March i6, 1922^ 



NATURE 



353 



Research Items. 



r Classification of Nematodes. — Dr. H. H. Cobb 

 sets forth in Nematology (8) a classification of 

 nematodes " based on a study of several hundred 

 ■genera " and depending chiefly on the characters 

 of the mouth and related organs ; and in the follow- 

 ing part (9) gives systematic descriptions of about one 

 hundred, mostly free-living, new species of nematodes, 

 liich form the type-species of nearly as many new 

 -nera. Among the morphological points may be 

 'ted the following : the large percentage of species 

 . th pointed setae, the complex distal ends of the 

 ■phalic setaj in some species indicating their sensory 

 nature, and the presence in a large group of nema- 

 todes of six well- developed pharyngeal onchia or 

 spears having an outward stroke and adapted for 

 digging. 



Forestry in Sweden. — The Forestry Research 

 Institute (Skogsforsoksanstalt) of Sweden, with the 

 view of making its scientific publications better known 

 to the general public, has recently begun the free issue 

 of a series entitled Skogliga Ron, which gives the 

 main points of the larger memoirs, emphasising 

 those of direct practical importance. No. i, by 

 Olof Tamm, deals with the constitution of the soil 

 in the primaeval forest of Northern Sweden. The 

 Institute, in addition to its periodical Skogen, pubUshes 

 leaflets, of which we have received Flygblad No. 23, 

 by E. Wibeck, on some new forest-cultivating 

 niachines, such as root ploughs and sowing apparatus, 

 and Flygblad No. 24, by O. Tamm, discussing the 

 dependence of forest growth on the mineral con- 

 stitution of the soil. Those interested can obtain 

 these publications on application to the Institute at 

 Experimentalfaltet, Stockholm. 



The Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats. — 

 The Report for the year ending June 30, 1921, of 

 the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats, is devoted 

 chiefly to an account of trawling investigations 

 carried out in the inshore waters of the coast of 

 Northumberland, which were suspended in 1913 and 

 renewed in 1920. Prof. Meek concludes, from an 

 examination of the rings on the otoliths of the plaice, 

 that the spawning season of 191 7, and probably also 

 that of 1916, was a poor one, and that the fry result- 

 ing from it were subjected to unfavourable conditions. 

 He thinks that this may perhaps be due to the 

 flooding of the inshore waters with oil. which occurred 

 in the war, during the pelagic period of the eggs 

 and fry. The trawling investigations of 1920 are 

 compared in detail, especially as regards plaice, with 

 those carried out before the war, from 1892 to 191 3, 

 and an account is given of the results of marking 

 experiments made with the same fish. An interest- 

 ing discussion on the migrations of the plaice and 

 other fishes in the area is added. The important 

 feature of the remainder of the Report is Mr. Storrow's 

 paper on herring shoals. Samples from shoals ex- 

 tending from Stomoway and the Shetlands in the 

 north to Yarmouth in the south were analysed as 

 regards age and maturity, and samples of Irish fish 

 were treated in the same way. Attention is directed 

 to the fact that henings in their fourth year form 

 the most important constituent of the summer 

 fishery along the east coast of Britain, and the author 

 concludes that the fluctuations in this fishery depend 

 largely upon the success of the spawning and rearing 

 of the season four years before that of fishing. 



Irish Eskers. — Mr. J. de W. Hinch, in a paper on 

 " The Eskers of Ireland " ( Irish Naturalist, vol. xxx 



p. 137, 192 1), criticises the recent memoir hy Prof. 

 J. W. Gregory {Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc, Section B, 

 vol. ccx.), in which it is maintained that a large 

 part of Ireland was submerged under the sea during 

 the formation of the boulder-clay that now occupies 

 the plainland. Mr. Hinch points out that this 

 revival of an old view, which was very natural in its 

 day, ignores the work done in glacial geology in 

 Ireland for the last thirty years. If it is necessary, 

 as some writers think, to regard eskers as deposited 

 in water, a lake must be postulated ; but the problem 

 of the marine shells found in abnormal positions 

 has been successfully met without demanding a 

 submergence, in accordance with the widening of 

 our knowledge of the behaviour of " continental " 

 ice-sheets. 



The Post-Glacial Climatic Optimum in Ireland. 

 — Mr. J. de W. Hinch, of the Geological Survey of 

 Ireland, has recently discussed " The Post-Glacial 

 CHmatic Optimum in Ireland " {Irish Naturalist, 

 vol. xxx. p. 85, 1921). He regards the warm damp 

 epoch when the Littorina sea pie vailed in the Baltic 

 area as representing an optimum which dechned 

 towards present-day conditions. The hazel, for in- 

 stance, had then its most northern fossil boundary, 

 and regions of high arctic vegetation became sub- 

 arctic. The oak and the elm have now a more 

 southerly limit than at this optimum. Mr. Hinch 

 now shows that the marine fauna of the estuarine 

 days, overlying submerged peat on so many parts 

 of the Irish cost, contains a number of moUuscan 

 species that have similarly migrated southward, 

 but which were formerly present in abundance in 

 a more northern habitat. The improvement in 

 cUmate at the epoch of the submergence which gave 

 us the estuarine clays may thus be regarded as an 

 optimum, or near an optimum, which has not been 

 maintained in more recent times. 



Labrador and New Quebec. — Memoir 124 of 

 the Geological Survey of Canada, by Prof. A. P. 

 Coleman, deals concisely with the " North-ea.stern 

 part of Labrador, and New Quebec," and will be 

 useful to geographers who wish to gain an insight 

 into a territory that embodies many late glacial 

 features, though it hes on the latitude of the Orkneys. 

 The landscapes in the Memoir are excellent, and among 

 them there is an example of the most puzzhng feature 

 of solifluxion in cold tundra lands, where the poly- 

 gonal areas of soil become surrounded by walls of 

 stones coarser than the average in the soil. As the 

 author remarks, the effect produced is " as if the finer 

 materials, sandy or gravelly rather than muddy, 

 ascended and spread out from the centre, crowding 

 the coarser blocks to the edge." No stratae inter- 

 vene in N.E. Labrador between sediments that are 

 probably Huronian and glacial deposits that are 

 referable to an early stage of the Pleistocene ice-age. 

 The later glaciations from the Labrador centre seem 

 never to have reached the Atlantic coast. The 

 raised beaches occur below the. 400 ft. contour-line, 

 and are attributed to the depression of the land by 

 the continental ice, which here was probably only 

 2000 ft. in thickness. Prof. R. A. Daly's study of 

 the post-glacial warping of the region immediately 

 to the south, including Newfoundland, was pubUshed 

 in the American Journal of Science, vol. cci. p. 381, 

 1 92 1, and in it he corrects previous statements, 

 referred to by Prof. Coleman, that raised beaches 

 occur in Newfoundland above 500 ft. The famous 



NO. 2733, VOL. 109] 



