158 



NATURE 



[September 30, 1920 



for the good of the people, their tattle, and their land. 

 Consequently he is seldom, or never, able to quit the 

 enclosure in which he resides, .^n interesting custom 

 once was the annual raising of an agricultural peasant 

 to the kingly rank, representing the real king's dead 

 father. After a period of about a week, during 

 which he lived at the tomb of the dead king, treating 

 the royal widows as his own wives and blessing 

 the real king and the country in the name of the dead 

 man, he was taken to the back of the tomb and 

 strangled. 



The report of the director of the New York 

 Aquarium, reprinted from the twenty-fourth Annual 

 Report of the New York Zoological Society, is chiefly 

 concerned with the unsatisfactory condition of the 

 building. Mr. Townsend has our sympathy, but he 

 arouses our interest more by two brief paragraphs. 

 One of these states that the large crayfish of the 

 Columbia River was safely transported alive from 

 California to New York in wrappings of damp paper. 

 The other ascribes the total disappearance of the sea- 

 horse (Hippocampus hudsonius) from local waters to 

 the unusually severe winter of 19 18. The report 

 describes and illustrates ingenious gravity filters and 

 strainers and air-compressors u.sed when sending 

 fishes by train or ship. 



The Davidson collection of recent Brachiopoda in 

 the British Museum fias hitherto been regarded as 

 taking the lead, but, at all events in point of numbers, 

 it is now outclassed by the collection in the United 

 States National Museum, of which Dr. W. H. Dall 

 has lately published an " Annotated List " (Proc. 

 U.S. Nat. Mus., vol. Ivii., pp. 261-377). The latter 

 contains more than six thousand specimens, repre- 

 senting 181 different forms, of which thirty-three are 

 here introduced as new. These fall into some fiftv 

 genera. The ordinary zoologist will regret to see 

 some apparently inevitable changes in well-known 

 names : thus Lingtda anatina becomes L. unguis, 

 Linn. ; Terebraiulina ca^ut-serpentis having been based 

 on a fossil of different structure, the name T. retusa, 

 Linn., must be adopted for the recent species; and 

 Liothyrina gives place to Gryphus. Among interest- 

 ing facts of distribution are noted the discovery off 

 the Californian coast of two Japanese species, Tere- 

 hratulina crossei and T. kiiensis. 



An interesting discussion arises in Dr. N. Annan- 

 dale's "Observations on ' Physa Prinsepii,'Sowerby " 

 (Rec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. li., p. 50, 1920), as to 

 the cause of extinction of this giant planorbid some 

 time after the intertrappean (late Cretaceous) epoch in 

 India. The genus Bullinus (formerly Bulinus, Adan- 

 son), to which this shell is 'now transferred, survives 

 in Africa, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia, in 

 conditions apparently less favourable than those 

 surrounding the fossil forms in India. Dr. Annandale 

 suggests that exceedingly congenial surroundings led 

 to an overgrowth of the mollusc (which attains 

 76 mm. in height), and that it was unable to survive 

 any reduction of the luxury that it had long enjoyed. 



In connection with blood-transfusion experiments 

 during the war it was found that severe reactions 

 NO. 2657, VOL. 106] 



sometimes followed the intermingling of the blood of 

 certain individuals. Previous work, in which human 

 .sera were classified into four groups according to 

 their i.so-agglutinating actions, was therefore very 

 useful in determining between which individuals 

 transfusion could safely take place. In a short paper 

 by Mr. J. R. Learmonth (journ. Genetics, vol. v., No. 2) 

 the author has studied the blood reactions of a number 

 of families, and concludes that the iso-agglutinins are 

 inherited, two pairs of Mendelian factors being con- 

 cerned. But it appears from observations by Bond 

 that iso-agglutinins which are absent from the serum 

 of a given individual may appear after the patient 

 has reacted to a .systemic infection. It has been 

 suggested that these serum reactions might be used 

 as a legal proof of illegitimacy. 



In two papers in the journal of Genetics (vol. x.. 

 No. 2) Mr. F. L. Engledow deals with the inheritance 

 of the various forms of lateral florets and rachilla in 

 barley and length of glume and grain in a hybrid 

 wheat. A bristly rachilla is dominant to smooth, and 

 it is suggested that the same factor governs the type 

 of hair in other parts of the flower, and may also be 

 concerned with the development of the root-hairs, 

 which would affect the yield. The barleys differ in 

 the form of their lateral florets, six-row and two-row 

 barlej' differing by a single factor, the heterozygotes 

 being intermediate with some fluctuations in expres- 

 sion. These fluctuations are found to be environ- 

 mental in origin, and not a case of mosaic inherit- 

 ance. In a cross between Polish and Kubanka wheat 

 long and short glumes behave as a pair of characters, 

 the F, being intermediate. But tlie interesting result 

 is obtained that in the extracted "longs " the length of 

 glume is reduced by nearly 25 per cent, in comparison 

 with the long-glumed parent, and this shift or modi- 

 fication remains true in the F,. Similar results were 

 obtained with grain-length, the long grain being 

 reduced by 12-5 per cent, in tfie extracted Fj's. These 

 two pairs of characters are inseparable in inheritance, 

 length of grain unexpectedly behaving as a maternal 

 character, although it must be partly determined by 

 the character of the endosperm. Possible explanations 

 of these results are discussed. 



Some very fine views of glaciers in Canada occur in 

 Dr. C. D. Walcott's "Geological Exploration of the 

 Canadian Rockies : Field Season of 1919," extracted 

 as a pamphlet from "Explorations and Field-Work of 

 the Smithsonian Institution in 1919." The photo- 

 graph of the environs of the Mount Lyell Glacier 

 makes a folding plate nearly 3 ft. long, and includes 

 the superb stratigraphical sections of the Mount 

 Forbes and Mons Peak region, where Carboniferous 

 rocks appear on the crests, succeeded downwards by 

 Devonian, Ordovician, and L'pper Cambrian strata. 



Dr. C. D. VValcott, in the Middle Cambrian 

 Burgess Shale of British Columbia, has secured a 

 field of remarkable palaeontological richness. He 

 remarks (Smithsonian Miscell. Coll., vol. Ixvii., 

 No. 6, 1920) that the sponges from this series com- 

 prise nearly all the siliceous sponges known to 

 him from the Cambrian strata ot .\merica. He men- 



