574 



NATURE 



[October 13, 1892 



In his report as surgeon-naturalist of the Marine Survey of 

 India, to which we referred last week, Dr. A. Alcock records 

 some interesting observations on the little estuarine crab Gela- 

 simus. The most obvious structural peculiarity of Gelasimus 

 is the enormous development of one of the chelae in the male 

 only, the chelae in the female being minute. The species ob- 

 served by Dr. Alcock was Gelasimus annulipes, Edw. This 

 species lives in vast swarms in " warrens " on the muddy tidal 

 swamps of the Godavari and Kistna, each individual having its 

 own burrow, round which it ranges, and into which it retreats 

 when alarmed. In the colder months, at any rate, the males far 

 outnumber the females. In a fully adult male the length of the 

 large chela is two-and-a-half times the greatest length, and one- 

 and-a-half times the greatest breadth, of the whole body, and 

 40 percent, of the entire weight of the animal, and is coloured a 

 beautiful cherry-red fading to arose pink, the rest of the animal 

 being of a dingy greenish-brown colour. Dr. Alcock has been 

 able to observe that, whatever other functions the great chela 

 may serve, it also, in the species under consideration, is (i) a 

 club used in the contests of rival males, and (2) a signal to 

 charm and allure the females. This last function is particularly 

 apparent. As one walks across the mud one first becomes aware 

 of the presence of these crabs by noticing that the surface of the 

 mud is everywhere alive with twinkling objects of a brilliant 

 pearly-pink colour. Carefully watched, these prove to be the 

 enormous chelre of a crowd of males of Gelasimus waving in the 

 air, each little crab standing at the mouth of its burrow and 

 ceaselessly brandishing its big claw. On closer observation, 

 among every ten or so males a small clawless female may be seen 

 feeding in apparent unconcern. If the female should ap- 

 proach the burrow of a male, the latter displays the 

 greatest excitement, raising itself on its hindmost legs, 

 dancing and stamping, and frantically waving its beau- 

 tifully-coloured big claw. From prolonged watching. Dr. 

 Alcock feels convinced that the waving of the claw by the 

 male is a signal of entreaty to the female, and he thinks that 

 00 one can doubt that the claw of the male has become con- 

 spicuous and beautiful in order to attract and charm the female 

 The second function, as a fighting weapon, becomes apparent 

 when in the general tournament one of the rival males approaches 

 too close to another. The great claw is then used as a club 

 the little creatures making savage back-handed sweeps at each 

 other. 



An excellent paper on fungous diseases and their remedies 

 was read lately by Prof. J. E. Humphrey before the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society, and has now been printed. One 

 of the principles on which he insists is that the treatment of these 

 diseases, to be efficient, must be preventive rather than remedial. 

 He points out that it is not enough to take care that plants shalj 

 have abundant nourishment. No practice, he says, is more 

 common among American fruit growers than to leave in the 

 vinery and the orchard, lying on the ground or hanging from the 

 branches, the dead fruits of the season, which have been rendered 

 worthless by fungi. Nothing could produce more unhealthful 

 conditions, for these dead fruits commonly furnish to the fungi 

 which attack them precisely the most favourable soil for further 

 and complete development. In the next spring the air is full of 

 the spores of these fungi, which find lodgment on the new leaves 

 and fruits of the very plants on which they grew last year ; and 

 so the story goes, year after year. "In a word," says Prof. 

 Humphrey, "keep your orchards and gardens and greenhouses 

 clean. Allow no rubbish to be about on which fungi can breed. 

 Remove and destroy all diseased fruits or plants as scrupulously 

 as you preserve saleable ones, and you will have more saleable 

 ones to preserve. It is surprising how far generous culture and 

 clean culture will go toward preventing fungous diseases, without 

 special treatment." 



NO. I 198, VOL. 46] 



The Marquis de Nadaillay contributes to Science (Sept. 23) 

 an interesting account of the various discoveries which have 

 been made in the caves of Baousse Rousse, between Mentonc 

 and Ventimiglia. The caves were found in 1872 by M. 

 Riviere, who has since vigorously prosecuted his excavations. 

 These have yielded many human skeletons, all belonging to the 

 Cro-Magnon race. They are robust, and bespeak an athletic 

 constitution and great muscular power. The men were re- 

 markably tall, the crania are dolichocephalic, and the tibias 

 platycnemic. The bones of all the adults, after the total de- 

 composition of the flesh, were painted red with the help of per- 

 oxide of manganese or other substances frequently met with in 

 the caves : a custom which the Marquis de Nadaillay believes 

 prevails, or till lately prevailed, among some Indian tribes. 

 Much attention has been devoted to the latest discovery, made 

 early in the present year, of three skeletons — a man, a woman, 

 and a "young subject," whose wisdom teeth had not been 

 developed. They were found eight metres below the ground, 

 and had been buried on a bed of cinders, broken fragments of 

 charcoal, and remains of all sorts, evidently the hearth on which 

 the family cooked their victuals. The boy wore a necklace 

 formed of two rows of the vertebrae of a fish and one row of 

 small shells. At different points hung pendants cut out of the 

 canine teeth of stags, decorated with parallel striae. The man 

 had also a necklace of fourteen canines of the stag, also 

 striated. With the skeletons ware found stone instruments, 

 some of them finely worked, but none of them polished, and 

 some bone implements of very rude fabrication. The man was 

 very tall. If we judge by the length of his thigh-bone, his 

 height must have exceeded six feet six inches. The teeth even 

 of the boy were very much worn ; those of the man were woin 

 to the roots. The bones of many mammals have been found, 

 but none belonging to extinct species, or even to the reindeer. 

 On the other hand, no polished stone implement has been dis- 

 covered. The remains, therefore, must be ascribed to the end 

 of the quaternary or the beginning of the neolithic times. One 

 cave is still unexcavated. The Prince of Monaco, whose 

 property it is, has given orders that the excavations are to begin 

 next spring, 



Mr. C. Hedley read before the Linnaean Society of New 

 South Wales, on August 31, a paper in which he presented an 

 interesting study of ancient geography. The immediate subject 

 was the range of Placostylus. He remarked on the essential 

 unity of the Placostylus' 2.xtz. as a zoological province, embracing 

 the archipelagoes of Solomon, Fiji, Hebrides, Loyalty, New 

 Caledonia, Norfolk Island (?), Lord Howe, and New Zealand ; 

 a unity explicable only on the theory that they form portions of 

 a shattered continent, and are connected by shallow banks 

 formerly dry land. Deep sea soundings, especially those of 

 the Challenger in the Coral Sea, further demonstrate the ex- 

 istence of such a submarine plateau, for which the name of 

 " The Melanesian Plateau " is proposed. Further, Mr. Hed- 

 ley contended that the Melanesian Plateau was never connected 

 with, nor was ever populated from, Australia ; that its fauna 

 and flora were originally derived from New Guinea. 



In the Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (vol. xv.), 

 Lieut. Dix BoUes calls attention to an interesting object included 

 in a collection of ethnological specimens given by him to the 

 museum in 1883-85. This is a wooden mask, which has for its 

 eyes two large bronze Chinese coins. The grave from which the 

 mask was taken is near the Chilcat village, at the mouth of 

 the Chilcat River, Alaska, where stands a row of six grave- 

 houses on a narrow strip of land close to the river, with a 

 swamp behind them. From this particular grave very little 

 was obtained by the explorers, its contents having nearly all 

 rotted away. Lieut. Bolles was told by the natives that it 



