December, 1902.] 



KNOWLEDGE, 



279 



Botanical.— The "Origin of the Deadnettles in Britain" 

 is discussed by Mr. S. T. Dunn in a paper which originally 

 appeared in the Snuth-EaMeni Nittimilisl for llMil. He 

 divides the species found in the British flora into three 

 groups. The first includes Lamiiiin (lalenhihihni alone, as 

 this is the only British species found naturally in our 

 wood*; the second group im-ludes L. album, L. piirpiifi'iim. 

 L. !iiri:iiini, L. amphxicatilf, and L. iuterDteiUiiiii, all of 

 which are unknown in Britain except in places prepared 

 unintentionally for them by man ; and the third consists 

 of L. hifiJiim, seeds of which were introduced with foreign 

 com, and L. niacuhitiim, which originated as an escape from 

 gardens. L. ijah'>h<hilo>i is distril>uted through Western 

 Siberia and Europe (including southern and central 

 England), but is imknown in the most northerly regions. 

 It is supposed that it spread into this country from the 

 continent at the end of the last glacial period, before man 

 had made his appearance in North-western Europe ; it is, 

 therefore, regarded as truly indigenous in Britain. Mr. 

 Dunn shows that the extremely common White Deadnettle 

 (L. iilbum), and the other species associated with it in the 

 second group, were introduced liy the agency of man. 

 The 'White Deadnettle is widely spread in the North 

 Temperate Zone, both as a native and as a weed. It 

 naturally grows in woods and forests, but in the British 

 Islands it is not known in these habitats, though common 

 enough wherever the ground is subjected to periodical 

 disturbance. The Purple Deadnettles (L. piirjxm'um and 

 L. incisum) are weeds in Britain, and are commonly found 

 as such throughout Europe, North Africa, the Orient, and 

 Siberia. L. amjili'.ricaiile is unknown except as a weed of 

 cultivated ground, and Mr. Dunn suggests that it has been 

 derived from L. macrodon, a native of the cedar forests of 

 Asia Minor, which, on extending its range into cultivated 

 ground, became somewhat modified by its altered sur- 

 roundings. L, )H(7CH/n/H;», though clearly non-indigenous 

 in Britain, is wild in the woods of Southern Belgium. 

 This interesting paper has been reprinted in the October 

 number of the Journal of Botany. 



Two British local floras have recently been nublished, 

 one dealing witli the Liverpool district and the other with 

 the East Riding of Yorkshire. The first, edited by Dr. C. 

 T. Green, includes the plants growing within fifteen miles 

 of the Liverpool Town Hall and two miles of Southport. 

 It is baaed on the " Flora of Liverpool," issued by the 

 Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club in l872 ; but the present 

 work contains several new features. A most useful one 

 is the addition of pretty little figures of most of the plants. 

 Further, there are twenty-one photographs of the scenery 

 of the district. The flowering plants, ferns, fern allies 

 and Characea; incluJed in the flora amount to lOCiO species. 

 The " Flora of the East Riding of Yorkshire," by J. F. 

 liobinson, contains 10.3.5 species, including lo7 aliens, 

 casuals, etc., and 20 '' incognita." 3Iention should also be 

 made here of Mr. F. H. Davey's " Tentative List of the 

 Flowering i'lants, Ferns, etc., known to occur in the 

 County of Cornwall," which was issued a few months ago. 

 — S. A. S. ,,. 



Zoological. — The opinion seems to be gaining ground 

 among zoologists that there arc two distinct forms of 

 okapi. In the October issue of the Pfocefliiujii of the 

 Zoological Society, Dr. Forsyth Major applied the name 

 Ocapia liehrechts-i to the form represented by a male skull 

 from the Congo "Free State, recently received in Brussels. 

 On the other hand, Prof. Ray Lankester (Ann. Mtuj. Nat. 

 Hist, for November) believes this form to be the true 

 O.johnntoni, as typified by the strips of skin described by 

 Dr. Sclater as Etjuns (.') johnstoni. Accordinglv he ]tro- 

 poses the name of 0. erilssoni for the form represented by 



the mounted specimen in the British Museum, hitherto 

 assigned to the typical species. Dr. Major has further 

 stated that the female O. jnhuMoni {^^^ liphrcfhinl) is horn- 

 less ; and the same will probably hold good fur the other 

 form. Assuming this to be the case, and also lulmitting 

 the existence of two distinguishable forms, it has yet to 

 be proved that these are anything more than local races 

 of a single species. 



In a paper recently published in the Procoedingf: of the 

 Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, Mr. O. C. Bradley 

 pro])oses a system of skull-measurements for mammals, 

 analogous to the " craniometry " employed in the case of 

 the human subject. 



Certain very remarkable prehistoric sketches of animals 

 from the cave of Font-de-Cxaume, in the Dordogne, are 

 reproduced and described by Messrs. Capitan and Breuil 

 in a recent issue of the Comples Rendiis of the Paris 

 Academy. The animals depicted are the reindeer and the 

 Pleistocene bison. Consequently, if genuine, the drawings 

 must apparently be assigned to the Palaeolithic epoch. 



Much interest attaches to the description by Dr. C. W. 

 Andrews {Geohnjical MayarAne for October) of a series of 

 vertebrate remains — chiefl}' mammalian — from a Pliocene 

 deposit on the Wadi-Natrun, Egyjit. The remains 

 include those of a three-toed horse (Hijiparion), of a 

 hippopotamus identified with a species previously 

 described from a formation of the same age in Algeria, of 

 an antelope apparently inseparable from the Hippntraguit 

 cordteri of the South of France, and of an undetermined 

 species of pig. This new fauna apparently ccmfirms 

 previous conclusions as to a land- union between Europi> 

 and North Africa in Pliocene times. 



Those who would cxjdain the distribution of certain 

 forms of life by the former existence of a land-connection 

 b<'tween the southern continents by way of " Antarctica," 

 have laid some importance on the existence of fishes of 

 the genus Gala.via8 in the freshwaters of New Zealand, 

 Australia, South America and the Cape. This evidence, 

 for what it is worth, has been completely shattered by 

 Mr. G. A. Boulenger's description (in a memoir on tiie 

 fishes of the Congo) of a marine representative of the 

 genus in question from the Southern Ocean. 



In a memoir recently published at St. Petersburg, 

 Dr. Otto Ilerz describes the journey of the expedition 

 under his charge to the Beresowka River, in North- 

 eastern Siberia, to exhumate and bring home the remains 

 of a frozen mammoth. Althougli the carcass had 

 lost the trunk and one of the tusks before the arrival of 

 the party, the expedition was a complete success, having 

 reached the Beresowka and completed its task before the 

 setting in of the winter frosts. Leaving the Beresowka 

 in November, the party reached .St. Petersburg in February 

 last, where they made over their spoils to tlie .Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Another memoir lately published at St. Petersburg is 

 devoted to a full description of the wild horse of Mongolia, 

 based on the rich series of specimens in the museum and 

 on examples living at Moscow. The author, Dr. SaJensky, 

 is convinced that Eiiuu.-< prscirahl-ii is a distinct animal and 

 not a hybrid, but does not decide whether it is a separate 

 species or merely a local or feral race. In the course of 

 his description the author mentions the interesting fact 

 that the callosities generally present on the hind legs are 

 wanting in some individuals of the domesticated horse and 

 the wild tarpan. Commentirg on the memoir in the Field 

 newspaper, Mr. Lydekker expresses the opinion that the 

 Mongolian wild horse can no longer be regarded as anything 

 more than a race, or sub-species, of Eqiius cabnllus. 



