March 17, 1892] 



NATURE 



471 



The Natural History Society of Buda-Pesth is stated to 

 number 7800 members. A special botanical meeting of the 

 Society will in future be held monthly, under the presidency of 

 Prof. Juranyi. 



The section of vegetable pathology of the botanical division, 

 in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was recently made a 

 separate division by Act of Congress. The authorities of the 

 new division decided to begin a fresh series of publications ; 

 and they have taken the first step towards the fulfilment of their 

 purpose by the publication of an important Bttllelin, by Dr. E. F. 

 Smith, presenting "additional evidence on the communicability 

 of peach yellows and peach rosettes." 



Japan has no fewer than 700 earthquake-observing stations 

 scattered over the Empire, and the Tokio correspondent of the 

 Times is of opinion that they are all needed. He points out 

 that not only are the Japanese shaken up by fully 500 earth- 

 quakes every year — some of them more or less destructive — but 

 at intervals there comes a great disaster, amounting, as in 

 the earthquake of October 28, 1891, to a national calamity. 

 Japanese annals record twenty-nine such disasters during the 

 last 1 200 years. 



A SEVERK earthquake shock, lasting twelve seconds, was felt 

 at Napa, California, on March 13, at 8.30 a. m. The direction 

 of the vibration was from north to south. 



A CORRESPONDENT at Leon writes to us of an earthquake 

 which was felt in Nicaragua on February 6. He speaks of a 

 connected series of longitudinally oscillating progressive seismic 

 waves, which lasted about ninety-two seconds. They were 

 parallel with, and near, the cones and masses of volcanic ejecta 

 which extend, with some interruptions, between the volcanic 

 groups in the States of Salvador and Costa Rica. The earth- 

 quake began at 10. 10 p.m. 



Prof. Hellmann, of Berlin, to whom we are indebted for 

 many painstaking investigations into the origin of meteorological 

 instruments and observations, has contributed to the Zeitschrift 

 fill- Luftschiffahrl for January an article on the first balloon 

 voyage made for scientific purposes. The works on the subject 

 of ballooning, of which there are many, state that the first was 

 by Robertson and Lhoest in 1803. and the next in the following 

 year, by B lot and Gay-Lussac. But this is not correct; the 

 honour undoubtedly belongs to Dr. John Jeffries, of Boston 

 (Mass.), who had for some years lived in this country. In 1786 

 he published a book {60 quarto pages and 2 plates), entitled, 

 " A Narrative of the Two Atirial Voyages of Dr. Jeffries with 

 Mons. Blanchard ; with Meteorological Observations and Re- 

 marks," The first voyage was on November 30, 1784, from 

 London to Dartford (Kent), and the second, on January 7, 1785, 

 across the English Channel. A paper containing the results 

 was read before the Royal Society in January 1786. The 

 barometer taken was made by Jones, of Holborn, and read to 

 18 inches. The heights reached in the two voyages were about 

 9200 feet and 4500 feet respectively. The latter height was 

 obtained Irigonometrically by an officer at Calais, while the 

 balloon lay stationary over the mid-Channel. 



The Record of Technical and Secondary Education, published 

 monthly, can scarcely fail to be of service to all who interest 

 themselves in educational progress. The number for March 

 includes, besides editorial notes, accounts of County Council 

 schemes and reports, scholarship schemes, recent progress in 

 various districts, agricultural college for the south-eastern coun- 

 ties, and the financial management of the technical instruction 

 fund. There are also instructive " miscellanea." 



A WRITER in the Mediterranean Naturalist for March notes 

 that no attention has hitherto been given to the fact that 

 NO. I 168, VOL. 45] 



certain species of birds prefer certain trees. He says : — 

 "It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the volu- 

 minous literature that has been written on birds and their 

 habits, no writer has noticed the preference that certain species 

 of birds give to certain trees. Jays and rooks are found in the 

 greatest number in oak-trees ; finches, in lime-trees ; and black- 

 caps among laurels. The nightingale is always found in the 

 greatest numbers in nut-groves, while the thrush evinces a 

 decided preference for the birch and ash. The beech is the 

 favourite tree of the woodpecker ; and the numerous families of 

 tits are generally found in the greatest abundance among the 

 blackthorn." 



Mr. W. M. Goldthwaite, New York, is publishing a new 

 monthly magazine called Minerals. The second number has 

 been sent to us. It contains many short papers, in which inter- 

 esting facts relating to various classes of minerals are presented 

 in a bright and popular style. 



Messrs. J. and A. Churchill have issued a fifth edition of 

 Dr. A. Tucker Wise's " Alpine Winter in its Medical Aspects." 

 The work has been condensed and rewritten in many places. 



The U.S. Commissioner of Education has issued his Report 

 for the year 1888-89, and, if it cannot be described as light read- 

 ing, it is certainly a most instructive and useful work. It consists 

 of two large volumes, and includes a number of chapters in which 

 education in the United States is compared with that of England, 

 France, Germany, and other countries. A full account is also 

 given of normal schools, manual training schools, courses of 

 study, &c. The second volume consists of "detailed statistics 

 of educational systems and institutions, with comments and 

 discussions." 



The peculiar milk-ferment known as "kefyr" or "kephir" 

 has been supposed to be peculiar to the Caucasus and other 

 parts of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Mr. C. L. 

 Mix has found a yeast apparently identical with it in use in 

 Canada and the United States. It occurs in the form of small 

 granules of a dirty brown colour, which retain their vitality for 

 a long period, and consist of a small proportion of yeast-cells 

 embedded in zoogloea-like masses of rod-shaped bacteria. The 

 yeast-cells increase by budding, and no formation of spores has 

 been detected in them. They do not invert cane-sugar like 

 ordinary beer-yeast, but they cause alcoholic fermentation in 

 milk-sugar or lactose and in dextrine, not in cane-sugar or 

 saccharose. The bacteria are short cylindrical rods with homo- 

 geneous protoplasm, developing under cultivation into lepto- 

 thrix-like filaments in which spores are formed. They appear 

 to take no part in the fermentation, remaining almost entirely 

 embedded in the zoogloea-masses during the process. 



Herr W. Belajeff has communicated to the Berichte of the 

 German Botanical Society a paper on the "Pollen-tube of 

 Gymnosperms," which, if his observations — made on 7a.r«jand 

 Juniperus — are confirmed with regard to other members of the 

 class, will greatly modify the accepted view as to the morpho- 

 logy of the different parts of the pollen-grain. Hitherto, the 

 two or three small cells in the pollen-grain have been regarded 

 as a survival of the male prothallium of the microspore. Bela- 

 jeff shows that this cannot be the case, as they are cut off in 

 succession from the large cell. Moreover, he states that it is 

 not, as is usually supposed, the nucleus of the large cell which 

 fertilizes the oosphere in the archegone, but the nucleus of one 

 of the small cells. When the pollen-tube begins to develop, 

 one of these small cells becomes detached and wanders down the 

 tube. Its membrane becomes absorbed ; its nucleus overtakes 

 that of the large cell and divides into two ; and it is one of these 

 two daughter-nuclei of the wandering small cell, together with 



