242 



NATURE 



[April 22, 1920 



alcohol and the diphtheria poison, and that neuro- 

 -l6gically we are dealing with no negative or defect 

 disease, but with a definite, positive reaction of the 

 nervous system to some unknown poison. "We know 

 nothing of what happens in the body from the eating 

 of a vitamine-free diet to the moment when the 

 symptoms of beri-beri appear, and we cannot exclude 

 the possibility that such a poison has been produced 

 in the body." Dr. Walshe seems to agree with 

 Eijkman that the ultimate cause of beri-beri may yet 

 prove to be a nerve poison produced by a disordered 

 metabolism arising out of vitamine deprivation. 



A "Flora of the District of Columbia and Vicinity," 

 by A. S. Hitchcock and P. C. Standley, with the assist- 

 ance of other Washington botanists, has been issued 

 as vol. xxi. of Contributions from the United States 

 National Herbarium (329 pp., 42 plates). It will 

 replace Lester Ward's "Guide to the Flora of 

 Washington and Vicinity," published in 1881, to 

 which there have been six supplements. The area 

 included is approximately a circle of fifteen miles 

 radius, with the Capitol as the centre. The list 

 includes all indigenous plants and all introduced ones 

 that have become established ; chance introductions 

 are mentioned in notes appended to an allied species 

 or genus. It is interesting to note that parts of this 

 area are still almost wholly unexplored botanically, 

 and the publication of the flora will afford an excel- 

 lent opportunity for local botanists to supply the gaps. 

 The arrangement is in the form of keys to the 

 families, genera, and species, which have been care- 

 fully worked out, and also tested in the field during 

 one collecting season ; and the text is clear. An effort 

 has been made to use common words so far as 

 possible as substitutes for technical terms, and so- 

 called popular names are provided for most species in 

 the manner familiar to British botanists in Bentham's 

 " Handbook," The Old World botanist will find some 

 familiar plants hidden under strange names, as, for 

 instance, Dicentra and Negundo (box-elder), which 

 appear as Bikukulla and Rulac. The plates are a 

 series of good photographic reproductions of aspects 

 of the vegetation and of some of the commoner species. 

 Unfortunately, the size of the book, large octavo, 

 militates against its use as a pocket companion for 

 the field botanist. 



Mr. J. F. N. Green (Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xxx., 

 p. 153, 19 19) has treated in his presidential address 

 to the Geologists' Association the vulcanicity of the 

 Lake District from a natural history point of view. 

 He illustrates the use of petrographic details as a 

 means of realising the conditions of intrusion and 

 eruption, as when he pictures the scoria-cones of 

 Borrowdale age rising above the sea and contributing 

 their materials to the sediments by ordinary processes 

 of erosion. He urges that the chemical analysis of 

 an igneous rock is by itself of little value, since it 

 cannot take into account the evanescent constituents 

 of the magma. 



Foraminifera as a group always have their fascina- 

 tion owing to their irresolvable simplicity of organic 

 structure and their apparent powers of selection in 

 the up-building of their coverings. Mr. J. A. Cush- 

 NO. 2634, VOL. 105] 



man (Proc. U.S. Nat. Museum, vol. Ivi., p. 593,; 

 1919) describes "Recent Foraminifera from off New 

 Zealand," including a new species of Technitella, a 

 genus that forms its test of neatly arranged acicular 

 sponge-spicules. In Bulletin 676 of the U.S. Geo- 

 logical Survey the same author describes Pliocene and 

 Miocene species from the coastal plain of the United 

 States, and shows how they help to indicate former 

 marine climatic conditions. Mr. Cushman's wide 

 knowledge of recent Atlantic forms renders even brief 

 notes of this kind suggestive to the geologist. 



Reference has been made in Nature (vol. xcv., 

 p. 216) to the replacement of quartz by pyrite. A 

 very remarkable case is now put forward by Mr. 

 W. H. Collins in the Summary Report of the 

 Canadian Geological Survey for 1918 (part E, p. 20, 

 19 19) from the Michipicoten district of Ontario. The 

 basement beds of stratified sands and gravels belong- 

 ing to the Pleistocene drift, and resting on the 

 Keewatin iron-bearing series, have apparently been 

 replaced by " snow-white granular silica" (presum- 

 ably quartz) with a deposit of loose pyrite grains 

 below resembling ordinary sand, and sometimes 5 ft. 

 thick. Mr. Carus-Wilson, it may be remembered, 

 has cited a case of the replacement by pyrite of the 

 carbonaceous cement of an Eocene sandstone (Nature, 

 vol. Ixviii., p. 436); but in the Canadian instance the 

 sand-grains themselves have disappeared under the 

 influence of solutions draining along the unconform- 

 able junction from the adjacent iron range. 



The Summary Report of the Mines Branch of the 

 Department of Mines of Canada for the year 19 18 has 

 just been issued, and contains an interesting record 

 of the year's activities. The fuel-testing station has 

 been engaged, in addition to its regular routine work, 

 upon an investigation on the carbonisation and 

 briquetting of lignite, which promises to yield im- 

 portant results, as also does a test of New Bruns- 

 wick oil shale in a novel type of retort — the Wallace 

 retort. The methods adopted in Canada may be 

 studied with advantage by those en^ged in the study 

 of carbonisation problems in this country. Good 

 work is also being done in the ore-dressing divi- 

 sion ; until the middle of the year this had been en- 

 gaged on the production of molybdenite concentrates 

 on a working scale in view of the Empire's require- 

 ments of ferro-molybdenum for war purposes ; after- 

 wards, however, the normal working of the division 

 was resumed and a variety of ores was tested and 

 reported upon, the methods used being not only the 

 ordinary wet-dressing methods, but also flotation (in 

 a Callow cell), magnetic separation, electrostatic 

 separation, and cyanidation. The Mines Branch may 

 fairly be congratulated upon an excellent year's work, 

 which must form a powerful factor in the develop- 

 ment of the mineral resources of the Dominion. 



In the March issue of the Decimal Educator, a 

 quarterly publication of the Decimal Association, 

 there is an interesting historical account of the Inter- 

 national Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres, 

 the establishment at which the international proto- 

 types of the metre and the kilogram are preserved. 



