January 19, 1905] 



NA TURE 



279 



As supplementary to the paragraph on the recent fall 

 of cliff at St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover (Nature, 

 January 12), it may be mentioned that the cliffs at St. 

 Margaret's Bay, which rise from 150 to 300 feet, are 

 formed of the Upper Chalk, comprising soft chalk and 

 ■harder nodular bands, with scattered flints and occasional 

 continuous seams of flint. These beds are surmounted by 

 'chalk, with many layers of flint nodules and some con- 

 tinuous bands of flint ; and this portion of the chalk forms 

 the mass of the cliffs at St. Margaret's Bay, the lower 

 "beds appearing at beach level and rising southwards. 

 The general dip of the chalk is to the north-east, corre- 

 sponding to some 'extent with the trend of the coast from 

 East Wear Bay to Dover and St. Margaret's. Numerous 

 falls of cliff have taken place along this coast for many 

 centuries, the greatest losses having occurred above East 

 Wear Bay in the great landslip of the Warren, where 

 notable founders occurred in 1716 and again in 1886. 

 'Such slips along the sea-front may serve for a time to 

 protect the cliffs from further waste, until the debris is 

 Temoved by the breakers. Copious springs issue along the 

 foot of the cliffs here and there, and a powerful spring 

 issues at St. Margaret's Bay. These probably had no 

 ■direct influence on the recent falls of cliff, but rather 

 would the slips be due to the local feeders of the springs, 

 to their erosive action along joints in the chalk, and to the 

 effects of frost. It is quite possible, as has been suggested, 

 that blasting operations at the Admiralty Harbour at 

 Dover may have accelerated the falls of cliffs at points 

 where they were weakened by natural agencies. 



The Viitorian Natiiralisl brings us news of the death, 

 •on November 18, 1904, of Mr. J. O. Luehmimn, Oovern- 

 ment botanist and curator of the National Herbarium at 

 Melbourne, at the age of sixty-one. Mr. I.uehmann went 

 to X'ictoria in 1862, and in 1867, on the resignation of 

 Mr. E. B. Heyne, secretary to the late Baron von Mueller, 

 Mr. Luehmann was offered the position, which he accepted, 

 and he remained connected with the botanical department 

 until shortly before his death. For many years he made 

 the preliminary identifications of specimens for Baron von 

 Mueller, becoming an authority on the eucalypts and 

 ■acacias. His great assistance was acknowledged b\ Baron 

 von Mueller in the preface to the " Key to the .System of 

 Victorian Plants." In the early days of the Field 

 Naturalists' Club of Victoria, before the institution of the 

 Victorian Naturalist, he contributed papers on the euca- 

 lypts and acacias. In 1896, on the death of Baron von 

 Mueller, he was appointed curator of the National Her- 

 "barium, and afterwards became Government botanist. 

 During late years he contributed several descriptions of 

 plants to the club's proceedings, in addition to an interest- 

 ing paper — observations on pre-Linnean botanists — in which 

 he directed attention to the many valuable botanical works 

 in the herbarium library. He was one of the earliest 

 Victorian fellows of the Linnean .Society of London. 



In a paper in the Lancet (January 7) Mr. G. C. 

 'Chatterjee, working imder the direction of Captain L. 

 Rogers, 1.M..S., announces that he has succeeded in culti- 

 vating trypanosomes from the Leishman-Donovan body 

 or parasite, thus confirming Captain Rogers's previous 

 work in this direction. 



We have received the first number of the new volume 

 ■of the Journal of Hygiene (vol. v.. No. i). which con- 

 tinues to maintain its previous high standard. It contains 

 papers on piroplasmosis by Mr. Bowhill and by Mr. Ross, 

 cultivation of trypanosomata by Mr. Smedley, epidemi- 

 NO. 1838, VOL. 71] 



ology of plague by Mr. Hankin, a leprosy-like disease in 

 the rat by Mr. Dean, &c. An introductory memoir, with 

 a portrait, gives an account of the work of the late Sir 

 John Simon. 



MM. Salomonsen and Drever have conducted some ex- 

 periments on the effect of the radium emanations on certain 

 Protozoa and on the blood. The material consisted of 

 fifty milligrams of pure radium bromide covered with 

 a sheet of mica. On Nassula the radium had little effect, 

 even with an exposure of six days. Some amoeba* were 

 killed in less than twelve hours, but others survived four 

 days. Trypanosoma Brticei was killed in from two to 

 three hours. On blood corpuscles the radium exerted a 

 ha:'molvtic power. 



H.R.H. Pri.ncess Christian and Mr. Chamberlain were 

 present on Friday last at St. George's Hall, Liverpool, 

 on the occasion of a nieeting in connection with the 

 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, at which a lecture 

 was delivered by Major Ronald Ross, F.R.S., on " The 

 Progress of Tropical Medicine." Major Ross, in the 

 course of his address, alluded to the discoveries which had 

 proved that yellow fever is conveyed .solely by mosquitoes, 

 to the work of Sir William MacGregor in the suppression 

 of malaria in Lagos, and to the anti-malarial measures 

 of the Suez Canal Company, which had resulted in a re- 

 duction of the annual rate of malarial fevers at Ismailia 

 from two thousand to two hundred. He also alluded to 

 the fact that the Liverpool School had sent out no less 

 than fourteen expeditions to investigate tropical diseases 

 in various parts of the world. 



Naturen for December, 1904, contains some realistic, and 

 perhaps rather ghastly, photographs of a python and its 

 prey, taken from menagerie specimens. In the first of 

 the series we have an unfortunate rabbit " fascinated " 

 and about to be seized by a python, in the second the 

 rodent in the coils of the serpent, and in the third the 

 python commencing to devour the crushed carcase. 



The most important, or at all events the longest and 

 most fully illustrated, paper in the second' part of vol. ii. 

 of the quarterly issue of Smithsonian Miscellaneous Con- 

 tributions is one by Mr. C. Schuchert on Silurian and 

 Devonian cystoid echinoderms and the genus Camara- 

 crinus, in the course of which many new forms are de- 

 scribed, and some valuable contributions made to the 

 morphology of the group. Among the other contents of 

 this issue, reference may be made to a list of west Indian 

 birds by Mr. J. H. Riley. 



The issue of liiologisches Centralblatt for January i 

 contains an article by Dr. E. RAdl on the hearing of 

 insects, at the conclusion of which it is pointed out that 

 this sense is much less developed in that group than in 

 the higher vertebrates. The hearing of insects seems, in 

 fact, to be a muscular rather than a nervous sense. The 

 other articles include one by Mr. H. S. Skorikow on the 

 plankton of the Neva, in the course of which several new 

 forms are described, and one by Dr. O. Zacharias on 

 the light-organs of Ccratium tripos. 



Iciithvosaurs, or the extinct marine " fish-lizards " of 

 the Mesozoic epoch, form the subject of an article by 

 Prof. H. F. Osborn in the January number of the Century 

 Magazine. After tracing the ichthyosaurian paddle into a 

 limb of the type of that of the existing terrestrial tuatera 

 lizard (Sphenodon) of New Zealand, which is regarded as 

 nearly related to the ancestral stock of the group, the 



