January 21, 1909] 



NA TURE 



355 



apparatus. Their school microscope, wilh objective eye- 

 piece, rack focussing stand with firm foot, is priced at 35s. 

 We welcomed old and tried friends in the Becker's Sons' 

 balances, and a new one in the Dobbs's dynamometer, 

 which appeared among Messrs. Townson and Mercer's 

 display. Mr. Thomas Wyatt e.xhibited the appropriately 

 named Massey series of apparatus for practical mechanics, 

 and some Haldane Gee instruments of better construction 

 than those on the market in former days. The stills and 

 ovens of Messrs. Brown and Son are well known to 

 chemists ; they should be well known to science masters. 



We have not space to describe the extensive exhibit of 

 books by Messrs. Arnold. G. Bell, Clive, Macmillan, 

 Methuen, and the Cambridt;e and Oxford University Press. 



Some of the amateur exhibitors were at too little pains 

 to show their work effectively, and we would remind them 

 of the necessity of making clear at once, by diagram or 

 otherwise, the main point of their exhibits. If a plan 

 of the exhibits could be added to the catalogue it would 

 be helpful. The trade exhibits are of undoubted utility, 

 especially to country workers, but it is to be hoped that 

 the invaluable display of resourcefulness and ingenuity 

 springing from our school laboratories will not be relegated 

 10 a subordinate position. The thanks of all who had 

 the good fortune to sec this successful exhibition arc due 

 to the hon. secretaries, Mr. D. J. P. Berridge and Mr. 

 G. H. Martin, for their skilled cataloguing and organisa- 

 tion. 



The president of the association next year will be Prof. 

 H. E. Armstrong, F.R.S., who has given the society 

 much help since its foundation. G. F. D.aniell. 



VARIOVS INVERTEBRATES. ' 



'T'HE fourth volume of zoological reports on the Discovery 

 collections is full of interest and fine workmanship. 

 It well deserves its beauti'ul " get-up." Dr. H. F. Nier- 

 strasz describes the single Solenogaster in the collection — 

 naming it rather awkwardly iProneomenia discoveryi, 

 sp. n., and takes a survey of the family Proneomeniida?. 

 Prof. G. H. Carpenter gives an account of a remarkable 

 collembolon — Gomphiocephiiltis hodgsoni, g. et sp. ri. — 

 apparently an ancient connecting link between Podurids 

 and EntomobryidK. In contrast to these two cases of 

 sparse material, we find Mr. W. M. Tattersall reporting 

 on more than ten thousand schizopods, mostly referable, how- 

 ever, to one species. He and Mr. Holt have been able 

 to add ten to the previous list of seven South Polar 

 schizopods, and the present memoir as some interesting 

 results as regards life-history and disl. 'bution. The collec- 

 tion includes no species of schizopod common to both 

 polar regions, but all the genera save one, Antarctomysis, 

 are represented in northern waters. The northern species 

 are quite distinct from their southern allies. 



Similarly Dr. R. X. Wolfenden notes that the Antarctic 

 copepod fauna is distintt from that of Arctic seas, and 

 that the species which are typical of the Antarctic and most 

 numerous do not extend far into the southern Atlantic at 

 least. The Discovery, like the Gauss, was fortunate in 

 finding the interesting crinoid Promachocrinus, which was 

 one of the prizes of the voyage of the Challenger. Prof. 

 F. Jeffrey Bell deals with this re-discovered treasure, and 

 w'ith a number of interesting new forms ; he also directs 

 attention to the " bewildering " variability of several species, 

 e.g. Cycethra verrucosa. His memoir has numerous illus- 

 trations of a certain dry humour, as when he notes that 

 " even the most recent writers on echinoderms have not yet 

 promulgated the doctrine that difference in size is a specific 

 character, though I am not quite sure that in practice they 

 do not sometimes act as though they had." It has been 

 supposed that none of the Antarctic echinoderms has frec- 

 swimining larvne, but Prof. E. W. MacBride and Mr. J. C. 

 Simpson describe the plutei of a sea-urchin and an ophiuroid. 

 They also found an unsuspected brood-pouch in Cucumaria 

 croica. a well-known holothurian. 



Bell's .■Intedon adriani yielded two species of Myzostomum, 

 which Dr. Rudolf Ritter von Stummer-Traunfels' deals with. 



