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NATURE 
[AUGUST 13,4914 
chased separately. We have received from the society 
copies of the 1913 numbers of the new journal, and 
some of those of the old one, besides two reprints 
from the Mindeskrift for Japetus Steenstrup, pub- 
lished in 1913 and 1914. 
These publications form sufficient testimony to the 
high standard of excellence maintained by the large 
output of papers by Danish botanists. ‘The mantle 
of the distinguished veteran of Danish botany, Prof. 
Eugene Warming, has fallen upon the shoulders of 
C. Raunkiaer, who two years ago succeeded Warm- 
ing as professor of botany in the University, and 
director of the Botanic Garden and Museum at Copen- 
hagen, and who has already, like his predecessor, 
done brilliant work on the ecology of plants. In the 
1913 Tidsskrift, Raunkiaer has a long paper on the 
plant ecology of the Skagen district, in which he 
applies his system of ‘‘life-forms’’ to the statistical 
study of the various plant communities. An account 
of Raunkiaer’s methods of ecological study was given 
by Dr. W. G. Smith in the Journal of Ecology, 
vol. i., 1913, pp. 16-26, in which the value of Raun- 
kiaer’s system was pointed out. Ecology bulks 
largely in this, as in former volumes of the Tids- 
skrift, but while the Danish botanists have done so 
much for this department of the science they have 
by no means neglected other branches. Their 
systematic investigation of the flora of the Danish 
West Indies has yielded a large and valuable series 
of monographs, while they have done more detailed 
and intensive work on the vegetation of Denmark 
than has yet been carried out in any other area of 
similar extent, and the work of Ostenfeld, Borgesen, 
Paulsen, and others on the marine vegetation of the 
northern seas, and on the plankton in particular, is 
too well known to botanists generally to need more 
than passing mention here. 
The first four parts of the new journal are occupied 
respectively by a list, in Danish with Latin diagnoses, 
of diatoms collected by Borgesen in the Danish West 
Indies; an account in English of the growth-forms of 
some plant formations of Swedish Lapland, by M. 
Vahl, who proposes a system of ecological nomen- 
clature for plant formations according to the dominant 
growth-forms distinguished by Raunkiaer (a summary 
of Vahl’s useful paper is given in Journal of Ecology, 
vol. i., pp. 304-6); a long paper in Danish on the 
ecology of lichens, with 240 illustrations, by O. Galloe, 
unfortunately without a summary in another 
language; and a valuable monograph of the marine 
alge (part i., Chlorophycez) of the Danish West 
Indies, in English, and with a chart and 126 fine 
illustrations, by F. Borgesen. The last-named 
(Bind i., No. 4, price 4 kronen) is of much more than 
merely systematic or algological importance, for 
Borgesen devotes 146 of his 158 pages to detailed 
descriptions of the Siphonez, a group of alga of 
peculiar morphological and biological interest, and 
exhibiting the extraordinary complexity of form and 
structure attained by-plants which are built up of 
ccenocytic or incompletely septate filaments. 
With these four papers the Dansk Botanisk Arkiv 
has certainly made an excellent beginning, and the 
only criticism that occurs to an English botanist is 
that all papers written in Danish should be furnished 
with a generous summary in English or French or 
German. In this connection one may remark that 
despite all that has been written and said concerning 
the advisability of the use of one or other of the three 
most widely read languages in scientific literature, 
pending the arrival of the golden age of one universal 
speech, there is apparently an increasing rather than 
diminishing tendency for scientific workers in the 
smaller countries, or those whose language is little 
No. VOL. 93] 
9225 
oko fs) 
‘known outside their own frontiers, to publish in 
their own tongue. 
There are, of course, many sides to this question, 
local patriotism and other considerations having to be 
taken into account, but it is certainly inconvenient and 
often exasperating to come across publications in 
languages such as Russian, Czech, the Scandinavian 
tongues, etc., with either the baldest summary, or in 
many cases none at all, in the more widely read 
languages. Life is too short for the acquisition of 
even a fair working knowledge of so many tongues; 
summaries or reviews in the familiar languages may 
or may not be published sooner or later in the Central- 
blatt journals, and are often very meagre indeed; and 
meanwhile one hesitates to tale the thing to a trans- 
lator—it may prove of no special importance for one’s 
purpose after one has taken the trouble or expense 
involved. The remedy is simple enough: a scientific 
worker whose native language is not English, French, 
or German, should take the trouble to master one or 
other of these languages sufficient to be able to append 
a good summary to his paper. Failing this, a rever- 
sion to the old custom of publishing in Latin might 
be advocated. 
The two reprints from the J. Steenstrup memorial 
volume are devoted to accounts of the species of 
Sargassum found on the coasts of the Danish West 
Indies, with remarks upon the floating forms of the 
Sargasso Sea, by Borgesen, in English; and of the 
distribution and reproduction of the common eel-grass 
or grass-wrack (Zostera marina) in Danish seas, by 
Petersen, in Danish. F.°Gs 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE: 
BirRMINGHAM.—The war will have a serious effect 
upon the University during the coming session. The 
whole of the new buildings at Edgbaston have been 
taken over by the War Office, and now form the 
First Southern General Hospital. Certain structural 
alterations are being carried out with a view of 
making the hospital as efficient as possible. The 
size and situation of the buildings and grounds, and 
their proximity to railway and canal, render them 
especially suitable for the present purpose. 
CAMBRIDGE.—Mr. W. L. Bragg, son of Prof. W. H. 
Bragg, has been elected to a fellowship at Trinity 
College. He gained first-class honours in the Natural 
Science Tripos, with distinction in physiology. 
A SCHOOL of public health is to be established at the 
University of Minnesota. 
Dr. T. SHENNAN, pathologist to the Royal Infirmary 
of Edinburgh, has been appointed Regius professor 
of pathology in the University of Aberdeen, in the 
place of the late Prof. G. Dean. 
THE new session of the medical faculty of the Uni- 
versity of Manchester will be opened on October 8 by 
an address by Prof. E. S. Reynolds on the industrial 
diseases of Greater Manchester. 
Tue Bissett-Hawkins memorial medal of the Royal 
College of Physicians of London has been awarded 
to Sir Ronald Ross, for his work in connection with 
malaria, and the Sir Gilbert Blane medal of the Royal 
College of Surgeons of England has been awarded to 
Surgeon G. F. Syms, R.N. 
It is announced in Science that Prof. C. H. Eigen- 
mann has been appointed research professor of zoology 
in the Indiana University, and that he proposes to 
devote the greater part of the time at his disposal 
in completing his studies of the distribution of the 
fishes of western Ecuador and western Colombia and 
