3i6 



NATURE 



[January 5, 191 1 



established in the Pacific by the United States, of 300,000 

 sea birds before the descent of the Government cutter put 

 a sudden stop to their proceedings. The author of the 

 paper emphasises the enormous value of birds in our 

 tropical and subtropical colonies from an economic point 

 of view, and pictures what would result from the extinc- 

 tion of such species as the straw-necked ibis, which saves 

 the Australian paddocks in their periodical ravages by 

 grasshopp>ers, of which twenty-five tons can be devoured 

 in a single day by 200,000 of these useful insect eaters. 

 Protection of colonial birds, he pleads, is called for also 

 in the interests of sentiment and hereditary association. 

 " Which is it to be," he asks, " the bird, alive, filling 

 the land with song and beauty and labouring unceasingly 

 for the good of millions of our kinsmen, or the bird, dead, 

 and irreparably lost to our colonies, that a few individuals, 

 whose number is composed largely of the foreign element, 

 may put money in their pockets? " 



Mr. Hamel Smith forwards us, in reference to the 

 review of his book, " Aigrettes and Bird Skins," in 

 Nature of December 15, 1910 (p. .207), a number of 

 extracts — unfortunately too long for our limited space — 

 from various notices dealing with the book in the colonial 

 and Indian Press, many of them supporting " a fair hear- 

 ing for both sides prior to the passing of enactments," 

 and reminds us that his book " suggests the establish- 

 ment of a close season generally and total prohibition of 

 shooting at any centre where the birds show serious signs 

 of diminishing." In reply to this communication our 

 reviewer repeats that the difficulties and expense of 

 effectively maintaining a close season are prohibitive. The 

 plume-hunter, moreover, apparently devoid of conscience, 

 ignores all laws, regulations, and enactments. The nuptial 

 period is his only harvest time ; if stopped in that season 

 his occupation would be gone. The facts already 

 sufficiently established prove that the trade is conducted 

 with the utmost cruelty, that the extermination of many 

 economically valuable species is imminent, and that no 

 close season will effectively stop the slaughter of ornate 

 birds so long as such great emporia as London and other 

 Continental cities remain open. In centres where exter- 

 mination is imminent, even if proclaimed, the plume- 

 hunter will carry on his trade by stealth when he cannot 

 openly, and will ship away his harvest as " cow-hair," 

 " horse-hair," or under any other specious designation 

 likely to pass the custom house. 



In a lengthy letter to the Times of December 26, 19 10, 

 Dr. Bulloch makes an earnest appeal for the adequate 

 endowment of medical education and research. He points 

 out that the better educated the medical man, the greater 

 the gain to society in general who requires his services. 

 Medical education at present is so expensive that the cost 

 is less than half covered by the fees of the students. We 

 have hospitals unrivalled in the world, but it has been 

 decreed that the generous contributions of those who sup- 

 port them must not be applied to medical education. The 

 public demands the greatest efficiency, yet with few excep- 

 tions fails to provide the institutes which are necessary 

 for the training. The donations of generous donors for 

 medical research, such as those of city companies and of 

 Mr. Carnegie and the Beit scholarships, to some extent 

 miss their aim. In the main they go to the researchers, 

 but neglect to provide these with laboratories and train- 

 ing for their work. The teachers who have to train them 

 are overworked and inadequately remunerated ; they them- 

 selves might, had they the time and opportunity, form 

 the mainstay of medical research in this country. But the 

 research scholarships are usually awarded to relatively 



NO. 2149, VOL. 85] 



young men, and their teachers obtain no help, financial or 

 otherwise. 



The Psychological Review for November (19 10) con- 

 tains a paper by Mr. T. V, Moore on the influence of 

 temperature and the electric current on the sensibility of 

 the skin. The author finds that the minimum threshold 

 for touch and for spatial threshold is reached when the I 

 temperature of the skin is about 36° C, above and below r 

 which point the threshold rises. He also concludes tha- 

 Pfliiger's law for the irritability of motor nerves aivl 

 muscles holds for cutaneous sensibility, which is accord- 

 ingly decreased at the anode and increased at the kathod<- 

 pole. Mr. Moore finds that, immediately after the subjet - 

 tion of a skin area to the induced electric current, thi 

 sensibility of the touch spots and of the pain spots is 

 lowered considerably, and he believes that under these con- 

 ditions a touch spot may function as a pain spot. 



According to an article by Mr. L. E. Hope, the curator, 

 published in the Museums Journal for December, 1910, a 

 local natural history record bureau has been established at 

 the Carlisle Museum. The area of observation include^ 

 a radius of fifty miles from the city, and it is to be hoped 

 that an increase in the local fauna list will be the result 

 of the movement. The scheme has been in operation sinc'' 

 1902, and during the last few 3-ears the annual number of 

 notes has been between 200 and 300 annually. The idea 

 may be commended to other local museums. ; 



According to an article in the Times of December 23, ■ 

 1910, the relatives of the late Mr. Boyd Alexander are i 

 about to present, in accordance with the wishes of the | 

 deceased, his large collection of African birds to the British 

 Museum. The specimens are about 4000 in number, and 

 include several species (whether the types is not stated 

 discovered by the late explorer, among the most interesi- 

 ing of these being Willcocks' honey-guide {Indicate 

 -willcocksi) and the long-tailed tree-warbler {Urolai 

 mariae), the latter representing a generic type of its own 

 The first portion of the collection was made in the Cap 

 Verdes, a second portion during the Kumasi relief expedi- 

 tion, a third when Mr. Alexander led a column to 

 Gambaga, a fourth in the course of the Alexander-Gosling 

 expedition from the Nile to the Niger, and the last in the j 

 islands of the Gulf of Guinea and the Cameruns. 



Much interest attaches to a note, by Mr. E. Bidwell, in 

 the October (19 10) number of the Ibis (ser. 9, vol. iv., 

 P- 759)' <^" fragments of the egg of an ostrich obtained 

 some years ago in a nalla on the Kain River, in the Band: 

 district of the United Provinces of India. Structurally 

 the shell is almost identical with that of the Somali 

 Struthio molybdophanes, but the thickness is somewha: 

 greater. The name S. indicus is proposed for the speci>- 

 represented by the Banda egg-fragments. It may be men- 

 tioned that in ancient literature there are references to 

 the occurrence of large birds in Central Asia, not improb- 

 ably inclusive of Baluchistan, which could scarcely have 

 been other than ostriches, while in old Chinese works there 

 is mention of ostrich-eggs sent as presents to the 

 emperors. The Assyrian sculptures show, moreover, that 

 ostriches formerly inhabited Mesopotamia. Sub-fossil egg- 

 shells indicate the occurrence of a species (S. chersonensts) 

 in the Government of Cherson, in south Russia, while in 

 the Pliocene we have remains of S. karatheodori horn 

 Samos and of S. asiaticus from northern India. 



The nature of the colouring of the kingfisher is dis- 

 cussed by Mr. F. J. Stubbs in the Zoologist for December, 

 19 10. According to the angle of vision and the position 



