i6 



NA rURE 



[November 7, 1907 



generic names wc may refer to Ptychognathus, which 

 was published in 1858, and therefore antedates and in- 

 validates Owen's use of that term for a South African 

 anomodont reptile. 



In a supplemental Bulletin (No. 3) on " leaf-hoppers," 

 recently issued by the Experimental Station of the 

 Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association at Honolulu, Mr. 

 G. W. Kirkaldy suggests that the Australasian zoological 

 region should be subdivided as follows : — (i) Austro- 

 Malayan, or Papuan, including, in addition to the limits 

 laid dov/n by Wallace, the tropical fo.-ests of Queensland, 

 and New Caledonia and the neighbouring islands as far 

 as Fiji ; (2) Euronotian, comprising Tasmania and the 

 south-eastern third of Australia; (3) the Maorian, 

 embracing New Zealand and adjacent islands ; (4) the 

 Westralian. The Caroline, Marshall, and Marianne groups 

 may be provisionally included in the Austro-Malayan sub- 

 region, while the Hawaiian Archipelago forms an un- 

 attached subregion of great antiquity. Fiji seems to be 

 related, as regards fauna, to the Papuan .Archipelago or 

 to the tropical forest of East .Australia, and Wallace's 

 Polynesian subregion should accordingly be abolished. 

 Celebes is perhaps best regarded as an unattached or inter- 

 mediale subregion. 



k LIST of sedges from Jamaica, compiled by Dr. N. L. 

 Britton from specimens examined in herbaria in New 

 York and London, has been published as a supplement to 

 the fifth volume of the Bulletin of the Department of 

 Agriculture, Jamaica. With regard to previous determin- 

 ations, Dr. Britton follows in the main the monograph 

 on West Indian Cyperaceee by the late Mr. C. B. Clarke, 

 published in Urban's " Symbols Antillanse " in 1900, 

 but prefers a broader acceptation of the genus Cyperus. 

 Fifteen genera and about a hundred species are 

 enumerated, of which some require confirmation from 

 additional specimens. 



In the October number of the Trinidad Bulletin the 

 editor notes, with regard to the species Theobroma 

 angustifoUa allied to the cacao, that while the fruit is 

 useless for commercial purposes, the tree, being more 

 robust and resistant, is likely to prove useful as grafting 

 stock for cacao plants. Reference is also made to an 

 ornamental grass, Thysolacna agrostis, introduced from 

 America, that may be grown in clumps similar to pampas 

 grass. The report by Mr. F. A. Stockdale, mycologist to 

 the Imperial Department of Agriculture in the West 

 Indies, on the palm diseases investigated in Trinidad is 

 published in full. Of the three diseases recorded, the most 

 serious is the root disease caused by a fungus assigned 

 to Botryodiplodia, a genus included in the Spha?ropsideaD. 



It is reported in the daily papers that Prof. Koch, who 

 is returning home after a long sojourn in the sleeping- 

 sickness districts of Uganda, regards sleeping sickness as 

 an enormous danger to the whole of East Africa. He 

 finds that the tsetse-fly, the Glossina falpalis, which 

 conveys the disease, breeds not only on the lake shores, 

 but along the whole length of the rivers. Prof. Koch 

 considers that there is a distinct connection between croco- 

 diles and sleeping sickness. Wherever crocodiles arc 

 found the disease may be discovered, but only in places 

 near the water. The blood of crocodiles forms the chief 

 nourishment of the Glossina, which sucks the blood 

 between the plates of the animal's hide. The extermin- 

 ation of the Glossina is impossible, but it is suggested 

 that the same end may be reached by destroying the croco- 

 diles or by the removal of the bushes and undergrowth 

 where the animals lurk. 



NO 1984. VOL. yyl 



No one more fully understands the danger of indis- 

 criminately using a questionnaire than Dr. J. G. Frazer, 

 who in publishing through the Cambridge University 

 Press his " Questions on the Customs, Beliefs, and 

 Languages of Savages " is careful to point out tin- 

 true method of utilising them. They are intended, not so 

 much to be put directly to the savage, as to indicate to 

 the inquirer in the field those subjects upon which students 

 at home desire information. Leading questions should be 

 avoided, as they tempt the savage to give answers which 

 he thinks will be acceptable. The savage should be 

 encouraged to talk in his usual vague way on the subject 

 under investigation until he has exhausted his inform- 

 ation for the time, when a question judiciously asked may 

 jog his memory. L^nexpected information casually offered 

 is the most valuable of all, " first, because not being 

 foreseen by the civilised man it cannot have been con- 

 sciously or unconsciously suggested by him to the savage ; 

 second, because it may put an entirely fresh complexion 

 on a whole series of customs and beliefs about which we 

 had fancied that we knew all that was worth knowing." 

 If used with this much needed caution, this suggestive 

 collection, which is supplementary to the manual issued 

 by the Royal Anthropological Institute, will be of much 

 value to travellers with a taste for investigating the 

 manners and customs of savage or semi-savage races. 



Striking evidence of the industrial advantage of the 

 occupation of the Philippines by the United Stales is 

 afforded by a copiously illustrated article on railway 

 development in the Philippines, by Mr. P. H. .Xshmead, 

 in the Engineering Review (vol. xxxiii.. No. 6). The 

 construction of the railways under Government patronage 

 cannot fail to be of permanent benefit. The vast sums 

 distributed as wages will be spent in the islands. An 

 industrial army of some 30,000 men will have been formed, 

 and such of these as are not required in the working of 

 the railways will be available for other industries, which 

 will receive an impetus by the supply of cheap means of 

 transport. 



The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, of which the 

 seventy-fourth annual report has been received, continues 

 to carry on successfully the valuable work in promoting 

 the commercial prosperity of Cornwall and in encouraging 

 mining invention for which it was brought into exist- 

 ence. The annual exhibitions of the society do much to 

 stimulate inventive genius, and from the report on the 

 seventieth exhibition it is seen that in view of the in- 

 creased mining activity in the county special attention 

 was devoted to life-saving appliances in mines. The 

 papers contributed to the society and published in the re- 

 port, whilst containing nothing of striking novelty, give 

 much useful information. They include papers on 

 tantalum, by Mr. F. H. Michell ; on uranium ores, by 

 Mr. F. J. Stephens; on deep bore-hole surveying, by Mr. 

 W. R. Bawden ; on modern mining methods, by Mr. J. H. 

 Collins ; and on the bees, wasps, and ants of Cornwall, 

 by Mr. James Clark. The volume concludes with a report 

 on the work of Falmouth Observatory, by Mr. W. L. 

 Fox and Mr. E. Kitto. 



In the American Journal of Mathematics, xxix., 4, Prof. 

 G. W. Hill shows how the attraction of a homogeneous 

 spherical segment can be evaluated in terms of cllintic 

 integrals. 



Writing in the Popular Science Monthly, Ixxi., 3, under 

 the title of " A Scientific Comedy of Errors," Profs. 

 T. D. A. Cockerell and F. R. B. Hellems present a sum- 

 mary of the early history of the cochineal and allied dye- 



