466 



NA TURE 



[June i6, 1910 



tion of culture. The later inhabitants were skilled in 

 various industries, and made journeys to, or had trade 

 relations with, distant tribes. Even if it was from time 

 to time occupied by migrants or enemies, these people were 

 all essentially of the same type, and the last were Indians 

 similar to the inhabitants of Middle California within 

 historic times. 



Messrs. Dulau and Co. have published part iv. of the 

 " Treasury of Human Inheritance," the publication con- 

 taining pedigrees, illustrative of the inheritance of various 

 defects or other characters, issued by the Galton Labora- 

 tory for National Eugenics. The present part contains 

 pedigrees of a large number of cases of hare-lip and cleft 

 palate, with introductory explanation and bibliography by 

 Dr. H. Rischbieth ; pedigrees of hereditary deaf-mutism 

 collected by the Eugenics Laboratory ; and pedigrees of 

 congenital cataract, collected and annotated by Mr. N. 

 Bishop Harman. The pedigrees are given in the same 

 general style as in previous parts, and the first and third 

 articles are illustrated by a number of plates, which are 

 exceedingly well reproduced. 



Mr. M. Oshima, of the Bureau of Scientific Researches 

 at Taihoku, has been enabled to add twelve species to the 

 twenty-nine recorded in Stejneger's " Herpetology of 

 Japan, &c.," as indigenous to Formosa. Of these twelve 

 additions, four species and one subspecies are regarded as 

 new to science. Mr. Oshima's paper appears in vol. vii., 

 part iii., of Aymotalioncs Zoologicae Japonensis, which 

 also includes four articles on as many groups of Japanese 

 invertebrates. 



To the June issue of Witherby's British Birds Mr. H. 

 Wormald contributes an exquisitely illustrated article on 

 the attitudes assumed by the mallard and certain other 

 drakes during the period of courtship. The performance 

 generally commences by four or five mallards swimming 

 round a duck with their necks drawn in, and then suddenly 

 lowering their beaks, and at the same time raising them- 

 selves nearly upright in the water and drawing the beak 

 up the breast. For the other actions we must refer the 

 readers to the paper itself, as they are difficult to describe. 



In their thirty-eighth report (1909-10) the directors of 

 the Zoological Society of Philadelphia state that in 

 December last a large number of animals collected by the 

 Smithsonian Institution expedition to East Africa, under 

 Mr. Roosevelt, were temporarily accommodated in the 

 gardens previous to their transport to the National Zoo- 

 logical Park at Washington. Specimens of Thomson's 

 gazelle, waterbuck, Coke's hartebeest, and wart-hog be- 

 came, however, the property of the society. The last- 

 named species, we regret to see, figures in the list as 

 Macrocephalus in place of Phacochcerus. When a name 

 fits an animal so admirably as the latter does the wart- 

 hog, it ought in no circumstances to be changed. 



We have to acknowledge the receipt of the report of the 

 director of the Zoological Gardens at Giza, near Cairo, 

 for 1909, in which it is stated that the season under review 

 was unusually favourable to the animals, although the 

 number of visitors was 26,239 ^^^s than in the previous 

 year. To the late and present Governors of Senar the 

 gardens were indebted for a large and representative col- 

 lection of animals fom the Blue Nile, while a feature of 

 the year was the large number of species which bred in 

 the menagerie. Jungle-cats and foxes were responsible for 

 the deaths of several animals, while to rats, owls, &c., 

 may probably be attributed the disappearance of many 

 others. 



NO. 2120. VOL. 8-?" 



In past years locusts have caused enormous losses in 

 South .Africa to the farmers, who have usually, on religious 

 grounds, taken no steps to destroy them. Since agri- 

 cultural departments have been formed, locust officers have 

 been appointed whose duty it is to collect information 

 about the swarms and the places where eggs are laid, and 

 to take such destructive measures as may be necessary. 

 The report of the chief officer for Cape Colony for the past 

 season has recently been issued in the Agricultural Journal 

 of the Cape of Good Hope (No. 2, 1910). The most 

 successful method of destruction is to spray the veldt with 

 a dilute solution of sodium arsenite and treacle, or, if the 

 grass is too short, to scatter some finely chopped green 

 vegetation, bran, or even " voetgangets " themselves, 

 previously soaked in the solution. When the swarm comes 

 along it is immediately attracted by the treacle, and eats 

 with great voracity, so that the insects soon begin to 

 sicken and die. It is even recorded that a second swarm 

 has come up and devoured the first, two swarms thus 

 perishing through one spraying. At an earlier stage the 

 destruction is a simpler matter — the insects are sprayed 

 immediately they hatch out. Wherever these methods are 

 adopted damage from locusts becomes comparatively 

 small, and as soon as the religious scruples of the farmers 

 can be overcome and adequate help is rendered, the locust 

 plague will cease to be formidable because it can be 

 controlled. 



Mr. E. Heron-Allen, writing from Large ."Acres, Selsey, 

 sends an account of the extraction of several colours by him 

 from purple iris flowers. The petals of from twenty to 

 thirty flowers of the deep purple iris, which were cither 

 quite withered (shrivelled, but still moist) or just beginning 

 to wither, were put into a jar and just covered w'th 

 alcohol. At the end of ten minutes, (i) a bright and typically 

 iris reddish purple solution was produced ; (2) these soaked 

 (in alcohol) blossoms, squeezed fairly dry and steeped in 

 plain cold water for ten minutes, gave a bright ultramarine- 

 blue solution, with no trace of purple or red ; (3) these 

 alcohol-soaked blossoms, left in the water for an hour, gave 

 a deep (almost indigo) blue solution, with no trace of purple 

 or red. Another similar lot of blossoms, cut just above 

 the seed pod, were steeped in enough alcohol to cover them, 

 for three hours, and gave a rich crimson solution with no 

 trace of blue or purple. Several other brilliant and distinctive 

 colours were obtained by various treatments of blossoms 

 and residues. Mr. Heron-Allen's interesting observations 

 remind us that while we have in this country a wide range 

 of blue and red, as well as of yellow flowers, there is not, 

 with the exception of woad (Isatis tinctoria), a single 

 indigenous blue, or even red, colouring matter which has 

 ever been of any importance as a dye-stuff. Many years 

 ago woad was used to some extent as a source of indigo, 

 while weld [Reseda luteola), dyer's-broom (Genista tinc- 

 toria), and many other yellow dyes were also employed, but 

 we were dependent upon foreign countries for our colouring 

 matters even when natural dye-stuffs were used. The 

 chemical constitution of the colouring matter of the purple 

 iris does not appear to have been investigated, but the 

 results obtained by Mr. Heron-Allen may probably be ex- 

 plained by the extraction of traces of acid and alkaline 

 bodies by the solvents used. 



Mr. Johs Schmidt, head of the recent Danish expedition 

 in the Thar for the investigation of physical conditions ir 

 the Mediterranean, has sent us a reprint of a preliminar> 

 report on the work of the expedition, published in Lc 

 Geographic. The Thor cruised in the Straits of Gibralta:! 

 and along the north coast of Africa to Sardinia, ther 



