184 
Cape Colony, for the first time for sixteen years, the town was 
covered with deep snow on June 11. Storm and cold are 
general throughout the Colony. The cold is unprecedented, 
and thousands of cattle and sheep have perished. In many 
places the telegraph poles are buried beneath snowdrifts. A 
very severe snowstorm swept ever the midland districts of Cape 
Colony on June 14. Trains were blocked at Naauwpoort by a 
snowdrift 6 feet in depth, and much difficulty was experienced 
in clearing the lines. Heavy falls of snow also occurred in 
other parts of the country. 
THE annual report of the Decimal Association records that 
ately there has been a very decided growth of public opinion in 
favour of the compulsory adoption of the metric weights and 
measures throughout the British Empire. There are warm sup- 
porters of the reform in Canada, Australia, Cape Colony and 
India, and efforts will be made to bring the question before the 
Conference of Colonial Premiers to be held at the time of the 
Coronation. British consuls abroad, residing in countries where 
the metric system is in use, continue to dwell upon the im- 
portance of the change being made from our present confused 
and complicated weights and measures to those of the metric 
system. The Committee on Decimal Coinage appointed by the 
Federal House of Representatives for Australia issued its report 
in April recommending the adoption of decimal coinage. The 
report of this committee concluded with a recommendation 
that the Commonwealth should cooperate in any movement for 
the decimalisation of the weights and measures of the Empire. 
Quite recently the Association of Trade Protection Societies of 
the United Kingdom passed the following resolution at its 
annual meeting :—‘‘ That this meeting is of opinion that the 
time has now arrived when the decimal system of coinage and 
the metric system of weights and measures should be com- 
pulsorily adopted throughout the British Empire.” 
AMERICA has just furnished a new high-speed record, which 
has been attained on the Burlington and Missouri Railroad. 
The train (says Hez/den’s Magazine for June) consisted of nine 
cars, namely, a mail car, a luggage car, two reclining chair cars, 
three sleeping cars, dining car and a private car, and the engine 
(B. and M. R. No. 41) was of the ten-wheeled type with 6-feet 
driving wheels. The section over which the record was taken 
was between Eckley and Wray, Colorado, separated by a distance 
of 14°8 miles, which was ‘‘ covered in exactly nine minutes, that 
is, the train was travelling at the rate of 98°66 miles per hour 
for the whole section.”’ It is stated that the time was correctly 
tallied by five separate chronographs, and may therefore be 
considered trustworthy. 
In the Jahrbuch der k.-k. geol. Retchsanstalt (Band li. 
Heft 1), Herr Lukas Waagen contributes a detailed account of 
the Jurassic Avecula (Oxytoma) inaeguivalvis and its allies. 
This paper will be welcomed by all who may have occasion to 
study this very variable and difficult group of shells. The author 
supplies a comprehensive synonymic list, and concludes that the 
numerous specific separations in this group, proposed by 
various authors, are in reality unwarranted. 
A score of new forms of fossil ear-bones of fishes, from the 
Tertiary strata of Austro-Hungary, have been described by 
R. J. Schubert (Jahrbuch der k.-k. geol. Reichsanstalt, Band li. 
Heft 2). These otoliths are for the most part referred to Um- 
brina, Corvina, Scizenidarum and Scizna, and were obtained in 
Pliocene deposits at Brunn am Gebirge and in Miocene beds at 
several other localities. Some appear to indicate relationship 
with recent Mediterranean forms, while others have their nearest 
allies in the Oligocene and Miocene of Germany and in the 
older Tertiaries of North America. The paper is well, 
illustrated. 
NO. 1703, VOL, 66] 
NATURE 
[JUNE 19, 1902 
In a memoir on the flora of Thibet or high Asia Mr. Botting 
Hemsley, F.R.S., has compiled an account which brings out 
vividly the unique conditions of altitude and climate. The data 
for the subject-matter are obtained from collections deposited 
in the herbarium at Kew. Amongst the peculiarities of the 
vegetation may be noted the scarcity of certain types of plants, 
é.g. annuals, succulents and bulbous plants (except <Ad/zum 
Semenovt, which is widely distributed). Woody plants, too, 
are rare and poorly developed. 
WE have received the Report of the South London Entomo- 
logical and Natural History Society for 1901. 
THE most interesting item in the Report of the Albany Museum 
for the year 1901 is the identification among the collection of a 
pair of horns of the blaauwbok (AHzppotragus leucophoeus), an 
antelope formerly found in the neighbourhood of Cape Town 
which has:been extinct for considerably more thana century. The 
horns were entered in one of the old catalogues as belonging to 
the animal in question ; assuming the identification to be cor- 
rect, the specimen appears to be the only known relic of the 
blaauwbok remaining in South Africa, 
In the American Naturalist for May, Prof. H. F. Osborn 
further elaborates his views as to the ‘‘ law of adaptive radiation ” 
among mammals. One result of his investigations is to explode 
the old idea that it is possible to reconstruct an extinct animal 
from either a claw or a tooth. Correlation is not, as Cuvier 
supposed, morphological, ‘‘ but physiological, function always 
preceding structure. It becomes closest when teeth and feet 
combine in the same function, as in the prehensile canines and 
claws of the Felidae, and most diverse where the functions are 
most diverse, as in the teeth and paddles of the Pinnipedia.” 
VoL. liii. of the Avzales of the Scientific Society of Argen- 
tina contains a long memoir, by Sefior A. Gallardo, of the late 
Dr. C. Berg, director of the museum at Buenos Aires. From 
this it appears that Berg was born at Tuckum, Curlandia, 
Russia, in 1843, and that, after much good work in his native 
country, he first visited Argentina in 1873. Here, under the 
auspices of Burmeister, he worked at the entomology .and 
botany of the country assiduously for nearly two years, when he 
was appointed professor of zoology at Cordoba. This appoint- 
ment, however, he held but two months, as in March, 1875, 
he was elected to the chair of natural history at the National 
College of Buenos Aires, in succession to Dr, J. Ramorino, In 
1890 he was specially entrusted with the reorganisation of the 
National Museum at Monte Video, and on the death of Bur- 
meister in 1892 he succeeded to the directorship of the National 
Museum at Buenos Aires, a post which he held until his own 
death. Berg’s work covered a very wild field both in zoology 
and botany, and an appendix to’'the memoir before us contains 
a very long list of papers of which he was the author. One of 
his latest contributions proved the distinctness of the smaller 
form of mara, or Patagonian cavy, the Dodichotis salinicola of 
Burmeister. He is succeeded in the directorship of the museum 
by Dr. Florentino Ameghino, so well known on account of his 
remarkable contributions to the history of the extinct vertebrate 
fauna of Patagonia. 
Curious if true must be the verdict in regard to a paper 
contributed by Prof. William Patten to the May issue of the 
American Naturalist on the structure and classification of the 
Tremataspide. This family is represented by a single genus 
and species (Zvemataspis schrenkz), all the known remains of 
which have been .obtained from the Lower Silurian of a small 
pit at Rootsikuelle, in the Isle of Oesel, in the Baltic. 
These remains consist chiefly, if not entirely, of more or 
less imperfect examples of the dorsal shield. Although Trema- 
taspis has always been classified with primitive vertebrates like 
— ee oF 
