492 



NATURE 



[January 2, 191 • 



T/(t' Museum News for December, issued at 

 Brociklyn, New York, gives a full account of the un- 

 rivalled collection of specimens of ancient Chinese 

 clolsonnd which has been recently presented to the 

 Central Museum by Mr. S. P. Avery. A complete 

 catalogue of this splendid collection has been prepared 

 bv i\Ir. J. Getz, and is accompanied by a full descrip- 

 tion of the elaborate processes by Mr. S. W. Bushell. 



The November issue of The National Geographic 

 Magaciiie is remarkable for the large series of excellent 

 coloured photographs which accompany two important 

 articles on modern Russia. The first of these, by Mr. 

 W. W. Chapin, is entitled, " Glimpses of the Russian 

 Empire "; the second, by Major-General A. W. Greely, 

 on "The Land of Promise," gives an interesting 

 account of a journey across Siberia, and describes the 

 enormous bodies of emigrants who are rapidly occupy- 

 ing a region of immense fertility. " Slowly but 

 surelv," he observes, " the fuller, freer life of Asiatic 

 Russia is bringing into higher and harmonious rela- 

 tions with its environment the godlike soul of man." 



Ix L'Aiitliropoiogie for September-October last, 

 L'.Abbe H. Breuil, MM. S. Gomez and C. Aguilo con- 

 tinue their important scries of studies of primitive art 

 in the Palaeolithic caves of Southern Europe with a 

 description of those recently found at Alpera, 270 kilo- 

 metres from Madrid. These drawings exhibit several 

 notable peculiarities. They are nearly all representa- 

 tions, probably magical in intention, of hunting scenes, 

 in which the drawings of human figures, usually thin 

 and elongated, with occasionally pronounced steato- 

 pygy, depicting their weapons — bows, arrows, and 

 lances — are peculiarly interesting. In one picture two 

 dames, perhaps of high rank, appear dressed in wide, 

 pi-obably ornamented, petticoats. As some of the 

 figures have been retraced, it is not easy to decide their 

 relation to works of art of the same or similar types, 

 except the conclusion that they probably belong to the 

 earlier Quaternary period. It is to be hoped that this 

 series of valuable contributions to prehistoric 

 archjeology will soon be republished in a permanent 

 form and in English. 



The " Live Stock Journal Almanack " for 19 13 

 maintains the high level characteristic of that publica- 

 tion, as well as its wealth of pictorial illustration. 

 The contents include nearly sixty articles, notably one 

 by Lord Northbrook on agricultural societies. Others 

 relate to most of the British breeds of horses, cattle, 

 sheep, and pigs. The least satisfactory is one on 

 the relationships of the different breeds of horses and 

 the ancestry of the group, the author evidently 

 possessing but an imperfect acquaintance with his 

 subject. 



In Naturwissenschaftlichc Wochenschrift of Decem- 

 ber 15, 1912, Dr. Killermann-Regensburg gives an 

 account, with illustrations, of pictures of the walrus, 

 the bison, and the elk by Albert Diirer. All three 

 are in the Sloane library at the British Museum ; those 

 of the bison and elk having been apparently brought 

 to liglu- but recently by Mr. Harry David, who de- 

 scribed Ihini in the first pari of llic Jalirhuch dcr K. 

 NO. 2253, VOL. 90] 



prcussischen Ktinslsammltmgen for 1912. In the early 

 part of the sixteenth century, and indeed up to 1550, 

 bison still survived in Prussia, Hungary, and Sieben- 

 biirge, so that Diirer may well have seen a living 

 example. Apart from prehistoric sketches, his picture 

 is the earliest known portrait of the bison. 



From the time their existence was recorded by Mr. 

 Boulenger, in 1900, the presence of hair-like appen- 

 dages in the males of certain frogs has been a puzzle 

 to naturalists. A possible clue to their function is 

 suggested by Dr. Bashford Dean in vol. xxxi., art. 

 29 (pp. 349-351), of the Bulletin of the American 

 Museum of Natural History. The suggestion is to 

 the effect that these hairs may serve to retain the coils 

 of spawn in cases where — as in the midwife-toad 

 (Alytes), which does not, however, develop hairs — they 

 are carried on the bodies and thighs of the males. It 

 is mentioned that hair-like vascular structures are 

 developed on the ventral appendages of the lungfish 

 Lepidosiren, which also possesses the brooding habit. 



To The ]'iclorian Naturalist of November, 1912, 

 Mr. J. A. Kershaw communicates some interesting 

 particulars with regard to the breeding habits and 

 young of the platypus. Three burrows on the Hopkins 

 River were dug out in the presence of the author, 

 one on October 26, 1911, and the other two on October 

 22, 1912. From the first was obtained a female with 

 two recently liatched offspring, and from the others 

 eggs, a pair in one case and a single one in the other. 

 When the first female was taken a young one was 

 clinging to the belly so tightly that some little effort 

 was required to detach it ; its fellow had fallen oft' 

 unobserved when the parent was dragged from the 

 trench. None of the burrows had an entrance below 

 the normal water-level, and in some cases the entrance 

 was so high up on the bank that it would be sub- 

 merged only by very exceptional floods. After the 

 eggs are hatched the female parent remains for some 

 days with the young in the burrow, which she blocks 

 with earth in several places, probably as a protection 

 against flood-water, or possibly against enemies. 



Messrs. H. E. Jordan and K. B. Steele have pub- 

 lished an interesting account of their work on the inter- 

 calated discs of heart muscle in The American Journal 

 of Anatomy (vol. xiii., 1912, 151). Mr. H. E. Jordan 

 had reached the conclusion in a previous paper, from 

 his study of the discs in the heart muscle of humming 

 birds, that those discs were not intracellular elements 

 marking cell boundaries as maintained by Zimmer- 

 mann and others. In the present paper, which is a 

 comparative study in the microscopy of cardiac muscle, 

 the authors adduce evidence in support of the con- 

 tention of Mr. Jordan. They maintain that the discs 

 are to be interpreted in terms of local contractions in 

 the muscle fibrils, and that this explanation accounts 

 for the great variety in formation and structure (of the 

 discs) which is found. Further, they hold that the 

 presence of these discs seems to be related in some 

 way to the function of rhythmic contraction which is 

 characteristic of cardiac muscle. In support of this 

 hypothesis they advance the following facts, (i) The 

 discs are absent in the heart of the mammalian foetus. 



