86 



NA TURE 



[May 25, 1905 



Technology, Boston, Mass., before December 31, 1906. 

 The prize will be awarded at the annual meeting in April, 

 1907. 



At (he meeting of the Pathological Society of London 

 on May 16, Mr. C. Walker gave a demonstration which 

 seems to solve the nature of the so-called " cancer bodies " 

 (Ruffer's bodies) of malignant tumours, which have been 

 believed by many to be parasitic protozoa. He showed 

 specimens of the normal reproductive cells of the testis 

 containing bodies which are apparently identical with the 

 " cancer bodies," but are really the archoplastic vesicles of 

 those cells. 



In the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for April 

 (xvi., No. 169) the most interesting and important com- 

 munication is by Dr. Clowes on the immunisation of mice 

 against cancer. In certain mice which had been inoculated 

 with mouse cancer, the disease underwent an unexpected 

 and spontaneous retrogression, and it was found that the 

 serum of these animals produced a marked curative effect 

 on the cancerous tumours in other mice suffering from the 

 disease. 



Dr. W. B. Wiierrv records some interesting observations 

 on the biology of the cholera spirillum {Bull. Bureau of 

 Gov. Laboratories, Manila, No. 19), in which he shows 

 that the slight variations in cultural and other characters 

 so often met with in different strains of this micro- 

 organism are largely due to slight differences in the culture 

 media employed, particularly in their reaction, and sugges- 

 tions are given for the more accurate preparation of 

 standard media. 



The Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute (.xxvi., 

 No. 4) contains a report of a discussion on the aerial dis- 

 semination of small-pox round small-pox hospitals, in the 

 course of which Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Dr. T. M. Clayton, 

 and others adduce a good deal of evidence against the 

 commonly accepted view of the danger of aerial infection 

 in the neighbourhood of such hospitals. Municipal milk 

 depots and milk sterilisation is the subject of another paper 

 by Dr. G. F. McCleary. 



Dr. Charles Creighton, who recently paid a special 

 visit to India for the purpose of inquiring on the spot 

 into some of the circumstances connected with the pre- 

 valence of plague, read a paper on this disease before the 

 Society of Arts on May 18. Dr. Creighton first criticised 

 the composition of the British Plague Commission of 

 1898, complaining that there was no epidemiologist upon 

 it. He next gave a somewhat detailed account of the 

 geographical distribution of plague, and directed attention 

 to the difference of incidence of the disease in the villages 

 of the district of Ratnagiri and those of the adjoining 

 district of .Satara. In the former all the buildings, road- 

 ways, &-C., are of stone, and plague occurs little or not at 

 all ; in the latter the villages are plague-stricken, and the 

 crowded dwellings are of mud, the floors, &c., being 

 saturated with offal. Dr. Creighton believes that crowded 

 sites too long inhabited and without drainage are the cause 

 of the trouble, which is explicable on the laws of soil- 

 infection enunciated by Pettenkofer and his school. 



A PRICED catalogue of pinned specimens of Lepidoptera, 

 issued by Mr. H. Fruhstorfer, of Turmstrasse, Berlin, 

 from whom we have received a copy, should prove useful 

 to collectors. 



Among our weekly budget are included three papers on 

 North American zoology. In the first, from the Bulletin 

 of the Brockly Institute (vol. i.. No. 5), published by the 



n:o 1856, VOL. 72] 



Macmillan Company, Dr. J. A. Allan gives a list of 

 mammals from Beaver county, Utah, several of which are 

 described as new. The mammals of this elevated region 

 are stated to differ considerably from their representatives 

 in the adjacent foot-hills. In No. 6 of the same serial 

 Mr. C. Schsefer describes new .American beetles, and in 

 the third paper (from the Proceedings of the U.S. Museum} 

 Mr. W. D. Kearfoot diagnoses new tortricine moths from 

 Carolina. 



In the April issue (vol. i., part iv.) of the Kecords of 

 the .ilbany Museum Dr. R. Broom discusses the proper 

 signification of the Owenian term " Anomodontia," and 

 comes to the conclusion that it is applicable only to the 

 dicynodonts. He also describes certain new fossil reptiles 

 from Aliwal North, and contributes some important notes 

 on the localities of type specimens of other South African 

 reptiles, especially those in the British Museum. In the 

 course of these remarks, it is pointed out that .Anthodon 

 is of Wealden age, and probably, therefore, a dinosaur 

 instead of a pariasaurian, and that the limbrbones de- 

 scribed by Owen as Platypodosaurus are almost certainly 

 referable to Udenodon. 



In the issue of Biologisches Centralblatt of May i the 

 Rev. Father Wasmann brings to a close his important 

 series of articles as to the origin of slavery among ants, 

 and formulates the conclusions at which he has arrived, 

 which are too long to be recapitulated in our columns at 

 length. It may be mentioned, however, that, in the 

 author's opinion, this system of slavery had indepen- 

 dent origins at different dates respectively in the formicine 

 and the myrmecine sections of the ant family, and that it 

 has also been independently acquired in different genera 

 and species of these two subfamilies at different times. 

 In general, it seems to have been of later origin in the 

 Formicina; than in the Myrmecine. Moreover, the pheno- 

 menon affords confirmation of the biological doctrine that 

 the ontogeny of a group constitutes a brief recapitulation 

 of its phylogeny. In another article in the same issue 

 Dr. O. Zacharias emphasises the importance of modern 

 methods of studying " hydrobiology " in relation to fish- 

 culture and fisheries. 



Part iii. of vol. xlvii. of the quarterly issue of Smith- 

 sonian Miscellaneous Contributions contains an article by 

 Mr. C. D. Sherborn on the species of birds described as 

 new in Vroeg's catalogue, published in 1764. P. S. 

 Pallas is believed to be the real author of the names. 

 The only copy of this work that has come under the 

 author's notice is in the library of the Linnean Society, 

 where it might have been left in well merited obscurity. 

 Social spiders {Stegodyphus sarasinorum) form the subject 

 of another article, by Mr. N. S. Jambunathan, in the same 

 serial. The spiders of this species, which was discovered 

 by the author at Saidapet, Madras, in i8q8, live in a 

 sponge-like nest formed of branching net-work with com- 

 municating canals and a number of external opening.-!. 

 These nests, which may be attached either to the tips of 

 branches of trees or to leaves of the prickly pear, are 

 ashy-grey in colour, and constructed of leaves and refuse 

 from the spiders' food. Externally is a coat of stout 

 sticky threads of the same colour as the spiders them- 

 selves, and sheet-like webs spread in all directions from 

 the nests. Five or six nests are often found together, each 

 of which may be the home of from 40 to 100 spiders, 

 usually in the proportion of seven males to one female. 

 .•\ number of spiders will cooperate to overpower a single 

 large insect. 



