AvuGUST 27, 1914] 
power to compensate owners for loss incurred in the 
application of the Act is the weak point in the existing 
legislation on the subject. 
Mr. R. F. GiLper has issued a catalogue of the 
remains discovered in the course of a survey conducted 
by him of a series of prehistoric dwellings in Douglas 
and Sarpy Counties, Nebraska. There were believed 
to be depressions caused by bison wallowing in the 
mud, but are now proved to be of human origin. 
Along the Missouri river as far as the Platte some 
forty ruins have been explored, and the specimens 
collected are now deposited in the Omaha Public 
Library Museum. The collection consists of numerous 
articles made of bone and deer horn, pottery, pre- 
historic pipes, and various ornaments. The most re- 
markable object is a human head carved out of pink 
soapstone, which is believed by some competent 
archeologists to be unique among American collec- 
tions. 
WE have to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of the 
tenth part of Dr. Koningsberger’s Java, the greater 
portion of which is devoted to the fauna of the coast 
region. 
AN extraordinary destruction of gulls and other sea- 
birds at Teesmouth, as the result of a thunderstorm 
accompanied by the fall of hail and lumps of clear ice, 
on July 2, is recorded in the August number of British 
Birds. |The bodies of three hundred gulls were 
counted within a distance of three-quarters of a mile, 
exclusive of those by the side of the breakwater. 
From the report for the year ending April 30, pub- 
lished in the July number of the Victorian Naturalist, 
we learn that the Victoria Field Naturalists’ Club 
continues in a flourishing condition, although the 
attendance at the excursions has been diminished 
owing to the greater demands of military training. 
Special efforts were made in the matter of bird-protec- 
tion and the prohibition of the feather-trade. 
A spEciAL double number (August and September) 
of the Irish Naturalist is devoted to an annotated list, 
by Mr. N. Colgan, of the opisthobranch molluscs to be 
found on the coast and adjacent shallow water of 
county Dublin. The Malahide River, or channel, by 
which the Malahide Creek is alternately filled and 
_ emptied, is a classic locality for these organisms, and 
was the source, in 1844, of specimens described by 
Alder and Hancock as new species. 
Bird-lore for July and August contains a_note- 
worthy letter from Mr. Abbott H. Thayer in regard 
to the alleged recent diminution in the numbers of the 
commoner birds in the United States. Impressed with 
the belief that the replies to question-lists issued to 
the general public are misleading, the author put him- 
self in communication with Prof. H. Miinsterberg, the 
Harvard psychologist, who unhesitatingly regards the 
answers as untrustworthy and the result of imagina- 
tion. 
THE Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales 
has started an illustrated journal of its own—the 
Australian Zoologist—of which the first number was | 
NO. 2339, VOL. 93] 
NATURE 
669 
published at Sydney in June. Among its contents is 
an article by the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing on a third 
species of the exclusively Australian genus of caprel- 
line marine crustaceans known as Paraproto. In a 
second Mr. A. R. McCulloch illustrates the remark- 
able sexual dimorphism of a pipe-fish, Stigmato- 
phora nigra, and likewise describes, Gnded the name 
of Histiogamphelus briggsii, a new generic and 
specific representative of the same group. 
To the series of greatly enlarged models in the 
Natural History Museum illustrating the structure of 
insects and other invertebrates harmful to man or 
domesticated animals have been added several of the 
bont-tick (Amblyoma hebraeum), of southern and cen- 
tral Africa, which transmits heart-water to sheep, 
goats, and sometimes cattle. With one exception the 
models are twenty times natural size, and show the 
male and female under normal conditions, the fully- 
gorged female (a truly disgusting object), and the 
larva, the last represented by two models, are multi- 
plied by 20 and the other 120. This interesting exhibit 
is at present placed in the central hall. 
ANOTHER special exhibition in the central hall of the 
museum includes two cases—originally arranged for 
the conversazione in connection with the congress of 
dental surgeons—illustrating some of the most remark- 
able types of vertebrate dentition, both recent and 
fossil. The coiled dental spiral a Helicoprion and 
the button-like teeth of Lepidotus are noticeable in the 
fish series, while reptiles are represented, among 
others, by Piacoa and Hyperodapedon, and mammals 
by the marsupial Thylacoleo, Arsinoétherium, Toxo- 
don, the primitive cetacean Prozeuglodon, and—most 
interesting of all—the head of a foetal rorqual from 
South Georgia with the row of temporary teeth on 
either side of the upper jaw. Other preparations show 
the rise and development of the plates of whalebone 
which eventually cover the entire palate in this and 
other whalebone-whales. 
THE “Report on Scottish Ornithology in 1913, in- 
cluding Migration,’ by Evelyn V. Baxter and Leonora 
Jeffrey Rintoul (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh; 1s. 6d. 
net), is a welcome publication. It summarises in con- 
venient form the ornithological happenings in Scotland 
during the past year. Following the introductory 
remarks comes a section on species and subspecies 
new to Scotland, which is of special interest. The 
dusky willow-warbler (Phylloscopus fuscatus), an 
Asiatic species not hitherto recorded in any part of 
Europe, was met with on Auskerry on October 1. 
New to Scotland during the year, although previously 
recorded in England, were the lesser grey shrike, 
the melodious warbler, the Indian stonechat, the gull- 
billed tern, and the Scandinavian subspecies of the 
lesser black-backed gull. Scarcely less interesting are 
many of the records in the longer section on birds new 
to faunal areas, and uncommon visitors. In the sec- 
tion on extension of breeding range, we note that in 
1913 the gadwall, the pintail, and the great crested 
grebe were all recorded for the first time as breeding 
species in the faunal area of ‘‘ Moray.’”’ Among the 
notes in the section ‘‘Summer and Nesting” we find 
