62 
NATURE 
[May 18, 1899 
Rhettic beds. The precise underground extent and the relations 
of the subdivisions of the New Red Series have been the subject 
cf considerable difference of opinion, but the evidence obtained 
from borings and river-cliffs is clearly stated by Mr. Holmes. 
Mr. WiLiiaM H. Dat makes some remarks (Proc. Acad. 
Nat. Sc. Philad., January 1899) on the celebrated Calaveras 
skull, which was found more than thirty years ago in a bed of 
gravel 132 feet below the surface of the uppermost lava-bed of 
Bald Hill, one of the ‘‘ table mountains” of Calaveras County, 
California. Mr. Dall was in California at the time of the dis- 
covery, and records his evidence in favour of its genuineness. 
One of the best-known examples of change of level during 
earthquakes is that of the great Kutch earthquake of 1819, when 
a large portion of the Rann of Kutch was depressed and imme- 
diately flooded by the sea, while at the same time a long mound 
was seen, which is known as the Allah Bund or Dam of God. 
With regard to the depression there can be no doubt ; but the 
character of the elevation, whether real or only apparent, is not 
so certain. The former view, supported by Lyell, was held 
until 1872, when Mr. A. B. Wynne (followed by Prof.. Suess) 
argued that the Allah Bund represented merely the compara- 
tively steep slope connecting the area which had been depressed 
from that whose level was unchanged. Ina paper in the Memozrs 
of the Geological Survey of India (vol. xxviii., pt. i., 1898), 
Mr. R. D. Oldham favours the older view, and presents a map 
and section (made by Captain Baker in 1844), which show that 
there was an actual upward slope of the ground from the plain 
on the north to the southern scarp of the Allah Bund. 
EFForts to determine the molecular structure of certain 
crystals have been made by means of etching them with hydro- 
fluoric acid or other reagents. The importance to petrographers 
of etch-figures in the investigations of amphiboles (hornblende, 
&c.) forms the subject of an elaborate paper by Mr. R.A. 
Daly (Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sciences, March 1899). 
Tue New South Wales Department of Public Health has just 
issued a report, by Mr. Frank Tidswell, principal assistant 
medical officer of the Government, on protective inoculation 
against tick-fever. The colony, in view of the ravages wrought 
by this disease in Queensland, are making strenuous efforts to 
prevent a repetition of the disaster in New South Wales. The 
subject has been very carefully investigated by American 
authorities, and the results obtained by Mr. Tidswell confirm 
those previously obtained in America. It appears that more or 
less efficient protection from the disease can be procured by in- 
oculating the blood of animals which have recovered from the 
fever, whereby the disease is produced in a mild form. Such 
artificial production of the disease is sometimes attended with 
considerable risk to the animal treated. Experience has shown, 
however, that it is principally older cattle which succumb, al- 
though, curiously, bulls, whether young or old, are extremely 
susceptible to tick-fever, and the greatest care has to be exercised 
in carrying out the inoculations. The period over which im- 
munity lasts has not, so far, been accurately determined, but 
immunity is acquired as early as six days after the subsidence of 
the fever. The disease appears to be widely distributed, having 
been identified in America, Jamaica, the Argentine Republic, 
South Africa, Roumania, and Java. It was first described by 
American investigators in 1893, and was called Texas or 
Southern cattle fever, in consequence of the locality where it 
was originally discovered. In Australia it is usually known as 
tick-fever, owing to the part played by ticks in transmitting 
what is now known to be the real cause of the disease, the 
micro-organism called by its discoverers Pyvosoma bigemenum. | 
At present the protective inoculation system is in a very ele- 
mentary stage, but it is confidently anticipated that with im- 
NO. 1542, VOL. 60] 
proved methods, based upon further researches, a very valuable’ 
measure will be introduced for effectually compassing this 
ruinous pest. 
THE atonal Geographic Magazine for April contains am 
account, by Mr. Walter D. Wilcox, of two expeditions to the 
headquarters of the Saskatchewan. The two main branches of 
the river start from the same ice-fields in the high Rockies, and 
after diverging several hundred miles unite in the plains 900 
miles from the source. Mr. Wilcox reached the region of the 
sources by ascending the Bow River from Laggan, and amongst 
other geographical results of interest discovered a pass from 
the Saskatchewan to the Athabasca. 
A NOTE ona harpoon-head found in a whale in the Bering 
Sea in August 1890, is contributed to the Wadzonal Geographic 
Magazine by Mr. W. H. Dall. Marks on the iron showed that it 
belonged to the American whaler Aoutezwma, which was 
engaged in the North Pacific about the years 1850-54; the 
whale must, therefore, have carried it for between thirty-six and 
forty years. Mr. Dall also gives some observations by Captain: 
E. P. Herendeen with regard to whales supposed from similar 
evidence to have made the north-east or north-west passage. 
THE Comptes rendus of the Paris Geographical Society (1899, 
No. 2) contain a note by M. Jules Richard on a series of nine 
short land excursions made from the Prince of Monaco’s yacht 
Princess Alice, during her Arctic cruise in the summer of 1898. 
A number of observations, chiefly zoological, were made from, 
various points and islands in the neighbourhood of Spitsbergen. 
Photographs taken at Bear Island, Hope Island, and Sassen Bay 
are reproduced, 
Dr. HacBarr Macunus, of Bergen, contributes an important 
paper on the population of Norway to the Zedtschrift der 
Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde, a summary of a larger memoir already 
published in the Norwegian language. The distribution of 
centres of population is discussed with reference to the 
geography of different parts of the country, the inhabited 
districts being separated into coast regions, fjord regions, and: 
valley regions. The transition from each of these into the un+ 
inhabited regions is carefully examined, and the development of 
unfavourable conditions of various kinds traced. A sketch-maps, 
preliminary toan attempt to construct a map showing the density 
of population in southern Norway, is appended. 
In an article in the Botanzcal Gazette for April, Prof. W. F. 
Ganong describes the following appliances for the elementary 
study of vegetable physiology in use at Smith College, North- 
ampton, Mass. :—A temperature stage, a clinostat, a recording 
auxanometer, an osmometer, a respiration apparatus, a germin- 
ation box, a root-pressure gauge. 
THE annual report of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Trinidad, 
for the year 1898 affords evidence of steady work done by the 
superintendent, Mr. J. H. Hart, and his staff, in the cultiva- 
tion of economic plants, in the herbarium, and in exchanges with 
other parts of the world. A newly introduced species of cacao,. 
Theobroma pentagona, may possibly be of commercial im- 
portance. 
In a paper in the Bzologisches Centralblait, Dr. L. Jost argues, 
from the remarkable tendency in Zzvarvéa spuria towards the 
sudden production of anomalies in the flower, which might be 
regarded as establishing new species, or even new genera, that 
the differentiation of species and genera may have been a much, 
more rapid process than has generally been assumed by 
evolutionary naturalists. 
WE have received two interesting reprints from the AZemozrs 
of the Boston Society of Natural History for 1899 :—Localised. 
Stages in Development in Plants and Animals, by Mr. R, T.. 
