26o 



NATURE 



[May 8, 19 13 



described and figured Ophrys Trollii, a plant with I 

 the middle lobe of the labellum narrow lanceolate, ' 

 elongated, purplish-red in the centre, gold at the 

 edge, the three outer perianth-lobes lanceolate . 

 pointed. The plant came from Winterthur. In this 

 country there appears to be a series of intermediate 

 forms connecting the typical form with O. Trollii, 

 some being more nearly allied to the former, some 

 to the latter.— Dr. Hisayoshi Takeda : The flora of 

 Shikotan. Shikotan is the southernmost of the Kurile 

 Islands, which are distributed in the form of a chain 

 between Kamtschatka and Yezo, and lies between 

 about 43 35' and 50' N. and 146° 30' and 55' E. Its 

 area does not perhaps exceed 140 sq. m. The island 

 is hilly, and some of the hills are covered with forests ■ 

 of conifers and deciduous trees, others with dwarf 1 

 bamboos — species of Sasa. There are many streams 

 along which bogs and swamps are often well de- i 

 veloped. The vegetation of this island has scarcely : 

 been touched by human hands, but left in quite a ' 

 primitive state. The number of the higher plants : 

 known to the author is 324, belonging to 213 genera j 

 and sixty-two families, of which 245, including eight j 

 new species, are new to the flora of this island, while | 

 136 species are not mentioned in Miyabe's " Flora of 

 the Kurile Islands," published in 1890, and also fifty- 

 eight genera and eight families are additions. to that 

 publication. Among plants 'which are common to 

 Shikotan (and also other islands of the Kuriles) and 

 Yezo, or Yezo and Hondo, but not found in Sagha- 

 lien, there are a number of plants which are dis- 

 tributed over north-eastern Asia, the Aleutian Islands, 

 &■<-. These plants are believed by the author to have 

 been introduced through the Kurile chain, but not 

 through Saghalien. 



Zoological Society, April 22.— Mr. E. T. Newton, 

 F.R.S., in the chair. — Dr. S. F. Harmer : The polvzon 

 of waterworks. An account was given of the serious 

 trouble which had been caused by the occurrence of 

 a rich and varied fauna in the pipes of certain foreign 

 waterworks, notably at Hamburg and Rotterdam. 

 As was first shown by Kraepelin, the polyzoa play a 

 prominent part in the activity of the pipe-fauna, by 

 feeding on diatoms and other microscopic organisms, 

 and serving in their turn as the food of other animals 

 which prey on one another. The nutritive matter 

 rendered available by the presence of enormous num- 

 bers of polyzoa is thus in large measure responsible 

 for the existence of other constituents of the fauna, 

 which may include even fishes, such as the eel and 

 the stickleback. The organic material supplied by 

 the disintegration of the polyzoa and other animals 

 is believed to be important for the nutrition of iron- 

 bacteria, which are well known to cause the most 

 serious trouble in waterworks. An account was given 

 of five cases of the occurrence of polyzoa in English 

 waterworks in sufficient numbers to give rise to very 

 serious inconvenience. In one or two of these cases 

 the advice given by Kraepelin, in his paper on the 

 Hamburg pipe-fauna, was being followed, bv the 

 introduction of a system of filtration, the principal 

 object of which is to remove the microscopic organ- 

 isms on which the polyzoa, and ultimately the whole 

 assemblage of animals in the pipes, depend for their 

 nutriment. — A. W. Waters : The marine fauna of 

 British East Africa and Zanzibar, from collections 

 made bv Cyril Crossland, in the years igoi-2. 

