FEBRUARY 19, 1914] 
NATURE 
695 
rivalled those of Werner in carrying their master’s 
views throughout the world. The stimulating pub- 
lications of Lévy and Lacroix, working on absolutely 
independent lines on the other side of the Rhine, estab- 
lished the new methods with equal firmness; and for a 
time the enthusiastic study of rock-structure threatened 
to remove geologists from observation in the field. 
While Rosenbusch issued successive editions of his 
great work, ‘‘Die mikroskopische Physiographie der 
Mineralien und Gesteine,’’ the latest being in con- 
junction with Dr. Wiilfing in 1905-7, he also sum- 
marised admirably the characters of rocks in his 
‘Elemente der Gesteinslehre,”’ published in 1900. He 
was responsible for many changes and redefinitions in 
nomenclature, which have been promulgated by the 
weight of authority rather than by the light of 
reason; but the exactitude of thought and method 
brought by him into a subject that, since 1825, had 
fallen from its high estate, has earned the gratitude 
of petrologists in every land. 
In the Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian 
Society for 1912, which has recently been published, 
Mr. T. Sheppard contributes a valuable paper on 
East Yorkshire history in plan and chart. Between 
Bridlington and Spurn Point, a distance of some thirty 
miles, the land is being worn away at a rate varying 
from a few feet to more than 20 ft. per annum. The 
continuous changes in the coast-line are well illus- 
trated by reproductions of a number of maps and 
charts, beginning with those of Leland and Lord 
Burleigh, in the time of Henry VIII., down to that 
by the late Mr. J. R. Boyle in 1889, showing the 
sites of the lost towns on the Humber. 
A PAMPHLET by Prof. Ernst Schwalbe, entitled ‘‘ Die 
Entstehung des Lebendigen,”’ has just been published 
by Mr. Gustav Fischer, Jena. After a summary of 
the writings on the subject from Aristotle onwards, 
the author expresses the opinion that we are com- 
pletely ignorant as to the origin of life, but he inclines 
to the view that it is supernatural. 
In Lieferung 4o (pp. 1-37) of Dr. Schulze’s ‘‘Das 
Tierreich” (Friedlander und Sohn, Berlin), Dr. G. 
Neumann, of Dresden, treats in considerable detail 
and in masterly style of the second division of the 
salpoid tunicates, constituting the groups Cyclo- 
myaria and Pyrosomida. The diagrams illustrating 
the complex structure of these organisms seem all 
that could be desired, as are likewise the definitions 
of the various groups. 
WE have received a copy of The Canadian Ento- 
mological Record for 1912, published in the report of 
the Entomological Society of Ontario for that year, in 
which Mr. Arthur Gibson, chief assistant entomologist 
to the Department of Agriculture, records the most 
notable species of insects captured in the Dominion 
during the period under review, inclusive of those 
described as new. Another paper contributed by the’ 
entomological division of the Department of Agricul- 
ture, Ottawa—in this instance to vol. vi. of the 
Annals of the Entomological Society of America— 
records observations made by J. D. Tothill on variation 
in flies of the genus Lucilia. This variation embraces | larvze of the higher 
NO. 2312, VOL. 92] 
size, colour, and the mode of arrangement and number 
of the cephalic bristles. As the result of this study, it 
appears ‘that all the new characters used by Mr. 
Townsend for the erection of the ten supposedly dis- 
tinct species are shown to come within the limits of 
variation of the North American species of Lucilia as 
recognised by Hough.” 
In January, 1912, Mr. C. W. Gilmore described, 
under the new generic and specific name of Globidens 
alabamaénsis, the remains of a mosasaurian reptile 
from the Upper Cretaceous of Alabama, characterised 
by the globular form of the cheek-teeth, that type of 
dentition having been previously unknown to exist in 
that group of lizard. By a curious coincidence, Prof. 
L. Dollo, of the Brussels Museum, received the im- 
perfect remains of a lower jaw of a mosasaurian from 
the Maestricht Cretaceous, carrying three teeth of the 
same general type as those of the American specimen, 
but somewhat laterally compressed. He has described 
the Belgian specimen in Archiv Biol., vol. xxviii., 
pp- 609-26) as a new species of the American genus 
under the name of G. fraasi. M. Dollo concludes that 
while the typical mosasaures (Mosasaurus) were surface 
swimmers, and fed on other vertebrates, the members 
of the genera Plioplatecarpus and Globidens were 
divers, the former feeding on belemnites and squids, 
and the latter on sea-urchins. 
Many years ago the late Dr. W. T. Blanford 
asserted that the blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) living 
on a spit of sand about thirty miles long between 
the salt Chilka Lake in Orissa, and the sea never 
drank water. With few exceptions, the statement 
was received with incredulity. That it may be prac- 
tically true is, however, indicated by observations 
recorded by Dr. R. E. Drake-Brockman, in The Field 
of January 31 (vol. cxxiii., p. 244), relating to a herd 
of Pelzeln’s gazelles (Gazella pelzelni), which have 
lived on the small island of Saad-ud-din, near Zeyla, 
Somaliland, since 1910. The usual annual rainfall 
is less than 3 in., and even when, as in 1g11, it is 
considerably more, pools of water are only to be found 
for a few days after a heavy shower.- The vegetation 
of the island is scanty. Dr. Drake-Brockman sub- 
mits that ‘the result of the experiment sets at rest 
the question whether desert-loving antelopes can sub- 
sist without water save that which collects for a few 
days after a heavy shower of rain.” Nothing is said 
with regard to the gazelles being able to obtain 
succulent roots or bulbs, such as those on which 
antelopes feed during the dry season in the Kalahari. 
UNDER the title of Mera Publications, No. 1, we 
have received a copy of a paper by Messrs. 
Harold Swithinbank and G. E. Bullen on the scien- 
tific and economic aspects of the Cornish pilchard 
fishery, (1) ‘‘The Food and Feeding Habits of the 
Pilchard in Coastal Waters.” In this are described 
some. observations made on board the steam yacht 
Mera in 1913, and also certain results of inquiries 
made from 1905-7 off the Cornish coast. The authors 
conclude that the pilchard when feeding exercises 
some degree of selection, catching chiefly certain con- 
stituents of the zooplankton, such as copepods and 
crustacea, whilst other organisms, 
