208 



NA TURE 



[December 29, 1904 



I 



followed. Next year new voyages to considerable distances 

 will be undertaken, like that from Moisson to Paris, or to 

 the Crystal Palace from London. In its last trial the 

 Lebaudy II. remained inflated for sixly-four days. 



With Mr. C. G. Barrett, whose death was announced 

 last week, has disappeared one of the last of the old school 

 of British lepidopterists, contemporary with Doubleday and 

 Newman. The first mention we can find of Mr. Barrett's 

 name is in the list of entomologists in the " Entomologist's 

 Annual " for 1857, but from that time onwards he became 

 a frequent contributor to the Entomologist's Weekly 

 Intelligencer, and afterwards to its successor, the Entom- 

 ologist's Monthly Magazine, the first number of which 

 appeared in June, 1864, so that the fortieth year of this 

 periodical has been marked by the demise of two out of 

 the seven editors whose names appear on the early numbers 

 of 1904, Robert McLachlan, the last of the original staff 

 who still continued to act, and C. G. Barrett, who joined 

 the staff of that magazine in 1880, and became a member 

 of the Entomological Society of London in 1884. Mr. 

 Barrett was an enthusiastic and very successful collector of 

 British Lepidoptera, and as he held a position in the Excise 

 which involved his being moved from one station to another, 

 he had great facilities for investigating the insects of 

 widely separated localities. Perhaps the most important of 

 his captures was the extremely interesting moth which he 

 obtained on the ffill of Howth, near Dublin, and was named 

 Dianthoeia Barrettii after him. Mr. Barrett's contributions 

 to entomology, with one notable exception, were published 

 almost exclusively in magazines, but in 1892 he commenced 

 his great work, " The Lepidoptera of the British Isles," in 

 serial parts, and he had completed the Macro-Lepidoptera 

 at the time of his death. Mr. Barrett's last paper, a de- 

 scription of the larva of Doryphora palustrella, Douglas 

 (one of the Tineina), appeared in the Entomologist's 

 Monthly Magazine for the present month, so that he may 

 be said to have died in harness. 



The Standard's correspondent states (December 26) that 

 the Vienna Veterinary Institute has just opened a labor- 

 atory for the study of the diseases of fish, which will be 

 in charge of Prof. Fiebinger. 



The Paris correspondent of the British Medical Journal 

 details some of the conclusions of the committee appointed 

 to investigate Dr. Doyen's claims respecting the cause and 

 treatment of cancer (December 24, p. 1720). M. Metschni- 

 koff, one of the committee, states (i) that in culture tubes 

 inoculated by Dr. Doyen with cancerous material in his 

 presence the Micrococcus neoformans developed ; (2) that 

 the characters of the microbe so obtained agreed with 

 those described by Dr. Doyen as characteristic of the 

 M. neoformans ; (3) it is not yet possible to report on the 

 specificity or pathogenic characters of the microbe ; (4) it 

 is not possible yet to state whether Dr. Doyen's serum has 

 a curative action or no. It will be seen that this report 

 is a very guarded one, and very different from the details 

 published in the daily Press. 



We learn from the Times (December 21) that a consider- 

 able number of beautifully worked flints have recently been 

 discovered at Culmore, which is said to be in the south 

 of Scotland, but we have been unable to find the locality on 

 maps. The spot where the flints were found has the appear- 

 ance of having been surrounded by marshy ground, and it 

 is possible that the flint-tools may have belonged to lake- 

 dwellers. .Arrow-heads, scrapers, anvil and hammer stones, 

 NO. 1835, VOL. 71] 



are abundant among the worked flints. The collection has 

 been acquired by Mr. Ludovic Mann, and will be exhibited 

 for a few weeks in the People's Palace, Glasgow. 



The annual conversazione of the Royal College of Science 

 and Royal School of Mines was held at the college as we 

 went to press last week, and was attended by about five 

 hundred guests. The company included Sir Norman 

 Lockyer, Sir Arthur RiJcker, Mr. Morant, Prof. Judd (the 

 dean), Prof. Tilden, Prof. Perry, Prof. Callendar, Prof. 

 Gowland, and Mr. G. W. C. Kaye (secretary). There were 

 many interesting exhibits in the various departments in 

 chemistry, physics, astrophysics, mechanics, metallurgy, 

 mining, geology, and biology, under the direction of their 

 respective professors. The Solar Physics Observatory was 

 open by permission of Sir Norman Lockyer, and a kinemato- 

 graph exhibition was given, while the college company of 

 the Corps of Electrical Engineers showed a searchlight. 

 Dr. W. Watson, F.R.S., delivered a lecture during the 

 evening on radium and twentieth century alchemy. 



Spolia Zeylanica for October contains the description by 

 Mr. Boulenger of a new snake of the genus Aspidura, and 

 an illustrated account by Mr. J. L. Hancock of the 

 Cingalese representatives of the grasshoppers of the family 

 Tettigidae. 



The October number of the American Naturalist is 

 entirely devoted to botanical subjects, even the usual pages 

 of notes being omitted. In the first article Prof. Penhallow 

 completes his account of the anatomy of conifers, in the 

 second Dr. B. M. Davis contributes the fourth instalment 

 of his studies of the plant-cell, while in the third Prof. 

 D. H. Campbell discusses the affinities of the ferns of the 

 groups OphioglossaccEE and Marsilacese. 



At the meeting of the Zoological Society held on 

 December 13 Mr. Rothschild exhibited a wonderful series 

 of mounted skins and skulls of gorillas and chimpanzees, 

 most of which had been set up by Rowland Ward, Ltd. A 

 long paper was also read on this unique collection, in the 

 course of which the author stated that he recognised four 

 different forms of gorilla, two of which constituted species. 

 Unfortunately, in our opinion, he advocated the transference 

 of the name Simla satyrus, so long applied to the orang- 

 utan, to the chimpanzee. Surely a title to a name ought 

 to become valid after such a long period of unchallenged 



Two articles from the twentieth volume of the Journal 

 of the Imperial University of Tokyo were received by last 

 mail. In the first Mr. T. Fujita discusses the mode of 

 formation of the germinal layers in gastropod molluscs. 

 More general interest attaches, however, to the second, in 

 which Mr. H. Yabe describes a number of cephalopod re- 

 mains from the Cretaceous rocks of Japan, this being his 

 second contribution to the subject. Most of the species 

 belong to European genera, and the large size of some 

 of the specimens of turrilites is very noticeable. We have 

 also received article 8 from vol. xviii. of the same serial, 

 in which Mr. B. Hayata gives a list of the plants of the 

 order Composite found in Formosa. 



In the December number of Bird Notes and News the 

 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds records its efforts 

 in regard to the late osprey case in Surrey. It may, how- 

 ever, be asked whether it would not be well to admit that 

 the preservation of such stragglers is a practical impossi- 

 bility, and that ospreys and motors are incompatible. 

 Similarly, in view of recent letters in the Field, the question 



