ApriL 18, 1907 | 
NATURE 
the plea that the British Government is not con- 
cerned in the subject as are those of Japan and Italy, 
for, if we are fortunately exempt from the visitation 
of seriously destructive earthquakes, this is not true 
of our possessions; moreover, as one of the principal 
suppliers of the materials which will be used in the 
building of earthquake-proof construction, we have a 
distinct national interest in earthquakes. In England, 
too, has been formed the most valuable organisation 
which exists for the study of those broader aspects 
of seismology in which the cooperation of widely 
separated observers is necessary; at more than filty 
stations, scattered over the surface of the: globe, 
instruments capable of recording distant earthquakes 
have been set up, and all report to one central station, 
where an abstract of their records is periodically pub- 
lished, but this organisation, which we owe to Prof. 
Milne, is entirely dependent on the energy and 
initiative of one man, it has no official status or 
permanent foundation, which will ensure its perman- 
ence or extension. 
Meanwhile, Germany has been to the fore and 
instituted an International Seismological Association, 
which, not content with the holding of periodical 
meetings, on the model of the international con- 
gresses, has established a central bureau at Strass- 
burg, where it aims at concentrating the study of 
earthquakes and the collection of seismological data. 
So far its activities have been largely devoted to the 
preparation of a catalogue of the earthquakes of the 
whole world, necessarily too incomplete to be of great 
scientific value, and to the collection, for the purpose 
of publication, of the seismograms of the Valparaiso 
earthquake, which, as has been shown in our pages, 
do not exist in that complete form, uacomplicated by 
the effect of other disturbances, which is necessary 
for scientific study. As aids to the advancement of 
science these count for very little, as advertisements 
they are invaluable; and in saying this we insinuate 
nothing against the founders of the International 
Seismological Association, we may acquit them of 
any commercial intention, we recognise the great 
services which its promoter has rendered to science, 
but the facts remain that, where the information is 
there will people go for advice, and where they go 
for advice there too will they obtain their materials; 
and so we are in a fair way to a repetition of the 
lesson of the Jena glass. 
INDIAN ORCHIDS." 
NE of the largest and most generally distributed 
of the natural families of Indian plants, the 
Orchids form at the same time a group in which 
considerable interest is taken by European residents 
in our eastern dependency. No order affords more 
satisfactory data where questions as to the distribu- 
tion of species have to be dealt with or points con- 
nected with endemism require illustration. The 
value of such data increases as the records for par- 
ticular areas approach completeness. In order that 
the records for at least one area might be made as 
nearly as possible exhaustive, Sir G. King planned, 
and with the help of Mr. R. Pantling, who made the 
necessary drawings, carried out a scheme for the 
description and delineation from fresh material of 
every orchid known to occur in Sikkim. The results 
were published in ‘Orchids of the Sikkim- / 
Himalaya,’? which forms the eighth volume of the 
Calcutta Garden Annals. 
1 “The Orchids of the North-Western Himalaya.” By J. I. Duthie. 
Annals of the Roy?! Roranic Garden, Calcutta, vol. ix. partii. Pp. ii4 131 5 
with 58 plates: (Calcutta: Bengal Secretar’at Press, 1906 ) 
NO. 1955, VOL. 75] 
The present worl: is, as Mr. Duthie explains, to 
be regarded as a supplement to that on the orchids 
of Sikkim. The area dealt with,. which comprises 
the whole of the Himalaya to the west of Nepal, 
| between 70° 30! and 80° 4o’ E., is no doubt much 
more extensive than the area investigated in the 
previous volume, which comprises only that part of 
the Himalaya which lies between Nepal and Bhutan, 
from 88° to 89° E. But though this be the case, the 
number of species to be dealt with is much smaller ; 
only 173 orchids are known to occur in the whole 
north-western Himalaya, as compared with 449 in 
Sikkim alone, and of these 105 are common to both 
areas. The same thoroughness has, however, 
characterised the search for material, and the same 
care marks the description of the species, though 
some may regret that the scope of the work has not 
allowed of fuller criticism in certain places of the 
work of previous writers. The author has been 
especially fortunate in having at his disposal the 
services of a competent artist, Mr. Hormusji Deboo, 
who has prepared fifty-eight highly satisfactory 
figures of those species that are to be found in the 
north-western Himalaya, but that do not occur in 
Sikkim. 
Apart from its value to systematic botanists and 
students of phytogeography, the work will be 
welcomed by residents in the hill stations of the 
north-west Himalaya as the previous volume has been 
by residents in Sikkim, who in their study of the 
orchids they meet with find themselves, particularly 
at first, unable fully to appreciate the characters and 
relationships of the species before them when they 
have to rely for information on technical descriptions, 
however excellent, that are unaccompanied by illus- 
trations. Regret will perhaps be felt that so few 
plates have been given. It is true that figures of the 
other 105 species are to be found in the worl: on the 
orchids of Sikkim, and it will be realised that the 
editor of the Annals must have felt himself precluded 
from incurring the expenditure involved in figuring 
the same species a second time. Still, the fact re- 
mains that the figures in the work on the Sikkim 
orchids, though good, fail to come up to the standard 
of the work of a trained draughtsman. 
The author may be congratulated on the produc- 
tion of a memoir which sustains the character 
imparted to these Annals by the distinguished 
botanist who founded the series. The two ideals of 
scientific accuracy and practical utility, aimed at in 
previous volumes, have been kept steadily in view, 
and the enlightened liberality of the Government of 
Bengal, which has rendered their publication possible, 
will be as gratefully recognised by botanical workers 
generally as it is by the editor of the Annals in the 
dedication of the volume before us. 
IDVANCE IN THE KNOWLEDGE 
OF CANGER. 
COMPLETE presentation of the doctrine of the 
A RECENT 
gametoid nature of malignant growths and of 
the grounds upon which that doctrine rests is can- 
tained in the first report on the cytological investi- 
gation of cancer, recently published.1 The papers deal- 
ing with this subject have appeared in various publi- 
cations, commencing with the original communication 
to the Royal Society by Farmer, Moore, and Walker 
in 1903, and they are here collected together and pre- 
1 University of Liverpool and Royal Infirmarv Cancer Research Labor- 
atories (Mrs. Sutton Timmis Memorial Fund). First Report on the Cyto- 
logical Inves‘igation of Cancer. 1905. Ry J. E. S. Moore and C. E. 
Walker. Pp. 87. (Liverpool : Published for the Liverpool Cancer Research 
Committee by the Priory Publishing Co., n.d.) 
