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NATURE 
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Research Items. 
FIRE-MAKING IN THE MALAY PENINSULA.—The fire- 
piston for the production of fire is used in a limited 
area among the Shans and people of Pegu in Burma, 
among the Khas and Mois, in the Malay Peninsula, 
Western Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, parts of 
Borneo, and in Mindanao and Luzon. Seven speci- 
mens of the implement deposited in the Perak Museum 
are described by Mr. Ivor H. N. Evans in the Journal 
of the Federated Malay States Museum (vol. ix. Part 
4). They are made of buffalo-horn, wood, and tin. 
Mr. Evans finds that in two out of three attempts 
he can make fire by means of it. The important part 
is the binding of a rag near the distal end of the 
piston, which acts as a washer, and prevents the 
escape of air. This must be so adjusted that it 
allows the piston to pass smoothly down the cylinder 
when the piston-head is struck sharply with the palm 
of the hand, and it must not be so tight that there is 
difficulty in withdrawing the piston fairly quickly, nor 
so loose that air can escape from within. 
Recorps oF British CoLEoprERA.—In the Entomo- 
logist’s Monthly Magazine for April Messrs. J. C. F. 
and H. F. Fryer record a species of weevil, Sitones 
gemellatus Gyll., from Sidmouth. Its occurrence 
in this country was scarcely to be expected. The 
only British species of Sitones with which it could be 
confused is S. cambricus, which lacks the mesosternal 
tubercle, and has the sides of the prothorax much 
more rounded. The same writers also record the 
very local beetle Dibolia cynoglossi from Chatteris, 
Cambs., where it occurs on Galeopsis. It is an 
extremely agile insect, and so quick in its movements 
that it is almost impossible to take it by ordinary 
sweeping. This may perhaps account for the absence 
of records in Britain, Cambridgeshire being apparently 
the first addition to its known distribution since 
Mr. Donisthorpe’s discovery of it at Pevensey in 1902. 
Messrs, Fryer further record Chrysomela marginata at 
roots of Reseda lutea (?) in the Breck sand district, 
near Mildenhall. The record is not conclusive 
evidence as to the food-plant of this insect, but it is 
suggestive that the larval instars may be spent on 
that plant. 
A Taxonomic Stupy IN THE CRUCIFERZ.—VoOIl. 9, 
No. 3, of the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 
is mainly occupied by a very full taxonomic study 
of the genus Thelypodium and its immediate allies 
(Chlorocrambe, Caulanthus, Streptanthella, Warea, 
and Stanleyella) by E. B. Payson, which has been 
carried out with the view of throwing light upon the 
phylogeny of the Cruciferae. The genus is character- 
ised by the possession of a gynophore or stipe which 
raises the ovary and fruit above the torus; while 
sometimes nearly negligible, in the species 7°. /aciniatus 
and T. eucosum, the stipe is usually more than two 
millimetres long. In view of the fact that a very 
characteristic stipe is frequently found in the Cap- 
paridacez, a close study of the species of Thelypodium 
would seem to be a necessary step toward the fuller 
examination of a favourite phylogenetic view which 
relates the ancestral form of the Cruciferae closely to 
the Capparidacee. It is further of interest to find 
that the characteristic septum traversing the pod in 
the Cruciferee shows a striking peculiarity in the genus 
Thelypodium, although no developmental series can 
be traced in this character and its interpretation is 
very difficult. Extending nearly or quite from end 
to end of the pod, through the middle of the septum, 
is a broad region composed of cells elongated parallel 
NO. 2794, VOL. III] 
to the marginal framework, and in this region the 
cell walls are more or less closely compacted. No 
species are now admitted to the genus Thelypodium 
that do not exhibit this type of septum. 
A JouRNAL oF HELMINTHOLOGY.—The new Journal 
of Helminthology, edited by Prof. R. T. Leiper, is 
primarily intended as a medium for the prompt 
appearance of original communications by the staff 
of the Department of Helminthology at the London 
School of Tropical Medicine. Up to the present no 
British journal has dealt solely with this branch of 
parasitology, and Prof. Leiper is to be congratulated 
on this latest addition to scientific literature. The 
Journal is to be published bi-monthly, and the 
subscription is 25s. a volume. The first number 
(price 5s. net) contains five papers, three of which 
have a direct bearing on medical and veterinary 
science. Dr. A. J. Hesse contributes a paper on the 
free-living larval stages of Bunostomum trigono- 
cephalum, a common intestinal nematode of the 
domestic sheep. Although this parasite is closely 
related to the hookworm, infection does not take 
place through the skin but by the mouth ; moreover, 
the embryos at the infective stage exhibit negative 
thermotropism, whereas hookworm embryos are posi- 
tively thermotropic. An epidemic of ascariasis on a 
skunk-farm has resulted in an inquiry, by Dr. T. 
Goodey and Mr. T. W. M. Cameron, into the morpho- 
logy and life-history of Ascaris columnaris, a common 
parasite of the skunk. The results of their experi- 
ments indicate that the larve of A. columnaris, in 
the course of their migrations in the body of the 
definitive host, pass through the lungs, as is the case 
with Ascaris lumbricoides and A. megalocephala. Dr. 
M. Khalil re-describes a trematode (Xenopharynx 
solus Nicoll, 1912) from the gall-bladder of a ““ Hama- 
dryad ’”’ (Naja bungarus) ; he also emends the genus 
Xenopharynx. Dr. G. M. Vevers contributes two 
papers. The first deals with the genus Paragonimus, 
which contains all the mammalian lung flukes of 
America and the Far East. He confirms Ward and 
Hirsch’s view that the cuticular spines are the only 
trustworthy structures on which to distinguish the 
four species of the genus, and also suggests that more 
than one species occurs in man. His other paper 
contains a descriptive account of some new helminths 
from British Guiana. 
LINKAGE IN SWEET PEA.—In a paper on linkage 
in the sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus), Prof. R. C. 
Punnett (Journ. Genetics, vol. 13, No. 1) reviews the 
work begun by Bateson and Punnett nearly twenty 
years ago, much of which is now classical in the 
history of genetics. He considers the relation between 
the number of linkage groups and the haploid number 
(7) of chromosomes, and concludes that the two will 
eventually be found to correspond. The numerous 
pairs of characters such as purple-red corolla, long- 
round pollen, and erect-hooded standard are given 
new symbols according to the linkage group to which 
they belong, and provisional ‘‘ chromosome maps ’”’ 
of five of the linkage groups are made, based on the 
percentages of crossing-over. The number of linkage 
groups at present appears to be eight, but there are 
several groups with as yet untested possibilities of 
low-grade linkage, and it is anticipated that the 
number of linkage groups will in this way be eventually 
reduced to seven, as the chromosome theory of 
heredity demands. 
