290 



NA TURE 



[January 6, 1910 



The existence in mammals of such a fifth arch, lying 

 between the seismic and pulmonic arches, has recently 

 formed the subject of several papers. This fifth arch 

 appears to be a vessel rising from the aortic bulb and dis- 

 charging into the pulmonic arch near its junction with 

 the dorsal aorta. It attains fullest development in man 

 and the mole, in both of which it is generally complete, 

 but in the cat and the pig the full arch is rarely formed, 

 while in the rabbit its condition is still more rudimentary. 



A LARGE portion of vol. iii., part ii., of the Transactions 

 of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, 

 Durham, and Newcastle is taken up by papers on poly- 

 pod Arthropoda, Canon Norman and Prof. Brady furnish- 

 ing a synopsis of the local crustaceans, while Dr. A. R. 

 Jackson comments on rare arachnids obtained in 190S, 

 and the Rev. J. E. Hull contributes notes on spiders. 

 Special interest attaches, however, to the description, by 

 Mr. E. L. Gill, of a new Carboniferous arachnid from 

 tlie Tyne Valley. This valuable specimen, which was 

 obtained from the Coal-measures of Crawcrook, is evidently 

 related to Anthracosiro woodwardi ; the two forms agree- 

 ing in the general structure of the abdominal region. 

 Whereas, however, the typical species has limbs of a 

 normal type, those of the Crawcrook specimen are 

 curiously expanded and flattened — so much so, indeed, that, 

 unless this peculiar contour admits of some other explana- 

 tion, it is evident that we have to do with a new species. 

 It has accordingly been named Anthracosiro latipes, with 

 the proviso that it may eventually be found advisable to 

 •change the generic title. 



Writing in the December (1909) number of the Zoologist, 

 Mr. H. St. J. K. Donisthorpe claims to be the fourth 

 naturalist who has witnessed in this country a slave-raid 

 on the part of a colony of Formica sanguinea. The 

 incident occurred at Bewdley, and the colony raided 

 belonged to F. ftisca. At the nest of the latter, the 

 narrator states that " Many workers [of sanguinea], laden 

 with pupa?, were streaming off in the direction of their 

 home. . . . Others were attacking and killing solitary 

 fusca -workers. Several fusca workers were observed up 

 the grass-stems, &-c., holding pupne, and endeavouring to 

 escape from the slave-raiders. I watched these proceed- 

 ings for a considerable time, and accompanied some of 

 the ants with pupae back to their nest, quite a distance 

 off, though they covered the ground very quickly." In 

 the same nest Mr. Donisthorpe took two " gyandromorph " 

 sanguiniae. the one being, both in colour and structure, 

 male on the right side and worker on the left, and the 

 other male on the left and female on the right. Only two 

 other specimens of such abnormal ants, neither referable 

 to sai!^iii>K>(i, appear to have been previously observed in 

 Great Britain. 



As a large portion of the December (1909) issue of the 

 Journal of Economic Biology is taken up by a list of 

 literature and the proceedings of the Association of 

 Economic Biologists, the articles are reduced to two. One 

 of these, by Mr. S. A. Neave, who has recently returned 

 from a prolonged tour in northern Rhodesia, Katanga, 

 and the Congo Free State, relates to the distribution of 

 the species of tsetse known as Glossina palpalis. The 

 author remarks that the great Congo-Zambezi w^atershed 

 forms a delimitation between two quite distinct faunas. 

 On descending from this plateau into the Zambezi basin 

 a fauna of the southern type is encountered, w.hereas at 

 the same elevation on the Congo declivity the area of the 

 western tropical fauna is entered. Now, so far as is 

 known, G. palpalis occurs only on the Congo side, and 

 NO. 2097, "^'OL- 82] 



its distribution coincides with that of the tropical fauna 

 generally. Further, the extent of the range of the species 

 within the tropical area is dependent upon station, the 

 insect first meeting the traveller as he descends from the 

 plateau in the well-wooded, damp gorges cut by the rivers 

 and streams. 



Circular No. 112 of the Bureau of Entomology of the 

 United States describes very fully the Mediterranean flour- 

 moth, and the damage and loss it causes to the milling 

 industry. The pest was first noticed in 1892 infesting 

 several Californian flour-mills, and since then it has 

 gradually spread until at the present day it occurs in 

 practically all the principal milling centres and in most 

 of the States. On attaining full growth the caterpillar 

 forms a new web, which becomes a cocoon wherein it 

 undergoes transformation to pupa, and it is in this stage 

 that the insect does most damage. The infested flour 

 becomes caked, clogging the machinery and necessitating 

 frequent and prolonged stoppage resulting in some cases 

 in the loss of thousands of dollars. The remedy suggested 

 is treatment with hydrocyanic acid ; the methods of carry- 

 ing out this rather delicate and dangerous fumigation, and 

 the subsequent cleaning of the mill, are fully given. 



The Imperial Department of the West Indies has issued 

 a pamphlet on the grafting of cacao, by Mr. Joseph Jones, 

 curator of the Botanic Station, Dominica. It is shown 

 that propagation by grafting gives better results than pro- 

 pagation by seed, inasmuch as the desirable characters of 

 anv particular tree, such as character of bean, prolific 

 bearing, early bearing, and resistance to disease, &c., can 

 be reproduced with tolerable certainty. Indeed, in no other 

 way can the planter ensure absolute uniformity of bean, one 

 of the most important features in the improvement of the 

 quality of the crop. Grafted trees always develop into a 

 low, spreading form, and this is of special advantage in 

 picking the pods and also in affording protection from the 

 wind. Full instructions for grafting are given, and the 

 process is shown to be neither diflicult nor expensive. 

 .Another pamphlet explains how to erect and work cotton 

 gins, and is intended for workmen in regular charge of 

 ginneries and for those who have to erect gins without any 

 previous experience with this class of machinery. 



The " cotton-boll weevil " — a beetle of the genus Antho- 

 nomus, to which our own " apple-blossom weevil " belongs 

 — causes in the United States an annual loss estimated at 

 25 millions of dollars. A vast economic literature has 

 grown up around this insect, the latest contribution being 

 an exhaustive account, by W. E. Hinds and W. W. 

 Yothers, of its methods of hibernation (Entom. Bull., No. 

 77, U.S. Dept. Agric, 1909). The species is carried over 

 the winter by adult beetles sheltering in various situations- 

 many in old bolls that remain on the cotton-stalks. Only 

 a small proportion of the individuals that commence to 

 hibernate survive until the spring, so that the wintering 

 period affords the most vulnerable stage in the insect's 

 life-history, and detailed information respecting it cannot 

 fail to be of value to the planters who seek some practic- 

 able means for destroying the weevils. 



The Year-book of the United States Department of 

 .Agriculture for 190S contains some interesting short articles 

 on the economic importance of vertebrates, written by 

 naturalists attached to the Biological Survey. Mr. 

 F. E. L. Beal discusses the relations between birds and 

 insects, and argues that insectivorous birds are beneficial 

 even though they destroy a large number of predaceous 

 and parasitic insects, since the vegetable-eating insects 

 that are present in any year in abnormally large numbers 