 Bryozoa— Cheilostomata. In the collection dealt with 

 from the neighbourhood of Zanzibar there are seventy- 

 six species or varieties of cheilostomatous bryozoa, 

 almost all being from ten fathoms or under, so that 

 for a shallow-water collection it is very large. — Major 

 J. Stevenson-Hamilton j Occurrence of albino examples 

 of the reed-buck (Cervicapra arundinum) in the Sabi 

 NO. 2271, VOL. 91] 



Reserve, Transvaal. Some interesting notes were also 

 given on the habits and distribution of Sharpe's steen- 

 buck (Raphiceros sharpei), which resembles the grys- 

 bok much more closely than it resembles the common 

 steenbuck in mode of life, and ranges from Nyasa- 

 land to the Transvaal, but gradually dies out to the 

 south-east of that country. 



Geological Society, April 23. — Dr. Aubrey Strahan, 

 president, in the chair. — R. H. Goode : The fossil flora 

 of the Pembrokeshire portion of the South Wales 

 Coalfield. Of the fifty-three determinable species of 

 fossil plants obtained from the Pembrokeshire portion 

 of the South Wales Coalfield, three are new species. 

 From the palaaobotanical evidence it is clear that the 

 so-called " Pennant Grit " of Pembrokeshire cannot 

 be regarded as the equivalent of the Pennant Grit 

 of the main portion of the South Wales Coalfield. 

 Until more plants have been obtained -from the so- 

 called "Millstone Grit" of Pembrokeshire, it is im- 

 possible to fix definitely the horizon of these beds. 

 However, it is evident that the beds assigned to the 

 Millstone Grit probably belong to the Middle Coal 

 Measures. Thirty-two fossil plants have been ob- 

 tained from the Middle Coal Measures of Pembroke- 

 shire which have not as yet been recorded from those 

 of the main South Wales Coalfield.— H. Kay : The 

 Halesowen Sandstone Series of the southern end of 

 the South Staffordshire Coalfield, and the petrified 

 logs of wood found therein at Witley Colliery, Hales- 

 owen (Worcestershire). With an appendix on the 

 structure of a new species of Dadoxylon, by E. A. 

 Newell Arber. The Halesowen coal-seam and asso- 

 ciated beds of blue clay form a definite intermediate 

 horizon traceable across the coalfield. The area is 

 folded into two anticlines with a deep central syncline 

 ranging south-south-eastwards, and the strata have a 

 south-south-easterly dip. The northern face is let 

 down by a fault repeating the lower beds. Other 

 faults throw southwards, and yet others intersect the 

 anticlines. Mining operations show the existence of 

 a buried anticline with the full Coal-Measure Series. 

 The Witley Colliery railway-cutting shows big logs 

 of petrified wood finely preserved by calcite, and of 

 Upper Carboniferous age. The wood has been 

 examined by Dr. Newell Arber, who finds it to have 

 Araucarian affinities, but of a species new to science. 

 In consequence of its Palaeozoic age, it is referred to 

 the genus Dadoxylon. The type of preservation is 

 also new to this horizon in this country, and the dis- 

 covery of Dadoxylon at Witley constitutes a new 

 record for British Upper Carboniferous rocks. 



Manchester. 

 Literary and Philosophical Society, March 18. — Prof. 

 F. E. Weiss, president, in the chair. — W. H. Sut- 

 cliffe : A criticism of some modern tendencies in pre- 

 historic anthropology. During the last few years 

 there has been a great revival of interest in the study 

 of Palaeolithic man and his instruments in Britain, 

 some of which are of great importance on account of 

 the care and skill with which they have been worked, 

 whilst others appear to be founded on untrustworthy 

 evidence. The author discussed such of these latter 

 as lead to the necessity of demanding a pre-Pleistocene 

 arrival of man in Britain. The Kent plateau eoliths 

 were examined and compared with the chipped flints 

 found by Mr. V. Commont and l'Abbe H. Breuil in 

 the Thanetian beds of north France and those de- 

 scribed by Mr. Hazzledine Warren from the undis- 

 turbed "clay with flints." It was pointed out that, 

 from our extensive knowledge of the fauna of this 

 formation (Rheims and New Mexico), it is quite cer- 

 tain that no tool-using animal could possibly have 



