422 



NA TORE 



[March i, 1906 



are announced), a social gathering of the members will 

 aki place on the evening of April 25, an excursion in the 

 neighbourhood of Rome will be made on Sunday, April 29, 

 and two alternative excursions, the one to Sicily and the 

 other to the Island of Elba, to places of chemical interest 

 on .May 3 ; as the number of participators in the latter 

 is limited, preference will be granted to those who are 

 first to send in their names, and more especially to foreign 

 members. Members may further obtain a reduction of 

 40 per cent, to 60 per cent, on the Italian State Railways, 

 and 60 per cent, on tickets issued by the navigation com- 

 panies Navigazione Generale Italiana and La Veloce. 

 The papers to be contributed will be grouped in eleven 

 sections, and may be in one of the four official languages 

 of the congress, namely, Italian, French, German, and 

 English. The discussions after the reading of the papers 

 may also be carried on in one of these languages. 



Museum News for February records the addition to the 

 Brooklyn Museum, New York, of a skeleton of the sperm- 

 whale, measuring 47 feet in length, which has been 

 suspended to the roof of the building. 



In the American Journal of Science (Februarv) Mr. C. C. 

 Trowbridge re-opens the disputed question of the inter- 

 locking of the emarginate primary flight-feathers in 

 raptorial birls, adducing apparently conclusive evidence that 

 this takes place in certain American hawks, with a result- 

 ing increase of wing-power. 



The contents of vol. lxxx., part iv., of the Zeitschrift 

 fur wissenschaftliche Zoologie, comprise a paper bv Dr. 

 E. Strand, of Christiania, on the structure and develop- 

 ment of spiders ; a second, by Mr. J. Wilhelmi, on the 

 excretory organs of the fresh-water turbellarian flat- 

 worms of the section Tricladida ; and a third, by Dr 

 (-. Henmngs, of Rostock, on the " tomovarvsche " "organ 

 in myriapods. The latter is the continuation of a paper 

 the first part of which appeared in the same journal in 

 1904. A systematic classification of the myriopods is given. 



In the report of the Maidstone Museum, Library, and 

 Art-Gallery for ,905 is published a photographic reproduc- 

 tion of an original drawing by the late Mr. W. H Bensted 

 of the well known slab (now in the Natural History 

 Museum) containing , large portion of the skeleton of a 

 young iguanodon, obtained by him from the ragstone 

 quarry in Queen's road, Maidstone, in ,834. The drawing 

 is, o course, mainly of historical interest. An offer of 

 the loan, for an indefinite period, of an exceedingly 

 valuable, and in this country almost unique, collection of 

 Japanese pottery, made by the Hon. H. Marsham has 

 been accepted by the museum authorities. 



The January issue of the Emu contains an excellent 

 portrait of the late Captain F. W. Hutton. From the 

 report of the proceedings of the fifth session of the 

 Australasian Ornithologists' Union, held at Adelaide 

 which appears in this number, we learn that the actin« 

 president devoted his address to the subject of European 

 and other birds introduced into Victoria. The two species 

 that have thoroughly established themselves are the starling 

 and the sparrow. No one appears to have a good word 

 for the latter, but as regards the former it is stated that 

 the residents in Riverina are longing for its arrival in 

 numbers to help them to cope effectually against the armies 

 of locusts and caterpillars that frequently infest those 

 districts. Thrushes, blackbirds, and greenfinches have 

 established themselves to a small extent in and around 

 NO. 1896, VOL. 73] 



the districts where they were first liberated, but chaffinches, 

 yellow-hammers, and siskins have practically failed to 

 accommodate themselves to their new surroundings. 



In discussing the early stages of the Palaeozoic rugose 

 corals, as a clue to the origin and relationships of the 

 group, Mr. C. E. Gordon, in the Februarv number ot 

 the American Journal of Science, finds himself unable to 

 accept Mr. Duerden's views as to the close connection 

 between the ancient tetrameral and the modern hexameral 

 types of corals. On the contrary, he is of opinion that 

 we are not yet in a position to define their relationships 

 or to state which is the earlier of the two. In a second 

 paper in the same journal Mr. C. R. Eastman discusses 

 the affinities to the lung-fishes presented by the group of 

 armoured Palaeozoic fishes typified by Coccosteus, and 

 commonly known as the Arthrodira. From the study of 

 the North American genera Dinichthys, Dinomylostoma, 

 &c, the author comes to the conclusion that the alleged 

 relationship is well founded, thus confirming the views of 

 Dr. A. Smith Woodward. The author goes, however, 

 somewhat further, and urges that while the living 

 Australian Ccratodus (Neoceratodus) fosteri bears an 

 intimate relation to Arthrodira on the one hand, and to 

 the Palaeozoic Dipterus and its allies on the other, yet 

 that it is a more primitive type than any of these. It 

 represents, in fact, the direct line of descent from primitive 

 Palaeozoic Ceratodonts, from which Dipterus and its allies 

 diverged in one direction and the Arthrodira in the other. 

 Hence the Dipnoi cannot be descended from the crosso- 

 pterygian ganoids, but are more probably derived from 

 Pleuracanthus-like sharks. Further, the association of the 

 Arthrodira with the Ostracophora (Pterichthys) in one 

 group, Placodermata, becomes obviously impossible. Mr. 

 R. S. Lull points out that the name Ceratops proposed by 

 Marsh for the Laramie horned dinosaur is preoccupied, and 

 he accordingly suggests the new name Proceratops, with 

 Agathaumidae as the family title. 



The Pioneer Mail remarks that the immunity of Euro- 

 peans continues to be one of the most noticeable features 

 of the plague epidemic. Last year, in the Bombay Presi- 

 dency, where the disease carried off more than a quarter 

 of a million people, only nineteen Europeans in all were 

 attacked, of whom ten died. In the previous year, in the 

 same region, where 316,000 deaths took place, only eight 

 were amongst Europeans. 



Mr. A. Elenkin, writing in the Bulletin du Jardin 

 imperial botanique, St. Petersburg (vol. v., part v.), on 

 the marine algae found near the biological station at 

 Mourmane, discusses the different forms of Lithothamnin, 

 and describes a new species characterised by the develop- 

 ment of bicellular spores. 



In recording his impressions of the botanical congress 

 at Vienna in the Bulletin de V Academic de Geographic 

 botanique, Mr. L. Navas, who represented the Socifte' 

 Aragonaise des Sciences naturelles, presents his arguments 

 in favour of giving the authority for the genus and not 

 the authority for the binomial name of a plant. 



A periodical bulletin — Le Bambou— devoted to the study 

 of the bamboo, its cultivation and uses, has been starte3 

 by Mr. J. H. de Lehaie, Mons, Belgium. The first 

 number, published January 15, contains an article on the 

 flowering and seeding of bamboos in Europe. From a 

 study of the collated data, the writer concludes that in the 

 section Arundinaria the majority of species flower gre- 

 gariously, produce seed and die, but in the case of 

 Phyllostachys the production of seed does not appear to 

 be the harbinger of death. 



