400 
NATURE 
[ FEBRUARY 21, 1907 
Klein’s bacillus is really the cause of the disease must 
for the present be left open. Much time has been spent 
in searching for this but hitherto without 
success.- If the bacillus ‘‘ should, after all, prove to have 
nothing to do with the disease, all this time will have 
been lost. It is not suggested that this will prove to be 
the case; but merely that it would have been better to 
start with an open mind on that point as well as upon 
others. It is pointed out that as no progress can be made 
while the disease is in abeyance, and that the original 
subscriptions to the committee were to last for 
years only, further financial means will be required with 
organism, 
” 
three 
the recrudescence of the malady in the future if any 
definite results are to be obtained. 
Tue Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field 
Club and the Transactions of the Hull Geological Society 
are excellent examples of the way in which the work of 
local societies may be produced. The former is printed by 
the historic house of John Bellows, in Gloucester. In the 
part for September, 1906, Mr. S. S. Buckman has a hand- 
somely illustrated paper on Schlotheimia and species of 
other genera of The reports of 
various excursions are accompanied by useful landscape- 
views. The Hull Geological Society, in its issue styled 
“vol. vi., part i., for the years r1901-5,’’ published in 
1906, gives us Mr. Danford’s detailed investigation of the 
belemnites of the Speeton Clay, with four remarkably fine 
plates of photographs, taken, like Mr. Buckman’s, from the 
actual One is tempted to ask, 
whether the money spent so liberally on such papers would 
not have been better devoted to their production in the 
Geological Magazine. The excellent 
surface-changes in Yorkshire, by Butterfield and 
McTurk, and Mr. note on Ceratodus from 
Westbury-on-Severn, stand, of course, in another category. 
The judgment of scientific readers must often be suspended 
between regret at the scattering of valuable work and 
admiration at the zeal with which it is put forward in its 
place of origin. It must be admitted that local publications 
of so high a standard are in themselves a 
research, 
Tue Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute for 
February (xxviii., No. 1) contains an important paper .by 
Prof. S. Delépine on testing the germicidal power of 
various substances by the thread method, in which it is 
concluded that nearly all the 
be studied by means of it. Dr. Newsholme contributes 
a paper on the notification of phthisis in 
Brighton, and Dr. Heron one on coordination of measures 
against tuberculosis. 
Liassic ammonites. 
specimens. however, 
records of local 
Messrs. 
Richardson’s 
stimulus to 
problems of disinfection can 
voluntary 
Tue report from the Select Committee on the Housing 
of the Working Classes Acts Amendment Bill, which 
was recently issued, contains some important recommend- 
ations, particularly as regards sanitary administration. 
It is found that at present sanitary control is imperfect, 
and that the administration of the Acts by the rural dis- 
trict councils is neglected. Among the recommendations 
are transference of the administration of the public health 
and housing laws to the county councils; the provision of 
medical officers of hewlth, properly qualified and adequately 
remunerated, so that they can devote their whole time and 
energies to the duties of their office; the provision of an 
expert staff of inspectors under the medical officer, whose 
title shall be altered from that of “ Inspector of 
Nuisances ’’ to ‘ Sanitary Inspector ’’; and the registra- 
tion of every house and tenement in rural districts. It 
NO. 1947, VOL. 75] 
is considered that small local authorities cannot satis- 
factorily frame and administer building and public-health 
bye-laws, and it is suggested that the Local Government 
Board should establish a staff of officers for the special 
purpose of supervising the construction, sanitary condition, 
and repair of houses under the Public Health Acts, and 
the provision of houses under the Housing Acts. 
No. 25 of the ‘‘ Scientific Memoirs of the Government of 
India,’’ by Captain S. R. Christophers, is devoted to a 
consideration of the importance of larval characters in the 
classification of mosquitoes. It is suggested therefrom that 
Stegomyia should be removed from the Culicina and placed 
in a group, Stegomyina, of its own, that Megarhinus and 
Toxorhynchites, together with Mucidus and Psorophora (re- 
moved from the Culicina), should form a separate group, 
&c. Memoir No. 26, also by Captain Christophers, deals 
with the Leucocytozoon canis, a protozoan parasite of the 
white blood corpuscles of the dog, first described by Bentley 
and later by James. According to Christophers, L. canis 
comes within the division Hzemogregarina of Laveran, and 
very possibly represents the mammalian form of Karyo- 
lysus (Labbe). Reproduction occurs by the formation of 
true cysts, containing about thirty sporozoits. Eencystment 
takes place in cells of the bone marrow. After escaping 
from the cysts, the sporozoits invade mononuclear transi- 
tional cells in the marrow, where they are seen as naked, 
oval forms. These undergo changes and become encap- 
suled, whilst the host cell is altered in a characteristic 
way. The complete sexual development of this parasite 
takes place in the dog-tick (R. sangineus). 
Tue Kew Bulletin was initiated in 1887, and although 
for a period the annual volumes were in abeyance, the 
series is now complete for a period of twenty years. The 
director of the gardens has recently issued an index as 
appendix v. to last year’s volume, detailing the contents 
from the commencement of the journal to the end of last 
year. 
Tue numbers of the Agricultural News (December 29, 
1906, and January 12, 1907) lately received contain refer- 
ences to the agricultural conference at Jamaica that was 
so disastrously cut short. With regard to rubber in British 
an expression of opinion by Dr. Bovallius is 
quoted wherein species of Sapium are recommended for 
cultivation on the lowlands in preference to Hevea and 
Castilloa, that require to be planted at a higher elevation. 
Guiana, 
SEVERAL references have appeared recently in the morn- 
ing journals to an alleged cure for the opium habit eman- 
ating from the Straits Settlements. Mr. E. M. Holmes, 
writing to the Times, January 22, states that the plant 
has been identified as Combretum Sundaicum, a woody 
climber growing abundantly on the plains around Kuala 
Lumpur, in Selangor. Further information is supplied in 
the Pharmaceutical Journal, January 26, where Mr. 
Holmes says that it would be premature to express a 
definite opinion until a larger quantity of the material is 
available for chemical analysis and physiological investi- 
gation. 
Ir is probably unknown to many pteridologists that 
crested and other “‘ sporting ’’ ferns may not infrequently 
be collected in the British Isles. Mr. C..T. Druery, who 
has found several wild ‘‘ sports,’’ writing in the Journal 
of the Royal Horticultural Society (December, 1906), quotes 
as two instances the discovery of a markedly crested form 
of Athyrium filix-foemina at Kilrush, Ireland, and the 
