4it) 



NA TURE 



[August 23. 1906 



unable to fly at all except on a windy day, when, by 

 facing the wind, it would be able to rise tp a considerable 

 altitude before its inertia was overcome. 



In connection with the foregoing paragraph we may 

 take the opportunity of referring to the marked discrepancy 

 in the matter of nomenclature which distinguishes the 

 papers of systematic specialists from those of biologists 

 with a wider range of studies. In Prof. Lull's paper, for 

 instance, the flying-lemur is referred to by the time- 

 honoured title of Galsopithecus, whereas in a recent paper 

 by Mr. G. S. Miller (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 1481) we 

 find it figuring as Cynocephalus, a name until recently 

 used for the baboons. As the president of the Bavarian 

 Ornithological Society remarked in his address for 1904, in 

 connection with the proposed transposition of the names 

 Tardus musicus and T. iliacus, " all these changes of long- 

 established names, even when the alteration was justifiable, 

 should be most rigorously guarded against, as the greatest 

 confusion would be the only result." 



In addition to Prof. Lull's communication, the August 

 number of the American Naturalist contains an article by 

 Messrs. Dexler and Freund on the external morphology of 

 the dugong, which is illustrated with reproductions from 

 photographs throwing new light on the form of the muzzle. 

 In the third article Mr. M. L. Hammatt describes the 

 manner in which the anemone Metridium marginatum 

 multiplies by fission. After either natural or artificial 

 fission, " the fragment cut off curls together until its 

 extremities meet, making parts of mesenteries before nearly 

 parallel now radial in position, thus attaining to the sea- 

 anemone structure with the least possible expenditure of 

 energy." 



In vol. xxii., art. 2, of the Bulletin of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, Prof. H. F. Osborn publishes 

 a complete description and restoration of the skeleton of 

 the gigantic carnivorous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus from the 

 Upper Cretaceous of North America. The creature stood 

 about 16 feet, to the crown of the head, and there is a 

 possibility that it may have carried an armour. The mOst 

 remarkable feature in its osteology is the presence of a 

 series of abdominal ribs comparable to those of the 

 tuatera (.Sphenodon), such structures having hitherto been 

 unknown either among dinosaurs or crocodiles. The author 

 states, however, that they have been found to exist in 

 the allied genus Allosaurus, and suggests that they may 

 also be represented in the herbivorous sauropodous dino- 

 saurs, in which group they have been regarded as referable 

 to the shoulder-girdle. 



.\s a contribution to the Hann jubilee volume of the 

 Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 1906, Dr. J. M. Pernter has 

 selected the interesting subject of the determination of the 

 size of cloud components from the phenomena of optical 

 meteorology, e.g. halos and coronae round sun and moon, 

 and glories such as formed by the shadow of the observer, 

 like the Spectre of the Brocken, &c. Among the first to 

 undertake the measurements of the ice-crystals or minute 

 rain-drops were Fraunhofer and Kamtz. Many of these 

 measurements have been re-calculated, together with much 

 additional information obtained chiefly from observations 

 made on Ben Nevis, by using the revised formulse of Airy 

 and Verdet. These measurements are given in detail in 

 several tables ; the general conclusions arrived at are that 

 both in clouds and fogs, up to the altitude of the highest 

 clouds, the diameters of the ice-crystals are from about 5 ^ 

 to 20 /i, and that consequently 5 ^ is the lower limit of the 

 NO. 1 92 I, VOL. 74I 



thickness of the ice-prisms. For rain-drops in clouds and 

 fogs the diameters are found to be between 20 /i. and about 

 100 fi. Dr. Pernter points out that these dimensions only 

 hold good when no precipitation is falling, and further that 

 it does not follow that still smaller ice-crystals, &c., may 

 not be floating about in the clear atmosphere, their number 

 being too few to cause any visible appearance of con- 

 densation. 



In a memorandum (dated August 5) on the meteorological 

 conditions in Egypt and the Sudan during July, Captain 

 Lyons, director-general of the Survey Department, 

 estimates that the Nile flood will be near the average this 

 year, so far as information is at present available ; the 

 critical period is said to be the first ten days of August, 

 as the volume of the flood depends on the level attained 

 by the Blue Nile being maintained for a sufficient time 

 during this month. The rainfall recorded at the principal 

 stations around the Nile basin in July shows that the 

 excess, which had been persistent since the beginning of 

 the year, is now, however, replaced by a deficiency, while 

 the fall over the Sudan plains has been somewhat above 

 the average at most stations from which observations have 

 been received. 



The PsycJwlogical Biilleliu (vol. iii.. No. 4) contains an 

 article by Prof. G. M. Stratton on the character of con- 

 sciousness. The conclusion to which the writer comes is 

 that consciousness is either the generical mark of all 

 psychic processes or else a special one of these processes, 

 viz. that of knowing. If, therefore, we apply the term con- 

 sciousness to the act of cognition, " it should not be under- 

 stood that knowing is the supreme function in the world of 

 objects, or that it really breaks loose from those connec- 

 tions with feeling and will which modern psychology has 

 recognised." Consequently, it seems to him that it would 

 be best to say " knowledge " when we mean " knowledge," 

 and to let the term *' consciousness " designate the common 

 and generic features of our psychic acts. 



The Bulletin de Vlnstiiut General Psychologique 

 (56 Ann^o, No. 6) contains two interesting articles, one a 

 full account of the marine laboratory at Wimereux, founded 

 in 1874 by Prof. Giard, the other on the fifth international 

 psychological congress held at Rome last year. A short 

 account is given in this last of the dispute between Flechsig 

 and .Sciamanna regarding the localisation of functions in the 

 frontal and pre-frontal regions. The former maintained 

 that all the frontal region corresponded to the most elevated 

 associations, the feelings of personality, of self-conscious- 

 ness, and of self-control, and that to the pre-frontal region 

 in particular belonged voluntary action. Sciamanna, after 

 experiments on monkeys, came to the conclusion that in 

 them, at any rate, the pre-frontal lobes could not be con- 

 sidered as the seat of intelligence, morality and the 'ike, 

 but that these higher functions ought to be considered, as a 

 rule, the result of the regular and harmonious working of 

 the cerebral mass as a whole, and that any disturbances 

 consequent on lesion were to be attributed to the rupture 

 of this complete harmony. A committee appointed to 

 examine the monkeys before and after death confirmed 

 Sciamanna 's account of their undisturbed mental condition, 

 but, on the other hand, found that the removal of the frontal 

 lobes had not been so complete as Sciamanna believed. 



The Manchester Microscopical Society has just issued 

 a revised list of the lectures arranged for delivery by 

 members of the extension section of the society during the 

 coming winter. The object in view by the section is to 



