37 o 



NATURE 



[September 14, 191 1 



bovine tuberculosis were specifically different. [*h< facl ol 

 imparative immunity of calves, cattle, and pigs to 



human tutw-rele bacillus enabled them to realise how much 

 they were indebted to the labours of the Royal Com- 

 mission. It misled Koch ; it would have misled many less 

 experienced investigators ; and but for the appointment of 

 the commission there would have been a series of repeti- 

 tions of Koch's experiments under restricted conditions 

 and an accumulation of testimony that he was quite right 

 in declaring that bovine and human tuberculosis were 

 distinct diseases, followed by a mischievous relaxation of 

 the measures directed to prevent the communication of 

 bovine tuberculosis to human beings and the loss of 

 innumerable lives. The commission fulfilled its mission, 

 and there is now irrefragable evidence that mammals and 

 man can be reciprocally infected with tuberculosis, with 

 the prospect of the introduction of stringent administrative 

 measures for preventing the propagation of tuberculosis 

 among human beings by means of food. Bovine animals 

 are only comparatively, not completely, immune to the 

 human tubercle bacillus, and human beings are notably 

 susceptible to the bovine tubercle bacillus, which produces 

 in them even the pulmonary forms of the disease. He 

 went on to emphasise the necessity of general legislation, 

 applicable to the whole country, to cope with the evil of 

 tuberculous milk supply. 



September this year is proving exceptionally warm, and 

 the record summer is extending its influence into the early 

 autumn. On seven days out of the first twelve in 

 September the shade temperature at Greenwich has ex- 

 ceeded 80°, which brings the total days with So and above 

 to forty-four for the summer so far, which is four more 

 than any previous record during the last seventy years. 

 The average maximum temperature for the first eight days 

 of the month is 2° higher than any previous record for 

 the same period. The maximum temperature at Greenwich 

 on September 7 was 92 , and on September 8 94° ; the 

 latter is 2° higher than any previous temperature so late 

 in September. There have already been seven days during 

 the summer with the temperature above 90 , and 1868 is 

 the only other summer in the past seventy years with an 

 equal number of hot days. The aggregate rainfall at 

 Greenwich from July 1 to September 12 is 1-62 inches, 

 which is 30 per cent, of the average, and rain has only 

 fallen on twelve days. When a complete discussion is 

 made of the very remarkable summer, it will be full of 

 interest. 



The Parliamentary report of the Meteorological Com- 

 mittee for the year ended March 31 shows that the busi- 

 ness has been exceptionally important ; the office was 

 transferred to South Kensington, where a museum of 

 instruments and objects of interest, and a small physical 

 laboratory, have been provided. The transfer to the com- 

 mittee of the administration of the Kew Physical Observa- 

 tory and of the magnetic observatory at Eskdalemuir (to 

 which we have before referred) was carried out. In 

 addition to many useful official publications, we note that 

 Dr. Shaw has completed a book (more particularly for the 

 use of aeronauts) on " Forecasting Weather," which 

 embodies the results of the work of the office in connec- 

 tion with dynamical meteorology during the last ten vears. 

 The reports of the operations of all the various depart- 

 ments exhibit great activity. Upwards of 3000 registers 

 of various classes relating to the meteorology of the ocean 

 received. The information has been utilised in the 

 preparation, inter alia, of the monthly meteorological 

 charts of the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans (to > 

 NO. 2185, VOL. 87] 



we have frequently referred). Considerable improvements- 

 have been made in the maps and tables of the Daily 

 Weather Report ; several stations in or near London are 

 now included in a separate table. The usual forecasts 

 have been supplemented by a " further outlook " giving 

 the prospects for a longer period when practicable. The 

 success of these and of the usual forecasts and storm 

 warnings during the year was very satisfactory ; wireless 

 telegrams from the mercantile marine were generally re- 

 ceived too late for the chart of the current day, but were 

 nevertheless frequently of great assistance to the fore- 

 caster. The investigation of the upper air by kites and 

 balloons has been regularly carried on ; a systematic 

 attempt was made to ascertain the effect of solar radiation 

 on the instruments, &c. The result, so far as it goes, is- 

 said to show that distinctly higher temperatures are re- 

 corded while the sun is shining. 



To the first part of the Bergcns Museums Aarbok for 

 191 1 Captain H. Negaard contributes a paper on the 

 earliest population of the Hardanger Field district of south- 

 western Norway, with descriptions and illustrations of their 

 works, weapons, and implements. Among the former, the 

 abundance of remains of Megalithic structures of the Stone 

 age is specially noticeable. In a second paper Mr. J. A. 

 Grieg records the vertebrate remains found among these 

 " boplader," which include those of trout, ptarmigan, 

 willow-grouse, plover, reindeer, and lemming. 



Dr. Florentino Ameghino emphasises his views on 

 early human development in South America in a paper 

 entitled " La antigiiedad del hombre en la Republica 

 Argentina " (Atlantida, tomo iii., 1911). The strati- 

 graphical studies of Wilckens are quaintly described as- 

 formed in the cabinet during " un acceso de ameghinofobia 

 aguda." The paper is mainly an answer to the work of 

 A. Mochi in the Archivio per I'antropologia, in which the 

 age of the beds containing human remains is held to be 

 in accord with what is known in Europe, while doubt is 

 thrown upon the materials brought as evidence from under- 

 lying strata. Ameghino claims certain diminutive eoliths 

 from the South American Eocene as having been fashioned 

 by the precursors of man. His general position is that 

 Argentina may be able to show what European strati- 

 graphy fails to prove, and this, of course, no scientific 

 geologist can overlook. 



In an article on the adaptation of the Primates, pub- 

 lished in The American Naturalist for August, Prof. F. B. 

 Loomis expresses the opinion that the group, of which the 

 earliest known representatives are the Lower (Wasatch) 

 Eocene Anaptomorphidaj and Notharctid^, originated in 

 the forest tract north of Hudson Bay, which then enjoyed 

 a tropical climate. " From this ancestral centre the first 

 Primates, along with other groups, migrated in all direc- 

 tions possible. . . . This opened three paths, one south 

 into America, a second south-easterly into England and 

 France, and a third south-westerly into Asia, thence ever 

 southerly across China and India and along the Indo- 

 Madagascar isthmus (or chain of islands) to Madagascar 

 and Africa." At an early date the group became differ- 

 entiated into fruit-eaters (Anaptomorphida;, followed by the 

 modern Tarsiidae) and general feeders (Notharctidie — giving 

 rise to the tropical American Cebida? — and the European 

 Adupida;, from which are derived modern Old World apes 

 and monkeys, while a side-branch gave rise to lemurs). 

 The Cebida; probably reached their present home from the 

 north during the Eocene, while the Old World Primates 

 travelled from America via Bering Strait, and made their 

 way south through eastern Asia to Madagascar and 



