1 66 



NA TURE 



[Ai'RiL 7, 1910 



J. Curtin in his " Creation Myths of Primitive America." 

 The present collection of tales, recorded in two dialects, 

 will preserve for the use of philologists a langua^ which 

 Is fated before long to disappear. 



The group Mesozoa is, as is well known, a kind of 

 zoological waste-paper basket into which various obscure 

 forms of extremely lowly organisation have been cast from 

 time to time. Many of these forms are of great interest 

 as indicating possible transitions from the unicellular to 

 the multicellular condition. The genus Haplozoon has been 

 added to this miscellaneous assemblage by Dr. Dogiel, 

 -who describes some new species thereof in the Zeitschrift 

 fur wissenschaftliche Zoologie (Band xciv., Heft 3). These 

 remarkable parasites, which live in the alimentary canal 

 of various polychaste worms, occur in the form of single 

 ■or multiple chains of cells, the first cell of the series being 

 provided with one or more stylets. Dr. Dogiel has pro- 

 posed the group-name Catenata for these organisms, which 

 Tie considers to be derived from the unicellular Peridinea, 

 and to exhibit protophyte rather than protozoon affinities. 



In a paper on the stability of the physiological proper- 

 ties of coliform organisms (Centralbl. f. Bakteriologie, 

 Abt. ii., Bd. 26, 1910, S. 161) Mr. Cecil Revis suggests 

 that the capacity of a micro-organism to ferment various 

 sugars, polyhydric alcohols, and polysaccharides depends 

 on the presence of certain atomic groups in the substances. 

 Thus glucose, mannose, galactose, laevulose, and lactose 

 all contain the group — CHOH — O — CH=, and are fer- 

 mented by Bacillus colt, while sucrose does not, and is not 

 fermented by many strains of B. coli. Attempts were 

 made to change the fermentive properties of various strains 

 of B. coli and other organisms by prolonged sojourn in 

 soils contaminated with faeces, &c., and in a non- 

 albuminous medium. After some months changes were 

 frequently noticed in the organisms isolated. Thus with 

 one typical B. coli which fermented lactose, dulcitol and 

 glucose well in twenty-four hours, after seven months in 

 soil contaminated with human faeces an organism having 

 the original properties was isolated, and, in addition, three 

 other forms, A, B, and C, were isolated, characterised by 

 -differences in the appearance of their colonies. Of these, 

 A and C gave the original reactions unchanged, but B 

 termented none of the test substances. Other instances of 

 similar changes are given. In control cultures kept on 

 gelatin, in general no change at all occurred. 



The Municipality of Hanover, according to a paper by 

 Mr. E. Howarth oh some German museums in the 

 February number of the Museums Journal, deserves the 

 gratitude of antiquarians for having restored and fitted up 

 as a museum Leibnitz House, the picturesque fifteenth- 

 century residence of a German merchant. It contains four 

 storeys, all stocked with objects of industrial art and 

 industry, arranged from an aesthetic rather than a 

 systematic point of view. 



In the March number of the Irish Naturalist Mr. R. J. 

 Ussher gives his experiences of cavern-exploration in 

 Ireland, in which he has taken so large a share. Most 

 important of all Is the mammoth-cave near Doneraile, 

 Cork, which was worked from 1904 onwards, and is older 

 than any other except Shandon. This cavern takes its 

 name from the number of mammoth-remains, but is also 

 characterised by the abundance of reindeer and the absence 

 of red deer, wild boar, and badger. 



According to the report of the Lancashire and Western 



Sea-fisheries (to which allusion was made in a recent issue), 



there is reason to believe that black-headed gulls are 



Injurious to cockle-beds. In the Floodborough district 



NO. 21 10, VOL. 83] 



these birds have been ascertained to feed almost exclusively 

 on young cockles, which they pick out of the sand. It 

 is accordingly recommended that these birds should be 

 excluded from the Wild Birds Protection Act, and their 

 eggs destroyed in the breeding-season. 



In the course of an interesting account of his recent 

 journey in north-western Arabia, published in the March 

 number of the Geographical Journal, Mr. Douglas 

 Carruthers claims to be the first European who has sighted 

 the Arabian ostrich since Palgrave's time. Three were 

 seen in the Wadi Hidrij, about 120 miles south-east of the 

 Dead Sea, which is probably the northern limit of these 

 birds, the range of which includes all the interior of 

 Arabia. It is suggested that the Arabian ostrich is in- 

 separable from the typical Struthio camelus of North j 

 Africa, but since the Arabian oryx and baboon are distinct | 

 from their African relatives, this is by no means certain,- 

 and can only be determined by the acquisition of actuab 

 specimens. Mr. Carruthers states that the interior of 

 Arabia is undergoing secular desiccation, so that many of 

 the Beduin find it increasingly difficult to maintain them- 

 selves. 



The question of the proper pose of the limbs of Diplo- 

 docus, which was opened some months ago by Dr. Hay, ; 

 has been taken up again by Mr. G. Tornier in a paper; 

 published in the Sitzber. Ges. naturfor. Berlin, 1909, p.< 

 193. In this paper a restoration is given of the skeleton,] 

 in which the shoulder-girdle is pushed low down and the 

 humerus and femur are extended almost horizontally, so 

 as to bring the belly within a very short distance of the 

 ground, while the head and neck are raised aloft in swan- 

 like fashion, the feet being mounted in wholly plantigrade- 

 style. The general appearance of the skeleton is somewhat^ 

 grotesque. On p. 507 of the serial cited Mr. Tornier replies; 

 to those who have criticised his restoration of Diplodocus. 

 Prof. O. Abel (Verh. k.k. zool. hot. Ges., Wien, 1909, p. 

 117) has likewise entered the lists, and urges that all thcj 

 sauropod dinosaurs were " elephant-footed," that is to say,| 

 in place of being plantigrade, their feet were of the semi-' 

 digitigrade type characteristic of the Proboscidea, with 

 posterior foot-pads. This Mr. Tornier refuses to admit in. 

 a paper published in the Sitzber. Ges. naturfor., Berlin. 

 1909, p. 537, where the completely plantigrade character 

 of the feet of these reptiles is re-asserted. 



Mr. B. H. Ransom, assistant-custodian of the helmintho- 

 logical collections, the National Museum of Washington, 

 has written a valuable work on the taenioid cestodes of 

 North American birds (Bulletin No. 69, U.S. National 

 Museum, Washington, 1909). Ten years ago, when study- 

 ing under Prof. H. B. Ward, at that time of Nebraska, 

 he began an investigation into the cestodes of North 

 American birds, and the present volume, of 140 pages, is 

 the first outcome of this research. The volume contains 

 detailed descriptions of five new species, and there are 

 numerous adequate figures. It also contains keys to tlie 

 genera of the superfamily Taenioidea, diagrams of familie-, 

 subfamilies, and genera, and lists of the species occurrii 

 in North American birds are added. The recent mon 

 graph of Dr. O. Fuhrmann, the well-known authority on 

 bird tape-worms, has been of great service to the author. 

 Mr. Ransom's paper ends, as is usual with Americ: 

 publications, with a very full bibliography and an accura 

 and full index, for which we cannot be too grateful to t' 

 author. 



Dr. K. M. Levander has published an important work 

 on the food and parasites of fishes in the Gulf of Finland 

 (" Beobachtungen iiber die Nahrung und die Parasiten der 

 Fische des Finnischen Meerbusens, " Finnldndische Hydro- 



