March 29, 191 7] 



NATURE 



91 



opium, and possibly valerian. After the outbreak of 

 war the main difficulties were in respect of the supply 

 of belladonna, henbane, and valerian. The needs are 

 jiow being met partly by products grown in this 

 country and partly by drugs obtainable from abroad. 

 Thus India supplies opium, Japan aconite and valerian, 

 -d Egypt henbane. Of the alkaloids and their salts, 

 en out of the fifteen used in the hospital were, 

 :i of course still are. manufactured here on a large 

 tie, both for home use and foi export. The re- 

 iiainder were obtained from enemy countries. Of the 

 acids and their salts, the majority are home products, 

 but in some cases the raw materials, especially 

 potassium and bromine, were either in enemy hands 

 or under neutral control, with the result that their 

 prices rose enormously. The most important of manu- 

 factured organic drugs, such as ether, ethyl chloride, 

 chloroform, iodoform, carbolic acid, glycerine, and 

 alcohol, are produced here in large quantities ; but 

 most of the synthetic drugs, like aspirin, phenacetih, 

 salvarsan, and veronal, were German products. Many 

 of these articles, however, are now being made here. 

 On the whole, for our druij supplies we are much less 

 pendent upon enemy sources than has generally been 

 ognised. The author, indeed, suggests that the 

 necessity for the home cultivation oi medicinal plants 

 has perhaps been over-emphasised, since the demand 

 for belladonna and digitalis is strictly limited. 



In No. 7, second series, of the Bankfield Museum 

 Notes, Miss L. E. Start publishes a monograph on 

 Burmese textiles from the Shan and Kachin dis- 

 tricts, based on a collection of examples made by 

 Mr. E. C. S. George, at the end of last century, 

 whilst he was engaged on the Commission for the 

 delimitation of the Burma-China boundary. The 

 monograph is illustrated by an excellent collection of 

 -drawings showing the modes of dress and the forms 

 •of ornamentation used by the native weavers. The 

 illustrations to some degree suffer from the absence 

 of colour, but designers of fabrics, who can examine 

 the original specimens in the Bankfield Museum, will 

 be well advised not to neglect this important collec- 

 tion of Oriental art, which may enable them to follow 

 some of these graceful designs, and prepare new 

 >chemes of decoration suitable to the native races of 

 Burma. 



Mr. J. H. GuRNEY makes grave charges against the 

 1 ook and the wood-pigeon in British Birds for March. 

 As to the former he remarks : "It has always seemed 

 an anomaly to me that hawks in Norfolk, and even 

 owls, should be persecuted, while rooks go almost un- 

 scathed, although there is not a farmer who has a good 

 word to say for them." They eat potatoes and newly 

 sown grain, riddle the cornstacks with holes and thus 

 admit the rain, and destroy a large quantity of swede 

 turnips. The wood-pigeons levy a heavy toll on the 

 thousand-headed kale and on the pea-fields. The 

 starling, in Norfolk, is tolerated on account of its 

 usefulness in destroying the white slugs, which infest 

 the clover- fields. 



Interesting " Observations on Some Habits of the 

 Coot" are described in the Scottish Naturalist for 

 March. These more especially refer to the behaviour 

 during courtship. At this time the white shield, so 

 conspicuous a feature of this bird, enlarges so as to 

 project on each side of the crown. But the author 

 leaves the reader in some doubt as to whether this is 

 a permanent increase during the breeding season or 

 whether it is an inflation evident only during moments 

 of excitement, comparable to the distension and con- 

 traction of the wattle of the turkey-cock in similar 

 circumstances. The adults were found to be still 

 feeding their offspring two months after hatching, and 



NO. 2474, VOL. 99]" 



therefore long after they had become fully fledged. 

 During October the male frequently gave the "spring 

 call," and the pair frequently repeated the behaviour 

 characteristic of the spring courtship, as many game- 

 birds are known to do. 



A VALUABLE contribution to our knowledge of the 

 genetics and evolution of an interesting group of 

 Lepidoptera is given by J. W. H. Harrison in a recent 

 paper entitled " Studies in the Hybrid Bistoninae " 

 {Journal of Genetics, vol. vi.. No. 2). The species with 

 which he has worked are the common British moth 

 {Biston hirtaria), the well-known local sandhill-haunt- 

 ing Nyssia zonaria, whose female is wingless, and four 

 sf>ecies of the northern genus Poecilopsis, one of 

 which, P. lapponaria, is a rarity in Scotland. The 

 Biston males, if successfully crossed with the wingless 

 females give winged males, and females with reduced 

 wings, and closely similar results followed the pair- 

 ing of P. pomonaria males with Biston hirta,ria 

 females. Hence, "as regards potency in transmitting 

 the secondary female character of wing-reduction, 

 pomonaria males and females are alike." Two of 

 these male hirtaria-poynonaria hybrids were success- 

 fully crossed with hirtaria females. With one excep- 

 tion, all the offspring were indistinguishable from 

 hirtaria, a result explained by the production of " a 

 few functionally active spermatozoa carr}'ing to all 

 intents and purposes hirtaria characters, with hosts 

 of spermatozoa carrying a varied array of novel 

 chromosome combinations, all possibly ineffective." 

 However, there was a single intermediate speci- 

 men which " lacked the sexual instincts and was 

 unable to walk or to fly." Mr. Harrison notes that 

 the North American Poecilopsis rachelae, when crossed 

 with the European species, gives a very small propor- 

 tion of fertile eggs and concludes that " geographical 

 separation caused the physiological condition of the 

 species to diverge enormously." 



Various schemes for the promotion of afforestation 

 in Scotland, by co-operation between the landowners 

 and the State, are discussed in three articles in Trans- 

 actions Roy. Scottish Arboricultural Society, xxxi., 

 part i. (January, 19 17). The Development Commis- 

 sioners, who have lately forwarded their proposals for 

 afforestation and land reclamation to the Reconstruction 

 Committee, do not favour the purchase of land by the 

 Government, but recommend that it should be taken 

 on lease, the landowner to receive, in addition to a 

 rent, a bonus or percentage on the profits of the under- 

 taking. Mr. S. Gammell advocates a scheme of plant- 

 ing by the landowner, who would receive from the 

 State a loan for this purpose, to be repaid, after the 

 lapse of a period of forty years, in twenty annual 

 instalments, calculated on compound interest at 25 per 

 cent. Mr. James W. Munro gives an illustrated 

 account of the life-history of Hylastes cunicularius , a 

 beetle which destroys recently planted conifers by 

 girdling the bark just below the root-collar. 



The Revue Scientifique of March 3 contains an 

 article by Prof. Henri Devaux, of Bordeaux, in which 

 the attention of French wheat-growers is directed to 

 the excellent results obtained by him with special 

 methods of cultivation of wheat which are said to be 

 widely and successfully practised in Russia. The two 

 methods singled out for special commendation are the 

 planting out of selected plants from a seed-bed, and 

 the cultivation of the wheat in wide rows, permitting 

 of an earthing-up of the plants at a later stage. It is 

 claimed that by either method a very much larger 

 individual plant can be obtained, and the total produce 

 of a given area greatly increased. Full details for 

 practical cultivation on these lines are given, and the 

 article is illustrated by photographs of specimen plants. 



