NATURE 



[July 6, 191 1 



congress is to be divided into nine sections, as follows : — 

 Group A : General. — Section i. Town-planning (building, 

 forms of country settlement, garden cities, width of streets, 

 heighl oi building), ii. Construction <>f buildings (planning, 

 distribution of space, building material, foundations, base- 

 ment, kitchens, lavatories, floors and ceilings, staircases, 

 lifts and roofs). iii. Internal arrangements (lighting, 

 heating, ventilation, furnishing), iv. Sanitation (cleaning, 

 removal of refuse, disinfection). Group B : Dwelling 

 Houses. — v. Dwelling houses in towns. vi. Dwelling 

 houses in the country. Group C : Special Kinds of Dwell- 

 ings.— v\\. School buildings, boarding-schools, prisons, 

 hotels, lodging-houses, hospitals, convalescent homes, 

 baths, churches, theatres, and other public buildings. 

 viii. Work-rooms and workshops, means of communication 

 and transit (railways, tramways, ships, vehicles, &c). 

 Group D : ix. Legislation, executive, statistics, &c. Prof. 

 Renk is the president of the congress, and Dr. Hopf the 

 general secretary, and all inquiries should be addressed to 

 him at Dresden, Reichsstrasse, 4. Other communications 

 and money-orders should be addressed : Kongresskanzlei, 

 Zimmer 156, neues Rathaus, Dresden. 



So far as is at present known, no fresh cases of plague 

 among the rats have been discovered in the last few days 

 :it rli- riverside wharves at Wapping and Shadwell (see 

 Nature, June 29, p. 502). The Times special corre- 

 spondent in the issue of June 2S pleads for an organised 

 inquiry into the incidence of plague among the rats in 

 England. Me points out that in East Anglia, where plague 

 was present last September, no action had been taken by 

 al el Lhe rural district councils, and that in London 

 only spasmodic attempts at rat destruction have been 

 undertaken. He also condemns as unwise the attitude of 

 the Local Government Board in attempting to suppress 

 knowledge of these recurring outbreaks of plague among 

 the rats. No other country has so much at stake as Great 

 Britain, with her vast carrying trade, and a persistent, 

 elaborate, and prolonged inquiry into the radius of rat- 

 infection is urgently called for. 



The issues of Travaux de Soc. Imp. dcs Naturalisies de 

 St. Petersbourg — C.R. des Sciences from January to March 

 contain several articles on various groups of invertebrates, 

 for the most part in Russian, notably two by Mr. K. 

 Derjugin on the scientific results of the cruise of the 

 schooner Alexander Koivalevsky in the Kola-Fjord during 



I'K'S-C,- 



To the Sitsungsberichle of the Vienna Academy of 

 Sciences for December, 1910 (vol. cxix., part i.), Mr. J. 

 Tandler contributes an important memoir on the pectoral 

 muscles of mammals, based on MS. left at his death by 

 the late Dr. E. Zuckerkandl. The anatomy and relation- 

 ship^ of these muscles are described in representatives of 

 the various orders, from the opossum to the gorilla and 

 man. 



In reference to the paragraph on African dinosaurs on 



p. 3 1 Nature of May iS, Mr. F. A. Lucas writes to 



saj that the longest rib of a dinosaur from the western 



United States, described in 1904 by Riggs under the name 



of Brachiosaurus altithorax, measures 274 m., or some- 



v hat longer than the corresponding bone of the African 



species. The length of the femur is 2-03 m., and that of 



tmerus 204 m. The latter is a little less than the 



length of the African humerus, but serves to show that 



lie lemur is not necessarily the longest of the limb bones. 



In Mr. Lucas's opinion Brachiosaurus and the African 



r may prove to be related. 



Ml '. 2175, VOL. 87] 



The migration of the godwit from eastern Siberia to 

 New Zealand forms the subject of an article by Mr. R. W. 

 Reid in the July number of Chambers's Journal. The 

 birds leave the extreme north of New Zealand earlv in 

 April, and reappear usually in the first weeks of October ; 

 and they appear to spend a couple of months in the far 

 north, four months in travelling, and the remaining half 

 of the year in their southern home. They thus enjoy 

 two summers in succession. When they arrive in New 

 Zealand the godwits are in their winter plumage, but those 

 which remain when their fellows fly north assume the 

 brilliant summer dress, although they never breed. These 

 non-migrating birds thus wear a summer livery in winter. 

 It would be interesting to ascertain whether the Antarctic 

 affords suitable breeding-grounds for the species. 



Musk-rats (genus Fiber) form an exclusively North 

 American group of rodents, with a distribution extending 

 from the neighbourhood of Bering Strait to Arizona and 

 the Gulf of Mexico. With such a range, it is remarkable 

 that they have not hitherto been detected in north-eastern 

 Asia, either in the living or fossil condition. Full details 

 of their taxonomy, distribution, habits, and commi 

 importance are given by Mr. N. Hollister in a memoir 

 published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as No. 32 

 of the North American Fauna. The typical species is 

 divisible into a number of local races, but the Newfound- 

 land musquash (/•'. obscurus) is recognised as a distinct 

 species on account of its inferior size, relatively large hind 

 feet, dark colour, and small and weak skull and teeth. A 

 form from a small area on the coast of Louisiana is like- 

 wise ranked as a species (F. rivalicius), although it differs 

 from the typical F. zibethicus mainly by its somewhat 

 inferior dimensions, duller colour, and darker under-parts. 

 Three extinct species are recognised. In spite of incessant 

 pursuit for the sake of their fur, which is steadily increas- 

 ing in value, musk-rats continue to hold their own, and, 

 according to the author, will probably become in the 

 future the chief American fur-producer. 



Inheritance of heterostylism and colour in Primula 

 sinensis have provided the subject of extensive experi- 

 ments by Mr. R. P. Gregory, who presents his latest 

 results in The Journal of Genetics (vol. i., No. 2). Colour 

 has to be considered independently for the flowers and 

 stems ; when absent from the flowers they are white, and 

 when absent from the stems they are green. Colour may 

 also be distinguished as full or pale. Full-coloured flowers 

 are only produced on deeply coloured stems, although 

 in the horticultural class " Sirdar," where the petals are 

 full-coloured but the pigment occurs in dots, the stems are 

 green. Full colours are dominant to pale ; magentas are 

 dominant to reds, and both colours to blue ; whites may 

 be dominant or recessive to colours. 



A more than ordinary amount of critical investigation 

 has been undertaken by Dr. A. S. Hitchcock and Miss 

 A. Chase in the compilation of the monograph on North 

 American species of Panicum, published as vol. xv. of 

 the Contributions from the United States National 

 Herbarium, as may be surmised from the list of herbaria 

 consulted, and is confirmed by examination of the details 

 supplied. The authors take a restricted view of the genus, 

 which is founded on the species Panicum miliaceum. In 

 addition to the section of Eu-Panicum, under which 

 seventy-five species are collected, a small subgenus Pauro- 

 chaetium with six species, and a large subgenus Dichant- 

 helium, comprising no species, are segregated. The two 

 larger sections an again subdivided into groups named 

 after a leading species. Members of the Dichanthelium 



