NATURE 



\NoiK 9, 187^ 



of the fisheries by every mei.ns in their power, and to impose no 

 restrictions or regulations upon them which were not clearly con- 

 sistent with that obiect. I have neither time nor inclination 

 again to deal with all the old arguments which year after year 

 have been brought forward to show that our sea fisheries are 

 being ruined. It is not quite two years since I entered at some 

 length into the subject in my work on " Deep-sea Fishing and 

 Fishing-boat?," and the question is not one that can be discussed 

 in a few lines, or even pages. But I may ask Prof. Newton 

 how he reconciles his belief in a falling-off in the supply of sea 

 fish with the recent considerable enlargement of Billingsgate 

 Market, the continued ir^mense fish traffic on the railways, and 

 the large additions which have been made, and are now being 

 made, to the capital invested in fishing-boats and gear ? Brix- 

 ham alone has added twelve new large trawlers, costing nearly 

 1,200/. each, to her fleet in the present year ; and the ship- 

 wrights there were hard at work on several more for other sta- 

 tions when I visited the place last month. Prof. Newton rightly 

 calls science to the aid of the sea fisheries, for there is still an 

 immense deal to be learnt about the economy of fishes which 

 may help the fishermen in their work. He makes no reference, 

 however, to the important discoveries which have already been 

 made by Professors Sars and Malm on the coast of Norway. 

 The investigations of the former naturalist especially, carried on 

 for several years, have resulted in showing that there need be 

 little fear of disturbing the "spawning beds" of most of our 

 edible sea fishes, as the spawn of almost all those in chief re- 

 quest is rot deposited on the bottom, but floats during the whole 

 process of development. 



I will not enter into the question of destroying the balance of 

 nature, on which Prof. Newton laid so much stress in his obser- 

 vations at Glasgow, because I believe we are all too ignorant of 

 the conditions affecting it to be able to do more than theorise on 

 the subject ; but I would ask my friend, assuming he is correct 

 in his belief that our sea fisheries are falling off, whether he has 

 considered the probable effect on them and on the balance of 

 nature, of the tens of thousands of additional gulls, guillemots, 

 &c., which I hope will result from our sea birds being undis- 

 turbed during the breeding season, under the Sea Birds' Protec- 

 tion Act, of which he was such an earnest advocate ? 



I do not know on what evidence he grounds his belief in the 

 decline of our sea fisheries ; but I have no hesitation in saying, 

 as the result of my inquiries during the last few years, that the 

 average annual produce of those fisheries has considerably in- 

 creased since the Royal Commissioners were engaged in inquir- 

 ing into their general condition. Bad weather has had an 

 important effect in some years in interrupting the fishermen's 

 work ; but fluctuations from such causes have continually oc- 

 curred, and they will undoubtedly happen again. 



E. W. H. HOLDSVVORTH 



Mr. Wallace and his Reviewers 



X DID not intend to take any public notice of reviews or 

 criticisms of my book on "Geographical Distribution"; Mr. 

 Gill's letter, however, calls for a few remarks. I have first to 

 thank him for pointing out the errors of a previous critic, and 

 also for a list of errata in the account of North American fresh- 

 water fishes. He very truly remarks, that had I been acquainted 

 with ichthyology and its literature these errors might have been 

 avoided ; but he has overlooked the fact that I have twice stated 

 (vol. i.,p. loi, and vol. ii., p. i68) that the part of my work 

 relating' to fishes is, practically, a summary of Dr. Giinther's 

 Catalogue. The labour of going through such an extensive 

 work for the purpose of extracting and tabulating summaries of 

 the geographical materials it contains, was very great, and no 

 doubt I have made some errors. Most of those indicated by 

 Mr. Gill depend, however, either on diflferences of classification 

 and nomenclature, or on additions to North American ichthy- 

 ology since the date of Dr. Giinther's work, and are therefore 

 due to the plan of this part of my book, and not to oversight. 

