146 



NATURE 



[April i, 1920 



on a decimal basis. It maintains that this decision 

 is justified by the following considerations : — (i) In 

 any scheme for reducing the existing system to a 

 decimal basis the pound should be retained. (2) The 

 pound and mil scheme is the only strongly supported 

 scheme which complies with this condition, (3) The 

 advantage to be gained by a change to the pound and 

 mil scheme as regards keeping accounts is in no way 

 cornmensurate with the loss of the convenience of the 

 existing system for other purposes. (4) Grave diffi- 

 culties will be created by any alteration of the penny. 

 (5) The scheme cannot be tried as an experiment or 

 on a voluntary basis. There are two minority reports 

 in favour respectively of the decimalisation proposals 

 of Lord Southwark and Lord Leverhulme. The in- 

 vestigation makes it clear that many of the difficulties 

 now regarded as insuperable would disappear if our 

 system of weights and measures were such as to 

 familiarise the general body of the community with 

 decimal calculation. This fact will, no doubt, 

 stimulate the advocates of the metric system to 

 renewed efforts to bring about this useful and neces- 

 sary reform. 



Dr. R. C. Smith states in the Scientific Monthly 

 for February that there is in the popular mind a sur- 

 prisingly large amount of misinformation and mis- 

 conception concerning many forms of natural history, 

 and this is not confined to exotic, but extends to well- 

 known plants and animals. As instances he quotes 

 the belief that the beaver uses its tail like a trowel ; 

 that the porcupine shoots its quills at enemies; that 

 certain squirrels and fish fly ; that snakes swallow 

 their young in times of danger; that cats suck the 

 breath of babies, and so on. The prevalence of these 

 beliefs is due largely to the fact that a considerable 

 portion of the people do little or no reading, or it is 

 confined to trashy literature, Xhese misconceptions 

 are due to various causes — to hasty acceptance of the 

 opinions of others, to mistaken observation and mis- 

 interpretation of the facts involved, but mostly to the 

 fertility of imagination. All this points to the neces- 

 sity of serious and efficient Nature-teaching in schools, 

 by the agency of which misinformation about well- 

 known objects of natural history can be corrected. 



We congratulate the Hunterian Museum at 

 Glasgow University on its year's record of steady 

 progress. In the Reports on the Hunterian Collec- 

 tions for the Year 1918-19 just received we note 

 especially the growth of the collections of insects of 

 economic and sanitary importance, through the en- 

 thusiastic work of Mr. R. A. Staig. The long list of 

 acquisitions in this department bears witness both to 

 Mr. Staig 's energy and to the admirable lines upon 

 which he is developing the collection. The geological 

 collections have received a valuable acquisition 

 through the purchase of the balance of the important 

 Leeds collections of fossil reptiles and fishes from the 

 Oxford Clay. The honorary curator of the coin 

 cabinet reports that the resumption of international 

 communication has been responsible for a consider- 

 able increase in the number of requests for casts from 

 workers abroad, and the list of consignments dis- 

 patched is eloquent at once of the world-wide fame 

 NO. 2631, VOL. 105] 



of this museum and of what the war has meant to 

 research workers at home and abroad. 



Among early palaeolithic flint implements found in 

 the river gravels of the South of England there are 

 certain specimens with the point slightly turned to 

 one side. These are regarded as intermediate between 

 the still older rostro-carinate flints and the ordinary 

 palaeoliths by Mr. J, Reid Moir, who describes seven 

 examples in detail and discusses them in a recently 

 published part of the Philosophical Transactions 

 (vol, ccix,, B, pp. 329-50, pis. 51-57). According to 

 this explanation, the makers of the rostro-carinate 

 implements eventually began to increase the efficiency 

 of their tools by extending the ridge of the beak 

 progressively further towards the butt end, while they 

 chipped the edges of the great flat face until it also 

 became a longitudinal ridge similarly extended. The 

 rostro-carinate implement, triangular in cross-section, 

 thus passed into the palaeolithic implement of the 

 "river-drift type," rhombic in cross-section; the two 

 opposite flat faces of the former having been chipped 

 away, and the two opposed great surfaces of the latter 

 being in planes at right angles to them. As the cross- 

 section of a rostro-carinate resembles that of a dog- 

 fish, while the cross-section of an ordinary palaeolith 

 corresponds with that of a plaice. Sir Ray Lankester 

 suggests that the latter should be described as platessi- 

 form. Other early palaeoliths in which one face is 

 flat may have originated from the rostro-carinate type 

 simply by the extension of the ridge of the beak and 

 the simultaneous thinning of the flint, thus resulting 

 in a skate-like or batiform shape. 



In the Philippine Journal of Science (vol. xiv., 

 No. 4) Mr. E. D. Merrill continues his work on new 

 or noteworthy Philippine plants. The present con- 

 tribution contains descriptions of one hundred new 

 or presumably new species, and eighteen new records 

 for. the islands. Of the nine genera which are for 

 the first time recorded as Philippine, two are of special 

 interest from the point of view of geographical dis- 

 tribution. One, Cloezia, a genus of Myrtaceae, has 

 hitherto been known only from New Caledonia, where 

 it is represented by six species. The discovery of a 

 representative in Mindanao, in forest at an altitude of 

 1700 metres, adds another genus to the remarkable 

 list of genera that are known only from the Philip- 

 pines and the islands to the south and south-east 

 of the archipelago. The second, Citriobalus, is a 

 small Australian genus of Pittosporeae, with one 

 species from Java, the range of which is now extended 

 to Luzon. Another Australian species, Ipomoea poly- 

 morpha, previously known only from Australia and 

 Formosa, has also been found in Luzon, 



Abstracts of scientific papers, when giving full 

 bibliographical details and fully indexed, are evidently 

 of greater utility than mere catalogues. An excellent 

 series of abstracts has for many years been prepared 

 by the Chemical Society, and Science Abstracts, issued 

 by the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the 

 Physical Society, is a well-known publication. The 

 abridgments of the Patent Office point to the use 

 of abstracts for purposes of search. Within the last 



