6i6 



NA TURE 



[October i8, 1906 



The annual meeting of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union 

 will be held at York on Saturday, December 15. Mr. W. 

 Eagle Clarke, of the Royal Scottish Museum, will deliver 

 his presidential address, entitled "Antarctic Bird-life," 

 which will be illustrated by a series of lantern-slides from 

 photographs taken during the National and Scottish ex- 

 peditions. Further details can be obtained from Mr. T. 

 Sheppard, the honorary secretary of the society, at the 

 Museum, Hull. 



A FRUIT growers' conference will be held at the South- 

 Eastern Agricultural College, Wye, on Wednesday, 

 November 7. The chair will be taken by Mr. Laurence 

 Hardy, M.P., and an introductory address will be given 

 by the principal of the college. The subjects to be con- 

 sidered at the conference will be : — Methods of planting, 

 S. U. Pickering, F.R.S. ; strawberry culture, W. P. 

 \\'right ; treatment of American blight, F. V. Theobald ; 

 and some fungus diseases of orchards and plantations, 

 E. S. Salmon. 



We learn from the Times that unavoidable delay in the 

 completion of the latest addition to the Carnegie Institute 

 building at Pittsburg, Pa., has made it necessary to 

 change the date for opening the annual international ex- 

 hibition from November i of this year to .April 11, 1907. 

 This change has been made because the trustees desire the 

 exhibition to be held in conjunction with the opening and 

 dedication of the building, which has been enlarged during 

 the past two years to about six times its original size. A 

 number of eminent men, representing the scientific, artistic, 

 and literary organisations and institutions of the world, 

 will be present at the dedication. 



The new session of the Royal Geographical Society will 

 be opened on November 12. when a paper will be read on 

 North-Eastern Rhodesia by Mr. L. A. Wallace. On 

 November ig Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner will deal with the 

 subject of the Seychelle Islands, and on December 10 an 

 account of irrigation in the United States will be given by 

 Major John H. Beacom. Other provisional arrangements 

 are as follows : — Polar problems. Dr. Fridtjof Nansen ; 

 through Central Africa from the west coast to the Nile, 

 Lieut. Boyd .-Mexander ; nine years' survey work in 

 northern China and Mongolia, Colonel A. W. S. Wingate ; 

 a journey through Central Asia to northern China, Major 

 C. D. Bruce ; the north magnetic pole and the north- 

 west passage, Captain Amundsen ; aboriginal India, Colonel 

 Sir T. H. Holdich, K.C.M.G. ; a journey from Yunnan 

 to Assam, E. C. Young ; the story of London maps, 

 Laurence Gomme ; the evolution of the map of Africa, 

 Edward Heawood ; inland waterways, G. G. Chisholm ; 

 the Taupo volcanic region, New Zealand, J. Mackintosh 

 Bell. At one of the meetings in the early part of next 

 year an authoritative account will be given of H.R.H. the 

 Duke of the Abruzzi's expedition to Mount Ruwenzori. 



In 1904 an advisory committee was appointed by the 

 Secretary of State for India to inquire into some of the 

 problems concerning plague, and the first function of the 

 advisory committee was to appoint a working commission 

 which has been investigating the disease in India ever 

 since. A series of reports on the work already accomplished 

 has just been published in a special number of the Journal 

 of Hygiene (vi.. No. 4). The first half of this contains 

 the results of experiments on the transmission of plague 

 by fleas. Guinea-pigs allowed to run free in plague houses 

 in 29 per cent, of cases contracted plague, but if the 

 animals were kept screened by fine gauze, so that fleas 

 had no access, they remained healthy. Fleas caught on 

 NO. 1929, VOL. 74] 



rats dying of plague and transferred to healthy animals 

 transmitted the disease. The Hon. N. C. Rothschild con- 

 tributes a paper on the species of flea found on rats. 

 Experiments on the infectivity of native floors grossly con- 

 taminated with B. pcslis seem to show that they do not 

 remain infective for more than twenty-four hours. In 

 plague-infected rats as many as 100,000,000 bacilli may be 

 present in i c.c. of blood, and a few in the urine and faeces. 

 Chronic plague in rats was noted in six instances at a 

 season of the year when neither human nor rat plague 

 existed, suggesting that this possibly is the means by which 

 the infection is propagated from season to season. 



The contents of the first part of the nineteenth volume 

 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria com 

 prise descriptions of new and little-known marine molluscs 

 from the adjacent sea, by Mr. J. H. Gatliff, and of decapod 

 crustaceans from the same, by Messrs. S. W. Fulton and 

 F. E. Grant, together with the first instalment of a census 

 of the Victorian representatives of the last-named group 

 by the same writers. 



The papers in the September issue of the American 

 Naturalist are chiefly interesting to histologists and 

 specialists. In the first Prof. A. W. Weysse and Mr. 

 W. S. Burgess contribute an elaborate account of the 

 histogenesis of the retina, summarising their conclusions 

 at considerable length in tabular form. The marine cope- 

 pod crustaceans of Rhode Island receive attention at the 

 hands of Mr. L. W. Williams, while Mr. R. H. Howe 

 discusses the lichens of Mount Monadnock, New Hamp- 

 shire. 



Another of those emendations in nomenclature which 

 are rapidly tending to make zoology an impossible science 

 to all save the specialists in particular branches appears 

 in a paper on the " digger-wasps " of North America and 

 the West Indies, forming No. 1487 of the Proceedings of 

 the U.S. National Museum. According to the author, Mr. 

 H. T. Fernald, none of the insects which have been in- 

 cluded in the genus Sphex during the past century properly 

 belongs to it. Consequently the species and subgenera so 

 long included under that generic designation now appear 

 under the title Chlorion, while Sphex is made to include 

 those hitherto known as Ammophila, a further change being 

 the substitution of the subfamily Chlorionins for the 

 original Spheginse, and the transference of the latter, under 

 the altered form of Sphecinae, to the old Ammophilin.-c. 

 Fortunately (under its amended form of .Sphecidje) the 

 family name of Sphegidte is retained for the whole group. 

 The author appears to have made an exhaustive study of 

 that section of the group he classifies as Chlorionina;, 

 having examined, and when necessary re-described, all the 

 type-specimens in American collections. 



To the June issue of the Proceedings of the Philadelphia 

 Academy Mr. H. W. Fowler contributes the first part of 

 a paper on .American fresh-water " heterognathous " fishes, 

 or those usually classified under the family name 

 Characinidte. In the author's opinion they should form 

 two families, for which the titles Erythrinidae and 

 Characidre are adopted. Apparently, however, there is 

 no justification for the use of the name Characinidse (or 

 Characidse), since there is no such genus as Characinus 

 or Characus. If but one family is recognised the name 

 Erythrinidfe may be employed, but if two groups are 

 recognised a new title (such as Citharinid^e) is required. It 

 may also be noticed that the author does not recognise the 

 preoccupation of Chirodon (or Cheirodon) by Chirodus. 

 The author has had access to all Cope's type-specimens. 



