516 
NATURE 
| Marcit 28, 1907 
William Ramsay, and responded to by Lord Kelvin and 
Prof. Ray Lankester. Prof. Lankester agrees that there is 
a need for great endowments for chemical 
science, and, indeed, the various departments of the whole 
scientific field, and that if learned societies make it known 
that they will administer those funds, the money will be 
forthcoming. He would be better to 
money in this way than that it should be given, say, to 
universities, which Prof. Lankester is unable to regard as 
promoters of scientific knowledge in this country. Sir A. 
Ricker, however, in responding to a later toast, said that 
furthering 
considers it give 
he has cherished as part of his creed that the business 
of a university is not only to teach, but to add to know- 
ledge. The Foreign Office and the Royal Society asked 
the University of London to undertake the establishment 
of a chair of protozoology, and it was done. As Prof. 
Lankester acted as the adviser of the Royal Society in this 
matter, Sir Arthur Riicker thought the action was proof 
enough that he really believed in research by a university. 
Ix an article on the evolution of the horse family, pub- 
lished in the March number of the American Journal of 
Science, Mr. R. S. Lull gives a series of diagrams illus- 
trating the differences in relative size and form of the 
various generic types. When referring to the suggestion 
that the one-toed Siwalik hipparion may be the ancestor 
of the zebras, the author is oblivious of the view that 
the latter form a mixed group, one of the members of 
which is closely allied to the wild ass. A paper by Mr. 
C. W. Gilmore, on a new species of the ichthyosaurian 
genus Baptanodon from Wyoming, is also included in the 
same issue. 
Tue fifth annual report of the Philippine Bureau of 
Science (published at Manila in 1906) shows that the 
society did excellent work during the twelvemonth under 
review, although its efforts were considerably hampered 
for lack of sufficient accommodation. Special attention 
was directed to the prevention of cholera by means of 
cholera vaccine. Although eradication of the disease 
seems impracticable, it appears to be a fact that the 
vaccine confers a blood-immunity greater than that result- 
ing in the case of typhoid by the use of typhoid vaccine, 
and it is considered that vaccination will prove of even 
greater value in the case of cholera than it is in that of 
tvphoid. 
A MOvEL of the restored skeleton of the horned dino- 
saur Triceratops prorsus, duplicated from one in the U.S. 
National Museum at Washington, has just been set up 
in the reptile gallery in the Natural History Museum. 
The original bones upon which the restoration is based 
were obtained from the Laramie beds (Upper Cretaceous) 
of Converse County, Wyoming. Another addition to the 
collection of very considerable interest is a specimen of 
the slughi (or gazelle-hound) of the eastern deserts, the 
gift of the Hon. Florence Amherst. The special interest 
attaching to these dogs (also known as Syrian or Persian 
grevhounds) is that they belong to the same type as one 
represented in the tombs of Beni Hasan, and are thus 
the oldest breed in existence. The best strains are in 
the possession of the Bedouin chiefs, from one of whom 
the specimen presented by Miss Amherst was obtained. 
CONSIDERABLE interest attaches to the exhibition in the 
entrance hall of the Natural History Museum of a speci- 
men of the tile-fish, Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps, a 
species remarkable, not only for its brilliant coloration— 
perhaps unequalled by any other non-tropical fish—but 
for its curious history. The species first made its appear- 
NO. 1952, VOL. 75] 
ance off No Man’s Land, Massachusetts, in 1879, when 
a specimen was taken in deep water on a cod-line. Soon 
after it could be taken in abundance with the same kind 
of apparatus, a catch of some 250 lb. of fish (ranging 
individually from 10 Ib. to 4o lb.) in the course of a 
couple of hours or less being not uncommon. This raised 
the hopes of fishermen, and in the U.S. Fishing Report 
for 1881 it was stated that “‘ there is every reason to 
believe that the tile-fish will rank among the most 
important food-fishes of the United States.’’ About the 
time (1882) that New English fishermen were getting into 
the swing of the fishing the tile-fish, owing to ice in the 
Atlantic, disappeared as suddenly as it came, and it is 
only during the last fifteen years that it has re-visited the 
American Atlantic coast, where it can now be taken at a 
depth of about seventy fathoms. 
THE commission appointed for the investigation of 
Mediterranean fever has issued part v. of its report. Staff- 
Surgeon E. A. Shaw, R.N., shows by experiments on 
monkeys that infection is possible through the eyes, nose, 
and digestive tract by means of infected dust and food, 
and through scratches and wounds by the urine of patients. 
The possibility of infection by unlimited contact is also 
The investigator shows that the 
M. melitensis produces little toxin, and he has failed to 
obtain a curative serum of much potency, and experiments 
by Dr. Eyre confirm the latter. A preventive vaccine was 
prepared which seemed to possess considerable immunising 
Major Horrocks, R.A.M.C., discusses the occur- 
rence of Mediterranean fever in Gibraltar, and shows that 
its incidence there, as in Malta, is probably largely de- 
pendent on goats. Dr. Eyre contributes a bibliography of 
the disease from 1897 to 1907. 
demonstrated. same 
powers. 
AmonG the botanical papers included in the Proceedings 
of the Indiana Academy of Science, 1905, Mr. W. J. 
Young communicates an account of the embryology of 
Melilotus alba, stating that the megaspore mother-cell 
forms the embryo sac without undergoing division, and 
that a portion of the endosperm functions as a haustorium. 
Mr. u. W. Wilson enumerates the rust fungi with host 
plants recorded from Hamilton and Marion counties ; 
species of Dicaoma attacking cereals, and Gymimoconia 
infesting the blackberry bushes, were the 
injurious. A description of the Leesburg Swamp 
and the plant associations occurring there is furnished by 
Mr. W. Scott. 
inierstitialis 
most 
AN account of experiments to determine the effect of 
stimulating organisms with different light rays is com- 
municated by Prof. E. Hertel to Naturwissenschaftliche 
Wochenschrift (February 10). Two contingencies have to 
be taken into account; first, allowance must be made for 
the disparity in the intensity of the rays, and, secondly, 
the effect of stimulation will vary with the absorbent 
capacity of the organism for rays of varying wave-length. 
When a method was applied for equalising the intensity 
of the different rays, the physiological effect was found 
to decrease from the red to the blue rays, but since the 
absorption of the rays by living tissue also varied in the 
same way, the conclusion is evolved that the effect of 
light does not vary with the wave-length. 
A SECOND paper on Termes gestroi, the white ant that 
is becoming a pest of considerable importance to the Hevea 
rubber trees in Tenasserim, is contributed by Mr. E. P. 
Stebbing to the Indian Forester (January). The curious 
accumulations of rubber in the nests have given rise to 
some discussion. The explanation put forward by the 
