JuLy 16, 1914] 
NATURE 513 
od 
Venus refer to its synodic (not sidereal) revolutions of 
583-9 days each, the only ‘‘ Venus year’? which the 
Mayas could appreciate, unless they had knowledge 
of the heliocentric system (8 x 365 =5 x 584=2920). The 
justification of the number 13 as given on p. 456 is 
therefore good enough for a people who were great 
worshippers of the morning and evening star, of the 
representations, symbols, and attributes of which their 
almanacs are full. This and further detail is discussed 
fully in Foerstemann and Seler’s collected and trans- 
lated papers, published by the Smithsonian Institution, 
Washington, 1904. 
A JOINT meeting of the British Psychological Society, 
the Aristotelian Society, and the Mind Association was 
held at Durham on July 3-6. A discussion of con- 
siderable interest to psychology took place on the 
réle of repression in forgetting. In it was considered 
Freud’s view that in forgetting, even among normal 
people, an important part is played by the factor which 
he terms ‘‘repression.”’ There appeared to be distinct 
agreement among the speakers that forgetting, both of 
the ordinary and the pathological kind, while some- 
times attributable to defects of retention, is frequently 
incapable of explanation without the assumption of 
positive factors which prevent recall of the retained 
matter. The nature of these positive forces, as they 
are treated by Freud, was discussed at length. Mr. 
Pear held that two kinds of forgetting should be dis- 
tinguished, one due to failure to retain (the conditions 
for which may be purely physiological in character), 
the other to failure to recall. The latter condition may 
be due to psychological factors, some of which are 
possibly of the kind described by Freud. Dr. Wolf’s . 
paper criticised the use of the term ‘‘repression.’’ Dr. 
Mitchell expounded in detail Freud’s theory of 
hysterical amnesia, while Prof. Loveday criticised 
Freud’s general conceptions, especially that of uncon- 
scious thought, pointing out the defects which were 
entailed by an adherence to the old doctrine of asso- 
ciationism. Dr. Ernest Jones and Dr. Crichton Miller 
supported Freud’s theory by facts from clinical experi- 
ence. Among other speakers were Mr. W. 
McDougall, Prof. T. P. Nunn, Prof. G. F. Stout, and 
Dr. H. Wildon Carr. 
WE have received from Mr. H. Swithinbank and 
Mr. G. E. Bullen a copy of a paper entitled ‘‘ The 
Scientific and Economic Aspects of the Cornish Pil- 
chard Fishery: ii., The Plankton of the Inshore 
Waters in 1913 considered in Relation to the Fishery.’’ 
Samples of plantkon were taken at twelve stations in 
Mevagissey and St. Austell Bay, at eleven stations in 
Mount’s Bay, and at six stations in St. Ives Bay, on 
June 1-3, 1913, and similar collections were made at 
a number of these stations in August of the same year. 
The principal species found in the samples have been 
identified and recorded. The paper also contains some 
notes on the pilchard fishery during the season. 
THE reports of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown, 
for the years 1910-13 are issued in a single cover. In 
that for 1910, the director reviews the condition of 
the building and collections at the time he assumed con- 
trol, in the course of which he compliments the late 
Wane g205,.VOL. 62) 
director and his staff on their efforts to improve the 
museum, although hampered by insufficient funds. 
On a later page the preparation and publication of 
a series of works on the entire South African fauna is 
urged, those at present in existence being more or less 
obsolete. In the report for 1913 large additions to the 
collections are recorded, which render the need of 
extension of the building more pressing than ever. 
To prevent the deaths of migrating birds from ex- 
haustion while fluttering around the lanterns of light- 
houses, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds 
a short time ago placed perches near the lan- 
terns. at St. Catherine’s and the Caskets. The 
perches are made in the form of a small ladder of 
wood and iron within view of the light, but so placed 
as not to obstruct it. Observations have shown that 
these perches were crowded every night during the 
migrating season. Trinity House has now permitted 
the society to furnish other lighthouses with similar 
accommodation, and the next so to be treated are the 
South Bishop, off Pembrokeshire, and that at Spurn 
Head, where the work will be completed this summer. 
A NOTICE of the English supplement, based on the 
second edition of ‘‘Jost’s Lectures on Plant Physio- 
logy,’’ appeared recently in these pages on May 7, 
and we now direct attention to the publication, by 
Mr. Gustav Fischer, of the third German edition of 
this work. The forty-two lectures which comprise . 
the volume occupy 744 pages of text, and the various 
branches of the subject have been thoroughly revised 
up to the date of publication. Attention may be more 
particularly directed to the full treatment of hybridisa- 
tion and plant-breeding in lectures 29 and 30 of this new 
edition. The work is on the whole so comprehensive 
and representative that it is a matter of regret that 
the subject. of protoplasmic connections is somewhat 
inadequately treated, but it must be admitted that 
blemishes such as this are rare. Jost’s lectures hold 
the position of pre-eminence as a standard presenta- 
tion of the science of plant physiology, and the book 
is all the more valuable since the facts are presented 
in a particularly interesting manner. 
WE have received the first part of the Annals of 
Applied Biology, the newly-founded official organ of 
the Association of Economic Biologists. Prof. Max- 
well Lefroy, assisted by a strong committee, acts as 
editor, and the magazine is published by the Cam- 
bridge University Press. The number contains a 
varied selection of articles; perhaps the most important 
is Mr. A. E. Cameron’s detailed account of the life- 
history of Pegomyia hyoscyami, known most widely by 
one of its several synonyms—P. betae—the mangel- 
fly. The leaf-mining maggot is here described in its 
successive stages. Mr. F. V. Theobald writes on the 
green spruce aphis (A. abietina), an insect very de- 
structive in England and Ireland, but apparently rare 
on the Continent, and not certainly known in Scotland. 
All naturalists, whether specially interested in 
' ““economic’’ questions or not, should read Prof. F. W. 
Gamble’s suggestive article on impending develop- 
ments in agricultural zoology. 
