14 NATURE 
[SEPTEMBER 4, 1913 
Tue droughty summer has closed with some excep- | tains important investigations dealing chiefly with 
tionally heavy rainfalls over the south-eastern portion 
of England, where the rains for the last two or three 
days of August have materially modified the aggregate 
measurements for the season. At Greenwich the rain- 
fall for the three days, August 29 to 31, was 1-22 in., 
which is more than the total for the preceding part of 
the month. Without the rainfall for the last three 
days of summer the total for the three months at 
Greenwich would have been more than an inch less 
than for the corresponding season in the abnormally 
fine year 1911. The total rainfall for the summer at 
Greenwich is 4-69 in., whilst in 1912 it was 7-86 in., 
and in 1911 it was 3-72 in. The driest summer of the 
last seventy years occurred in 1864 with 2-50 in., and in 
the last fifty years there have been fourteen summers 
drier than the one which has just closed. At Green- 
wich the summer rains this year are 7o per cent. of 
the average. In places the recent rains have not had 
much influence on the total for the summer. At Jersey 
the summer rains, June, July, and August, are only 
28 per cent. of the average; at Leith, 4o per cent., 
where until August 28 they were only 28 per cent. ; 
at Valencia, 51 per cent.; and at Liverpool, 66 per 
cent. The mean temperature for the three months at 
Greenwich was 61°, which is in precise agreement 
with 1912, and 5° cooler than 1911. The sunshine this 
summer was 442 hours, in 1912 it was 497 hours, and 
in 1911 it was 819 hours. 
Tue proceedings of the third meeting of the General 
Malarial Committee of the Government of India, held 
at Madras during November, 1912, have been pub- 
lished recently as a substantial volume, which contains 
much interesting reading and affords evidence of a 
great deal of energetic and enthusiastic research upon 
the etiology of disease in India. The papers and 
discussions reported cover a wider field than the title 
indicates. Several papers deal with the question of 
Stegomyia fasciata, the mosquito known to be the 
carrier of yellow fever in the New World; in view of 
the approaching opening of the Panama Canal, when 
the endemic home of yellow fever will be brought into 
closer communication with the Far East than it is at 
present, the degree of prevalence of this mosquito in 
the ports of India is likely to become a matter of 
urgent practical sanitary importance. Other papers 
read dealt with the vexed question of the transmission 
of Kala Azar. Capt. Patton, who regards the parasite 
causing this disease as a member of a group of 
Flagellates primarily parasitic in insects, has observed 
developmental stages of the parasite in the common 
bed-bug, but as yet no satisfactory experimental proof 
that the bed-bug transmits Kala Azar has been 
brought forward, nor has the existence of any “ reser- 
voir "’ of the disease in domestic or wild animals be 
demonstrated. The problem of Kala Azar is, how- 
ever, under investigation by a number of competent 
workers, and its solution in the near future may be 
confidently expected. 
Tue Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine has 
issued its report for the year 1911 (more correctly for 
the year ending March, 1912). The bulk of the report 
is written by the director, Dr. Anton Breinl, and con- 
NO, 2288, VOL. 92] 
parasitic worms and Protozoa, illustrated by eleven 
excellent lithographed plates. “Especially notewerthy 
amongst these researches is an investigation into the 
morphology and life-history of Onchocerca gibsoni, 
the nematode parasite which causes the so-called 
worm-nodules in Australian cattle. A number of 
experiments were recorded which were directed to- 
wards solving the problem of the transmission of this 
parasite, but up to the present these experiments have 
not led to any conclusive results as to the intermediary 
host of the worm. Appended to the director’s report 
is that of the entomologist, Mr. Frank H. Taylor, 
and a report on the Cestoda and Acanthocephala of 
North Queensland, by Dr. T. Harvey Johnston. The 
entire report makes a quarto volume of 96 pp. and 
17 plates, neatly bound in cloth, but having one defect 
from the point of view of the bibliographer, namely, 
that there is nowhere any indication to be found of 
the date of publication, whether 1912 or 1913. This 
is an unfortunate omission in a work which describes 
numerous new species of animals, including even a 
new species of Cyclops. 
In a recent number of the Annals of Tropical 
Medicine and Parasitology (vol. vii., No. 3A), Dr. 
J. W. Scott Macfie gives an account of a new species 
of trypanosome observed in human beings in Nigeria. 
It occurs most commonly in young people, and pro- 
duces a mild form of sleeping sickness in which the 
trypanosomes cannot be found in the peripheral blood, 
but are present in the lymphatic glands. To the 
smaller experimental animals of the laboratory the 
trypanosome appears to be but slightly pathogenic. — 
In the blood of the guinea-pig the trypanosome is 
smaller than Trypanosoma gambiense; like that 
species it is polymorphic, with long and slender, short 
and stumpy, and intermediate forms, and a few minute 
trypanosomes, measuring as little as 8 mu in length, 
appear constantly in the blood-films. Some of the 
short, stumpy forms have the principal nucleus 
situated far forwards at the anterior (flagellar) end 
of the body. Forms in which the flagellum appears 
to be free from the body for its whole length are also 
found. The Nigerian trypanosome is regarded by Dr. 
Macfie as a species distinct from T. gambiense, and 
is given the name T. nigeriense. 
In part 6, vol. iii., of the Journal of the East Africa 
and Uganda Natural History Society, Mr. C. W. 
Hobley discusses, from an examination of weapons 
used by the Pygmy and other neighbouring tribes, 
the question of the evolution of the arrow. He comes 
to the conclusion that the use of the stone point is 
later than that of the thorn; hence, that the use of 
poison applied to the tip is probably older than is 
commonly supposed; the lateral barbs were suggested 
by some of the many thorny-stemmed plants which 
flourish in the bush in which the hunter lived. He 
suggests that the aboriginal tribes of the centre of 
the continent passed direct from the use of natural 
thorns to the use of iron points, but the people east 
of Lake Victoria began with natural thorn points, 
passed through an age in which stone arrow-points 
were used, and eventually passed into anironage, the 
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