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NATURE 



[January 7, 191 5 



Staff Corps, one of the band of military officers 

 selected in the early years of the Department to start 

 work in various provinces. Readers of Capt. For- 

 syth's charming- book, now somewhat forgotten, the 

 " Highlands of Central India," will remember that it 

 was in 1861 that the Central Provinces became a 

 Chief Commissionership under Sir Richard Temple, 

 who took great interest in forestry, so that almost 

 at once he procured the services of Capt. (now Col.) 

 G. F. Pearson as conservator, with Capt. Forsyth and 

 others as assistants. In 1864 they were joined by 

 Doveton, who, on Pearson's transfer, became the 

 conservator, and remained such until his retirement 

 from the service in 1896. During these thirty-two 

 years he devoted himself to the selection and demarca- 

 tion of forests for permanent reservation and careful 

 management, he studied the welfare not only of the 

 agricultural people, but also of the half-civilised jungle 

 tribes who lived in and near the forests, and he 

 endeavoured to introduce systems of working suitable 

 for supplying the huge amount of small timber and 

 fuel required by the people, and the timbers of better 

 quality wanted for building and railway works. His 

 paper on the growth and cultivation of bamboo in 

 vol. ix. of the Indian Forester is still one of the best 

 on the subject. He was a good sportsman, and had 

 a great knowledge of the wild life in the forests, the 

 "atmosphere" of which is now so well known from 

 the wonderful pictures of it in the "Jungle Book." 

 At the instance of Mr. H. S. Wellcome, the 

 founder of the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Re- 

 search, an Ambulance Construction Commission has 

 been inaugurated to consider the improvement of 

 motor ambulances and the standardisation of patterns. 

 The list of members of the commission includes, 

 among other well-knoivn names, those of Sir 

 Frederick Treves, Barl., Sir John Cowans, K.C.B., 

 Sir Arthur May, K.C.B., Sir Alfred Keogh, K.C.B., 

 Sir Claude Macdonald, K.C.B., and Prof. W. E. 

 Dalby. The commission will in the first place act 

 as a judging committee for the award of prizes of the 

 value of 2000Z. provided by the Wellcome Bureau of 

 Scientific Research. These prizes are offered for the 

 best designs of an ambulance-body which shall fit a 

 standard pattern motor chassis for field motor-ambu- 

 lances. . The last day for the receipt of competing 

 designs is June 30, 1915. It is anticipated that the 

 competition will bring in a number of ingenious 

 designs, from which the ideal field ambulance-body 

 will be evolved. It is hoped that the information 

 obtained by the competition will be published in a 

 permanent form, available for future reference. The 

 first prize is of one thousand pounds, the second of 

 five hundred, and the third of three hundred pounds- 

 All details of conditions may be obtained from the 

 secretary, the Ambulance Construction Commission, 

 10 Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, London, W. 

 The competition is open to citizens of all nations. 



Record rains for December were registered in 

 London and at other places in the south and south- 

 east of England. At Norwood the aggregate for the 

 month was 6-74 in., the measurement being in strict 

 agreement with the ordinary rules. The Meteoro- 

 NO. 2358, VOL. 94] 



logical Office record at South Kensington is said to 

 be 6-6o in., at the Royal Botanic Society's Gardens, 

 Regent's Park, 645 in., at Camden Square, 6-34 in., 

 m the City, at Holborn Viaduct, 5-95 in., and at 

 Wandsworth Common, 5-4 in. At Brighton and Tor- 

 quay the rainfall is reported to have measured more 

 than 9 in., and at Bournemouth 98 in. The wettest 

 December previously, according to the Greenwich 

 returns for the past 100 years, is 5-76 in. in 1876, and 

 there are only five instances of 6 in. or more in any 

 month at any period of the year. These abnormal 

 falls are 1828, July, 643 in. ; 1852, November, 600 in. ; 

 1880, October, 7-65 in. ; 1888, July, 675 in. ; and 1903, 

 June, 607 in. It will be seen that the rainfall, 6-75 in. 

 in July, 1888, is similar to the amount measured last 

 month in Norwood, and the only monthly fall actually 

 to surpass it is 765 in. in October, 1880. The open- 

 ing days of January have been equally wet, and gener- 

 ally over the metropolitan area the rainfall for the first 

 three days of the month amounts to fully an inch, 

 which is one-half of the usual normal fall for January. 

 It is almost needless to say that these excessive rains 

 are occasioning serious floods in the Thames Valley 

 and over a large part of the country. 



In Bulletins et Memoir es de la Societe d'Anthro- 

 pologie, Paris, No. i for 1914, M. J. Castagn^ de- 

 scribes a series of stone monuments in Ferghana. 

 They seem usually to take the form of cairns, and the 

 writer is inclined to believe that they were ossuaries 

 in which the ancient inhabitants of the mountains 

 of Ferghana used to deposit the bones of their dead, 

 already picked clean by dogs or other animals, as was 

 the custom in Sogdiana up to the beginning of the 

 seventh century. 



The seventh annual report for 1913-14 of the 

 governors of the National Museum of Wales is a 

 record of steady progress. The south block of the 

 new building is under construction at a cost of about 

 66,oooi., and a welcome donation has enabled the 

 governors to proceed with the erection of tyvo addi- 

 tional galleries. Arrangements have been made for 

 the decoration of the building with a series of appro- 

 priate sculptures. Though the present is not a good 

 time for an appeal for public support, the governors 

 are naturally desirous of securing funds for the com- 

 pletion of the building. Meanwhile numerous dona- 

 tions of valuable specimens have been made, and it 

 may be hoped that the public spirit of Welshmen, 

 aided by grants from the Treasury, will enable the 

 governors to complete this important building, and 

 to arrange for the display of the valuable collections 

 already in their possession. 



Mr. Zae Northrup describes a bacterial disease of 

 the "white grub," or larva of the May or June beetle 

 {Lachno sterna, spp.). The organism is a micrococcus 

 which can be isolated and cultivated, and the sugges- 

 tion is made that it might be employed for the destruc- 

 tion of this larva, which causes considerable depreda- 

 tions among the crops (Technical Bull., No. 18, 1914, 

 Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station). 



To Naturen for December, 1914, Dr. A. W. Brogger 

 contributes an illustrated article on certain swords, 



