, 
APRIL 25, 1907] 
NAT OTE 
617 
THE RIVER PILCOMAYO.* 
HE river Pilcomayo has its source in the Bolivian 
mountain ranges, and traverses the virgin forests of 
the Gran Chaco in a south-easterly direction. For nearly 
two hundred years the idea of utilising this river for pur- 
poses of navigation has engaged the attention of the 
Governments of Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, in order 
to provide the rich regions through which it passes with 
an easy means of communication, and to afford an outlet 
by water for the natural products of the fertile zones of 
the eastern part of Bolivia. 
The author of the report before us, who is a member 
of the American Society of Engineers, was appointed by 
a syndicate of capitalists in 1905 to conduct an expedition 
for the purpose of studying the navigable condition of the 
river, and reporting as to the possibility of rendering it 
fit for the passage of boats. 
The exploration party consisted, besides the chief, of 
two assistants, a land and forest expert, storekeeper, and 
twenty-five men. They took with them for the purposes 
of transport twenty-two mules, forty-one horses, sixteen 
oxen, and five boats. Twenty-two bullocks were also taken 
for food. The expedition occupied four months. 
The country traversed appears to be sparsely inhabited 
by Indians who, on the whole, are friendly. A colony 
has been established at Buena Ventura, about 560 miles 
up the river, which contains thirty families of colonists, 
with a total population, including servants, “‘ intruders,” 
and squatters, of 1000 souls. There are also in the dis- 
trict some Roman Catholic mission stations. 
The river Pilcomayo discharges into the Paraguay, the 
depth at low water at its junctions being about 10 feet, 
and above this for sixty miles there are no soundings 
less than 193 feet. At 120 miles the depth decreases to 
about 7 feet; at 150 miles there was barely 3 feet. At 
about 317 miles from its mouth the river is lost for ten 
miles in a marshy tract of country, through which there 
does not exist any defined channel. Beyond this tract, 
which constitutes an immense horizontal plane extending 
to “distances unknown,’’ at 327 miles from the mouth, 
the river again assumes a defined channel with a depth 
of from 10 feet to 12 feet. This channel was explored 
up to the Argentine boundary at El Hito, 677 miles from 
the mouth. The width varies from roo feet at the lower 
end, where the course is well defined, to 300 feet in the 
upper part. 
In the lower part of the river the water is brackish and 
unfit to drink, owing to a number of salt springs, and 
in the upper river it is turbid and of a reddish colour. 
To render this river navigable for barges carrying 
twenty-five tons and drawing 43 feet of water, over a 
length of 670 miles, or about 1oo miles beyond the colony 
of Buena Ventura, the commission advised the construc- 
tion of three cuts or canals, one to avoid the marshy 
district and the two others two porous districts in the 
upper length, these cuts to have a bottom width of 33 feet 
with 5 feet depth of water; the construction of seventy- 
three locks and dams; the regulation of the channel and 
clearance of obstructions. The amount required to carry 
out these works is estimated at a sum equal to about one 
million of English money. 
CRETACEOUS FERNS.? 
THE author states that he approached the subject of 
palzeobotany as a layman whose earlier training had 
been mainly in physics and mathematics. He set him- 
self to collect such fragmentary remains of fossil plants 
as the Lower Cretaceous rocks of his neighbourhood 
afforded, with the intention of making an intensive study 
of the several genera. This first instalment of his results 
deals mainly with a single genus of Mesozoic ferns, to 
which Dunker in 1846 gave the name Hausmannia. The 
fronds of this genus are characterised, in some species, by 
1 “The River Pilcomayo from its Discharge to Parallel 22° S., with Maps 
of Reference.” By Gunnar Lange. Pp. 124. Translated from the Argentine 
Original. (Buenos Aires: The Meteorological Office Press, 1906.) 
°* “ Beitrage zur Flora der unteren Kreide Quedlinburgs.” Teil i., Die 
Gattung Hausmannia, Dunker, und einige seltenere Pflanzenreste. By Prof. 
