July 21, 1910] 



NATURE 



;i 



The council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh hiis 

 awarded the following prizes : — (i) The Neill Prize for the 

 biennial period 1907-8, 1908-9, to Mr. F. J. Lewis, for his 

 papers in tho society's Transactions " On the Plant Remains 

 in the Scottij=h Peat Mosses." (2) The Keith Prize for the 

 biennials period 1907-S, 1908-9, to Dr. Wheelton Hind, for 

 a paper published in the Transactions of the society " On 

 the Lamellibranch and Gasteropod Fauna found in the 

 Millstone Grit of Scotland." 



The L'.S. Congress has passed a bill granting 10,000!. to 

 establish a biological laboratory for the study of diseases 

 of fish, especially those related to cancer. The station is, 

 says Science, to be established under the U.S. Fish 

 Commission. 



The committee ot the science section of the Japan-British 

 Exhibition has issued invitations to an inspection of the 

 collections at the White City to-morrow, July 22, at 

 3.30 p.m. 



The Geneva correspondent of the Times announces the 

 death, at sir^ty-four years of age, of Col. Georges Agassiz, 

 nephew of the famous naturalist. After completing his 

 Studies at the University of Lausanne, Col. Agassiz spent 

 several years in America with his uncle in scientific work 

 and researches. Recently he presented to the Cantonal 

 Museum at Lausanne his collection of butterflies, numbering 

 18,000 rare specimens. 



It is stated that a bill is to be introduced into the French 

 Parliament malcing Greenwich time compulsory instead of 

 Paris time, which differs from it by about nine minutes. 

 If the bill becomes law, France will thus be brought into 

 line with the zone system of referring time to meridians 

 differing by an integral number of hours from the Green- 

 wich meridian. It is thus not so much a question of one 

 country adopting the time standard of another as it is of 

 France accepting an international system of time recl^oning. 

 M. Millerand, Minister of Public VVorlis, has been asked 

 by the French Cabinet to support the proposal to substitute 

 Greenwich time for the time of the Paris meridian when 

 the matter is brought before parliament. 



In the House of Commons on Tuesday, a bill " to 

 prohibit the sale or exchange of the plumage and skins of 

 certain wild birds " w-as brought in and read for the first 

 time. In introducing the bill, Mr. P. Alden said that the 

 object of his bill is to try to prevent the absolute extinc- 

 tion of a few rare birds. The bill that passed the House 

 of Lords in 1905 prohibited the importation of the plumage 

 of altnost all birds. Mr. Alden includes in the schedule of 

 the present bill only a few birds that are on the point of 

 eiytinction, but which may be saved if this bill, or a bill 

 diafted by the Board of Trade, be passed into law within 

 the next year or two. There is a law in Australia to 

 prevent the export of the plumage of certain rare birds, one 

 of which is the emu, yet last year more than one thousand 

 emu skins were catalogued for sale in London — all 

 smuggled out of Australia. A number of species of 

 humming birds are almost extinct. In Trinidad the 

 number of species has been reduced from eighteen to five. 

 The skins of 25,000 humming birds have been catalogued 

 for sale in London during the past year. 



We learn from Science that the tJniversity of Southern 

 California, at Los .'Xngeles, has established recently a 

 marine biological station at Venice, Cal. The station is on 

 the nearest beach to the urtiversity, some thirteen miles 

 distant. It comprises an aquarium consisting of forty 

 tanks with running sea water, and a series of laboratories 

 NO. 2125, VOL. 84] 



for class work and research. The laboratories, which face 

 the north, are provided with sea water and fresh water. 

 The station is designed to afford : (i) facilities for demon- 

 stration to classes studying marine life ; (2) opportunity for 

 the students of the university to carry on advanced work in 

 marine biology ; and (3) a limited number of research 

 laboratories, some of which are available, without cost, to 

 investigators who are prepared to carry on research work 

 in some of the phases of marine biology. 



The programme of papers and of demonstrations drawn 

 up for the International Zoological Congress, to be held 

 at Graz next month, includes a great variety of subjects. 

 Prof. Boveri promises an address on Anton Dohrn ; Prof. 

 Delage will give an account of experimental partheno- 

 genesis. Embryology will be treated by Profs. Lee, Julin, and 

 Hubrecht. Tile geographical distribution of several groups 

 of animals will be discussed, more particularly the cave- 

 fauna of Carinthia. Prof. Gaupp will deal with the 

 affinities of the Mammalia, Dr. Keller with the origins of 

 domesticated races, and there are also many other memoirs 

 promised that will attract workers in prot6zoology, genetics, 

 and experimental embrvology. The Graz meeting should 

 prove a very successful one. 



It is officially announced that a submarine telephone 

 cable of a novel type was recently laid across the Channel 

 from Dover to Cape Grisnez by the British Post Office, in 

 order to improve telephonic communication between this 

 country and France, and also to determine the limits of 

 possible improvement by the use of a new type, with a 

 view' to its application to telephonic communication between 

 places which have hitherto been beyond telephonic range. 

 This is the first cable of the kind laid in tidal waters and 

 across the open sea, although a similar cable was pre- 

 viously laid in the Lake of Constance. The new cable will 

 be brought into regular use as soon as the corresponding 

 French land lines are completed, but the tests so far made 

 have given very satisfactory results. The electrical con- 

 ditions of submarine cables make telephonic communication 

 through them difficult as compared with such communica- 

 tion carried on over land lines, and any improvement in 

 their efficiency will have a marked effect in extending the 

 distance through which telephonic speech is possible, and 

 this more especially when the cable forms a considerable 

 part of the total length of line through which communica- 

 tion has to be effected. In the case of the new cable just 

 laid, the efficiency has been increased more than three 

 times beyond th& value which it would have if it had not 

 been specially treated. This improved efficiency is due to 

 the insertion of " loading coils " in the cable at intervals of 

 one nautical mile. The coils reduce the distortion of the 

 current impulses which correspond to the spoken sounds, 

 and so render the speech more distinct. 



In the fourth number of the fifty-sixth volume of 

 the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Captain F. 

 Schmitter, of the Medical Corps, U.S. Army, publishes a 

 set of rough notes on the customs and folk-lore of the 

 natives of the Upper Yukon, Alaska. It is remarkable 

 that thex are partly in the age of stone and partly in 

 that of copper. The hammers which they use to break up 

 bones for cooking and for making arrow-heads are rude 

 lumps of stone, and of the same material are the axes 

 which, at any rate up to quite recent times, they employed 

 for cutting down trees ; but their hunting-knives are of 

 bone, ground flat, and sharp on both sides, or of copper 

 welded in a similar fashion. Their chief weapon, the 

 spear, is made by binding a hunting-knife of caribou 

 horn to a pole 6 feet long. 



