2s2 



NA TURE 



[January io, 1895 



logical phenomena being due to an organisoi — presumably 

 PUsmodiothora brassic.i. This being so, too great care cannot 

 be taken to prevent soil or diseased roots being conveyed from 

 a field which is diseased to another which is sound. 



A SociEvr which has a total of more than eleven thousand 

 governors and members, may fairly be said to be in a flourishing 

 condition. Such is the Royal .Agricultural Society ; and with so 

 great a membership, it is no wonder that a large amount of im- 

 portant work is carried on under its auspices. The current 

 quarterly yi>Kr«a/ of the Society has among its contents special 

 articles on the rotation of crops, light railways, and the trials of 

 oil engines at Cambridge. It also contains the annual reports 

 of the consulting chemist, Dr. J. A. Voelcker ; the consulting 

 botanist, Mr. \V. Carruthers, F. R.S. ; and the zoologist, Mr. 

 Cecil Warburton. The report of the Council shows that in 

 the Department of Comparative Pathology and Bacteriology, 

 established at the Royal Veterinary College by the aid of a grant 

 from the Society, the work in the research laboratory has in- 

 cluded investigations on tuberculosis, diphtheria, anthrax, and 

 other diseases, and the use of mallein and tuberculin for the 

 detection of glanders and tubercle in the earliest stage. The 

 further experiments which have been made, have materially 

 strengthened the evidence in favour of both agents as aids to 

 diagnosis in d jubiful cases of disease. We note that the Council 

 hive elected as an honorary member of the Society, Prof. \V. 

 Fleischmann, Director of the Agriculiural Institute of the Royal 

 University of Kunigsberg, in recognition of his distinguished 

 services to European agriculture. The annual country meeting 

 of the Society will beheld this year at Darlington; Leicester 

 has been chosen as the place of meeting for next year. 



Every naturalist is acquainted with the elaborate springlike 

 mechanism by which the woodpeckers and humming-birds are 

 enabled to protrude their tongues with such rapidity for the 

 cipture of insect prey. These remarkable instances of adapta- 

 tion have been more than once described, and some other 

 special modifications of the avian tongue and its bony supports 

 will be recalled by ornithologists. In a recent number of Der 

 Zoologiiilie Garten (Frankfurt, xxxv., November, 1894), llerr 

 Schenkling-Previ't redescribes these cases after a renewed in- 

 vestigation, and also supplies a quantity of interesting informa- 

 tion on the form of the tongue and hyoid apparatus of birds in 

 general. The old idea that the woodpecker transfixes its prey 

 with its sharp-tipped tongue is probably not yet extinct, but 

 Herr Prcvut adds his opposition to this opinion, and states that 

 the insects are agglutinated to its tongue by the .--ticky secretion 

 with which its surface is copiously covered. Although the 

 foim of the tongue usually corresponds to the shape of the bill, 

 there are exceptions to this rule, as, for example, in the waders, 

 kingfisher, and hoopoe, which, in spite of their long bills, only 

 possess small caitilaginous tongues ; in the pelican, indeed, 

 the tongue is altogether rudimentary. In most birds, whose 

 food consists of .--eeds, the tongue is dart- or awl-shap;d ; in 

 others, spatulate ; rarely, vcrmilorm or tubular. In some birds, 

 such as the owl, which swallow their prey entire, the tongue is 

 broad and serves as a mere shovel. In the hedge-sparrow, 

 nuthatch, woodcock, and others the tongue is bifid or irifid at 

 its apex, while in the humming-birds the tongue is split into 

 two branches almo>t to its base, and is used for actually 

 gripping the small insects on which these resplendent little 

 cieatures subsist. In a family of parrots (Trichoglossida:) the 

 tongue is provided at it' apex with a brush of some 250-300 

 hair-like processes. In the parrots, the tongue is thick and 

 fleshy, devoid of horny barbs or papilLx', and is even suspected 

 to possess sense-organs of taste. Herr Priv.pt concludes his 

 concise but interesting paper with some remarks on the influence 

 of the form of tongue in birds on their varying powers of 

 NO. I3I5. VOI-. 51] 



articulation. It is interesting to note that the parrots, the form 

 of whose tongues most closely resembles that of man, are able 

 to imitate his language more nearly than any other birds. 