1 National Antarctic E.\pediiion, 19CX-4. Natural Historj-. Vol. iv., 

 Zo^logv. Pp. 280 ; $g plates. (Printed by OrJer of the Trustees of the 

 British Museum, 1908.) 



XO. 2047, VOL. 79] 



One is new, .1/. antarcticum, illustrating the common experi- 

 ence that every new species means another new species — 

 of parasite ; the other, M. cysticoliim, has been previously 

 recorded from Ross's Sea in the Antarctic, from off the 

 east coast of Japan, and from the tropical West Atlantic — 

 a remarkable distribution which finds its explanatiori in the 

 antiquity of the myzostomid group and in the uniformity 

 of deep-water conditions. The sipunculids are represented 

 by some thirty specimens. These Mr. W. F. Lanchester 

 describes under the title Phascolosoma socius, n. sp., and in 

 so doing makes some interesting critical remarks on the 

 relative value of the systematic specific characters in this 

 group. Two new sea-anemones are described by Mr. 

 J. A. Clubb, but the most interesting part of his report: is 

 the description of the sixteen " brood-pouches " of Cribrina 

 ocloradiata (Carlgren) from the Falkland Islands. Each 

 pouch arises as an invagination of the three layers of the 

 body-wall retains its external pore, and usually contam's 

 two emb'rvos. In reporting on the tetractinellid and 

 monaxonellid sponges, Mr. R. Kirkpatrick describe;s 

 twenty-two new species of the latter, and establishes four 

 genera. Some of the records of Antarctic distribution are 

 striking, e.g. that of Esperiopsis villosa, Carter, a form fre- 

 quently ' recorded from high northern latitudes, but only 

 from one intermediate station, viz. hi deep water off the 

 Azores ; or that of SphaerotyJiis capitatus (Vosmaer), an 

 Arctic form, not reported from any intermediate locality— as 

 yet. There' are no fewer than nineteen plates illustrating 

 this memoir, and there are twelve illustrating Mr. T. F. 

 jenkin's admirable account of the Calcarea, which teems 

 with novelties, two new families, six new genera, and new 

 species galore. Altogether, it cannot be doubted that the 

 Discovery was true to her name. 



THE DiNISH NORTH-E.iST GREENLAND 

 EXPEDITION. 

 THE account of the Danish Xorlh-east Greenland Expedi- 

 ■*■ lion given by Lieut. A. Trolle before the Royal 

 Geographical Society on December 7, 1908, is printed m 

 the January number of the society's journal, with several 

 instructive illustrations and a map. During this expedi- 

 tion which lasted two vears, the little-known fjords and 

 coast of north-east Greenland were explored, and much 

 other valuable scientific work was accomplished, though 

 the tragic death of the leader, Mylius Erichsen, and his 

 two companions, Hagen and Brbnlund, while on a sledge 

 expedition, gives melancholv interest to it. In his lecture 

 Lieut Trolle only referred in general terms to the results 

 of the scientific work carried on by the various observers 

 during the expedition, as these will be published later, 

 but the subjoined extracts from the paper, and the two 

 illustrations here reproduced by permission of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, will show that the expedition was 

 marked by notable achievements. 



The object of the expedition was to explore the last of 

 the hitherto unexplored parts of Greenland. The whole 

 of the west coast from 78° N. lat. to Cape Farewell is, 

 as is well known, under the administration of Denmark. 

 On the cast coast there is a Danish colony at Angmasalik, 

 while great parts of the coast had been mapped by Captains 

 Holm, Garde, Rvder, and Amdrup. The stretch from 72 

 to 77° X. lat. had been explored, chiefly by Clavenng and 

 Sabine, bv the Gcrmajua Expedition, by the English 

 whaler Scoresbv, and the Swedish explorer Nathorst. 

 From 77° X. lat. and farther north the country, how- 

 ever, was practicallv unexplored, though the Duke of 

 Orleans, on the Belgica. in 1905, had gone as far as 

 78i° N. lat., and from his ship had seen part of the outer 

 islands. . 



The north-west had chiefly been explored by British and 

 American expeditions, and the chief merit of the Danmark 

 Expedition is that it has now supplemented what was still 

 wanting in a knowledge of the outlines of Greenland by 

 exploring the whole of the north-east coast. 



The expedition consisted of twenty-eight members, and 

 a characteristic feature of its organisation was the un- 

 usuallv large scientific staff and proportionately small crew, 

 in the proper sense of the word. Thus there were six 



