230 



NATURE 



[October 24, 1912 



cephalopod fauna of the Mediterranean, afthough in 

 its general character the former is nevertheless dis- 

 tinctly Indo-Malay. Apart from Loligo and Sepia, 

 which are extraordinarily rich in peculiar forms, there 

 are, indeed, remarkably few exclusively Japanese 

 species. The presence of the group of species allied 

 to Polvhus, or Octopus, honkongensis suggests an 

 ■ invasion from the Aleutian-Californian province, 

 although this is by no means certain. 



In an article on the cultivated and wild forms of 

 cochineal insects, published in the September issue of 

 The Journal of Economic Biologv. Mr. E. E. Green 

 protests against the transference of the name Coccus 

 fiom these insects to another genus, and the substitu- 

 tion ofDactylopius. In retaining Coccus cadi for the 

 tvpical cochineal insect, he will gain the approval of 

 those naturalists who consider that familiar zoological 

 names, which give an obvious clue to the animals 

 they represent, ought not to be displaced. It is pointed 

 out that the Indian cochineal insect, for which the 

 author proposed the name C. indicus in 1908, was 

 originally imported from Brazil in 1795, other importa- 

 tions being made subsequent!". Nevertheless, it 

 cannot apparently be identified with any American 

 form, and therefore seems to indicate the develop- 

 ment, within a century, of a new species, as the result 

 of changed environment. 



The September number of The Quarterly Journal 

 of Microscopical Science (vol. Iviii., part i) contains an 

 important paper by Prof. G. E. NichoUs on the 

 structure and development of Reissner's fibre and the 

 subcommissural organ. Prof. Nicholls gives a very 

 useful historical review of our knowledge of these 

 remarkable structures, and severely criticises Sar- 

 gent's work on the subject. He then passes on to a 

 detailed account of Reissner's fibre and the sub- 

 commissural organ in the Petromyzontidae and Myxin- 

 oidei, illustrated by a number of diagrams and some 

 verv remarkable photomicrographs. In the same 

 number Mr. Geoffrey Smith publishes the ninth part of 

 his " Studies in the Experimental Analysis of Sex." He 

 finds that in hybrid pigeons, of which only males 

 were obtained, the ripe spermatozoa are of about twice 

 the normal size. This is explained by abnormalities in 

 the process of spermatogenesis. In the first matura- 

 tion division, the chromosomes, instead of forming the 

 normal eight synaptic pairs, are irregularly distributed 

 on the nuclear spindle, while the second maturation 

 division is suppressed. Mr. Smith thus confirms the 

 previous observations of Guyer, and adopts his view 

 that the sterility of such hybrids is due to the inability 

 of the chromosomes derived from specifically different 

 parents to form the normal synapses. 



We have received a revised and enlarged edition of 

 a neo-vitalistic essay by Prof. Moriz Benedikt, of 

 Vienna. It is entitled " Biomechanik und Biogenesis " 

 (Fischer, Jena, pp. 88), and deals in a somewhat 

 esoteric, not to say eccentric, fashion with the 

 pioblems of vitality. The author has devoted special 

 attention to "action at a distance" in the life of 

 organisms, to a monistic interpretation of psychical 

 activity, and to the origin of living substance. As to 



NO. 2243, VOL. go] 



the last, it probably occurred for the first time in 

 the meshes of colloidal sea-sand, and the composition 

 of our blood-serum is a hereditary reminiscence of the 

 primeval cradle of life. But living matter has un- 

 doubtedly continued to be formed, else the organic 

 world would long since have eaten itself up. Whether 

 the results of present-day natural synthesis (which 

 eludes our observation) attain to the level of the very 

 simplest organisms we know, is questionable. But 

 it is difficult to be quite sure when the genial author 

 is not poking fun at us. "Biomechanik" is another 

 word for " neo-vitalism," and Prof. Benedikt's general 

 position is that the ordinary physical, mechanical, and 

 chemical laws hold good for vital processes, but (to 

 use his phraseology) do not completely dominate them. ' 

 Laws "of a higher order" hold good in the realm of 

 life — laws which cannot be deduced from those of the 

 inanimate world. The movements of corpuscles in 

 living matter are much more intricate than those in 

 not living matter, and the author is especially con- 

 cerned with the structural configurations that have 

 made vital activities possible. 



The Pliocene deposits contain the key to many 

 problems of modern animal distribution, including the 

 centres from which man spread across the earth. 

 Workers in European natural history will especially 

 welcome Dr. J. P. Tesch's handsomely printed 

 memoir, " Beitrage zur Kenntnis der marinen Mol- 

 lusken im west-europaischen Pliocanbecken " {Med. 

 van de Rijksopsporing van Delfstoffen, .t^o. 4, The 

 Hague, 1912, and Craz and Gerlach, Frieberg in 

 Sachsen, price 6 marks). A list and commentary on 

 the distribution of the known molluscan species of the 

 area occupy the greater part of the paper, and con- 

 siderable use is made of information obtained from 

 borings in Holland. 



The new phenomenon Prof. Righi brought before 

 the Academy of Science of Bologna in January, to 

 which he gave the name of ionomagnetic rotation, is 

 described in detail in the Memoirs of the academy and 

 in the Physikalische Zeitschrift for August. If a 

 spark from a condenser of considerable capacity is 

 sent horizontally through a gas and two small vertical 

 vanes of mica in the form of a cross are suspended 

 in the middle of the discharge by a fine fibre attached 

 to the centre of the cross, the spark prnduces no rota- 

 tion of the cross. If, however, a vertical magnetic 

 field is established in the gas the cross rotates through 

 a considerable angle if the gas is air, and over a small 

 angle in other gases. Prof. Righi ascribes this rota- 

 tion to the bending of the paths of the ions or electrons 

 and to the additional protection which the vanes afford 

 each other against impacts from one side rather than 

 from the other in these circumstances. The observed 

 rotations indicate that the effects of the positive ions 

 are in general greater than those of the negative. 



A GENERAL lecture, delivered by Prof. G. Ciamician 

 before the International Congress of Applied Chem- 

 istry in New York, is reprinted in Science for Septem- 

 ber 27, under the title, "The Photochemistry of the 

 Future." At the outset some interesting suggestions 

 are advanced as regards the utilisation of the solar 



