460 
NATURE 
[June 24, 1915 


the initials A.R. attached to their reagents imply ] land is one of the counties in which the pine marten 
that they are Absolutely Right. 
Tue National Geographic Magazine for May again 
publishes a valuable contribution to the study of the 
great war by two timely articles. Mr. H. G. Dwight 
writes on the gates to the Black Sea: the Dardanelles 
and the Bosphorus, and Mr. E. A. Grosvenor on Con- 
stantinople and Sancta Sophia. The letterpress is 
interesting, but it is little more than an accompaniment 
to a fine series of photographs which illustrate in an 
admirable way the difficult conditions under which the 
present campaign is being conducted. 
So much has been written on the subject of eoliths 
and of the Piltdown skull, that, in the existing state of 
the very active controversy which is being conducted 
on these questions, it is, for the present, inadvisable 
to discuss them in these columns. Meanwhile, the 
attention of British archaeologists may be directed to 
an important memoir, occupying sixty-three pages, 
contributed by M. M. Boule to the issue of L’Anthro- 
pologie for January-April, 1915. He sums up the 
latter question by remarking :—‘‘Les documents de 
Piltdown sont malheureusement des documents incom- 
plets. Leur interpretation est encore douteuse sur 
des points essentiels. Ils constituent, malgré tout, 
une découverte des plus importantes et des plus in- 
structives.”’ 
In a paper read before the Royal Society of Medicine 
(Pathological Section, May, 1915) Dr. Charlton Bas- 
tian directs attention to the use of tyrosine as an aid 
in the demonstration of the “‘de novo” origin of living 
organisms (see Nature, December 14, 1914, p. 466, and 
January 22, p. 581). He finds that a o-o5 per cent. 
solution of tyrosine in the proportion of thirty drops 
to each fluid ounce of his culture fluids accelerates the 
appearance of the organisms. The tyrosine should 
be added after the culture fluids are ripe for examina- 
tion, the mixture being examined after three to four 
weeks’ further incubation subsequent to the addition. 
When added at the time of preparation of the culture 
tubes, this action was not observed. 
Tue additions to the menagerie of the Zoological 
Society of London during the month of May numbered 
136, among which were four Siamese fighting-fish 
(Betta pugnax) from Siam, new to the collection. 
Having regard to the abnormal conditions under 
which we are now living it is gratifying to notice that 
while the receipts for admission during this year, up 
to the end of May, show a decrease of 1189l., as com- 
pared with the corresponding period in 1914, there is 
an increase of 266]., as compared with the correspond- 
ing period of the previous ten years. 
In the columns of the Times of June 17 especial 
attention was directed to the fact that a litter of pine 
martens, ‘‘one of the rarest animals of the British 
Isles,’ was taken on June 15 among the crags below 
Honister Pass, in the Lake District. ‘‘Cumberland,”’ 
we were informed, ‘“‘is not even mentioned in the 
text-books on Carnivora as one of the few counties 
in which the pine marten is still to be found.” If this 
be so, then the text-books need revision, for Cumber- 
NO. 2382, VOL. 95] 

may now most certainly be found, though even here 
it is rare. 
Dr. G. F. Kunz, president of the New York 
Academy of Sciences, has in preparation a volume on 
“Ivory and Elephants,’ and asks us to appeal to such 
of our readers as may be able to help him for detailed 
measurements of the tusks of the mastodon, mam- 
moth, and elephant. He requires the length of the 
tusk along the outside curve; the circumference taken 
at the middle; the circumference and diameter at the 
socket; and the length of the base within the socket. 
Dr. Kunz appears already to have collected all the 
available published records, and hopes for help now 
from those who may possess as yet unrecorded speci- 
mens. Any information will be gratefully accepted, 
and duly acknowledged, and should be addressed to 
him at 409 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
Two papers which will be highly acceptable to 
ornithologists appear in British Birds for June. In 
the first of these Miss Maud D. Haviland records 
some brief notes on the breeding habits of the grey 
phalarope, which she had the good fortune to en- 
counter at Golchika, on the river Yenesei, Siberia. 
Her notes, illustrated by some most excellent photo- 
graphs, are confined to the incubation period, and 
show that while incubation is performed by the male 
alone, both sexes unite in the care of the young. 
Another point worthy of note concerns the coloration, 
which, though vivid in this species, when in the 
breeding dress, is yet highly protective. The second 
paper contains records of the recovery of a number 
of birds, ringed and released by members of the 
British bird-marking scheme. While most were re- 
covered at or near the place of their birth, one or two 
had wandered far afield, as in the case of a song- 
thrush ringed as a nestling at The Fylde, Lancashire, 
on April 4, 1914, and recovered at Pontillado, Spain, 
on November 18. A whinchat, marked as a nest- 
ling at Ingleton, Yorkshire, on June 15, 1914, was 
recovered on October 4 at Loule, Portugal. 
STUDENTS of magmatic differentiation in igneous 
rocks will find much to interest them in Mr. B. J. 
Jayaram’s discussion of the charnockite series in 
south-west Mysore (Records, Mysore Geological De- 
partment, vol. xii., p. 77). 
Mr. H. Suter, in Paleontological Bulletin No. 2 of 
the New Zealand Geological Survey, has revised the 
type-material of the Tertiary Mollusca of New Zealand, 
and the drawings prepared for F. W. Hutton’s cata- 
logues are now for the first time published. All such 
work tends to reduce to order the conflicting classifica- 
tions that hamper stratigraphy in New Zealand. 
Scientia, the international scientific review, contains 
in its May issue three articles by eminent politicians 
on the catastrophic state of Europe; but there is also 
an interesting review in French by M. P. Rudzki, of 
Cracow, on recent theories of the origin of continents, 
including the work of Messrs. Jeans and Love. 
Tue American Journal of Science for May, 1915 
(vol xxxix., No. 223), contains several palzonto- 
logical papers. We notice here one by Mr. E. W. 


