596 



NA TURE 



[April 19, 1900 



important developments have taken place. The 400,cx50,ooo 

 jjcople have hitherto been served by 350 miles of railway, or less 

 than one mile for each million persons. More than ten times 

 this length of railway is, however, now projected, and not only 

 projected in the ordinary sense of the term, but in many cases 

 being actively pushed forward and with prospect of a compara- 

 tively early completion. With telegraphs connecting the capital 

 with every province and also with the outside world ; with steam 

 navigation and foreign steam vessels penetrating to the very 

 head of the many navigable waterways ; with new treaty ports 

 opening upon the coast and far inland ; and with foreigners per- 

 mitted to travel for business or pleasure to the remotest corners 

 of the Empire and carry with them their merchandise and 

 machinery, the changes which the commercial conditions of 

 China are undergoing are well worthy of attention. The 

 present report is full of valuable information to business men 

 iand students of political and commercial geography. 



An interesting and suggestive article, by Monsieur E. de Cyon, 

 on the means whereby the "homing" pigeon ascertains the 

 direction in which it should fly — in other words, its orientation 

 — appears in the Revue Scientijique of March 24. After refer- 

 ring to the intimate connection between the migratory and the 

 "homing" instinct, the author points out an important differ- 

 ence in the conditions under which migration and "homing" 

 are carried out. In the former case the bird may have experi- 

 ence to guide it ; and it is at least well acquainted with the 

 neighbourhood in which it lives. On the other hand, a 

 "homing" pigeon, after being carried a longer or shorter dis- 

 tance by train in a dark compartment, is suddenly let loose in 

 some place it has never seen before, yet, after mounting in 

 circles to a considerable elevation in the air, it suddenly starts 

 in the direction of home, not unfrequently following the course 

 of the railway by which it travelled. As the result of experi- 

 ments, the author is of opinion that the retina and the nose take 

 an important share in the orientation ; the other conditions 

 being a keen "local memory," and a high development of the 

 cerebral organs connected with the nerves upon which this sense 

 of orientation depends. 



Thirty-nine new species of Weevils are recorded and 

 diagnosed from Madagascar by J. Faust, and eighteen new and 

 imperfectly-known species of beetles belonging to the genus 

 Lomaptera and its allies from the Papuan region, are described 

 by K. M. Heller in the Abhandl. u. Berichte K. Zoolog. Anthr. 

 Mus. Dresden, 1899, Bd. viii. {^Festschrift fiir A. B. Meyer). 

 In the same volume, B. Wandolleck has an important memoir 

 on the anatomy of the cycloraphous larvae of Diptera, the form 

 more particularly studied being the larva of Platycephala 

 planifrotis. It is illustrated by two plates of photographs of 

 transverse sections through the larva, and by several cuts in the 

 text. , The volume closes with a paper, by J. Jablonowski, on 

 the development of the medullary cord in the pike, illustrated 

 by one plate. There is very little difference between the stages 

 here described and those which other observers have recorded 

 in various species of the Salmonidje. 



The twenty-second annual meeting of the German Ornitho- 

 logical Society was held in Dresden in May 1897, and the 

 papers read before that body have been published in the 

 Abhandl. u. Berichte K. Zoolog. Anthrop. Mus. Dresden, 

 Bd. vii. 1899. Besides other papers in the same volume there 

 s one on new beetles from Celebes and from the Philippines, by 

 K. M. Heller, and a memoir on the mammals of Celebes and 

 the Philippine Archipelago, collected by the Sarasins and 

 described by A. B. Meyer. This is a valuable piece of work 

 from a faunistic point of view, several new forms are recorded 

 and figured. An appendix on the spoon- or spatula-shaped 

 hairs occurring in certain bats is added by J. Jablonowski. 

 NO. 1590, VOL. 61] 



A REPORT on the working of the Botanical Department 

 (Jamaica) for the year ending March 31, 1899, appears in a 

 supplement to the famaica Gazette for February i, 1900. 



" Studies of North American Grasses : The North American 

 species of Chaetochloa," by Messrs. F. Lawson-Scribner and 

 Elmer D. Merrill, is the subject of Bulletin No. 21 of the 

 U.S. Department of Agriculture (Division of Agrostology). 



Of equal value^ from a systematic point of view, are the 

 contributions from the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, 

 contributed to the Proceedings of the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences. No. xvii. of the new series comprises new 

 species and varieties of Mexican plants, by J. M. Greenman ; 

 synopses of the genera Jaeger ia and Russelia, by Mr. B. L. 

 Robinson ; new Dioscoreas from Mexico, by Mr. E. B. Uline ; 

 new Phanerogams from Mexico and Central America, by Mr. 

 B. L. Robinson. 



The firm of Gustav Schmidt, Berlin, is publishing, in twelve 

 parts, a collection of forty-eight excellently-coloured plates of 

 garden flowers and plants, under the title "Die schonsten 

 Stauden fiir die Schnittblumen und Gartenkultur." The series 

 of pictures, and the accompanying descriptive text, are edited 

 by Messrs. Max Hesdorffer, E. Kohler and R. Rudel. 



Messrs. J. and A. Churchill have just published the 

 third edition of an "Elementary Practical Chemistry and 

 Qualitative Analysis," by Dr. Frank Clowes and Prof. J. B. 

 Coleman. The book contains a good course of laboratory work, 

 commencing with simple measurements and manipulations, 

 which lead in an instructive way to analytical reactions of the 

 commonly occurring metals and inorganic acid -radicles, and the 

 means of detecting them. 



With the copper apparatus for the preparation of fluorine, 

 recently described, M. Moissan has been able to take up the 

 examination of fluorides which could only be obtained hitherto 

 in quantities too small for detailed study. It was shown some 

 years ago that sulphur took fire in fluorine, and in the number of 

 the Comptes rendus for April 2, M. Moissan gives a description 

 of the properties and methods of isolation of one of the sulphur 

 fluorides thus formed. Fluorine is passed over sulphur con- 

 tained in a copper boat in an atmosphere of nitrogen, and the 

 resulting gases cooled to - 80° C. in a mixture of solid carbon 

 dioxide and acetone. By allowing the liquid thus obtained to 

 boil off" at the ordinary temperature, a mixture of fluorides of 

 sulphur is obtained, partly absorbable by potash. The un- 

 absorbed portion proved to be the hexafluoride, SFg, which 

 possessed remarkable properties for a fluoride, being a colour- 

 less, odourless gas, so inert in its behaviour towards reagents as 

 to be comparable to nitrogen. It is unacted upon by prolonged 

 contact with potash, by fused potash or lead chromate, and has 

 no effect upon red-hot copper oxide ; phosphorus and arsenic 

 can be distilled unaltered in the gas, and sodium can be melted 

 in it without change, the temperature having to be raised above 

 the boiling point of the metal before reaction sets in. Further 

 details of this interesting gas are promised. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Macaque Monkey {Macacus cynomolgus, i ) 

 from India, presented by Mr. T. Packer ; a Barbary Mouse 

 {Mus barbarus) from Barbary, presented by Master Chapman ; 

 a Lyre Bird {Menura superba, ? ) from South-East Australia, 

 presented by Messrs. Carrick and Fry; a Roller {Coracias 

 garrulus), European, deposited ; two Australian Thicknees 

 [CEdicnennes grallarius); two Masked Wood Swallows {Artamus 



personata) ; two Wood Swallows {Artamus, sp. inc.) from 



Australia, purchased ; seven Barbary Wild Sheep ( Ovis trage- 

 laphus, 3 (J , 4 ? ), born in the Gardens. 



