182 
NAT Otis 
[APRIL 15, 1915 

del Entomologo,”’ written by Father Navas, and pub- 
lished last year by the Catholic Press of Barcelona. It 
contains concise directions to the beginner for collect- 
ing, preserving, and classifying insects. Neither old 
nor new methods have been overlooked, for a well- 
worn figure of a collector ‘‘beating’’ into a venerable 
type of umbrella faces a sectional drawing of the 
modern ‘‘ Berlese funnel,” 
Dr. RoiF WirTTING continues to contribute a great 
deal of most valuable hydrographical information on 
the sea-waters in the neighbourhood of Finland. In 
addition to the Jahrbuch, 1913, of the Finlandische 
Hydrographisch-Biologische Untersuchungen, No. 13, 
which contains the details of salinity, temperature, and 
current measurements obtained on the seasonal cruises 
and at particular stations, we have received special 
papers by him on the optical and chemical examina- 
tion of the water samples and on the methods of deter- 
mining traces of ammonia in sea-water, as well as a 
paper by Prof. K. M Levander on the plankton of the 
Tavastfjard. The oceanographers of Finland are to 
be congratulated on the regularity and persistence 
with which this work has been maintained for a num- 
ber of years upon a uniform plan, a persistence which 
has obtained for them a place in the forefront of the 
European countries which have been engaged in 
marine researches in recent years. 
WE have received from the British Museum (Natural 
History) a report by Dr. S. F.. Harmer on Cetacea 
stranded on the British coasts during 1914. The 
arrangements made by the Board of Trade for report- 
ing such strandings a couple of years or so ago 
have been continued, and in some respects amplified, 
a notable innovation being the dispatch of the lower 
jaws of the smaller species, and of a plate of whale- 
bone in the case of the baleen-whales. Up to the 
outbreak of the war returns were received regularly, 
but afterwards, when coastguards had their hands 
full of other duties, there was a great falling-off in the 
returns, this being particularly the case during the 
period from August to mid-October, when the items 
should have been at their maximum. The whole 
annual record of strandings amounted only to fifty- 
seven, as compared with seventy-six in the previous 
year. It may now be regarded as definitely estab- 
lished that the porpoise is by far the most abundant 
of the smaller cetaceans visiting the British coasts, 
and it may be added that the series of lower jaws of 
this species received at the museum has enabled Dr. 
Harmer to make some valuable observations with 
regard to the rate of growth, wear, and variation 
of the teeth—such observations indicating that a so- 
called species founded on such differences is invalid. 
Four records of the dolphin and the same number of 
the white-beaked dolphin are included in the list, 
which also comprises a Sowerby’s beaked whale taken 
alive in September on the Wexford coast. 
A RECENTLY published number of the Indian Journal 
of Medical Research (vol. ii., No. 3) begins with a 
memoir by Mrs. Helen Adie on the sporogony of 
Haemoproteus columbae, the ‘‘halteridium”’ parasite 
of the blood of the pigeon. The development was 
NO. 2372, VOL. 95 | 


studied in Lynchia maura, the hippoboscid fly which 
is a common parasite of pigeons, and well known to 
be the invertebrate host of the Hzmoproteus. 
Whereas, however, previous investigators had not 
been able to find any stage of the parasite more ad- 
vanced than the ‘“ookinete’’ or ‘‘vermicule”’ in the 
Lynchia, and were of opinion that the parasite was 
inoculated into the pigeon by the fly in this phase of 
its development, Mrs. Adie has found that the 
ookinete-stage is succeeded by a process of sporogony 
exactly similar to that of the malarial parasites, with 
oocyst and sporozoite stages, ending with vast num- 
bers of sporozoites in the salivary glands of the fly. 
The author states that no blood-parasites other than 
the Haemoproteus were to be found in the pigeons; 
this statement, if correct, disposes of the obvious 
criticism, that the sporogony seen might be that of 
some Proteosoma parasite of the birds. Mrs. Adie is 
much to be congratulated on having filled an impor- 
tant gap in the knowledge of the development of these 
parasites, and on having discovered a series of stages 
‘which had escaped the notice of such competent ob- 
servers as the Sergent brothers and Aragao. It is to 
be regretted that all recent writers on the develop- 
ment of malarial parasites use the term “‘zygote’’ in 
an entirely incorrect manner; the term should be used 
to mean the body formed by the union of the two 
gametes, and should therefore be applied, in the pre- 
sent case, to the rounded stage preceding the ookinete, 
and not to the oocyst-stages following the ookinete- 
stage. 
ATTENTION may usefully be directed to a paper on the 
care of old trees, illustrated by plates, in the Kew 
Bulletin (No. 2, 1915), since this is a subject often 
sadly neglected by those in charge of our parks and 
gardens which contain historic or interesting trees. 
The questions of breakages by wind, injuries by 
fungi, proper watering, feeding, and mulching, and 
the proper treatment of wounds are dealt with fully. 
Mr. T. Petcu contributes to the Annals of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (No. vii., vol. v.), a useful 
preliminary note on the genera Hypocrella and Ascher- 
sonia, fungi parasitic on scale insects which he has 
studied in connection with the type specimens pre- 
served in the principal European herbaria. As a 
result of his investigations Mr. Petch has been able 
to clear the ground for his full paper, to be illustrated, 
we hope, with the drawings, by setting out the 
synonymy of the species examined. The species of 
the western hemisphere, with the one exception of 
Hypocrella camerunensis, found in Brazil and Africa, 
are distinct from those of the eastern hemisphere. 
Tue description of new species of plants from China 
occupies the greater part of No. xxxviii. of vol. viii. 
of the Notes of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 
and are largely the result of Forrest’s and Ward’s 
collecting in western China. Among them are six 
new Rhododendrons to swell the long list of this im- 
portant Chinese genus, and one of them, R. Wardii, 
W. W. Smith, with its large flowers, ‘‘slightly fleshy 
bright yellow with the faintest touch of crimson on 
interior at baso,”’ fills the heart of the cultivator with 
