March 22, 1900] 



NATURE 



499 



This latter work is frequently found very useful for refer- 

 ence to the extreme conditions of weather and unusual 

 occurrences since a.d. 220. In 1856 he published in Orr's 

 Circle of the Sciences, in conjunction with Mr. J. B. Scoffern, a 

 " Practical Meteorology," which will well repay perusal at the 

 present day. Mr. Lowe's labours were, however, in no way 

 limited to meteorology. He communicated several joint papers 

 on luminous meteors to the British Association, and assisted the 

 late Prof. E. Forbes in the compilation of his well-known work 

 :i "The British >follusca," and he also wrote several valuable 

 .\ orks on British ferns and flowering plants. He was one of 

 the founders and original fellows of the Meteorological Society, 

 of which body he was a life member, and contributed many 

 papers to its Proceedings on meteorological subjects and also 

 on earthquake and astronomical phenomena. Mr. Lowe was 

 the inventor of the dry powder tests for the determination of 

 the amount of ozone present in the atmosphere. 



The census of Great Britain will be taken on Sunday, March 

 31, 1901. The Census Bill was read a third time in the House of 

 Commons on Monday, and as it now stands, the schedules will 

 require the following particulars to be filled in ; — (a) The name, 

 sex, age, profession or occupation, condition as to marriage, re- 

 lation to head of family, birthplace, and (where the person was 

 born abroad) nationality of every living person who abode in 

 every house on the night of the census day ; and {b) whether 

 any person who so abode was blind or deaf and dumb, or im- 

 becile or lunatic ; and {c) where the occupier is in occupation of 

 less than five rooms, the number of rooms occupied by him ; and 

 ((/) in the case of Wales or the county of Monmouth, whether 

 any person who so abode (being of three years of age or up- 

 wards) speaks English only or Welsh only, or both English and 

 Welsh. 



As already announced, an International Congress of Botanists 

 will be held in Paris from the ist to the loth of October, in con- 

 nection with the Exposition. It is proposed to bring before the 

 Congress special subjects for discussion ; and the following have 

 been already approved by the Committee: — (i) Monographic 

 studies ; (2) Species, hybrids and cross-breeds ; (3) Unification 

 of micrometric measures ; (4) Influence of the nature of the sub- 

 stratum on the development of Fungi. The President of the 

 Committee is M. E. Prillieux ; the General Secretary, M. E. 

 Perrot, I'Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie, Paris. All botanists 

 who notify the General Secretary their desire to become mem- 

 bers of the Congress, and who pay the fee (20 francs), will be 

 enrolled as members. Public and general sessions, conferences 

 and collecting trips, displays of fungi, and visits to botanical 

 establishments, are planned. 



In accordance with a recommendation of the Columbus meet- 

 ing of the Botanical Society of America, and Section G of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the 

 Columbus meeting, Prof. W. Trelease, of the Missouri Botanic 

 Garden, has contributed to Science (vol. x. No. 255, Nov. 17, 

 1899) a scheme for the classification of botanical publications. 

 He proposes arranging them under nine heads :— (i) Works of 

 miscellaneous contents ; (2) Biographies of botanists ; (3) No- 

 menclature, taxonomy and descriptive botany ; (4) Morphology 

 and organography ; (5) Vegetable physiology, including ecology ; 

 (6) Vegetable pathology, including the injuries of plants and 

 therapy ; (7) Evolution, natural selection, &c. ; (8) Man's in- 

 fluence on plants, artificial selection, &c. ; (9) Phytogeography, 

 floras. Sec. These are ^ain classified under a large number of 

 subdivisions. 



The Botanical Society of France has elected M. Drake del 

 Castillo President for the year 1900 ; M. Boudier, M. I'abbe 

 BouUu, M. Morot and M. de Seynes, Vice-Presidents. 

 NO. 1586, VOL. 61] 



The Italian botanical journal, Erythea, will be discontinued 

 with the completion of the seventh volume. 



A Herbarium, collected especially to illustrate the flora of 

 the Rocky Mountains, is being organised in connection with the 

 University of Wyoming. 



Bulletin 62 of the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, Morgantown, W. Va., consists of a paper, by Mr. L. C. 

 Corbett, on the effect of incandescent gas-light on the growth of 

 plants. He finds that the incandescent gas-light of the Welsbach 

 burner is an active stimulus to the growth of plants when used 

 at night to supplement daylight. The paper is illustrated by 

 charts and photographs. 



An article of archaeological interest appears in the March 

 number of the Engineering Magazine, which, in discussing the 

 " Gold-mining prospects in Rhodesia," treats of the discovery of 

 gold ornaments found in ancient ruins in Rhodesia, and their 

 probable age. From the text we gather that ornaments have 

 been found in houses dating back, it is believed, three thousand 

 years ago ; it is also pointed out that the ignorant black popula- 

 tion could not have made them. The group of objects represent- 

 ing trays, bracelets, beads, and other articles difficult to specify, 

 has been carefully photographed and reproduced. 



Those of our readers interested in foreign Lepidoptera may 

 be glad to learn that Mr. E. Swinhoe has recently issued his 

 ninth annual list of specimens for sale. 



Our namesake. Die Natur, in its issue "of March 11, con- 

 tains an interesting sketch of the collections in the Berlin 

 Museum. From this we learn that the plan of placing a small 

 map to each specimen, indicative of its geographical distribution, 

 has been adopted; and likewise that a special .saloon is devoted 

 to the fauna of Germany. In the latter we further note that the 

 Bats are exhibited in spirit, as is now the case with a large 

 portion of those in the British Museum. 



We have to congratulate the Trustees of the South African 

 Museum on the completion of the first volume of the Annals of 

 that institution, the third and concluding part of which has 

 just come to hand. The great bulk of this fasciculus is taken up 

 by the description of various South African Scorpions and their 

 distant cousins the Solifugai, or " False Spiders," two genera of 

 the latter being recorded for the first time from the Cape 

 district. The volume closes with a short paper, by Dr. R. 

 Broom, on two new species of Dicynodont Reptiles from the 

 well-known Karoo series ; and it is a matter of satisfaction to 

 find not only that the study of extinct forms comes within the 

 province of this useful publication, but that such a competent 

 observer and anatomist as Dr. Broom has turned his attention 

 to this branch of research. 



Confronted with the difficulty of mounting the bones of the 

 limbs of extinct mammals at their proper angles of inclination, 

 Prof. H. F. Osborn has undertaken a careful comparative in- 

 vestigation of those of the elephant and the rhinoceros, in the 

 hope of finding a clue from the conformation of the bones them- 

 selves as to their true position in the mounted skeleton. The 

 results of his studies are given to the public in the February 

 number of the American Naturalist. In regard to the elephant, 

 he makes the noteworthy statement "that the study of the 

 skeleton alone would have given us a very faulty conception of 

 the animal." He is led to conclude that in all primitive un- 

 gulates the long bones of the limbs were set at considerable 

 angles to one another, as in the majority of the existing repre- 

 sentatives of the order, and that the vertical position they 

 occupy in the elephant is an acquired feature. To quote his 

 own words :— ' ' The straightening of the limb is an adaptation 



