iS 



NATURE 



[March 6, 19 13 



ing call ium carbonate. His pathological work was 

 all undertaken with reference to the problem of cancer, 

 lb commenced by a study of the effect of transplant- 

 ing tissues in invertebrates, and subsequently extended 

 his researches to fishes, where he investigated the 

 effect of repeated stimulation of the tissue by chemical 

 reagents. During the short time he held the John 

 Lucas Walker studentship he was engaged, with 

 much success, in the culture of tissues from the frog 

 and the dogfish in plasma outside the body of the 

 animal. 



A paper read recently before the Royal Statistical 

 Society by Prof. E. C. K. Gonner, on the population 

 of England in the eighteenth century, was of interest 

 both historically and geographically. In the first part 

 an analysis, in considerable detail, was furnished of 

 the sources available for estimating the population 

 before the "unfortunate superstition which delayed the 

 taking of a census " was removed from the public 

 mind, and of the controversy which occupied the 

 pens of contemporary investigators. By means which 

 he fully set forth, the author then arrived at con- 

 clusions which justified him 'in presenting compara- 

 tive maps of the density of population in England in 

 1700, 1750, and 1801, which, while greatly generalised 

 and based only on county areas, show several features 

 of the highest interest. To take one case, the early 

 1 I iblishment of a dense population in Lancashire, 

 contrasted with its later establishment in the midland 

 industrial area, and still later in the West Riding 

 of Yorkshire, forms a series of facts which clearly 

 emerges on the maps. Throughout the period there 

 is visible the tendency of the present industrial areas 

 to take their places above the purely agricultural 

 areas in the list of relative density of population, 

 although the population of the agricultural areas by 

 no n-Kins declined. The results so accurately parallel 

 the history of these areas at the period that the 

 author's conclusions and his use of authorities are 

 cli arly justified. 



No. 17 of the sixtieth volume of Smithsonian Mis- 

 cellaneous Collections is devoted to notes by Mr. A. H. 

 < lark on the American species of Peripatus, with a 

 list of the known New World representatives of the 

 group. 



The Agricultural Department of India has issued 

 a further instalment, in its Memoirs, of the life- 

 histories of Indian insects; this contribution, which 

 Mr. G. R. Dutt, dealing with parasitic and 

 other Hymenoptera. In the case of some of the 

 Mutillids, or "velvet ants," it has not yet been ascer- 

 tained how many species they may affect parasitically, 

 and as this may have an important economic bearing 

 inquiries are to be set on foot with the object of filling 

 this cap in our knowledge. 



In an interesting and fully illustrated report of an 

 expedition to Arctic America, published in the January 

 issue of The American Museum Journal, Mr. R. M. 

 Anderson states that the musk-ox was exterminated by 

 Eskimo in the neighbourhood of Franklin Bay about 

 fourteen years ago, and that the species is also prac- 

 tically killed off in the district around the east end of 

 NO. 2262, VOL. 91] 



Great Bear Lake. The barren-ground caribou and 

 the white sheep have likewise suffered severely at the 

 hands of natives armed with modern weapons, 

 although small numbers of the latter are still to be 

 found near the sources of every river from the Col- 

 ville to the Mackenzie, which probably formed the 

 limit of its range. 



Messrs. J. G. O'Donoghue and P. R. H. St. John 

 have published in The Victorian Naturalist (January, 

 1913) some notes on the vegetation and bird-life of the 

 Brisbane Range, in continuation of their earlier work 

 on the natural history of this little-known Australian 

 locality. The prevalence of the gum-tree saw-fly in 

 this area may be judged from their mention of a 

 sapling of Eucalyptus rostrata which actually drooped 

 with the burden of five large masses of the larvse of 

 this insect. Among other items of these interesting 

 notes, mention may be made of the extraordinary 

 activity of small red ants in the transport of the seeds 

 of acacias, evidently for the sake of the oily appendage 

 (caruncle), which the ants bite from the seed, leaving 

 the latter in great masses outside the nest. Brief 

 references are made to the various types of vegetation 

 associated with different soils and physiographic 

 aspects, but it is greatly to be hoped that Victorian 

 botanists will make a detailed ecological investigation 

 of what appears to be an area of unusual interest 

 from this point of view. 



Prof. F. W. Oliver has contributed to The Gar- 

 deners' Chronicle (No. 1364, February 15) an ex- 

 tremely interesting account of the new nature reserve 

 at Blakeney, Norfolk. The extensive area of waste 

 maritime lands known as Blakeney Toint, which has 

 been presented to the National Trust, is to be pre- 

 served as a place for the study of wild nature, its 

 acquisition having been made primarily on scientific 

 grounds rather than on account of its scenic or his- 

 toric interest, though it is fully entitled to rank as a 

 place of great natural beauty. As Prof. Oliver has 

 shown in his recent article in The New Phytologist, 

 Blakeney Point shows to perfection the operation of 

 the sorting mechanism by which new ground is built 

 up from the spoils won bv the sea from the land, ind 

 brought back by an orderly process in the form of 

 shingle, sand, and mud, and also the colonisation of 

 this new ground by plants appropriate to its kind. 

 The distinctive features at Blakeney are the profusion 

 in which developmental stages of all the maritime 

 plant-communities abound, and the rapidity with 

 which change in each sort of terrain is being accom- 

 plished. Apart from its ecological interest, the Point 

 is famous as a breeding ground for wild seafowl, and 

 as a place of call for winter migrants, while in many 

 and various respects the fauna generally is full of 

 interest, especially with reference to the important 

 and sometimes surprising relation of the insects and 

 the rabbits to the plant population. 



The liability to drought in India as compared with 

 that in other countries is the subject of an interesting 

 paper by Dr. G. T. Walker in the Memoirs of the 

 Indian Meteorological Department (vol. xxi., part v.). 

 The paper is a preliminary attempt to deal with the 

 matter from an examination of the annual records, 



