2o8 



NA TURE 



[June 28, 1906 



the Earl's Court Exhibition and at the Crystal Palace. 

 Technical interests have not been neglected, the programme 

 including visits to the National Physical Laboratory, to 

 the power stations at Greenwich and Chelsea, to the 

 Wellingborough blast-furnaces, to the Dover Harbour 

 works, and to various engineering, shipbuilding, and 

 cement-manufacturing works. The Iron and Steel Insti- 

 tute has down on the programme for reading a list of 

 twelve papers, and the American society eleven more. 

 These have all to be dealt with in three morning sessions. 

 The papers likely to prove of chief interest are communi- 

 cations on blast-furnace gas engines, by Prof. H. Hubert 

 (Lii^ge), Mr. K. Reinhardt (Dortmund), and Mr. T. West- 

 garth (Middlesbrough) ; on the crystallography of iron, by 

 Mr. F. Osmond (Paris) ; on high-speed tool steels, by 

 Dr. H. C. H. Carpenter (National Physical Laboratory); 

 and on segregation in steel ingots, by Mr. H. M. Howe 

 (Xew York). For the week following the London meet- 

 ing a tour to York, Middlesbrough, Durham, Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, Glasgow, and Edinburgh has been arranged 

 for the institute's American guests by a committee of 

 which Mr. R. h. Hadfield, president of the institute, is 

 chairman, and Mr. Bennett H. Brough secretary. 



The latest issue to hand (March) of the Proceedings of 

 the Philadelphia .'\cademy contains the completion of Dr. 

 B. Smith's communication on the phylogeny of ]'olutiliihes 

 petrosus (already noticed in our columns), and an article 

 by Mr. H. W. Fowler on the fishes and reptiles of the 

 Florida keys. 



Two papers bearing on the Mendelian doctrine, more 

 especially as regards the theory of pure gametes, have 

 been recently published by the Carnegie Institution, one, 

 by Messrs. Castle and Forbes, on the heredity of hair- 

 length in guinea-pigs, and the other, by Mr. W. E. Castle, 

 on the origin of a polydactylous race of these rodents. 

 Considerations of space alone prevent fuller notice. 



Limitations of space must likewise be our excuse for 

 not noticing in detail an important paper on the germ- 

 cells of Aphides, by Mr. N. M. Stevens, also published by 

 the Carnegie Institution. The present classification of 

 aphides is considered imperfect, and reference to the 

 cytology of the germ-cells will probably be necessary be- 

 fore an improvement can be made. Special attention is 

 directed to the fact that while in some species partheno- 

 genetic and sexual modes of reproduction alternate 

 irregularly, in others parthenogenesis continues throughout 

 the summer. 



The contents of the fourth part of vol. Ixxxi. of the 

 Zeitsclirift fiir wissenschaftliche Zoologie are entirely de- 

 voted to invertebrates. In the first article Mr. W. Mayer 

 discusses the dermal sense-organs of leeches ; spermato- 

 genesis in earthworms forms the subject of the second 

 article, by Mr. Depdolla ; in the third Dr. M. Nowikoff 

 has remarks on the median eye and frontal organ of the 

 crustacean Artemia ; while in the fourth Mr. E. Martini 

 describes certain superficial structures in nematode worms. 



The report for 1905 of the Marine Biological Associ- 

 ation of the West of Scotland has just been received. " At 

 no time has the station been so efficient as an instrument 

 of research, of organised education, or of general instruc- 

 tion as it now is. At no time, either, have its prospects 

 of growth in usefulness and efficiency on all these lines 

 been so promising." At the same time, if the work is to 

 be properly carried on, a large increase in the endowment 

 NO. I9I3, VOL. 74] 



fund is essential, and for this a special appeal is made in 

 the report. Provision must likewise be made for the up- 

 keep and working of the Mermaid, the five years' fund 

 generously provided by Mr. J. Coates having now come to 

 an end. An increase of the staff by the addition of a 

 trained assistant is also a matter of urgency, but for this 

 no funds are at present available. 



In the Oregon University Bulletin (vol. iii., Supp., 

 No. 3, May) Mr. T. Condon describes, under the new 

 generic and specific title of Desmatophoca oregonensis, 

 the skull of a seal, referable to the family Otariidae, from 

 the Miocene of the Oregon coast. The author claims this 

 as the first Miocene seal yet described. Evidently he is 

 unacquainted with the seal-skull, referable to the same 

 family and from the same formation (at Empire City), de- 

 scribed by Mr. True in the quarterly issue of the Smith- 

 sonian Miscellaneous Collections for May, 1905, under the 

 name of Pantoleon magnus. Although Mr. True's speci- 

 men is considerably the larger of the two, there is no 

 apparent reason why it should not be the male of the skull 

 described by Mr. Condon. The latter author urges that 

 the Miocene age of the Oregon seal is a bar to the view 

 that the Pinnipedia are descended from the bears. 



Vertebrate osteology constitutes the main item in the 

 contents of the first three parts (issued in one fasciculus) 

 of vol. xix. of the Bulletin of the Imperial Society of 

 Naturalists of Moscow. In the first article, for instance, 

 Mr. L. P. Kravetz discusses the development of the mam- 

 malian sternum and presternum, more especially in rela- 

 tion to the conflicting views which have been expressed 

 in regard to the origin of these structures. The skeleton 

 of the cat-fishes (Silurids), as exemplified by the skull of 

 the Old-World genus Clarias, forms the subject of a long 

 communication by Mr. G. Schelaputin, in which the author 

 revives the view that the fully ossified and sculptured 

 cranial roof indicates some kind of affinity with the 

 Paleozoic Coccosteus. The skeleton of the cat-fishes (in- 

 clusive of the American Loricariidje) forms the subject of 

 another article, by Mr. D. N. Koschkaroff, constituting a 

 portion of a dissertation on teleostean osteology in general. 

 A phylogenetic tree of the silurids and loricarids is in- 

 cluded in this paper. 



The results of experiments in Barbados for the seasons 

 J903— 5 with new seedling canes and manurial experiments 

 on sugar-cane plots have been published in the pamphlet 

 series, No. 40, issued by the Imperial Department of .Agri- 

 culture for the West Indies. One or two of the varieties 

 have now been under trial for six years, while others are 

 newer and have only been tried for two or three seasons ; 

 one of the latter is B 1529, that with the highest quotient 

 of purity takes the first place among plant canes. The 

 manurial experiments confirm the results obtained in 

 previous years, pointing to the value of nitrogen and potash 

 and to the detrimental effects of phosphatic fertilisers. 



Mr. H. H. Cousins contributes a third article on cassava 

 trials at the Hope Experiment Station to the Bulletin 

 (April) of the Department of Agriculture, Jamaica. The 

 object has been to compare the yields of different varieties 

 when grown for different periods. It was found in one 

 instance that the yield of starch per acre was increased 

 from 35 tons at the end of a year to yi tons after culti- 

 vation for twenty-one months, so that as far as cultivation 

 alone is concerned a biennial crop would be the most profit- 

 able. On the subject of oranges, Mr. Fawcett offers some 



