178 



NATURE 



[June 23, 1892 



i860 of his having then seen, in the Derby Museum at Liver- 

 pool, two specimens of the larger race of this species, one in 

 winter dress and the other in incipient spring plumage, both 

 being marked as females, and as having been obtained at Sandy 

 Cove in New South Wales, April 20, 1844, by the late John 

 Macgillivray. This wandering species does not seem to have 

 been hitherto recorded from Australia. Prof. Newton finds 

 little verification of Temminck's assertion in 1840 ("Man. 

 d'Ornithologie, " iv. p, 349), often repeated in one form or another, 

 that the sanderling occurs in the Sunda Islands and New 

 Guinea ; or even of a statement made by a recent writer in 

 general terms, that it is a winter visitor to the islands of the 

 Malay Archipelago ("Geographical Distribution of the 

 Charadriidas, &c.," p. 432). Java seems to be the only one of 

 these islands in which its presence has been determined, and 

 though it was included with a mark of doubt in the lists of the 

 birds of Borneo by Prof. W. Blasius (1882) and Dr. Vorderman 

 1886) respectively, it has been omitted, and apparently with 

 reason, from that of Mr. Everitt (1889). It is well known to 

 pass along the whole of the west coast of America, and it has 

 been obtained in the Galapagos and the Sandwich Islands, but 

 Prof. Newton knows of no instance of its having been observed 

 in any Polynesian group or within the tropics to the eastward of 

 Java. 



In the same number of the Records of the Australian 

 Museum is a valuable paper (with plate), by Mr. Charles 

 Chilton, on a Tubicolous Amphipod from Port Jackson. 

 Among some Australian Crustacea sent to Mr. Chilton as ex- 

 changes by the trustees of the Australian Museum was a tube- 

 dwelling Amphipod collected in Port Jackson. There was a 

 plentiful supply both of specimens and of the tubes formed by 

 them, and after a full examination and comparison of them with 

 Mr. Stebbing's description and figures, Mr. Chilton has no 

 doubt that they belong to Cerapus Jlindersi, Stebbing, a species 

 described from a single female specimen taken in Flinder's 

 Passage during the voyage of the Challenger. Mr. Stebbing 

 says nothing of the tube in his description, and Mr. Chilton 

 presumes, therefore, that he has not seen it. Mr. Chilton is 

 able to supplement Mr. Stebbing's description in this respect, 

 and to describe the male of the species, and to give the points 

 in which it differs from the female, and also some interesting 

 facts on the changes in form that occur during the growth of 

 the male. 



Some time ago the Ceylon Observer gave an account of the 

 killing of a wild boar by a cheetah near Galle. In its issue of 

 May 25 it prints a letter from Mr. Clive Meares, who says that 

 the fortune of war has now gone the other way, a cheetah 

 having been killed by a wild boar. The coolies of Ginniedominie 

 estate, Udagama, on going to work on the morning of May 23, 

 discovered in a tea-field near the jungle signs of a severe 

 struggle having taken place between a cheetah and a wild boar 

 — judging by the marks. On further search the dead body of a 

 cheetah was discovered in the tea, death having evidently been 

 caused by the severe handling it had received from the boar. 

 The brain being very much congested with blood and several 

 teeth marks deeply buried in the neck, there could be no doubt 

 as to the cause of death. On the animal being skinned the 

 wounds were found to be very deep. She weighed 42 pounds, and 

 she was 71 inches long from nose to tip of tail, and 24 inches in 

 height at the shoulders. 



Mr. a. Rea, the Superintendent of the Arch^ological 

 Survey, Madras, has reported an important discovery he has 

 made of another casket, some relics, and inscriptions in the 

 Buddhist stupa at Bhatuprolu in the Kistna District. In 

 Sewell's List of Antiquities, vol. i. p. 7, mention is made of a 

 casket found in the dome of the stupa some years ago. It 

 NO. II 82, VOL. 46] 



struck Mr. Rea that as the chief deposit was usually placed near 

 the centre of the foundations, it was probable that another 

 casket might be found. Copies of his report, with inscriptions, 

 have been ordered to be sent to Dr. Hultzsch, the Government 

 Epigraphist ; to archaeological experts in India, and to various 

 learned Societies. 



Mining seems likely to be splendidly represented at the 

 Chicago Exhibition. It is announced that "all of the precious 

 minerals, all of the economic minerals, all of the precious stones, 

 all of the coals, all of the building stones and marbles, all of 

 the clays and sands, all of the salts and pigments, as well as the 

 machinery, implements, and appliances employed in their con- 

 version to the uses of man, will be fully represented," Especial 

 attention will be devoted to the iron industry. The Exhibition 

 will provide ample data as to the location and extent of the 

 greater iron deposits, the analyses of the ores, with all the 

 machinery and devices employed in mining, hoisting, conveying, 

 storing, &c. 



Prof. Daniel G. Brinton contributes to the new number of 

 the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 

 XXX., No. 137, valuable papers on the Chintantec language 

 of Mexico, the Mazatec language of Mexico and its affinities, 

 and South American native languages. Of the latter languages 

 he says that they are the least known of any in the world. 



A vocabulary of the Eskimo language has been compiled by 

 M, Ryberg, a Danish official in Greenland. It represents work 

 carried on during fifteen years. 



The publication of the quarterly journal for cryptogamic 

 science, Grevillea, will still be continued under the proprietor- 

 ship of Mr. E, A. L. Batters, and the editorship of Mr. George 

 Massee. 



Mr, E, D. Marquand has published a list of the flowering 

 plants and vascular cryptogams of Guernsey. It includes the 

 remarkable number of 636 flowering plants, 18 ferns, and 9 fern 

 allies. Of these about 130 are not recorded for Guernsey in Prof. 

 Babington's " Primitise Florse Sarnicea;." 



The latest researches of the Finnish expedition to the Kola 

 Peninsula will modify the position of the line which now repre- 

 sents on our maps the northern limits of tree- vegetation in that 

 part of Northern Europe. The northern limit of coniferous forests 

 follows a sinuous line which crosses the peninsula from the 

 north-west to the south-east. But it now appears that birch 

 penetrates much farther north than the coniferous trees, and 

 that birch forests or groves may be considered as constituting 

 a separate outer zone which fringes the former. The northern 

 limits of birch groves are represented by a very broken line, 

 as they penetrate most of the valleys, almost down to the sea- 

 shore ; so that the tundras not only occupy but a narrow space 

 along the sea-coast, but they are also broken by the extensions 

 of birch forests down the valleys. As to the tundras which have 

 been shown of late in the interior of the peninsula, and have 

 been marked on Drude's map in Berghaus's alias, the Finnish 

 explorers remark that the treeless spaces on the Ponoi are not 

 tundras but extensive marshes, the vegetation of which belongs 

 to the forest region. The Arctic or tundra vegetation is thus 

 limited to a narrow and irregular zone along the coast, and to a 

 few elevated points in the interior of the peninsula, like the 

 Khibin tundras, or the Luyavrurt (11 20 metres high). The 

 conifer forests, whose northern limit offers much fewer 

 sinuosities than the northern limit of birch-growths, consist of 

 fir and Scotch fir ; sometimes the former and sometimes the 

 latter extending up to the northern border of the coniferous 



