November 14, 1907] 



NATURE 



3.9 



Some interesting facts on the continued falling off in the 

 production of natural indigo were given at a recent meet- 

 ing of the Society of Chemical Industry by Mr. R. J. 

 Friswell, chairman of the society. From Government re- 

 turns it appears that for the five years ended 1904-5 the 

 total acreage in India devoted to this cultivation was 

 755,900 acres. In 1905-6 this had fallen to 330,400 acres, 

 or to less than 44 per cent, of its former area. By 1906-7 

 it had fallen further to 329,800 acres. Meanwhile, the 

 production of synthetic indigo is advancing by leaps and 

 bounds. No statistics are available as to the actual 

 quantity made by foreign factories, but the iinports into 

 our own islands may be taken as a fair index. In 1905 

 synthetic indigo amounting to 32,246 cwt. was imported. 

 In 1906 this increased to 39,042 cwt., an increase of 

 21 per cent. During the same years the imports of 

 natural indigo were 8201 cwt. and 7641 cwt. respectively, 

 a decrease of 6-8 per cent. Mr. Friswell thinks that 

 natural indigo will for some years to come occupy a place 

 in the world's market. Planters have, therefore, a breath- 

 ing time to improve their methods, both biologically and 

 chemically — biologically by improving the content of the 

 plant, chemically by improving the methods of winning 

 the indigo and making its quality constant. 



The International Congress on Tuberculosis will be 

 held in Washington, D.C., from September 21 to October 

 12, 190S. We have received a preliminary announcement 

 from the National Association for the Study and Preven- 

 tion of Tuberculosis, which has been entrusted with the 

 organisation of the congress. Dr. Frank Billings is the 

 president of the National Association, and Mr. Roosevelt, 

 Mr. Grover Cleveland, and Prof. William Osier are 

 honorary vice-presidents. Dr. John P. C. Foster and Dr. 

 Mazyck P. Ravenel being the vice-presidents, and Dr. 

 H. B. Jacobs the secretary. The association has appointed 

 a special committee on the International Congress, of 

 which Dr. Lawrence F. Flick, of Philadelphia, is chair- 

 man, and Dr. Joseph Walsh, of Philadelphia, secretary. 

 The congress will be divided into seven sections, as 

 follows : — Section i., pathology and bacteriology, presi- 

 dent. Dr. William H. Welch, of Baltimore ; section ii., 

 clinical study and therapy of tuberculosis — sanatoria, 

 hospitals, and dispensaries, president. Dr. Vincent Y. 

 Bowditch, of Boston ; section iii., surgery and orthopedics, 

 president. Dr. Wm. J. Mayo, Rochester, Minn. ; section 

 iv., tuberculosis in children, etiology, prevention and 

 treatment, president. Dr. Abraham Jacobi, of New York; 

 section v., hygienic, social, industrial, and economic 

 aspects of tuberculosis, president. Dr. Edward T. Devine, 

 of New A'ork ; section vi., State and municipal control of 

 tuberculosis, president, Surgeon-General Walter Wyman, of 

 Washington, D.C. ; section vii., tuberculosis in animals 

 and its relations to man, president. Dr. Leonard Pearson, 

 of Philadelphia. The section work of the congress will be 

 carried on in the week September 28 to October 3. During 

 that week there will be two general meetings. A tubercu- 

 losis exhibition will be open during the whole time of the 

 congress. 



Mayfield's Cave, Indiana, owing to its short distance 

 (4^ miles) from the University laboratory, was recently 

 selected for systematic exploration, both physiographically 

 and faunistically. The results of this survey form the 

 subject of a paper by Mr. A. M. Banta published by the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington. In the summary it 

 is pointed out that small caves contain, as a rule, prac- 

 tically the whole cavern-fauna of the district in which they 

 occur, while reference is also made to the probable origin 

 of cave-animals. 



NO 1985, VOL. 77] 



Owing to the fact that radical structural differences, 

 constant through large groups, are very few, while minor 

 group-characters, in countless unexpected directions, are 

 extremely numerous and varied, the beetles of the family 

 Tenebrionidje have always been extremely troublesome to 

 the systematic entomologist. Confronted with this diffi- 

 culty, Mr. T. L. Casey, in proposing a revised classifi- 

 cation of the American representatives of the subfamily 

 Tentyriinje (Proc. Washington Acad., vol. ix., pp. 2761- 

 522), states that he does so with diffidence, although eio- 

 pressing the hope that he is on the right track. 



According to the report for the year ending on June 30, 

 the Manchester Museum has received a bequest of books 

 and money from the late Mr. Mark Stirrup, many years 

 secretary to the local Geological Society. The interest of 

 the monetary bequest (the first the museum has received) 

 is to be devoted to the improvement of the geological 

 collections. During the year. Prof. Hickson completed 

 his account of the alcyonarian zoophytes obtained during 

 the Antarctic expedition, and likewise identified and 

 described a number of representatives of the same group 

 obtained during the cruise of the Huxley in the Bay of 

 Biscay. 



Of late years the attention of naturalists interested in 

 the phylogeny of the Insecta has been turned to the 

 Symphyla, a group of arthropods apparently exhibiting to 

 a certain extent characters common to millipedes, centi- 

 pedes, and thysanurous insects. In the hope of further 

 elucidating the generalised affinities of the Symphyla, Mr.- 

 S. R. Williams has therefore investigated the life-history 

 of an American member of the group, Scutigeretlar 

 immaculata, especially in reference to the eggs and the 

 young larvae, the results of which are published in the 

 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 

 vol. xxxiii., pp. 461-485. In possessing seven pair of legs 

 and ten dorsal scales, the larval Scutigerella more nearly 

 resembles the adult than is the case with any diplopod 

 of which the early history is known to the author, and it 

 is therefore regarded as a highly specialised tvpe rather 

 than a generalised ancestral form, such as the hcxapod 

 larvje of other diplopods are generally considered. 



A MONOGRAPH of the genus Lepidium, prepared by Dr. 

 A. Thelling, has been published in vol. xli. of the Neue 

 Denkschriften der schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesell- 

 schaft. It consists of two parts, the first dealing with 

 synonymy and morphology, the second with the classifi- 

 cation of the species. The author splits the genus into 

 five sections, differing slightly from the arrangement pro- 

 posed by Prantl. The sections are distinguished primarily 

 by the character of the fruit, whether winged or plain, 

 and by the relative length and position of the style com- 

 pared with the wing. Under morphology the variations in 

 the number and position of the stamens and honey glands 

 are noted ; among the fruits, the three-valved capsule 

 borne by a variety of Lepidium sativum is peculiar. The 

 species are arranged in three geographical groups, com- 

 prising species from Europe, Asia and Africa, from 

 America, and from Australia. 



A REPORT on the prevention of malaria in Britisir 

 possessions, Egypt, and parts of America, presented by 

 Prof. Ronald Ross to section vii. of the fourteenth Inter- 

 national Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held at 

 Berlin in September, has been reprinted from the Lancet 

 of September 28 and issued in pamphlet form. In this 

 report Prof. Ross sums up, so far as possible with the 

 imperfect data at his disposal, the results of anti-malaria 

 measures in British possessions. " The ideal procedure 



