 corn-growing districts is supposed to be the only legitimate 

 system to be pursued by intelligent farmers elsewhere." Who 

 are the persons referred to ? It may be well to remind the gentle- 

 man who wrote this paper that English farmers are calling out 

 for more freedom of action in the cropping of their land, and that 

 for several years past vast numbers of them have been doing that 

 which he would appear to have discovered in 1875. We cannot 

 at present make room for further criticism on this paper ; and 

 we are glad to be able to state that the number contains several 

 meritorious articles. 



The Journal oj the Chemical Society for November contains 

 Dr. Hofroann's Faraday lecture, entitled "The Life-work of 

 Liebig in Experimental and Philosophic Chemistry ; with allu- 

 sions to his influence on the development of the collateral 

 sciences and of the useful arts." The lecture is illustrated by a 

 portrait of Liebig, and an autotype copy of a letter from Liebig 

 to Faraday. — Prof. J. W. Mallet contributes a paper on achre- 

 matite, a new molybdo-arsenate of lead, and Mr. W. J. Lewis 

 a note on the crystallography of Leucaurin, being an appendix 

 to a former paper by Messrs. Dale and Schorlemmer. — The jour- 

 nal contains its usual number of valuable abstracts from foreign 

 periodicals. 



Morphologisches Jahrbuch. — In the second part of this journal 

 Dr. B. Solger discusses the homology of the cervical vertebra: 

 and nerves in the Sloths, and concludes that the vertebiae up 

 to the 22nd are homologous in Choloepus and Bradypus, 

 but that the homologies of the first twelve nerves cannot be 

 determined ; the nerves from the 13th to the 23rd are homo- 

 logous. — Another paper by Dr. Solger describes two carti- 

 laginous pieces in the visceral skeleton of Chitncera monstrosa, 

 which appear to have been hitherto unnoticed. — Dr. Hermann 

 Fol gives an account of the so-called endostyle of Huxley in 

 various genera of Tunicata, and appears to establish it satisfac- 

 torily as a slime-gland. Excellent figures of its ciliated ar.d 

 glandular epithelia are given. — Prof. Gegenbaur devotes twenty- 

 two pagts to a consideration of the omohyoid muscle, which he 

 believes to be a remnant of a continuous muscle whose origin 

 extended from the sternum along the clavicle to the scapula. He 

 also gives an account, with microscopic sections, of the nipples 

 in Didelphys and in Mus dectunanus. — Dr. Carl Hasse's paper 

 on Aviphioxus lanccolatus is devoted to a demonstration of the 

 structure of the eyespots, in which he finds cells which may be 

 designated optic cells, as distinguished from the pigment-cells. — 

 Plot. Gegenbaur occupies forty-seven pages with a detailed and 

 very hostile criticism of Gotte's recently-published work on the 

 Development of the Toad as a basis for the Comparative 

 Anatomy of the Vertebrata. He censures it in very many 

 respects as empirical and unscientific. 



Jahrbuch der kais.-kon. geologischen Reichsanstalt, band xxv. 

 No. 2. — In this number of the Jahibuch, Dr. E. Tietze, 

 who has been some time in Persia, describes the springs and 

 spring-formations that occur in Demavend mountain and its 

 neighbourhood ; most jf the springs are thermal, and deposit 

 large quantities of calcareous tufa. — The next paper gives 

 details of the work done in the chemical laboratory of the 

 Geological Survey, and includes upwards of 200 analyses. — Dr. 

 C. Doelter describes the geological structure, the rocks, and 

 minerals of the Monzoni Alps in the Tyrol. This paper is 

 illustrated with a geological sketch-map and two plates ot 

 minerals. — Among the " Mineralogical communications" the 

 most generally interesting paper is one by Professor Fuchs 

 on the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions of 1874. He enu- 

 merates 123 earthquakes, distributed as follows: — Winter 37; 

 (Jan. 12, Feb. 15, Dec. 10) ; Spring 32; (March 12, April 11, 

 May 9) ; Summer 25 ; (June 7, July 5, Aug. 13) ; Autumn 29 ; 

 (Sep. 9, Oct. 9, Nov. 11). — The remaining papers are these :^ 

 "On Sahlite as a rock-constituent," by E. Kallowsky ; "On 

 the chemical composition of meionite," by E. F. Neminar ; "On 

 Lievrite," by L. Sipocz ; "On the minerals occurring in the 

 metalliferous veins of the Pribram region," by F. Babanetk ; 

 " On rocks from the island of Samothracia," by J. Niedzwiedzki. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Royal Society, Dec. 9. — " On some Electro-magnetic 

 Rotations of Bar-magnets and Conducting-wires on their Axes," 

 by G. Gore, F.R.S. 



In ^all the published forms of Ampere's experiment of the 

 electro-magnetic rotation of a vertical bar-magnet or conducting- 

 wire upon its axis by Ampere, Faraday. Sturgeon and others, the 

 magnet or wire has either been immersed a large portion of its 

 depth in mercury, or its middle part has been connected by a 

 wire with a surrounding annular channel filled with mercury, 

 and the electric current passed into or out of the magnet or wire 

 by means of that liquid, and the mercury has formed an essential 

 part of the arrangement. 



In all published cases of rotation of bar-magnets on their axes 

 by the influence of electric currents, the two ends of the magnet 



