28 



NATURE 



[September 2, 1920 



In the last issue of the Bollettino of the Italian 

 Seismological Society (vol. xxii., 1919, pp. 129-42) 

 Dr. Agamennone describes a series of slight earth- 

 quakes at Frascati on November 6-7, 1909, of the 

 sa^e nature as true volcanic earthquakes, and yet 

 originating on the flank of the extinct volcano of the 

 Alban Hills. Small as is the area covered by these 

 hills, Dr. Baratta distinguishes within it nine seismic 

 zones, and the interest of the shocks described lies 

 in the evidence which they offer of the continual 

 migration of activity from one of these zones to 

 another. The same number of the Bolleltino con- 

 tains Dr. G. Martinelli's catalogue of 568 earth- 

 quakes felt in Italy in 1917 (pp. 164-87). This takes 

 the place of the very full pre-war reports which 

 formerly occupied several hundred pages every year. 

 While the completeness of the record does not seem 

 to have suffered under war conditions, the catalogue 

 in its restricted form has lost none of its usefulness 

 for statistical purposes. 



In the latest part of the Transactions of the Nova 

 .Scotian Institute of Science (vol. xiv., part 4) Prof. 

 John Cameron describes two remarkable human 

 skulls from South Malekula, in the New Hebrides. 

 They seem to havs been elongated by distortion 

 through bandaging in infancy, and they exhibit the 

 enormous development of the frontal air sinuses which 

 are such a marked feature of the Melanesian skull. 

 These sinuses not only produce very prominent super- 

 ciliary ridges, but also, with the large maxillary 

 sinuses, cause a flattening of the upper and lower 

 margins of the orbit, imparting to it a quadrangular 

 shape. The various features are compared with those 

 of the known fossil human skulls from Europe. 



During the war the Geological Survey of Egvpt 

 had the opportunity of obtaining some of the interesting 

 fossil vertebrates from the Lower Miocene estuarine 

 deposits at Moghara, and it has just published a 

 description of the collection in a "Contribution h 

 1 'Etude des Vert^br^s Miocenes de I'Egypte," by 

 M. R. Fourtau. The fish-remains, on which there are 

 notes by M. F. Priem, are unimportant, but among 

 the reptilian remains there are fine skulls of new 

 species of Crocodilus and Tomistoma and of a new 

 genus of gavials named Euthecodon. The primitive 

 arnodactyl mammals of the family .^nthracotheriidae 

 are represented as usual by many valuable fragments, 

 and there are several teeth ol Mastodon. Dinotherium 

 is curiously absent, and M. Fourtau finds it difficult 

 to explain why this genus should be found with 

 Mastodon further south in Africa. One tooth of a 

 hyaena is the sole fragment of a carnivore, but there 

 are two portions of mandibles of anthropoid apes 

 which are of great interest. The figures of these two 

 fossils are very unsatisfactory, but according to the 

 description one seems to represent a new genus 

 related to Hylobates, while the other may belong to 

 a species of Dn,'opithecus. 



Two lecture-demonstrations to teachers of science 

 in secondary schools on "The Study of Crystals in 

 Schools," given by Mr. T. V. Barker at the Uni- 

 versity Museum, Oxford, on .'\ugust lo-ii, are pub- 

 NO. 2653, VOL. I06I 



lishcd in a small pamphlet by the Holywell Press, 

 Oxford. In the first lecture some of the salient fact.* 

 of crystallography were experimentally demonstrated 

 on growing crystals by means of the lantern-micro- 

 scope, in or<ler to illustrate the lecturer's view that 

 some instruction about crystals should be given in all 

 chemical lectures and laboratories. It was pointed 

 out that almost every answer to an examinatiorb 

 question on atomic-weight determinations will include 

 a dissertation on Mitscherlich's discovery of iso- 

 morphism learnt from a text-book, yet probably 

 neither the candidate nor even the writer of the text- 

 book had ever seen isomorphous crystals, and still 

 less proved them to be so by simple measurement. 

 In the second lecture some simple crystal measure- 

 ments were made of mictoscopic crystals on the screen 

 and of larger crystals with a contact goniometer, and 

 the properties of cleavage, hardness, and density were 

 also demonstrated on a variety of crystallised sub- 

 stances. The object aimed at, of showing the pos- 

 sibilitv of introducing simple experiments on crystals 

 into secondary-school natural science teaching as part 

 of the physics and chemistry courses, and of demon- 

 strating how interesting to young people such experi- 

 ments could be made, appears to have been fully 

 attained, and doubtless many of the teachers who 

 attended will make some effort to respond in their 

 own schools, and thus to give our possible future 

 chemists an early idea of the great value of crystallo- 

 graphy to the chemist. 



\ VALUABLE Contribution to South African botany 

 is a paper on new and interesting South Africarr 

 mosses bv Mr. H. N. Dixon (Trans. Roy. Soc. South 

 Africa, vol. viii., part 3, 1920), in which the results 

 are given of the work on collections received from 

 various districts during recent years. A considerable 

 number of novelties are described, new records 

 established for South Africa, and many of the genera 

 or species critically examined. 



In the Kew Bulletin (No. 5, 1920) Dr. A. W. Hill 

 gives some account of the Tresco Abbey Gardens, Scilly 

 Isles, emphasising their claim to be regarded as an Im- 

 perial asset of great importance to the botanists of this 

 country whose woik concerns the botanical resources 

 of the British Empire, and pointing out the desir- 

 ability of arranging that fystematic botanists should 

 be given facilities for studying in the Gardens in the 

 living condition the plants with which they have 

 become familiar in the herbarium. In this favoured 

 spot mav be studied not only the principal features 

 of the temperate regions of New Zealand and out- 

 lying islands, of Australia, and of South America, 

 but also many of the characteristic features of the 

 sub-tropical vegetation of South .Africa. A great 

 number of plants were introduced from Australia, 

 New Zealand, and South .-Xfrica about the middle of 

 last century by Mr. Augustus Smith, whose botanical 

 enterprise and interest in gardening were continued 

 by his nephew and heir, Thomas .Algernon Dorricn- 

 Smith, who succeeded to the lordship of the islands 

 in 1872, and. since the death of Mr. Dorrien-Smith 

 in 19 18. by Major A. A. Dorrien-Smith. A feature of 

 the collection is a large series of drawings -of many 



