March 2, 1899] 



NA TURE 



42: 



Madreporaria collected by the Royal Indian Marine Survey 

 ship Investigator. This is the first independent report upon 

 a single group of the zoological collections made by the Investi- 

 gator, and accumulated at the Indian Museum since 18S5. 

 It must, however, be remembered that the deep-sea dredging 

 operations only form a small part of the work of the officers 

 of the Marine Survey, rarely more than twenty deep-sea 

 hauls being made in one year. Only the deep-sea Madre- 

 poraria dredged at a depth greater than 100 fathoms are 

 included by Major Alcock in his memoir. In this collection 

 there are only twenty-five species and fourteen genera. In the 

 Indian Seas, "deep" forms of Madreporaria are found to occur 

 in greatest abundance at a depth of between 400 and 600 

 fathoms, where the bottom temperature generally ranges from 

 about 48° Fahr. to 44° Kahr. The sea in which corals were 

 found in the greatest abundance and variety was the narrow basin 

 between the Laccadive and Maldive Islands on the west, and 

 the Malabar coast on the east. With regard to the geographical 

 distribution of the corals, the lists of species prepared by Major 

 Alcock show so many intimate affinities of the fauna of the 

 Indian Seas and the North Atlantic fauna, that the conclusion is 

 arrived at that there was formerly a direct sea connection 

 between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the connection being 

 by way of the Mediterranean. 



Mr. John Whei.don, Great i^)ueen Street, W.C, has issued 

 a catalogue of scientific books and papers offered for sale by 

 him. 



Illustrations of the good work done at the Hull Botanical 

 Laboratory (U.S.A.) are furnished by two papers, of which we 

 have received reprints, from the Botanical Gazette — the effect 

 of aqueous solutions on the germination of fungus-spores, by T. 

 L. Stevens ; and the life-history of Lemna minor, by Otis W. 

 Caldwell. 



The first part of the Transactions of the English Arboricul- 

 tural Society for 1899 contains three papers on practical forestry : 

 on the different methods adopted in the measurement of stand- 

 ing and felled timber, by Mr. T. Bright ; on the planting, 

 maintenance and management of a plantation for the first 

 twenty-five years, by Mr. J. E. Dalgleish ; and on the felling and 

 barking of oak and larch timber, and the preparation of the 

 bark, by Mr. A. J. Ross. 



In the Bulletin International of the Academy 01 Sciences of 

 Cracow for January 1899, we have a full German translation of 

 the important paper by W. Rothert, to which we have already 

 referred, on the structure of the vegetable cell-wall. He sums 

 up the general results in the statement that a reduction of the 

 typical structure may take place in two ways — either by the 

 attachment of the thickening bands by their greatest breadth : in 

 other words, the replacement of bordered by simple pits ; or by 

 the imperfect formation of the thickening bands, and in their 

 looser arrangement. 



The following items of information in regard to biological 

 stations are taken from the American Naturalist : — The 

 University of Indiana will locate its biological station this year 

 at Warsaw, Ind. — Cornell University will maintain summer 

 schools during the coming summer in botany, entomology, 

 geology, and zoology. — The Natural History Society of St. 

 Petersburg has established a biological station on the shores of 

 Lake Bologoy. — It is under contemplation to establish a per- 

 manent biological station on the shore of Casco Bay (U.S.A.), 

 which is remarkably rich in animal life. 



In the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society for 



February is an interesting paper by Mr. J. Newton Coombe, on 



the reproduction of diatoms, in which the author supports the 



view of Mr. George Murray, that certain diatoms may reproduce 



NO. I 53 I, VOL. 59] 



themselves, either by a rejuvenescence of the cell and the excre- 

 tion of a new frustule within the parent, or by the formation, by 

 division of the protoplasm, of a number of new individuals within 

 the parent. — Mr. A. W. Waters contributes a paper on Bryozoa 

 from Madeira. — In the summary of recent researches is a 

 translation of Dr. H. Harting's highly technical paper on 

 formulae for small-apertured objectives ; and one of a paper by 

 Herr Karl Strehl on the theory of the microscope. 



At the last meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great 

 Britain and Ireland, some important additions were made to 

 our knowledge of the morphology of the liver of higher 

 Primates. It has always been rather a moot point whether 

 the rather solid, slightly fissured liver of man and the anthropoid 

 apes corresponds to the whole of the multilobulated liver of the 

 lower Primates, or only to its central part. From the specimens 

 and drawings of human fatal and anthropoid livers, shown by 

 Prof Arthur Thomson, of Oxford, at the Anatomical Society, 

 there can be no doubt that the liver of the higher Primates has 

 been evolved out of the multilobulated organ of the lower 

 Primates by a process of fusion. He was able to show that 

 even in the liver of man there were always minute fissures on 

 the under surface of the right lobe, indicating a more primitive 

 form of lobulation, and which were much better represented in 

 the liver of the gorilla It is strange that the gorilla, which 

 shows in so many points the nearest approach to man of all the 

 anthropoids, should in this organ stand furthest away from him 

 and approach the lower apes. According to Prof. Thomson, 

 the liver of the gorilla is rather variable in its fissuring, and so is 

 that of the orang. The anthropoids show every stage of the 

 caudate lobe, intermediate to its development in ordinary 

 monkeys and its vestigial state in man. On the other hand, 

 Prof. Parsons and Dr. G. F. Rogers drew attention to abnormal 

 fissuring and lobulation of the human liver that did not corre- 

 spond to any forms found amongst the Primates. 



According to Dr. Arthur Keith, the peculiar shape and 

 structure of the human and anthropoid liver is an adaptation to 

 erect posture. With the assumption of this posture by the 

 higher Primates, all the organs of the abdominal cavity 

 acquired a much more extensive fixation to the roof and 

 posterior wall of that cavity. The liver no longer rested on the 

 belly wall, as it does in the lower Primates, but was extensively 

 fixed by its posterior surface to the back and roof of the 

 abdominal cavity. The more extensive fixation of the liver led 

 to the obliteration of its deep fissures. The fissures of the liver 

 are certainly of physiological importance to the lower forms, for 

 they allow the lobes of the liver to glide upon each other, and 

 separate as that organ descends in inspiration. 



At the meeting of the Anatomical Society already referred to, 

 Mr. R. H. Burne communicated an account of the curious biliary 

 net-work formed by the cystic and hepatic ducts of the common 

 otter, shown by no other mamma!, and which recalled the 

 arrangement found in certain reptiles. 



The third part of the "Catalogue of the African Plants col- 

 lected by Dr. Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-61," by Mr. W. P. 

 Hiern, has been published by the Trustees of the British Museum 

 (Natural History). The volume contains descriptions of the 

 natural orders of Dicotyledons from Dipsacea; to Scrophu- 

 lariacese. A short description of the Catalogue appeared in 

 N.\TURE of May 1897 (vol. Ivi., p. 52). 



A NEW edition — the fifteenth — of the volume on "Tele- 

 graphy," by Mr. W. H. Preece, C.B., F.R.S., and Sir James 

 Sivewright, K.C.M.G., in Longmans' Text-Book of Science 

 Series, has just been published. The work originally appeared 

 in 1S76, but the advances since then have been so great that it 

 has been reconstructed several times. The present edition con- 