P. B. Richter. Pp. iv+27+plates. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1906.) 
NO. 1956, VOL. 75] 
the possession of a bi-lobed lamina not unlike that of the 
leaves of the maiden-hair tree (Ginkgo biloba), while in 
other forms the lamina is divided into several linear lobes, 
and “bears a resemblance to the leaves of Baiera, an 
extinct genus of the Ginkgoales. It is, however, with the 
recent Indian and Malayan fern Dipteris that Hausmannia 
exhibits a more than superficial resemblance. Despite the 
unfavourable nature of the Quedlinburg rocks from the 
point of view of preservation of detail, Prof. Richter’s 
industry has been rewarded by an accumulation of material 
which has enabled him to add considerably to our know- 
ledge of this well-defined genus of ferns. He has insti- 
tuted, on what appear to be adequate grounds, a few new 
species. The flora of Quedlinburg is characterised by a 
preponderance of ferns, which are said to form 80 per 
cent. of the whole; no trace of Angiosperms has been 
found; Conifers and Cycads are rare; while ferns are re- 
presented by the Gleicheniacez, Matonidium, Laccopteris, 
Clathropteris, Hausmannia, Weichselia, and a few frag- 
ments of the common Wealden species Onychiopsis 
Mantelli. It would seem that in these fossils we have the 
relics of a vegetation which flourished in a_ situation 
favourable to ferns. Ferns undoubtedly played a more 
prominent part in the composition of Mesozoic floras than 
in the floras of the present, but it is unlikely that the 
Quedlinburg flora as a whole was composed almost entirely 
of these plants to the exclusion of Lower Cretaceous 
Gymnosperms which are recorded from other localities. 
Prof. Richter’s contribution does not throw any fresh 
light on the nature of the sporangia of Hausmannia; he 
has, however, demonstrated a striking resemblance in 
habit to recent species of Dipteris as regards the slender 
rhizomes and long leaf-stalks. The author is disposed to 
regard the affinity between this northern Lower Cretaceous 
type and the Malayan Dipteris as rather less close than 
has been assumed by Prof. Zeiller and by the reviewer. 
In the absence of well-preserved sporangia, the question 
of degree of relationship cannot be settled; but the account 
given of such fragments of fossil ferns as were accessible 
to the author of this monograph seems to strengthen the 
view that the Dipteridinz were abundantly represented 
in the northern hemisphere in the latter half of the 
Mesozoic era. In age the flora is considered to be rather 
younger than Wealden, and is compared with the Urgonian 
flora of Greenland as described by Heer. It is difficult 
to draw a conclusion as to geological age from the small 
number of types so far described, but in our opinion the 
Quedlinburg plants might fairly be classed with the 
Wealden floras of northern Germany, England, Belgium, 
and many other regions. 
Prof. Richter has done good service to paleobotany by 
his thorough and scientific researches, and one may express 
a hope that other amateurs may follow his example and 
devote themselves with equal energy and success to the 
detailed study of the fossils of a single district. 
AGC ass 
PROBLEMS OF APPLIED CHEMISTRY.* 
THE science and art of the engineer are intimately 
interlaced with those of the practical chemist. The 
practical, as distinguished from the scientific, chemist 
possesses sufficient knowledge and experience to see to the 
working of machines and to minor repairs without calling 
in an engineer, save in difficult or complicated cases. In 
former times the chemical manufacturer learned his trade, 
both on the chemical and the engineering side, as far as 
it was indispensable, but he learned it simply ‘‘ by rote,”’ 
as the saying goes. To be sure, this never took place 
without large sums of money being thrown away, either 
in the form of misshapen or faulty apparatus and 
machinery, or of spoilt chemicals, and so on. And this 
happened to the unstudied “ practical man,’’ who, through 
family connections or by mere chance, had stumbled into 
chemical manufacturing, as well as to men who had 
studied the science of chemistry, and who desired to apply 
the knowledge thus gained to the execution of some well- 
known process, or to the working of some laboratory in- 
1 Abridged from a discourse delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday, 
March 15, by Prof. George Lunge, of Zurich. 
