^50 



NATURE 



[May 30, 19 1 8 



crop, as the case, may be, in wild birds, for the pur- 

 pose of determining the usefulness or otherwise of 

 anv given species to the farmer or gardener. Briefly, 

 he shows that the volumetric standard adopted by the 

 Biological Survey of the U.S. Department of Agri- 

 culture affords the only trustworthy source of informa- 

 tion, and should become, indeed, the only recognised 

 test. Each bird requires a certain bulk of food per 

 day, not a certain number of different kinds of insects, 

 seeds, etc., and rightly to estimate the importance of 

 any element in its diet we must first know what 

 proportion the insects, seeds, and so on constitute to 

 the standard requirement. Two very helpful diagrams 

 illustrate the paper. 



How little the true nature of museum work is 

 understood, even by many men of science, forms the 

 subject of a very able essay by Dr. F. A. Bather in 

 the Museum Journal for May. It seems incredible, 

 for example, that a well-known British zoologist was 

 recently found to believe that the specimens in the 

 public gallery represented the whole collection of 

 fishes in the British Museum of Natural " History ! 

 After citing instances of the work done by museums 

 in unravelling intricate problems, such as that pre- 

 sented by the attacks of beetle-larvae on the roots of 

 the sugar-canes in Mauritius, Dr. Bather proceeds to 

 show the imperative need for the most refined, sys- 

 tematic study of living organisms, irrespective of any 

 value they may have in rel&tion to " applied science." 

 This is the most valuable part of his essay, as it was 

 meant to be, though we fear that the day is yet far 

 distant when the general public will realise that science 

 for its own sake is worth pursuing. 



The Geological Survey of Queensland is to be con- 

 gratulated on the progress it is making in publishing 

 accounts of the fossils of that colony. • The two con- 

 cluding sections of part i. of Mr. A. B. VValkom's 

 memoir on the Mesozoic floras of Queensland are 

 especially interesting for comparison with the Jurassic 

 and Rhaetic floras of Europe, which they much re- 

 semble. In Publication No. 260 Mr. R. Etheridge, 

 jun., describes some important fossil invertebrata, in- 

 cluding Cretaceous crustaceans and a few fragments 

 of the largest known Carboniferous trilobite, which 

 measured about 60 mm. in breadth. 



There is remarkable uniformity in the anatomy of 

 flesh-eating dinosaurs of Mesozoic times, whether they 

 are early or late, small or gigantic. They all have 

 large hindquarters for bipedal walking, a long tail, 

 very srnall mobile fore-limbs, and a more or less 

 regular series, of sabre-shaped teeth. Mr. Lawrence M. 

 Lambe has just published a well-illustrated descrip- 

 tion of another genus, Gorgosaurus, from the Cre- 

 taceous rocks of Alberta, Canada (Geological Survey 

 of Canada, Memoir 100). Its typical species is about 

 30 ft. in length, and is specially interesting as one 

 of the latest carnivorous dinosaurs known. There is 

 little new in the skeleton, but the fore-limbs seem to 

 be even more reduced than usual. 



The subject of soil aeration is attracting consider- 

 able attention in tropical agriculture, and numerous 

 results are now being obtained, a summary of which 

 was presented by Messrs. A. Howard and R. S. Hole 

 to the Indian Science Congress at Lahore. The effect 

 of adding potsherds or sand to the Pusa soil is shown 

 to increase nitrification and plant growth ; in the case 

 of Java indigo the increase was as much as 40 per 

 cent. Flood irrigation, on the other hand, on fine 

 alluvial soils, interferes with their ventilation by 

 rapidly destroying the texture and by forming a com- 

 pact surface crust impermeable to air. One limiting 



NO. 2535, VOL. lOl] 



factor — water^ — is removed, but another — the need for 

 aeration — is introduced. Thus over-irrigation actually 

 diminishes the yield. This is shown by results ob- 

 tained at Quetta, where thirteen maunds of wheat 

 were obtained with one irrigation and only eight 

 maunds where three irrigations were given. In any 

 flood irrigation system a practical compromise be- 

 tween the needs Qf the plant for air and for water 

 must be worked out. This has been accomplished at 

 Quetta by the proper utilisation of the preliminary 

 watering given before sowing. Under this new 

 system the yields are often higher than those 

 obtained with the six or seven waterings usually 

 applied. The Quetta results have been shown by ex- 

 periment to apply to the Punjab and Sind, where 

 almost half the irrigation water now used could be 

 saved. The economic significance of these results 

 becomes apparent when it is remembered that the 

 annual revenue derived from irrigation works in India 

 is 5,000,000/. sterling. It is further shown that aera- 

 tion probably influences the distribution of plants, and is 

 therefore of importance in ecological studies. 



The Danish Meteorological Institute has publisihed 

 its report for 19 17 ,on the sta'te of the ice in the Arctic 

 seas (Isforholdene i de Arktishe Have). War condi- 

 tions have made it imjx)ssible to obtain as full reports 

 as usual except from the coasts of Greenland, Iceland, 

 Spitsbergen, and the Barents Sea. In Spitsbergen and 

 the Barents Sea the ice conditions were again abnormal 

 and most unfavourable. The winter ice in Spitsbergen 

 fjords broke up a month later than usual, and the 

 autumn ice formed several weeks ahead of the average 

 date. There was pack-ice off the west coast of Spits- 

 bergen throughout the summer months. The coast 

 was most approachable during the firs»t half of August 

 and the second half of September. Throughout the 

 summer it seems, as usual, to have been easier to enter 

 King's Bay than fjords further south, but until late in 

 July the pack on the west coast of Spitsbergen more 

 or less met the pack of the Greenland Sea, and on 

 this account it was not easy to reach the open water 

 north of Prince Charles Foreland. Storfjord seems to 

 have been clear of ice in September, and possibly in 

 August. Reports from the Kara Sea are scanty, but 

 the ice conditions there seem to have been bad. No 

 vessel attempted to make the passage in 19 17. 



Some explorations in the previously little-known 

 Tibetsi highlands of the Sahara by Col. Jean Tilho are 

 summarised in an article in La Geographic, vol. xxxi., 

 Nos. 6-8. The explorations were part of a long series 

 of journeys between Lake Chad and the Anglo-Egyptian 

 Sudan undertaken in the years 1912-17. Col. Tilho 

 has established that the Tibetsi highlands are not a 

 single range lying north-west and south-east, but con- 

 sist of four, or perhaps five, ranges radiating between 

 west-north-west and north-east from the Koussi massif. 

 In this massif is the extinct volcano of Emi-Koussi, 

 which rises to a height of 11,155 ^^- above sea-level, 

 and marks the summit of the Tibetsi highlands. Emi- 

 Koussi has an enormous crater, eight miles long and 

 about five miles bread, within which are several 

 secondary craters, of which Era Kohor has a diameter 

 of about two miles. In the bottom of this crater is a 

 deposit of sodium carbonate covering about 100 acres 

 and at least 4 ft. in depth. There is clear evidence 

 of the former existence of a lake, but there is now no 

 water. Among other interesting results. Col. Tilho 

 claims to have established definitely that there was 

 never any connection between Lake Chad and the 

 Nile. Material has been obtained in most of the 

 region traversed for a new map, which has been drawn 

 on a scale of i to 1,000,000. No map accompanies the 

 article. 



