April 27, 19 16] 



NATURE 



187 



vided." "The field of inquiry was quite new, and 

 -offered boundless opportunities of research," and it 

 was vigorously exploited, with the result which the 

 war has made only too plainly evident. Alluding to 

 the manufacture of dyes, regret is expressed thgl a 

 great new branch of industry has passed from British 

 control, but in this matter blame is laid upon the 

 Government, both central and local, in the enactment 

 of unwise restrictions, the effect of which, as, for 

 example, in the instance of alcohol, has resulted in the 

 serious hampering of industrial development. The great 

 industrial prosperity of the country has also produced 

 an attitude of indifterence to scientific discovery in this 

 and other countries, which, in the case of the latter, 

 has silently but none the less surely laid the founda- 

 tion of great industrial enterprises. "There has never 

 been," says Sir Hugh Bell, "during the last fifty years 

 a time of any duration when it would have been pos- 

 sible to get 10,000 capable workmen to take up new- 

 work. There have been plenty of unemployed, but 

 they were persons who, under the conditions existing, 

 were unemployable." There could scarcely be a more 

 eloquent testimony to the need, or a more adequate 

 spur, for a better organised scheme of education by 

 means of which we could create a great reservoir of 

 rightly educated men. We need the vision without 

 which a nation must perish. 



The Cuzco valley in southern Peru has become 



I known for its vertebrate remains embedded in com- 



1 paratively recent gravels (see Nature, vol. Ixxxix., 



' p. 584, and vol. xci., p. 615). The Yale expedition 



! was mainly concerned with the antiquity of man, but 



I Mr. H. E. Gregory was enabled to extend his re- 



I searches to the geology of the valley and its relation 



i to the Andean chain. In the American Journal of 



I Science, vol. xli. (1916), p. 19, he presents a new 



1 conception of the Andes as an uplifted plateau of 



I continental and marine sediments penetrated by 



\ igneous intrusions, the surface of erosion having little 



} regard to geological structure. The deep dissection of 



this late Mesozoic surface has cut "a number of 



canyons rivalling the Grand Canyon of the Colorado 



I in depth and ruggedness." The Urubamba has 



trenched the plateau to a depth of more than 5000 ft. 



jThe Cuzco valley is an incident of the plateau, where 



jfaulting has helped to produce a depression, in the 



|upper part of which a lake was at one time formed by 



iownwarp. 



In the interior of Borneo much exploration 

 (■emains to be done. Mr. J. C. Moulton, Curator of 

 |he Sarawak Museum, has put together an account 

 )f the various expeditions to Mount Kinabalu, 

 British North Borneo, from 185 1 to his own expedi- 

 ion in 1913 {Sarawak Museum Journal, vol. ii., 

 )t. ii., September, 1915). The article is accom- 

 •anied by a map showing the best routes to the 

 nountain. and contains a good deal of new informa- 

 jion, much of it collected from native sources. The 

 ame number of the Journal contains a number of 

 laluable articles on the natural history, botany, and 

 Dology of Borneo. 



Further evidence that some at least of our British 

 allows {Hirundo rustica) winter normally in the 

 treme south-east of Africa has come to light by the 

 ;overy, near Grahamstown, on February 6, 1916, 

 a bird which was ringed by Mr. F. W. Sherwood 

 Lytham, Lancashire, on July 3, 1915. This, re- 

 arks Mr. H. F. Witherby, in British Birds for April, 

 the third swallow which has been reported from 

 )uth Africa similarly marked for identification. The 

 St was ringed as an adult at Rosehill, Cheadle, 

 affordshire, on May 6, 191 1, and was caught on a 

 rm near Utrecht, Natal, on December 27, 1912. 



NO. 2426, VOL. 97] 



The second was ringed as a nestling at Skelmorlie, 

 Ayrshire, on July 27, 1912, and was caught at Riet 

 Valley, Orange Free State, on March 16, 19 13. 



Some useful work on Indian Cestoda, by Mr. T. 

 Southwell, appears in the Records of the Indian 

 Museum, vol. vii., part i, igi6. The author describes 

 a number of species found in Indian fishes, birds, and 

 mammals. He confines his remarks to the anatomical 

 characters of adults. The larval stages, indeed, of 

 many of the species herein surveyed are unknown. 

 More particulars in regard to the hosts of these para- 

 sites would be acceptable. Where information on this 

 head is lacking it would be of distinct advantage to say 

 so. The same issue contains a paper by Major R. E. 

 Lloyd and Dr. N. Annandale on the brackish- water 

 hydrozoon, Campanulina ceylonensis. The authors 

 have been enabled to work out the complete life- 

 history of this interesting species, and thereby they 

 have discovered that the form described by Browne 

 under the name Irene palkensis is really but a senile 

 stage of ceylonensis. 



Kevv Bulletin, No. i for 19 16, contains a useful 

 paper on the African species of the genus Morinda 

 (Rubiaceae) by Mr. S. Hutchinson. Four species are 

 now recognised, a new one, M. confusa, being de- 

 scribed in the paper. Owing to the excellent material 

 sent home by Mr. Lane-Poole, Conservator of Forests, 

 Sierra Leone, the country inhabited by three of the 

 species, it has been possible to draw up careful 

 diagnoses. The fourth species, M. lucida, Benth., is 

 not known further north than the Gold Coast. The 

 Sierra Leone species are found in the rain forests of 

 the colony. The species are used medicinally for 

 various purposes, but especially for fever, M. geminata 

 having a' reputation as being efficacious in cases of 

 yellow fever. The distinctive characters of the four 

 species are well shown in a series of text figures. 



An important memoir on the Avezzano earthquake 

 of Januar>' 13, 1915, has been communicated by Prof. 

 E. Oddone to the Italian Seismological Society {Bol- 

 lettino, vol. xix., 1915, pp. 71-215). On the small- 

 scale map which illustrates the paper, the isoseismal 

 lines of the epicentral area are shown, the intensity 

 being determined by reference to the Cancani duo- 

 decimal scale. In this district there are two chief 

 areas of destruction. The northern area, in which 

 the intensity of the shock reached the degree 12, lies 

 in the basin formerly occupied by the lake of Fucino, 

 and extends 'from the neighbourhood of Avezzano to 

 that of Lecce. The southern area, in which the in- 

 tensity was usually 10, but in places 11, lies along the 

 Val Liri. Prof. Oddone attributes the remarkable 

 variations of intensity in the epicentral district mainly 

 to orographic and geological conditions, and not to 

 the existence of separate centres of disturbance. The 

 directions of the movement diverge from an epicentral 

 area a few kilometres in length and elongated from 

 north-west to south-east, the centre of the area being 

 in 41° 58' N. latitude, 13° 36' E. longitude, or about 

 16 km. to the south-east of Avezzano. The ground 

 in this district is broken up by numerous fissures, the 

 most remarkable of which is a perimetral crack, fol- 

 lowing approximately the course of the isoseismal 12. 

 The crack, which has been traced almost uninter- 

 ruptedly for 70 km., is usually from 30 to 100 cm. in 

 width, the ground within it (that is, towards the 

 Fucino) being depressed relatively by 30 to 90 cm. 

 The duration of the earthquake, scarcely exceeding 

 five seconds, was one of the shortest of known destruc- 

 tive earthquakes. Prof. Oddone estimates the depth 

 of the focus at approximately 10 km. 



The existence of reindeer in Spitsbergen has never 

 been satisfactorily explained, and is a vexed problem 



