60 NATURE 
instead of setting out from mathematics to turn its 
attention towards mechanics, physics, and chemistry, 
instead of bringing all its forces to converge on the 
study of matter, had begun by the consideration of 
mind—if Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, for example, 
had been psychologists.” He answered that our 
psychology would have been almost inconceivably 
different from what it is. ‘‘ Foreign to every mechan- 
istic idea, not even conceiving the possibility of such 
an explanation, science would have inquired into, in- 
stead of dismissing a priori, facts such as those you 
study. Witalism,’’ he continued, ‘‘is a sterile doctrine 
to-day. It will perhaps not be so always, and it prob- 
ably would not have been so had modern science at 
its origin taken things at the other end.” 
Tue current number (February, 1914) of the Journal 
of Genetics contains papers dealing with several 
aspects of the problem of heredity. Mr. R. K. 
Nabours writes on inheritance in Paratettix, an 
American genus of locusts. In addition to P. texanus, 
Hanc., he found eight varieties which differ in their 
colour patterns, and are given new specific names. 
The inheritance of these colour patterns in crosses 
is found to be Mendelian in the sense that segregation 
occurs in the F, offspring, the species P. texanus 
being recessive to all the others. In the F, the colour 
patterns of both parents are equally developed, so 
that there is no phenomenon of dominance. In the 
experiments, five ‘“‘unexpected individuals”’ appeared, 
which seem to have been due to germinal changes. 
Long and short wings were found not to be inherited, 
but to be controlled by environment. Mr. Richardson 
contributes a note on inheritance in strawberries, and 
Mr. ‘Salmon describes sterile male dwarfs in the hop. 
In continuing his studies on the effects of environ- 
ment on parthenogenetic and sexual reproduction in 
Cladocera, Mr. Agar concludes that ‘‘there is no 
justification for retaining the hypothesis of an inherent 
reproductive cycle,’ the transition from one type of 
reproduction to the other being entirely under environ- 
mental control. Dr. C. J. Bond describes an_her- 
maphrodite Formosan pheasant having the secondary 
sexual characters of a male on the left side and of a 
female on the right, and suggests an explanation 
based on hormones. The utility of the paper on 
reduplication series, which deals with highly question- 
able Mendelian hypotheses, is problematical. 
THE revived interest in the study of Thysanoptera 
among English entomologists is shown by the pub- 
lication of two important papers in a recent nuniber 
of the Journal of Economic Biology (vol. viii., No. 4) 
on British species of the order, by Mr. C. B. Williams 
and Mr. R. S. Bagnall respectively. A number of 
new species are described in each paper. Mr. Williams 
also describes some new forms from the West Indies. 
Tue lately issued part of the Bulletin of Entomo- 
logical Research (vol. iv., part 3, 1913) is mostly 
occupied by two papers combining geographical and 
economic interest. Dr. J. J. Simpson describes his 
journeys for entomological research in British West 
Africa, giving much ecological information and a map 
to show the ascertained range of five species of 
NO} 2235 7, avo 193) 
[MarcH 26, 1914 
Glossina in Sierra Leone. Mr. A. D. Peacock dis- 
cusses the ‘“‘Entomological Pests and Problems of 
Southern Nigeria,’ describing the principal insects 
that injure the staple crops of the country—cotton, 
cocoa, maize, yams, and rubber. The stages of the 
red “cotton stainer’’—a heteropterid bug, Dysdercus 
superstitiosus, are described and illustrated with 
coloured figures; excellent illustrations of other harm- 
ful species are also given. 
In the February number of Naturen Dr. A. W. 
Brgégger discusses certain ‘‘kayaks’’ discovered in 
Scotland and the isles—two of them so long ago as the 
seventeenth century—which have been regarded as of 
a Scandinavian, or rather Finnish, type. Dr. Brogger 
states, however, that this is altogether wrong, and that 
the kayaks, together with the associated paddles and 
other implements, closely resemble those used at the 
present day in Greenland. How they reached Scot- 
land and the Orkneys is briefly discussed. 
THE greater portion of the third part of vol. iv. of 
the Annals of the Transvaal Museum is occupied by 
papers on the results of the zoological section of the 
Percy Sladen Memorial Expedition to Great Namaqua- 
land in 1912-13, of which section Mr. Paul Methuen 
was in charge. Mr. Austin Robert supplies the list 
of mammals collected, while the reptiles and amphi- 
bians are discussed by Messrs. Methuen and John 
Hewitt, and the arachnids by Mr. Hewitt. New species 
in each of the three last-mentioned groups are 
described. 
As the result of a fifteen weeks’ sojourn in South 
Georgia during the Antarctic summer of 1912-13, Mr. 
Cushman Murphy (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 
vol. xxxiii., p. 63) was led to believe that old males 
of the sea-elephant had become exceedingly scarce, 
and that not sufficient were left to impregnate the 
females. According, however, to the taxidermist who 
accompanied Major Barrett-Hamilton, this was a tem- 
porary deficiency due partly to the visits of a sealing 
vessel belonging to the Compana Argentina de Pesca, 
and partly to an unprecedented slaughter of some 600 
males in a single season. During the past season 
fair-sized and large males are reported to have been 
relatively numerous, 
WE have received from the secretary of the Com- 
mission on Zoological Nomenclature, in conformity 
with the instructions of the congress which require 
that a year’s notice be given before any official excep- 
tions to its rules can be allowed, a memorandum 
praying for the retention of the old generic names 
Doliolum, Pyrosoma, Salpa, Cyclosalpa, Appendicu- 
laria, and Fritillaria, signed by the following workers 
on Tunicata :—C. Apstein, A. Borgert, G. P. Farran, 
G. H. Fowler, R. Hartmeyer, W. A. Herdman, 
J. E. W. Ihle, H. Lohmann, W. Michaelsen, G. Neu- 
mann, C. Ph. Sluiter, F. Todaro. How far the pre- 
sent confusion would be worse confounded by con- 
formity to the new rules may be seen by the fact 
that what every zoologist knows as Pyrosoma would 
be called Doliolum, and a new name would have to 
be coined for the well-known plankton key-form at 
present termed Doliolum. 
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