168 
NATURE 
[APRIL 16, 1914 
But in other cases a difficulty will arise. Where 
experience cannot speak with certainty, a 
scientific reason must be urged, and it will be 
necessary to formulate a series of deductions from 
the life-history of the insect or fungus which would 
justify a presumption that in different surroundings 
the pest might prove epidemic as well as destruc- | 
tive to plant lite, or at least injurious to the crop. 
No doubt it will be possible, in the course of time, 
to declare with more accuracy than at present what 
are the circumstances in which such conditions 
might arise; but it will require a long and careful 
study, not only of plant hygiene, but also of the 
limits of the powers of adaptation to environment 
possessed by parasitic organisms, under the 
stinvlus of altered climatic and cultural con- 
ditions, as well as freedom from injurious influ- 
ences. This article in the proposed convention 
will, if adopted, have a marked influence on the 
trend of economic biology and plant pathology. 
NOTES. 
A COLLECTION of rock specimens of considerable his- 
toric interest has just been presented to the Depart- 
ment of Minerals of the Natural History Museum. 
The specimens in question were collected in Arctic 
North America by Sir John Richardson, who accom- 
panied Sir John Franklin’s Arctic Expeditions of 
1819-1827. They have since that time been kept in 
the museum of the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, 
but inasmuch as the fossils collected in the same 
Arctic expeditions are in the National Museum at 
South Kensington, it was felt to be in the fitness of 
things that the rocks should be also preserved there. 
An application was accordingly: made to the Lords of 
the Admiralty to sanction the transfer of the specimens 
from Haslar to Cromwell Road, with the result that, 
as we have stated, they are now in the Department of 
Minerals. 
On Tuesday next, April 21, Dr. Walter Wahl will 
deliver the first of two lectures at the Royal Institu- 
tion on problems of physical chemistry: (1) study of 
matter at high pressures, (2) study of matter at low 
temperatures; on Thursday, April 30, Dean Inge will 
begin a course of three lectures on the last chapter 
of Greek philosophy : Plotinus as philosopher, religious 
teacher, and mystic; and on Saturday, April 25, Dr. 
T. E. Stanton will commence a course of two lectures 
on similarity of motion in fluids: (1) the theory of 
similarity of motion in fluids and the experimental 
proof of its existence, (2) the general law of surface 
friction in fluid motion. The Friday evening dis- 
course on April 24 will be delivered by Dr. F. W. 
Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, on the stars around 
the north pole. 
Pror. E. Heyn, of Berlin, is this year to deliver 
the annual May lecture before the Institute of Metals, 
upon the subject of ‘‘ Internal Strains in Cold Wrought 
Metals, and Some Troubles Caused Thereby.’’ The 
last May lecture, by Sir J. Alfred Ewing, was on the 
subject of ‘‘The Inner Structure of Simple Metals,” 
and previously Dr. G. T. Beilby had lectured on an 
allied subject, ‘‘The Hard and Soft States in Metals.” 
NO. 2320, VOL, 193) 
Prof. Heyn’s discourse will be given in the building 
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Storey’s 
Gate, Westminster, S.W., under the chairmanship of 
Admiral Sir Henry Oram, president of the Institute 
of Metals, on Tuesday, May 12, at 8.30 p.m. The 
secretary of the Institute, Mr. G. Shaw. Scott, of 
Caxton House, Westminster, S.W., will be glad to 
| forward tickets to any readers who may desire to be 
present at the lecture. 
PRINCE GALITZIN will preside over the fifth meeting 
of the International Seismological Association, to be 
held early next September, in St. Petersburg. The 
exact date of the meeting is not yet fixed, but the 
provisional programme has just been issued. Reports 
will be presented by the committees on microseisms, 
on tides in the earth’s crust, the bibliography of 
seismology, the catalogues of earthquakes prepared 
by the permanent committee, and the uniformity in 
the arrangement of seismological bulletins. It will 
be proposed that a new station shall be founded at 
Bergen, that a reserve supply of seismographs should 
be kept for occasional or temporary use, and it will 
be urged that all seismographs should be provided 
with suitable ‘‘damping”’ arrangements, and that cor- 
rect time should be supplied by telegraphic signals to 
all earthquake observatories. Among the papers pro- 
mised may be mentioned those of the president on 
the analysis of seismograms, the comparative study 
of seismograms from different stations, and on ob- 
servations of the angle of emergence, and of Prof. 
Omori on the tromometric observations made during 
the recent eruptions on the flanks of the Asama-yama. 
News has just reached us of the death on February 
18, in his forty-sixth year, of Dr. J. Huber, director 
of the Museu Goeldi, Para, Brazil. 
Mr. G. H. Martyn, writing from Biarritz, says that 
on March 30, at the end of a bright day with light 
winds, the sun appeared to pass through a clear sky 
and set in the sea, from which it seemed immediately 
to start rising again. ‘‘The reflecting layer of air 
was not wide enough to reflect the whole disc of the 
sun, but a band having a width of a third of the sun’s 
diameter, so that the appearance was of the sun 
rising and passing behind a bank of invisible clouds.” 
In the Irish Naturalist for March Mr. N. Colgan 
contributes an article entitled ‘‘ Field Notes on the 
Folk-lore of Irish Plants and Animals.’’ He shows 
the current traditional knowledge of the trans- 
mogrification of species, and that of sexes in plants. 
Thus, the royal fern is believed to be’ the wild 
rannyock or common bracken, and the spargantium 
or bur-reed the wild shellistring or flagger. The 
people identify a he- and she-bulkishawn or ragweed, 
the latter turning. out to be the common tansy. On 
the Irish coasts the common limpet or patella is firmly 
believed to develop out of the acorn-shell or balanus 
which covers the rocks. The grimmest belief about 
the elder is ‘thus stated by a car-driver: ‘‘ That’s the 
elder tuff. It’s a bad thing to give a man a scelp of 
that. If you do, his hand ’ill grow out of his grave.” 
A CONSIDERABLE portion of the second number of 
vol. v. of the Journal of the Federated Malay States 
