436 
the soil may remain infected with the fungus, Syn- 
chytrium endobioticum, which is its cause. Owing to 
the thick coats which cover the sporangia no method 
of killing them has been discovered, so that soil 
treatment as a remedy is of no practical use. Experi- 
ments recently carried out at the pathological labora- 
tory of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, by Mr. A. D. 
Cotton (see Kew Bulletin, 1916, No. 10) have proved 
that, in addition to the potato, our common English 
weeds, Solanum nigrum and S. dulcamara, can be 
infected with wart disease, and a few small warts 
containing the characteristic sporangia of the fungus 
have been produced on the roots of these two plants. 
Though these plants may not be active sources of 
soil infection, it is clear that they should be removed 
from a wart-disease area. 
In reference to our recent note (NATURE, vol. xcviii., 
p- 395) as to the replacement of materials in_sedi- 
mentary rocks by iron ‘pyrites, Mr. C. Carus-Wilson 
writes that he has described a case from the base 
of the Cainozoic strata in Bournemouth Bay, where 
a lignitic vegetable mud in the interstices of a sand- 
stone has been thus changed into a pyritic cement. 
A HANDSOME addition has been made to the repre- 
sentation of regional geology by the publication of a 
colour-printed geological map of Mysore on the scale 
of 1 in. to 8 miles (approximately 1: 500,000). The 
whole of the rocks are assigned to the Archzean era, with 
the exception of the ‘“‘sheet laterite’? of the north, 
which is probably in the main of Cainozoic age. The 
map, compiled under Dr. Smeeth’s direction by the 
Department of Mines and Geology of Mysore, gives 
a clear and harmonious picture of the great folded 
masses of crystalline rocks, striking N.N.W. from 
southern India, until they are concealed by the enor- 
mous Cretaceous lava-flows of the Bombay Presidency 
and Haidrabad. Dr. Smeeth’s general description of 
the country was noticed in Nature, vol. xcvii., p. 505. 
Naturen for October, 1916, contains an appreciative 
review of the geological work of Prof. Amund Helland, 
of the University of Christiania, written by Hr. P. A. 
Oyen in connection with the seventieth birthday of this 
veteran observer. An attractive portrait accompanies 
the memoir. The author usefully reminds us that 
Helland stands as one of the great pioneers in glacial 
studies, and that before he was thirty years of age 
he undertook a journey to Greenland in order to 
satisfy himself of Ramsay’s views on the relation of 
fjords and cirques to ice-action. This notice makes us 
turn with pleasure\to Helland’s paper published in the 
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 
in 1877 (vol. xxxiii.), where the origin of cirques in 
alternations of frost and thaw, combined with the 
presence of a transporting glacier, is very clearly 
stated. Hr. Oyen remarks that even the famous dis- 
cussion on glacial erosion in Stockholm in 1910 added 
little to what had been put forward many years before 
by Ramsay, Lorange, and Helland. 
Tue Weekly Bulletin of the Hawaiian Volcano Ob- 
servatory is in reality a monthly paper of some twelve 
pages, and is supplied to the members of the Hawaiian 
Volcano Research Association. Movements and 
changes in the Kilauea crater are reported under 
weekly headings, and, beginning with the bulletin for 
August, 1916, photographic plates of the surface of 
the lava-lake of Halemaumau are issued by Mr. T. A. 
Jaggar, jun., so as to form a continuous record. The 
importance of such observations lies in the fact that 
the stages leading up to a disturbance of unusual 
magnitude cannot be missed, as is commonly the case 
where active volcanoes attract spasmodic attention. 
The Hawaiian Observatory may aid in explaining the 
NO. 2466, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
[FEBRUARY I, 1917 
circular plugs of lava, with radial structure, described 
as ‘‘craterlets’ in the Decoan Trap (L. L. Fermor and 
C. S. Fox, Records Geol. Surv. India, vol. xlvii., p. 81, 
1916). These occur in a limited region of the Chhind- 
wara district of the Central Provinces, and are now 
well illustrated, so that we may hope for their recog- 
nition elsewhere as the basal portions of spiracles and’ 
lava-bubbles. 
Tue difficulty in the spelling and transliteration of 
place-names arises out of the insufficient number of 
characters for separate sounds which our alphabet con- 
tains. This thas been partly overcome by geograph- 
ical authorities in different countries using an alphabet 
devised for the purpose, but all present difficulties in 
the way of phonetic representation. In the Memorial 
volume of the Transcontinental excursion of 1912 of 
the American Geographical Society, Mr. G. G. Chisholm 
suggests an international alphabet as a standard of 
reference. By comparison with this alphabet geo- 
graphical authorities of different countries might 
decide the signs to be used for ticular sounds in 
their own alphabet. Mr. Chisholm would like the 
sounds of this alphabet recorded on gramophone re- 
cords, a copy of which could be kept by every impor- 
tant geographical society. : 
In the Geographical Review for December (vol. ii., 
No. 6) some account is given of the new Museum of 
the American Indian, the foundation-stone of which 
was laid in New York in November, 1915. The 
museum, which will occupy part of the same block as. 
the American Geographical Society, is the outcome o' 
the collections of Mr. George G. Heye, and will contain 
everything of value to the student of the American. 
Indian, from Fuegia to the Arctic regions. Up to 
the present all the funds for the furtherance of the 
work, including many expeditions, publications, and 
the purchase of collections, have been furnished by 
Mr. Heye and his mother. Mr. Heye has now turned 
over all his collections to a board of trustees, of 
which he has been elected chairman. Mr. Heye re- 
tains the directorship. The new building will probably. 
be completed in the spring.” ; 
ELrcrrostatTic methods have sometimes been tried’ 
with doubtful success for separating minerals of nearly 
the same specific gravity. Writing in the Rendiconti 
del R. Istituto Lombardo (xlix., 15), Dr. Pietio 
Riboni now proposes a new arrangement consisting 
of a horizontal plane conductor at zero potential, and 
a cylindrical charged conductor fixed above it with 
its axis parallel to the plane. The conducting par- 
ticles fly to and fro between the two conductors, 
becoming alternatively positively and negatively 
charged, and owing to the curvature of the lines of 
force which are arcs of circles, coupled with the 
effects of gravity and possibly elasticity, they gradu- 
ally make their way outwards. The dielectric par- 
ticles, on the other hand, tend to travel towards 
the places where the intensity of the field is greatest, 
and are found in the centre of the field. Although 
this method is described mainly with a view to the 
separation of metallic particles, it might be interest- 
ing to try whether it could be used to eliminate coal- 
dust from shore gatherings of foraminifera. 
THE proximity to the field of Italian military opera- 
tions of portions of the remarkable formation known. 
as the Karst adds interest to a paper in Scientia (xx.,. 
8), by Luigi De Marchi, on ‘t The Waters of the Carso’” 
(in Italian, with French translation by Dr. S. Jankele- 
vitch). The tableland between Trieste and Abbazia 
is simply honeycombed with craters, some no larger 
than a room, some hundreds of .yards in diameter,. 
the hollows of which are cultivated with pota- 
: toes, while at Abbazia springs of cold fresh water 
