April 30, 1903] 



NA TURE 



617 



planets. The principle on which this comparison is made 

 seems to be wrong. A storm having been recorded, an 

 inquiry is made into the positions of the planets, moon, &c. 

 It would be more convincing if, from the arrangement of 

 the planets, the weather was foretold. The reply of the 

 author is, however, that we do not know sufficient of the 

 state of the weather over the whole world to be able to say 

 whether the prediction is justified or not. The author does 

 not seem to have read Prof. Schuster's address to the Astro- 

 nomical Section at Belfast, in which he will find discussed 

 the true principles which indicate a real connection between 

 phenomena in which some relationship can be traced. 



A method of studying the action of insects' wings by 

 instantaneous photography is described by Herr Robert von 

 Lendenfeld in the Biologisches Centralblatt. The photo- 

 graphs were taken by concentrated sunlight, as many as 

 2500 exposures per second being obtained by revolving a 

 cog-wheel in the plane in which the image of the sun was 

 focused. The photographic images of the insect were 

 separated by means of a revolving mirror. One great diffi- 

 culty was to make the fly fly, and it must not be forgotten 

 that the insect was confined in a very restricted space, or 

 even in some cases held in the fingers, thus hardly repro- 

 ducing the conditions of free flight. 



In a note in the Bulletin of the Imperial Naturalists' 

 Society of Moscow, M. W. Mamontow describes a diamond 

 contributed to the mineralogical museum at Moscow from 

 the Ural Mountains. It was one of four diamonds found in a 

 new secondary bed near the village of Koltachi ; it weighed 

 1107 carat, and its specific gravity was 3516. Most of the 

 Ural Mountain diamonds weigh less than a carat. The 

 author describes sixteen deposits in the southern and central 

 Urals from which more than 222 crvstals have been obtained 

 in seventy-three years. 



Whether the microbes which are constantly present in 

 the intestinal canal of man and animals are essentially 

 necessary to promote digestion, are harmless and un- 

 necessary, or are even injurious, is a question on which 

 various observers have arrived at different results. In a 

 paper communicated to the Bulletin of the Imperial 

 Naturalists' Society of Moscow, Mdlle. P. V. Tsiklinsk} 

 discusses this question. From an examination of the litera- 

 ture of the subject, and from a study of the microbe flora 

 in question, the authoress is led to believe that, while certain 

 microbes do undoubtedly promote digestion, and, in accord- 

 ance with M. Metchnikoff's observations, in some cases 

 exercise an antagonistic influence against germs of disease, 

 it is probably possible, by artificial means, such as by 

 variation of diet, to dispense with the bacteria in question, 

 and thus to avoid the danger that they often cause in the 

 living animal. Further, the view is put forward that 

 the thermophilous microbes of the intestinal canal are mere 

 varieties of ordinary non-thermophilous microbes, and not 

 distinct species. 



We have received from Messrs. W. Watson and Son, of 

 High Holborn, their latest catalogue of microscopes and 

 accessories. Among the new items may be mentioned the 

 series of substage condensers, which, through the courtesy 

 of Messrs. Watson, we have had an opportunity of testing. 

 These are all of a high order, especially the " holoscopic " 

 oil immersion condenser, which appears to be as good as, 

 if not superior to, any similar condenser we have had 

 through our hands. The " macro illuminator " is a most 

 useful accessory for low-power photomicrography, the 

 illumination of large objects being by its aid very easily 

 accomplished. There is also described a new two-speed 

 fine adjustment, the design and construction of which is 



NO. I748, VOL. 67] 



of considerable merit as well as a fine adjustment, designed 

 for photomicrography and high-power work by Mr. E. B. 

 Stringer, which should be of the greatest value to workers 

 in these branches. The well-known " Van Heurck " micro- 

 scope, than which there is probably no finer instrument to 

 be obtained, is again described fully, as well as a new 

 metallurgical microscope, for which there should, in view 

 of the great advances recently in this branch of work, be 

 a considerable demand. 



We have received what appears to be the first part of a 

 new Italian entomological journal, Redia, published at 

 Portici. This part comprises a single memoir, by Signor 

 F. Silvestri, on the termites and the insects which live with 

 them of South America. For the purpose of his researches 

 the author visited Argentina in 1898, and Chili and Uruguay 

 in the following year, obtaining a vast store of material, 

 which has since been carefully worked out. The present 

 memoir contains accounts of a number of new generic and 

 specific types discovered by the author. Six plates are 

 devoted to details of structure. 



A unique specimen has been added to the gallery of fossil 

 reptiles in the Natural History Museum. This is a con- 

 siderable portion of the skeleton of a gigantic sauropod 

 dinosaur obtained from the Oxford Clay near Peterborough 

 by Mr. E. N. Leeds, of Eyebury. When first the bones of 

 this species were discovered some years ago, they were 

 described by the late Mr. J. W. Hulke as Omithopsis 

 leedsi, but the generic title has since been changed to 

 Cetiosaurus. The remains include the tail, sacrum, and 

 parts of one hind and one fore limb. The Peterborough 

 dinosaur, which is evidently allied to the American Diplo- 

 docus (of which restored sketches are placed alongside), is 

 the first example of the larger forms of these reptiles found 

 in Britain of which enough of the skeleton has been found 

 to admit of its being mounted. The mounting reflects the 

 greatest credit on the mason and artificers of the museum. 



Among the series of memoirs on the fishes of Japan by- 

 Messrs. Jordan and Fowler, to which allusion has so fre- 

 quently been made in these columns, none is of more general 

 interest than the one on the sharks and rays (Elasmo- 

 branchs), forming No. 1324 of the Proceedings of the U.S. 

 Nat. Mus. Of the numerous forms recorded, by far the 

 most noteworthy is the shark described as Mitsukurina 

 oiostoni. The genus and species are based on a single 

 specimen captured in 1898 off Misaki in deep water, which, 

 until November of last year, remained the only known ex- 

 ample. Dr. Smith Woodward has suggested that this 

 shark is not generically distinct from the Eocene Scapano- 

 rhynchus, but this is not admitted by the authors of the 

 memoir before us, although the characters on which they 

 maintain its distinctness appear insignificant. Messrs. 

 Jordan and Fowler adopt more family groups than is usual, 

 and use several names which are unfamiliar, although in 

 employing Cetorhinus, in place of Selache, for the basking- 

 shark they are undoubtedly right. 



As Prof. L. Bailey has made a special study of plant- 

 breeding and plant form, he is well qualified to discuss the 

 modern theories of variation and principles of hybridisation. 

 These subjects he treated in an address delivered before the 

 American Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, and 

 his paper has been printed in Science. Prof. Bailey points 

 out that the most important part of Mendel's contribution 

 is the law of heredity which he put forward, which is based 

 upon similarity or purity of the two fusing elements. 



The Botanical Club of Canada has endeavoured to stimu- 

 late the collection of phenological records throughout the 

 various provinces of the Dominion, and in Columbia and 



