154 
NATURE 
[ApRIL 8, 1915 


A good map is included showing the author’s route. 
Of the 470 species collected, thirty-three, or about 
7 per cent. of the whole, are endemic to the region, 
2 per cent. are purely Ceylon species, and ro per cent. 
are peculiar to the South Indian peninsula. Legu- 
minose, with fifty-five species, and Rubiacez, with 
thirty-eight, are the most extensively represented 
natural orders. One new species, Senecio calcadensis 
—a composite—is described and figured. 
Tue Missouri Botanical Garden completes its 
first volume with several interesting papers. Mr. 
E. A. Burt contributes a third paper on _ the 
Thelephoraceze of North America, and _ details 
twenty-one species of Cyphella) Mr. R. R. 
Gates publishes an account on some CEnotheras from 
Cheshire and Lancashire, with three well-executed 
plates. The work represents the results of cultivation 
and hybridisation both at the Missouri Botanical 
Garden and the John Innes Institution at Merton, and 
details of the new forms, both mutants and hybrids, 
are given. In the same part Messrs. Greenman and 
Thompson describe and illustrate new species of 
flowering plants from the south-western United States 
and Mexico. 
Tue first number of the Kew Bulletin for 1915 is 
mainly occupied by a paper on the semi-parasitic 
genus Thesium in South Africa, which is illustrated 
by two plates showing the different types of 
floral morphology. The genus which exhibits its 
maximum development in South Africa has been 
studied in connection with the preparation of the 
“Flora Capensis.”” Some 128 species are found to 
be represented at the Cape, belonging to four well- 
marked floral types or sections. Two of these, the 
sections Penicillata, in which the tuft of hairs behind 
the anther remains free and not attached to the 
anther, and Annulata, where a ring of hairs at the 
throat of the perianth replaces the tufts of hairs behind 
the anthers, are peculiar to the Cape region. A fresh 
description of the genus is given, a key to all the 
South African species, and fifty-two diagnoses of new 
species are published by Mr. A. W. Hill. The dis- 
tribution of the genus is remarkable. The majority of 
species are African, but several are spread over 
Europe and temperate Asia, while two occur in Brazil 
and one in Australia. 
THE permanence of the aroma of hops of a par- 
ticular variety when grown in another locality has 
long been a vexed question. Mr. Johs. Schmidt has 
been carrying out investigations at Carlsberg, and has 
satisfactorily proved that if pure lines of hops with 
the “Saaz” aroma from Bohemia, or Oregon cluster 
hops, with the distinctive and peculiar ‘‘ American ” 
aroma, are grown in Denmark, they do not lose their 
characteristic qualities. _ The experiment of cross- 
fertilising these varieties with pollen of wild Danish 
hops has also been made, and it was found that a pro- 
portion of $4 the offspring exhibited the character- 
istic aromas of the female parents, though the plants 
carrying the aroma did not necessarily retain the 
external appearance peculiar to the mother plant. 
These latter results are similar to those 
NO. 2371, VOL. 95! 

cently published by Mr. E. S. Salmon from 
crossing female Oregon cluster by English male 
plants. The series of experiments suggest an. in- 
teresting line of Mendelian research. Mr. Schmidt's 
paper appears in Comptes rendus des travaux du 
Laboratoire de Carlsberg (11me volume, 3me livraison, 
1915). 
Pror. A. P. BricHam’s presidential address to the 
Association of American Geographers, delivered at the 
meeting in Chicago at the end of last year, is pub- 
lished in Science of February 19. Broadly speaking, 
his theme was that the geographer’s “‘ goal is broad 
generalisation. But the formulation of general laws 
is difficult and the results insecure until we have a 
body of concrete and detailed observations.’ Prof. 
Brigham’s geographical keynote is environment, and 
certainly in this study the generalisations which have 
hitherto preceded detailed observations have presented 
many pitfalls. Prof. Brigham’s address was full of 
| suggestions for detailed research in various fields. In 
an early paragraph he referred to the symposium on 
the trend of modern geography conducted by G. B. ~ 
Roorbach, and published in the Bulletin of the 
American Geographical Society for November, 1914. 
This marshalling of the views of some thirty geo- 
graphers, mainly American, but some British, pointed 
to the same conclusion. It perhaps gave unfair 
weight to a particular aspect of geographical opinion, 
inasmuch as fully two-thirds of those whose views 
were given were professors or other teachers, and the 
mathematical and cartographical department of the 
subject received rather scanty treatment. This apart, 
however, most of them expressed their ideas. of the 
functions of geography in a variety of carefully 
worded formule all of much the same meaning. In 
indicating fields of research, they were less successful 
than Prof. Brigham, and some suggestions (in the 
direction of climatology, for instance) travelled well 
outside the geographical scope. 
Dr. Bruce and Dr. Rudmose Brown gave an 
account to the Royal Geographical Society on March 
22 of Dr. Bruce’s expedition to Spitsbergen in 1914. 
Its object was to investigate Stor Fiord, the great 
bay to the south-east of Spitsbergen. Difficulties due 
to the war seriously interfered with their plans, and 
most of the time was spent in geological work on 
Prince Charles Foreland, the island off the western 
coast of Spitsbergen. Most of the paper was devoted 
to a discussion of the ownership of Spitsbergen. The 
authors of the papers claimed that the archipelago 
should be British in virtue of prior claim. After. the 
abandonment of the whaling fishery, the country was 
long left derelict, but during the last forty years 
claims for its possession have been advanced by - 
Russia, Norway, and Sweden. In 1909 the United 
States suggested the establishment of an American 
protectorate. In 1912 a conference between Norway, 
Sweden, and Russia agreed that Spitsbergen should 
remain neutral territory and be jointly administered 
by those three Powers. Drs. Bruce and Brown main- 
tain that this agreement would deprive Britain of any 
| voice in the future of Spitsbergen, despite her right 
re- | of ownership due to annexation, exploration, and pre- 
