270 



NATURE 



[December 5, 1918 



there will also be presented several importanl papers, 

 Jhe publication of which has been withheld owing to 

 the operation of the censorship. The meeting is, 

 lore, to be anticipated with interest, as is also 

 the annual May lecture, which will be delivered by 

 Prof. F. Soddy on the subject of "Radio-activity." 

 A local section of the Institute of Metals has been 

 formed in Sheffield, the recently dissolved Sheffield 

 Society of Applied Metallurgy forming the nucleus 

 of the new section. The roll of the institute has 

 increased by more than two hundred during the cur- 

 rent year, and, in view of the probable advent of 

 peace, it is expected that a total of 1200 members 

 will soon be recorded, and that within a few months 

 of the institute's tenth birthday. 



The first part of what will prove an extremely valu- 

 able report on the mammals of equatorial East Africa 

 has just been issued by the United States National 

 Museum (Bulletin No. 99). This is the work of Mr. 

 N. Hollister, and embraces the Insectivora, Cheiroptera, 

 and Carnivora. While great attention has been paid 

 to synonymy and tables of measurements — matters of 

 very real importance — a considerable amount of space 

 has been devoted to notes on life-histories furnished 

 by the various field collectors on expeditions sent 

 out by the Museum during the last few years. No 

 fewer than sixty type skulls are figured here for the 

 first time. Furthermore, those interested in the pheno- 

 mena of variation and in the skeletal changes wrought 

 by captivity will find in this report some verv striking 

 facts. 



Some very disconcerting figures anent the slaughter 

 of penguins for the sake of their oil appear in the 

 Victorian Naturalist (vol. xxxv., No. 6). We are 

 assured that, though as many as 1,500,000 are an- 

 nually killed for this purpose, the colonies show no 

 diminution in their numbers. We are glad to know 

 that a representative of the Australian Ornithologists' 

 Union is to visit the islands during the coming 

 slaughtering season to investigate the charges of 

 cruelty made against those engaged in this traffic, and 

 also the assurances which have been given that, 

 though the birds are slain by the million, their 

 numbers show no reduction. This scarcely seems 

 credible. Ornithologists the world over look with 

 grave misgivings on the continuation of this devas- 

 tating work, to which we trust an end will speedilv 

 be put. 



The observations on the nesting habits of the bull- 

 finch by Miss Frances Pitt, which appear in Britisli 

 Birds for November, deserve the careful attention of 

 students of animal behaviour as well as of ornitho- 

 logists. During incubation, Miss Pitt remarks, the 

 female is fed entirely by the male, and for the first 

 six days after the hatching of the young he feeds both 

 his mate and their offspring. He also, for the first few 

 days, attends to the cleaning of the nest, passing 

 some of the excrement to the female to swallow, and 

 disposing of the rest himself. After the first dav or 

 two both parents undertake the removal of the excre- 

 ment, which is no longer eaten, but carried off and 

 dropped at a distance. At first the young are fed at 

 intervals of about fifteen minutes, but by the time 

 they are read} to By nearl) an hour elapses between 

 each meal. As with so many young birds, the nest- 

 lings are greatly distressed liv the midday heat, and 

 lie gasping for breath, with their heads hanging over 

 the edge of the nest. Each parent has its own path, 

 which it invariably uses in returning to and departing 

 from the nest — a trait which appears to be common 

 to most birds. By the eighth dav the nestlings show 

 signs of developing feathers, and begin even to at- 

 NO. 2562, VOL. I02] 



tempt to preen the growing stumps, probably to allav 

 slight uneasiness, akin to itching, due 10 the ferment 

 of vigorous growth. 



Dk. A. L. du Ton (Trans. Geol. Soc. S. Africa, 

 vol. xxi., p. 53, 1918) describes an interesting intru- 

 sion of aplite into serpentine in Natal. The aplitc 

 has become overcharged with alumina, which has 

 separated as corundum, while the serpentine: has 

 become penetrated by silica and locally converted into 

 talc. The ferrous iron of the serpentine has separated 

 out completely as minute octahedra of magnetite 

 during the process. The same paper describes the 

 occurrence of two sheets of magnetite containing 

 ilmenite in a gabbro in the Tugela Valley. These 

 cannot have separated by gravitation from the gabbro, 

 and are regarded as intrusive bodies which retained 

 their fluidity and oozed upwards under squeezing pro- 

 cesses from the lower portion of the cauldron, leaving 

 behind a residue of pyroxenes, and corroding and 

 including silicates that had already separated in the 

 overlying gabbro. 



The report of the fifth Indian Science Congress held 

 at Lahore in January last, published in the journal of 

 the Asiatic Society of Bengal for August, consists of 

 the usual presidential addresses and short abstracts of 

 upwards of ninety papers; but with a few exceptions, 

 notably in the sections of physics and zoology, the 

 addresses and papers deal mainly with matters of 

 economic, agricultural, and commercial interest. 

 Without disparagement, the report mav be said to 

 illustrate chiefly the interested official view of science, 

 which is fixed steadfastly on material benefits rather 

 than lifted into the grand realms of creative imagina- 

 tion. From a considerable mass of such useful in- 

 formation we extract the interesting statement that, 

 as one of the results of the war, several distilleries 

 for the extraction of essential oils have been estab- 

 lished in Southern India, and that experts now have 

 confidence in the ability of India to supply the world's 

 demand for sandal-oil and thymol. In the papers of 

 purely scientific interest Messrs. Southwell and Baini 

 Prashad have followed out the life-historv. of a new 

 tapeworm of a shark, which passes its larval stage in 

 the muscles of the Indian shad; Mr. M. J. Narasimhan 

 mentions the isolation of a bacillus from root-nodules 

 of Casuarina, which behaves like the nitrogen-fixing 

 bacillus of the root-nodules of Leguminosa? ; Messrs. 

 K. Yredenberg and Das Gupta report the discovery 

 at last of Upper Palaeozoic fossils in the Krol beds 

 of the Simla region; and Mr. C. A. Matley gives a 

 brief description of Dinosaur remains from the Lameta 

 beds of Jubbulpore. 



The forty-seventh annual report of the Deputy 

 Mister and Comptroller of the Roval Mint has just 

 been issued. It refers to the operations of the year 1916. 

 The total number of coins struck was 2655 millions, 

 which was nearly 59 millions more than in 1915, and 

 is the highest figure on record. Owing to the con- 

 tinued withdrawal of gold from circulation, the great 

 demand for silver coin which arose in the previous 

 year was continued, and no fewer than 127 million 

 pieces were struck, against an average of 49 millions 

 for the previous ten rears. A very great increase in 

 copper coinage also took place, and 136-8 million coins 

 were struck. On the other hand, onlv 1-5 million 

 gold coins were struck, as compared with an average 

 of 24 millions in the previous ten years. The sterling 

 value of the total coinage in 1916 was 10,386,137/.. 

 as compared with 29,385,568?. in 1915. During the 

 year the Mint, Birmingham, Ltd., struck 33-7 million 

 coins, under the supervision of the Roval Mint, for 

 British Colonies and Dependencies. This firm also 



