March io, 1910J 



NATURE 



43 



similar problem, which is likely to cause no little 

 embarrassment. The depressed classes are now claiming 

 similar rights from their higher brethren. The Pariahs of 

 Madras have formed an organisation, and in Bombay the 

 question is so serious that the Guicowar of Baroda has i 

 been moved to advocate more consideration for them. The \ 

 movement has now spread to Bengal, where the Jugi \ 

 weavers have issued a manifesto, prepared by Prof. Radha ; 

 Govinda Nath, urging that they are really sprung from the \ 

 Yogi ascetics, and are entitled to social status like that ; 

 of Brahmans. They repudiate the theory generally held | 

 that they represent the decayed Buddhist communities, 

 who on the decay of their faith were, like other depressed 

 religionists, compelled to adopt menial occupations. It will j 

 be interesting to watch the reception which their claim ' 

 receives from the Babus of Bengal. 



To vol. xi. of the Proceedings of the Washington 

 Academy of Sciences Dr. F. H. Knowlton contributes a 

 paper to prove that the Hell Creek and Ceratops beds of 

 Montana, which have been usually regarded as of Upper , 

 Cretaceous age, are really the equivalents in time of the 1 

 Tertiary Fort Union formation. Evidence in favour of " 

 this view is stated to be afforded by the plants, inverte- ; 

 trates, and vertebrates of the formations in question, and 

 the author concludes by the definite statement that the 

 Hell Creek, Somber, and Ceratops beds are stratigraphic- 

 ally, structurally, and palaeontologically inseparable from 

 the Fort Union beds, and therefore of Eocene age. To 

 this view Mr. T. W. Stanton, in the same issue, replies 

 that, in his opinion, the Ceratops beds are of Cretaceous 

 age on account of their stratigraphical relations, the pro- 

 nounced Mesozoic character of the vertebrate fauna and its 

 lack of Tertiary types, and the close relation of its in- \ 

 vertebrates to those of the Cretaceous. The admitted | 

 relationship of the flora to that of the Eocene is regarded 

 a? of minor importance. 



In Nos. I and 2 of the Research Bulletin of the State 

 University of Oklahoma Mr. H. H. Lane »J^scribes the 

 breeding and placentation of the nine-banded armadillo, 

 and likewise proposes a revised classification of the 

 Edentata. As a rule, this species produces four young at 

 a birth, one for each of the four mammae, and from the 

 circumstance that in the cases which came under the 

 author's obser\-ation the young in each litter were of the 

 same sex, and were contained in a common chorionic 

 vesicle, it is considered probable that they were all derived 

 from a single fertilised egg, and that the sex is deter- 

 mined in the latter. The placenta is of a deciduate tj'pe 

 intermediate in form between the zonary and the discoidal, 

 and as this tjpe does not precisely conform to the 

 "placenta zono-discoidalis " of Strahl, it is proposed that 

 it should be known as " placenta zono-discoidalis in- 

 distincta." The author divides the Edentata into tlie 

 Taeniodonta (extinct), Xenarthra,. Pholidota, and Tubuli- 

 dentata. Wortman is considered to be justified — in opposi- 

 tion to the view of W. B. Scott — in regarding the 

 Tseniodonta (or Ganodontia) as represented by the 

 Conoryctidae and Stylinodontidae, in the light of un- 

 specialised ancestral Edentates. 



Dr. Raymond Peakl and Eh-. Frank M. Surface have 

 been studying the egg-production of selected fowls w'th 

 the view of answering the question, " Is there a Cumu- 

 lative Effect of Selection ? " and their conclusions have 

 been published under this title in the Zeitschrift fur 

 induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre (Band ii., 

 1909, Heft 4). Two distinct experiments were made. The 

 ". inaugurated by the director of the Maine Agricultural 

 NO. 2106, VOL. 83] 



Experiment Station and the late Prof. G. M. Gowell, con- 

 sisted in the continued selection of fluctiiating variations 

 with the view of increasing the fecundit}'. The second 

 dealt with the inheritance of fecunditj*. The experiments 

 were conducted on a large scale, and yielded extremely 

 interesting, although from the poultry farmer's point of 

 view very disappointing, results. Systematic selection 

 carried on for nine consecutive years yielded no increase 

 in the average production of the flocks, nor was there any 

 decrease in variability as regards egg-production. Egg- 

 producing abilttA- is apparently not inherited ; on the 

 contrary-, the daughters of hens w^hich laid 200 or more 

 eggs per annum actually laid, on an average, a smaller 

 number of eggs than the daughters of less prolific birds. 

 These results seem to have an important bearing on the 

 theory of natural selection. 



STtn>EXTs of cj-tology who are interested in the dynamical 

 aspects of the phenomena of karjokinesis will welcome a 

 paper on this subject, by Prof, .^ngel Gallardo, in the 

 Archiv fiir Entivicklungsmechanik der Organismen (Band 

 xxviii.. Heft i), a separate copy of which has been sent 

 to us by the author. Prof. Gallardo interprets the division 

 of the cell as a bipolar phenomenon of an electro-colloidal 

 character. He regards the cell as a complex mixture of 

 positive and negative colloids of different potential, of 

 electrolytes, and of neutral coagulated substances susceptible 

 or not of induction. He considers that the chromatin 

 carries a negative, and the cytoplasmic colloids a positive, 

 charge. The centrosomes are supposed to be capable of 

 acquiring a positive potential higher than that of the 

 cytoplasm. This potential increases through unknown 

 causes, and determines the division of the centrosome. 

 The radiations w^hich appear around the separating 

 daughter-centrosomes are chains of force, fotmed by the 

 orientation of cytoplasmic microsomes. The trajectories of 

 the centrosomes during separation are the resultants of 

 their mutual repulsion and of the attraction of the nucleus. 

 The chromatin divides during the metaphase by repulsion 

 of its chromosomes under a high negative potential, and 

 the two groups of daughter-chromosomes separate under 

 the double action of their mutual repulsion and of the 

 attraction of the centrosomes. The two new nuclei thus 

 formed attract the positive cytoplasm, and thus determine 

 the division of the cell itself. The paper also contains a 

 useful resumi of the views of other writers, such as 

 Hartog and Delage, on this interesting subject. 



A FEW years ago we noted w^ith pleasure the commence- 

 ment of the Bio-chemical Journal^ and congratulated the 

 editors. Prof. Benjamin Moore and Mr. Edward Whitley, 

 of Liverpool, on their enterprise in starting a periodical 

 in which bio-chemists could publish their researches. The 

 chemical side of biological investigation is well to the fore 

 at the present time ; physiologists, pathologists, botanists, 

 and others are devoting themselves to the unravelling of 

 nature's secrets by chemical methods ; chairs and lectiu-e- 

 ships in the subject are being established in our universi- 

 ties and colleges ; the subject has a rapidlj' growing litera- 

 ture of its own, and journals dealing with it are published 

 in Germany and America as well as in Liverpool. The 

 undertaking has met with an unqualified success, and the 

 first number of the fifth volume has just been published. 

 The occasion is signalised by the appearance of the journal 

 in a form more worthy of the matter it prints, both cover 

 and the quality of the paper used being improved. The 

 papers in it indicate the manifold way in which chemical 

 research is invading all branches of bio-chemical study ; 

 the first, by Major Sutherland and Captain M'Cay, deals 

 with the influence of salts on haemolysins, with special 



