436 



NATURE 



[June 2, 192 1 



now informs us under date May 7 that "while Mr. 

 Hoy is collecting specimens in AustraUa for the 

 Smithsonian Institution, he is in no sense an officer 

 of the institution." A letter has therefore been sent 

 by the institution to the Minister of Industry, South 

 Australia, expressing regret that anything written by 

 Mr. Hoy should have led to misunderstanding, and 

 gratefully acknowledging " the kind assistance given 

 Mr. Hoy both by the authorities and private citizens 

 in the various parts of Australia which he has 

 visited." 



Sir Hercules Read in his presidential address to 

 the Society of Antiquaries {Aniiq. Journal, vol. i., 

 pp. 167-82, July, 192 1) avails himself of his ap- 

 proaching freedom to deliver some home-truths. 

 "The contents of a museum take precedence of the 

 building that contains them." Disregard of this 

 principle and of the views of the museum officers by 

 two distinguished architects has made the Victoria 

 and Albert Museum and the northern annex to the 

 British Museum "deplorable and costly mistakes." 

 (Sir Hercules says this would not occur in the case 

 of a laboratory. Well, there is such a building 

 recently erected to the plans of one of these architects 

 in which the best light is given to passages and the 

 windows of the work-rooms are obscured by useless 

 balustrades and overhanging arches.) The Govern- 

 ment has allotted to London University a site that 

 will soon be required by the expanding British 

 Museum. Congestion may be in part relieved by 

 removing objects from exhibition into store ; but this 

 is only to postpone the inevitable removal of either 

 the museum collections or the national library to 

 another site. Lastly, the recent trouble with Scot- 

 land over a battered gravestone leads Sir Hercules to 

 condemn the stringent embargo which several coun- 

 tries have laid on the export of all — even their most 

 trivial — antiquities. At any rate, we shall all agree 

 that for the British Isles, if not for the British 

 Empire, the British Museum should be the centre 

 where a complete representation of all products of 

 Nature and art can be seen. We need, instead of 

 competition, intelligent co-operation between the 

 various museums. 



The mode in which the narrow-mouthed lamprey 

 {Geotria stenostoma, Ogilby) ascends waterfalls is 

 described by Mr. D. A. Herbert in the Journal of the 

 Royal Society of Western Australia (vol. vi., part i., 

 1920). The animal can obtain hold only on a wet 

 surface, and the cutting off of the water by a hand 

 placed above the fish causes it at once to drop back 

 into the pool. Two excellent photographs are given 

 of the toilsome climb. 



In a second important paper on the structure of 

 the Andes (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. Ixxvi., p. i, 

 1920) Mr. J. A. Douglas points out that the Alpine 

 type of overfolding cannot be traced in the Andean 

 Cordilleras, and that the chain is due to vertical uplift 

 between two ancient resistant masses which from 

 time to time have compressed a series of transgressive 

 deposits between them. The author continues the fine 

 series of photographic plates that characterised his 

 previous paper published in 1914. 

 NO. 2692, VOL. IO7I 



Dr. C. D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, has informed the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing 

 that since the appearance of Raymond's memoir on 

 the trilobite he has reviewed his own trilobite sections, 

 and also cut a number of additional sections, one of 

 which, fortunately, cuts across the exopodite so as to 

 show its structure and the relations of the fringe of 

 filaments to the spiral arm. Other sections indicate 

 that the ventral limb was formed of a coxopodite, 

 endopodite, and exopodite, and, in addition, a short, 

 flat epipodite with numerous long, strong filaments. 

 Dr. Walcott has also succeeded in securing photo- 

 graphs of the epipodites of Neolenus, which illustrate 

 the difference between them and the exopodite. 



An interesting paper by Mr. Leslie Scott on " Agri- 

 cultural Co-operation " appeared in the April issue of 

 the Fortnightly Review. In the author's opinion, the 

 farming community — especially the class of small 

 farmers — exerts a considerable stabilising influence in 

 the nation, and it is therefore highly desirable that 

 this class should be maintained. Farmers have to 

 face foreign competition, and they have to stimulate 

 home demand ; the best vi^ay to do these two things 

 is to cut down wherever possible the expenses incurred 

 in distribution and in the purchase of feeding-stufTs, 

 etc. "Factory" farms reduce production costs, but 

 they also eliminate the small farmer, for the factory 

 farm consists of 10,000-20,000 acres farmed by a 

 manager appointed by some company. Agricultural 

 co-operation seems to be the only method by which 

 economic production can be attained and the small 

 farmer preserved at the same time. A great deal is 

 done bv such co-operation in Denmark, and there are 

 a few agricultural societies doing good work in this 

 country, but there is a great need for union among 

 these different societies. They are now being joined 

 up in the Agricultural Wholesale Society, and as soon 

 as the farmers put implicit trust in their own societies 

 and the societies place equal trust in the central body, 

 then the wholesale society — provided that it is ade- 

 quately capitalised — will be able to make practically 

 its own terms in the markets both of this country and 

 of the world. 



The Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga Douglasii, the most 

 valuable conifer in western North America, is now 

 planted extensively by foresters in this country, as it 

 produces a large volume ot timber in a short period of 

 years. Until recently this tree enjoyed practical im- 

 munity from both insect attack and fungus disease, 

 but this happy state no longer exists, and it is neces- 

 sary now to sound a warning that unless preventive 

 measures are taken, great disaster may befall planta- 

 tions of this species. Such has happened in the case 

 of the white pine, Pinus strobus, an American tree 

 that can no longer be commercially planted in Europe 

 on account of its liability to succumb to the deadly 

 fungus Peridermium strobi. The Douglas fir is 

 becoming infested in the South of England with a 

 woollv aphis, Chermes Cooleyi, which was first 

 noticed in 19 14 in the New Forest. Its spread since 

 then has been alarmingly rapid, and isolated attacks 

 were noticed last summer in Peeblesshire. It is dis- 

 tressing to hear also of a fungus which has been 



