66 



NATURE 



[September 17, 1914 



describe briefly the attempt to reach their observing 

 station at Kiev (Russia) ; they only got so far as Riga, 

 and had to return. According to tlie Morning Post 

 (September 7) the Russian astronomers were dis- 

 appointed at the fact that Major Hills and Prof. 

 Fowler when at Riga did not communicate with Prof. 

 Backlund, because a Russian eclipse expedition went 

 to Riga prepared to assist them in every way. As it 

 happened, the weather at Riga w-as much finer than 

 at most of the eclipse stations. The Morning Post 

 gives further information about the German 

 astronomers, who were invited to Russia to observe 

 the eclipse. It seems that the German parties were 

 warned in time to return, and some did so. Those 

 who hesitated were arrested and sent to Odessa. It 

 is then stated, "The American party packed up the 

 German instruments and sent them also to Odessa, 

 but nothing has been heard of them since, and the 

 German astronomers have been vainly appealing to 

 Prof. Backlund, who is naturally helpless and cannot 

 interfere personally." 



Vertical Circle Observations at the U.S. Naval 

 Observatory.— Vol. viii. (second series) of the Pub- 

 lication of the United States Naval Observatory con- 

 tains the vertical circle observations made with the 

 5-in altazimuth instrument for the period 1898 to 1907. 

 The observations were made by Messrs. F. B. Littell, 

 G. A. Hill, and H. B. Evans, and were reduced by 

 the first-named. The volume is subdivided into intro- 

 duction, observations and reductions, individual results 

 of observations and catalogue. The introduction con- 

 tains an account of the instrument, which was built 

 by Messrs. Warner and Swasey, under the super- 

 vision of Prof. William Harkness ; it was completed 

 and housed at the end of 1897, and first used in 

 February, 1898. The aperture of the telescope is 

 5-02 in., and the focal length is 50 in. Two sections 

 and a photograph of the instrument in situ illustrate 

 the general arrangements. Pp. 1-389 show the ob- 

 servations and reductions ; pp. 393-445 are devoted to 

 the individual results of the observations ; and pp. 

 447-65 give the catalogue. In the last-mentioned the 

 magnitudes are those of the Revised Harvard Cata- 

 logue. The declinations are derived from the means 

 of the individual results by the application of the cor- 

 rections for flexure and latitude ; thev are for the 

 epoch given in the column headed " Mean Date," and 

 for the mean equator 19000. The precessions and 

 secular variations are based on Newcomb's constants. 



Parallaxes of the Brighter Galactic Helium Stars. 

 — No. 82 of the Contributions from the Mount Wilson 

 Solar Observatory, reprinted from the Astrophysical 

 Journal, vol. xl., 1914, July, contains an extensive and 

 important research by Prof. J. C. Kapteyn, entitled 

 " On the individual parallaxes of the brighter galactic 

 helium stars in the southern hemisphere together with 

 considerations of the parallax of stars in general." 

 The communication covers eighty-six pages, and is 

 divided into -twenty sections, the first being composed 

 of an introduction and a summary. The stars chosen 

 are the helium stars brighter than the 6th magnitude 

 for the part of the sky lying between galactic lati- 

 tudes + 30°, and galactic longitudes 2i6°-36o°. In a 

 subsequent paper or papers, he hopes to deal with 

 the helium stars in the other parts of the skv. For the 

 brighter stars 01 other spectral classes lie has not 

 attempted to derive individual parallaxes, but has 

 discussed the prospects of the successful treatment of 

 such an investigation. The reader must be referred to 

 the paper itself for the details and results of the inves- 

 tigation, but attention may be directed here to the very 

 interesting charts dealing with the distribution of the 

 helium stars as regards galactic positions illustrating 



NO. 2342, VOL. 94] 



the apparent tendency of these stars to clustering. 

 The most extensive of these clusters is between longi- 

 tudes 200° and 340°, and this group forms the main 

 subject of the present paper. Another chart gives 

 the arrangement of the helium stars in space. Prof. 

 Kapteyn directs particular attention to three fairly 

 strong condensations with different parallaxes, and he 

 says : " Of course, we may see in the arrangement 

 of these condensations the indication of a spiral struc- 

 ture. I shall not lay much stress on this, unless we 

 find the same thing repeated in other parts of the 

 sky." 



PAPERS ON INVERTEBRATES. 



''pHE anatomy of the blind prawn of the Sea of 

 -*• Galilee (Lake of Tiberias), described by Dr. 

 Caiman in 1909 as the representative of a peculiar 

 genus, under the name of Typhlocaris galilea, is dis- 

 cussed by Mr. Ghosh in vol. ix.. No. 6, of the Journal 

 and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 

 In another article in the same issue Messrs. Annan- 

 dale and Kemp point out that, so far as known, the 

 Sea of Galilee is the home of only three species of 

 decapod crustaceans, of which the aforesaid Typhlo- 

 caris is noticeable on account of its marked structural 

 differences from all other members of the group, as 

 well as for its apparent modification for subterranean 

 existence. As a matter of fact, it is known from a 

 single open and well-lighted pool near the marge of 

 the lake, and the authors suggest that earth-move- 

 ments may have been the cause of this departure from 

 its apparently proper habitat. 



In the April number of the Records of the Indian 

 Museum, Mr. Kemp continues his notes on the deca- 

 pod crustaceans in the Indian Museum, dealing in 

 this instance with the family Hippolytidae, a group 

 notable on account of the great generic variation in 

 bodily form and in secondary sexual characters. 

 Several species and two genera are described as new. 



New and other African scorpions, spiders, etc., form 

 the subject of an article by Mr. J. Hewitt in vol. iii., 

 part I, of Records of the Albany Museum. It is note- 

 worthy that a two-lunged spider, Cydrela friedlanderi, 

 of the famil)' Zodariidae, resembles the members of a 

 totally different group in closing the entrance to its 

 burrow by means of a trap-door. In the two-lunged 

 trap-door species the females are bright-coloured like 

 their allies, which do not protect themselves in the 

 same manner ; in other trap-door spiders, on the 

 contrary, the females lack bright colours. 



Two infusorians of the family Cothurnidae found 

 in moss during Dr. Charcot's Antarctic expedition led 

 Mr. E. Penard to undertake a re-in\^estigation of 

 moss-dwelling rhizopods and infusorians, the first 

 result of which is an elaborate article on the Cothur- 

 nidae communicated by that naturalist to the Mdm. 

 Sac. Phys. et Hist. Nat. Geneve (vol. xxxviii., fasc. i). 

 These organisms form an important feature of the 

 invertebrate life of the polar regions, where moss and 

 lichens constitute the chief vegetation ; they are, how- 

 ever, by no means restricted to high latitudes, and 

 the author has devoted much attention to the question 

 whether in warmer zones they may not pass part of 

 their time in open water. His answer is that while 

 some are exclusively moss-dwellers, others appear to 

 spend weeks, if not months, periodically in water. 



Among the contents of the first livraison of vol. xlv. . 

 of Trav. Soc. Imp. Nat., St. Petersbourg., is an article 

 on the anatomy and physiology of the synaptid holo- 

 thurians, to which a brief abstract in French is 

 appended. 



