November 21, 1912] 



NATURE 



339 



According to the fifth annual report of the 

 American Bison Society, the herds of bison, in the 

 United States and Canada continue to show a gratify- 

 insT increase, the total number of animals known to 

 exist in the country at the date of the report being 

 2760, against 1310 four years previously. 



In the report of the Horniman Museum and Library 

 for 191 1 it is stated that considerable progress has 

 been made in the arrangement of the collections. A 

 large decrease in attendance is attributed to the hot 

 summer of the year under review. In a footnote 

 reference is made to the opening of the new building 

 in January last. 



T/ie Fi'eW of November 9 contains a photograph of 

 a "nest," or sleeping-platform, built high up in a 

 tree adjacent to the ape-house by an orang-utan which 

 escaped from captivity in the Zoological Gardens on 

 the evening of Sunday, November 3. The ape prob- 

 ably intended to pass the night on the platform, but, 

 either from fear of the keepers, or on account of the 

 situation being too cold, changed his mind, and re- 

 turned to the building. 



We have to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of a 

 new and revised edition of Dr. Egid Schreiber's well- 

 known " Herpetologia Europaea," which includes de- 

 scriptions of all the species of amphibians and reptiles 

 hitherto recorded from Europe. The present edition, 

 published, like, its predecessor, by G. Fischer, of Jena, 

 forms a bulky volume of 960 pages, and is illustrated 

 by a large number of text-figures, the price being 

 30X. It is of special importance on account of con- 

 taining full notices of the varieties which have been 

 described in the case of certain species. Another 

 valuable feature is formed by the tables of the geo- 

 graphical ranges of all the species given near the end 

 of the volume. 



The economic importance — either beneficial or in- 

 jurious — of the various species forms the keynote in 

 Prof. W. B. Barrows's " Michigan Bird-life," a fully 

 illustrated volume of 822 pages, published by the Agri- 

 cultural College of the State to which it refers. The 

 volume is the outcome of ten years' labour, and 

 appears thoroughly exhaustive, so far as the present 

 state of knowledge goes. The seventy full plates have 

 been prepared from specially selected photographs 

 taken by a former student of the college. The author 

 confirms previous statements with regard to the ap- 

 parent extermination of the passenger pigeon, re- 

 marking that the last wild specimen known in the 

 United States, so far as ascertained, was killed in 

 September, 1S98, in Mayne County, Michigan. The 

 author is of opinion that the clearing of forests and 

 the general opening-up of the country are largely 

 responsible for the extinction of the species, the result 

 of this being that "the birds were driven from one 

 place to another, and gradually compelled to nest 

 further and further to the north, and under conditions 

 successively less and less favourable, so that eventually 

 the larger part of the great flocks consisted of old 

 birds, which, through stress of weather and persecu- 

 tion, abandoned their nesting-places and failed to rear 

 any considerable number of young." 



NO. 2247, VOL. go] 



The Glacial flora and fauna of the Grand Duchy of 

 Baden have been investigated by Dr. P. Stark {Berichte 

 d. Natiirforsch. Ges., Freiburg, Band xix.. Heft 2), 

 who has made a most painstaking study of the Glacial 

 deposits in this area. The botanical portion of the 

 work includes not only the flowering plants, but also 

 the mosses, and not merely the relatively large remains 

 such as stems and leaves, but such minutiae as pollen, 

 spores, and fragments of epidermis. This careful 

 study is of special interest from the ecological point 

 of view, since it contains numerous contributions to the 

 knowledge of moorland, alpine, and arctic vegetation 

 during Glacial and post-Glacial times. The author 

 shows commendable caution in the matter of inferring 

 marked changes of climate from the succession of 

 plant remains in the "Glacial" and "inter-Glacial" 

 peat deposits, and lays stress on the need for taking 

 into account ecological conditions other than varia- 

 tions in temperature in an attempt to explain the 

 differences in the vegetation of the superposed beds. 



The Mexican cotton-boll weevil (Anthonomus 

 grandis) has spread so rapidly in the southern States 

 of America during recent years as to become the 

 most serious pest with which cotton-growers have 

 to contend. A detailed report on this insect and its 

 ravages has been published by the Bureau of Entomo- 

 logy, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Bulletin 114), 

 with twenty-two plates and thirty-four text-figures. 

 An exhaustive account is given of the investigations 

 carried on since 1895, the chief contents of previous 

 publications on the boll-weevil being incorporated in 

 this important memoir. The area infested by this pest 

 has increased from 1400 square miles in 1892 to no 

 fewer than 271,000 square miles in 19H, the average 

 rate of spread during the last six years having been 

 27,000 square miles a year. At present 400,000 square 

 miles of cotton-producing area remain unaffected, but 

 the alarming rate of spread has led to the adoption 

 of energetic measures for the repression of the weevil. 

 The report is largely devoted to elaborate descriptions 

 of the life-history, dissemination, and hibernation of 

 the insect. Under the heading " natural control," the 

 compilers describe the effects of temperature and 

 other climatic conditions upon the weevil, the fungus 

 and bacterial diseases (unfortunatelv very few and 

 sporadic) to which it is subject, and the extent to 

 which it is kept down by parasitic and predatory 

 insect enemies and by birds. Finally, they enumerate 

 the various methods of repression which have been 

 tried ; the most successful is that of destroying the 

 weevils in autumn by uprooting and either ploughing- 

 in or burning the cotton-plants. 



The first sheets of The Geophysical Journal for 19 12 

 (second year) have reached us. This journal forms 

 part of "The British Meteorological and Magnetical 

 Year Book," issued by the Meteorological Office. It 

 gives, as before, daily values for the meteorological 

 and geophysical elements observed at three observa- 

 tories — Kew, Valencia, and Eskdalemuir — and includes, 

 inter alia, solar radiation, seismology, atmospheric 

 electricity, and terrestrial magnetism (see Nature, 

 April 25). The new issue contains additional tables 

 giving the results of the exploration of the free atmo- 