The first number of the Botanisches Centralblalt gives, from 

 the annual report of the Socieic des touristes du Dauphinc, an 

 account of the various attempts to establi>h .A.lpine botanic 

 gardens in the Jura, Tirol, Siyria, the Bavarian .\lps, Switzer- 

 land, &c. 



The number of Bonnier s Rrjtie GenJrale de Botani^iie for 

 December 15, 1S94, contains a biographical sketch of the late 

 Prof. Duchartre, with an enu neration of his contributions to 

 physiological, morphological, and systematic botany, amount- 

 ing to 240 papers or separate publications. 



The first part is published of x.'he/ahrbucher fiir wissenschajt- 

 liche Botanik under the new editor-hip of Prof. Pfeffer and 

 Prof. Strasburger. It contains the following papers: — "In- 

 vestigations on Bacteria," by Dr. A. Fischer, and " Physio- 

 logical investigations on the formation of callus in cuttings of 

 woody plants," by Herr H. Titlmann. 



Lord Lilkokd's "Coloured Figures of British Birds" have 

 now reached their twenty-ninth number, and contain a series of 

 excellently-drawn chromo-lithOjjraphs of our native species. 

 Four or five more parts are required to finish the work, which, 

 when arranged, will fill ten or twelve crown-octavo volumes. 



The veteran naturalist, Dr. R. A. Philippi, of Santiago,has 

 just issued an illustrated memoir, in quarto, on the stags of the 

 .\ndes, which will form part of the ".Vunals of the National 

 Museum of Chili." Besides the two ordinarily recognised species 

 of the sub-geims Furcijer — Cerz'us chiUnsii and C. antisinsis — 

 Dr. Philippi describes a third specie^, Ccrvus hrathyceros, from 

 Northern Peru, which appears to be well established. 



The birds of Bulgaria and the adjacent provinces of Turkey 

 have, hitherto, been little invC'itigatfd by European orni- 

 thologists, and are consequently imperfectly known. .\ good 

 contribution to our knoArtedge of this subject has just been 

 made by the publication o( Reiser's " Ornis Balkanica." The 

 author is Custos of the Museum at Sarajevo, in Bosnia, and 

 has travelled extensively in the Bulgarian provinces. 



The 119'h number of the Biolo^ia Cenlrali Americana of 

 Messrs. Godman and SiUin, which has recently been issued, 

 contains coniinuaiions of the "Birds" by Messrs. Salvin 

 and Godman, of the Coleoptera by Dr. D. Sharp and Mr. 

 Champion, of the Ilymenoptera by Mr. Cameron, and of the 

 "Butterflies ' by Messrs. Godman and Salvin, all illustrated 

 by coloured plates of the highest exoellence. Various other 

 subjects are in progress, and there can be no diubt that the 

 work, when complete, will give us an account of the zoology 

 of an important region of the New World, executed in a style 

 and with a completeness which has hardly ever been approached 

 by any similar undertaking. 



An important paper on tropical fodder grasses appears in the 

 Keiv Bulletin for November. The object of the paper is " to 

 draw attention to a fe<v grasses that have attained to first rank 

 for fodder purposes in the tropics, and to give particulars re- 

 specting the conditions under which they have been found to 

 thrive." The information given will be of considerable assist- 

 ance in indicating grasses suitable for cultivation in tropical 

 countries. It will also show some countries that, while they 

 have been spending time and money in endeavouring to intro- 

 duce foreign grasses, they have overlooked excellent indigenous 

 grasses close at hand. 



Messrs. Blackie and Son have published a small book 

 entitled " First Stage Mathematics." The contents are limited 

 to the rcijuirements of the Code of the Education Department 

 for mathematics as a specific subject. 