 Although possessing a tolerable acquaintance with the lite- 

 rature of ornithology, I had found the task of collating and com- 

 bining the latest information into a uniform system of classi- 

 fication and nomenclature to be one which severely taxed 

 whatever knowledge and literary ability I possessed. To have 

 attempted to do the same thing in a class of animals which I had 

 never studied would, I felt sure, have resulted in great confusion, 

 and have been far less satisfactory and reliable than the course 

 I have adopted. Had I been able to find any work giving a 

 general account of the fishes of temperate North America, I 



should gladly have availed myself of it, but I do not gather from 

 Mr. Gill's letter that any such work exists ; and notwithstanding 

 the great imperfection of the results (in the eyes of a specialist) 

 as regards the fishes of the United States, I still think I exer- 

 cised a wise discretion in confining myself to the vast mass of 

 materials, classified on a uniform system, which Dr. Giinther's 

 Catalogue affords. 



I may here add, that the " 24 peculiar genera" mentioned by 

 me are in addition to the " 5 peculiar family types" — making 

 together the " 29 peculiar genera " referred to in the succeeding 

 paragraph— so that the contradiction alluded to by Mr. Gill is 

 only apparent. ALFRED R. WALLACE 



Dorking, October 30 



Self- fertilisation of Plants 



In Nature, vol. xiv. p. 475, I find an abstract of Mr. 

 Meehan's paper on the " self-fertilisation " of Browallia data. 

 When I first saw this paper in i}a.& Proceedings o{\}[i'& Philadelphia 

 Academy of Natural Sciences, I suspected that the observation 

 was incomplete and the inference hasty. It is therein stated 

 that the densely bearded connectives of the upper anthers com- 

 pletely close the tube of the corolla with a bearded mass ; that 

 "no insect can thrust its proboscis into the tube except through 

 this mass ; and if it has foreign pollen adherent to it, it will be 

 cleaned off by the beard ; furthermore, the very act of penetra- 

 tion will thrust the anthers forward on to the pistil [meaning 

 stigma], and aid in rupturing the pollen-sacs [opening the anther 

 C:lls?], and securing self-fertilisation." My inspection of the 

 flower showed that the orifice of the tube was clearly pervious on 

 the (morphologically) anterior side by a chink, which is nearly 

 divided by a crust of the tuba into two orifices, one exactly 

 before each anther-cell ; a hog's bristle, slightly moistened, on 

 being thrust down these passages in a freshly open flower, and 

 then withdrawn, was found to have the inserted part well sup- 

 plied with adherent pollen, so that it was not " cleaned off by 

 the beard," nor was it cleaned off by introduction into the orifice 

 of a second flower. 



As to self-fertilisation being brought about by the thrusting of 

 the overhanging anthers down upon the stigma, this seems to be 

 effectually prevented by the lodgment of these anthers in a pair 

 of cup-like concavities at the back of the stigma, so as to keep 

 them quite away from the actual stigmatic surface. It is obvious 

 that if insects ever self-fertilise Browallia it is by carrying down 

 upon their tongue or proboscis some pollen from the upper 

 anthers ; but in this operation, passing from flower to flower, 

 they are quite as likely to cross-fertilise them. The blossoms 

 are freely visited by Hymenot'tera and Lepidoptei'a of various 

 sorts. It is quite probable that the other cases of " self- fertilisa- 

 tion " brought forward by Mr. Meehan may equally bear a dif- 

 ferent interpretation from his own. Asa Gray 



Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 



Nitrite of Amy! 



Mr. George Aryarch, of Cincinnati, asks of me through 

 the columns of Nature two questions concerning the nitrite of 

 amy], which I may briefly answer as follows: — (i) Nitrite of 

 amyl has been used, and with considerable success, in the treat- 

 ment of epilepsy, but its application can only be entrusted to a 

 regular practitioner of medicine who understands its mode of 

 action. (2) It has not as yet been proved to be of service in the 

 treatment of paralysis. B. W. Richardson 



CAPT. NARES'S REPORT^ 



H.M.S. Alert, at Valentia, 

 October 27, 1876. 



SIR, — I have the honour to report in detail the proceed- 

 ings of the Expedition since leaving Upemivik on 

 July 22, 1875, as follows : — 



The Alert and Discove7y, one ship in tow of the other, 

 left Upernivik, from which port I last had the honour of 

 addressing you, on July 22, 1875. 



A dense fog prevailing at sea I steamed to the north- 

 ward, between the islands and the main land, experiencing 

 clear and calm weather until arriving near Kangitok 



I Communicated by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. 



