March 17, 1910] 



NA TURE 



77 



author is inclined to support the theory that these include 

 both hearing and the maintenance of the bodily equilibrium. 



The February issue of the Bulletin of the Sleeping Sick- 

 ness Bureau (No. 14, vol. ii.) appears with cut edges, 

 which will be found a great convenience by readers. It 

 contains the usual useful resume of papers dealing with 

 trypanosomes and their agents of transmission, sleeping 

 sickness, &c. 



The Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for January 

 (xxi., No. 226) contains two essays bearing on the history 

 of medicine, one an address by Prof. Osier on Michael 

 Servetus, who was done to death for heresy at Geneva in 

 1553. the other by Dr. Steiner on Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, a 

 distinguished, though forgotten, American student of 

 tuberculosis, who lived in the second half of the eighteenth 

 century. 



In a paper dealing with the sewage-pollution of shell- 

 fish (Journal of Hygiene, vol. ix.. No. 4, 1909, p. 412) Mr. 

 James Johnstone points out that at present no public 

 authority possesses legal powers to deal with the question 

 of the contamination of shell-fish. Polluted mussels sup- 

 plied with clean sea-water undergo purification with rapid 

 partial disappearance of the intestinal bacteria contained 

 in their tissues — in four days, for instance, the number of 

 contained bacteria had been reduced by about 93 per cent. 



The annual report for 1908 of the curator of the techno- 

 logical museums in Sydney has been received. Special 

 reference is made to the collection of building and orna- 

 mental stones, in connection with which a brochure, con- 

 taining coloured reproductions of specimens quarried in the 

 colony of New South Wales, was issued. Notice is also 

 given of a forthcoming volume on the " pines " of 

 Australia, similar to the monograph on the Eucalypts, 

 which will deal with the economics of Australian conifers. 



The action of light on the expansion of buds of woody 

 plants is the subject of a paper contributed by Mr. V. 

 Lubimenko to the Bulletin de I'Academie Itnpiriale des 

 Sciences, St. Petersburg (No. 2, 1910). Experiments were 

 made with twigs placed under bell-jars covered with thick- 

 nesses of white or black paper. In certain cases a diminu- 

 tion of light retarded development, in others it accelerated 

 it ; but in all cases complete darkness caused a marked 

 retardation in the expansion of the buds. The author 

 advances the opinion that light is necessary for the internal 

 chemical changes which precede growth. 



The report on the Botanic Station, Experimental Plots 

 and .Agricultural School, Dominica, has recently been 

 ssued, and shows that much useful work has been done 

 n distributing among planters crops likely to prove of 

 :ommercial value or possessing striking features from an 

 jrnamental point of view. Much attention has been 

 levoted to the manuring, cultivation, and general manage- 

 nent of cacao ; the requirements of the lime industry have 

 jeen investigated, and some preliminary work has been 

 lone on the planting of rubber. 



Ix view of the enormous increase in the number of 

 mblications devoted to insect pests, it is becoming more 

 md more necessary to have occasional summaries of the 

 vork done in a particular subject. We are therefore 

 >leased to see that, a " Bibliography of Sugar-cane 

 intomology, " drawn up by Mr. G. W. Kirkaldy, has 

 teen issued as Bulletin No. 8 of the Hawaiian Sugar- 

 planters' Association. The list of papers seems to be very 

 omplete ; indeed, the author tells us that a considerable 

 umber of apparently worthless notes have been included 

 NO. 2107, VOL. 83] 



because of the difficulty of drawing a sharp line between 

 what is and what is not useful. The bulletin is divided 

 into two parts : a list of work, arranged under authors, 

 and a preliminary list of the insects, spiders, &c., of the 

 sugar-cane fields, with cross-references to the papers in 

 the first part in which they are mentioned. 



A RECENT issue (No. 30) of the Transvaal Agricultural 

 Journal contains an article on the olive, urging that more 

 attention should be paid to this crop. The olive was intro- 

 duced into Cape Colony many years ago, but for some 

 reason or other has never become very popular. It does 

 not bear a paying crop until it is at least six or severr 

 years old, and the oil has to compete with highly 

 adulterated commercial products ; but there is a good deaf 

 of land in the Transvaal that would give satisfactory crops 

 either with or without irrigation, and one or two trial 

 plantations are already in existence which promise to be 

 successful. We have also received from the Transvaar 

 Department of Agriculture some Farmers' Bulletins deal- 

 ing with sunflower cultivation, prickly pear for stock food, 

 and the cultivation and preparation of the calabash pipe 

 gourd. The sunflower does not appear to be a very 

 promising crop, as it is expensive to handle and is largely 

 produced in Russia. 



Prof. Dove, of Gottingen, contributes a suggestive 

 article on the aims and methods of commercial geography 

 to Petermann's Mitteilungen. The paper deals with the 

 use of the population unit in discussion, the limits of 

 eff'ective capacity of trade routes, the relations of topo- 

 graphy and climate to trade, and similar matters, and 

 subjects some of the methods in ordinary use to somewhat 

 severe criticism. 



A NEW map showing the distribution of thunderstonn- 

 frequency in central and northern Europe, by Dr. E. Alt, 

 appears in Petermann's Miffct/Mn^en. The smallest yearlv 

 frequency occurs in Cornwall, north-western Scotland, 

 Norway, and the Arctic coast, where the average is under 

 five. The region of most frequent thunderstorms — more 

 than thirty a year — appears in northern Italy and the 

 Carpathians. 



From a catalogue issued by Spindler and Hoyer, of 

 Gottingen, we see that ninet}'-six seismographs, designed 

 by Prof. Wiechert, have recently been distributed in 

 various parts of the world. One has been installed by 

 the National Physical Laboratory at Eskdalemuir. The 

 largest of these instruments carries a mass of 17,000 kilos., 

 and the motion of the ground relatively to this is magnified 

 2200 times. There is, however, a 5 per cent, loss in con- 

 sequence of the inertia and elasticity of the system of 

 levers. The instrument costs 5000 marks. 



Between July i and December 31, 1909, at Shide, in 

 the Isle of Wight, 279 earthquakes were recorded. Each 

 of these records is confirmed by corresponding observations 

 at other observatories, whilst many of them are known to 

 be the surviving efi^orts of earthquakes which were large 

 at a distant origin. They are therefore of great import- 

 ance. The instruments at Shide are of the type adopted 

 by the British Association, recording on paper moving at 

 a rate of 4 mm. per minute. During the same interval of 

 time Hamburg recorded 123 shocks, Strassburg 64, and 

 Laibach 42. These great differences in the number of 

 records obtained at different stations appear to be almost 

 entirely due to the type of instrument employed. Those 

 which record on smoked paper are excellent for large dis- 

 turbances, but fail to record movements which are small. 



