422 



NA TURE 



[August 24, 1905 



the birth-rate, which during the last few years has steadily 

 been declining, and has now reached the lowest figure on 

 record, viz. 27-0 per 1000 for London and 292 per 1000 

 for seventy-five large towns. There must come a time, 

 if this decline continues, when the deaths will exceed the 

 births, and our population will decrease — a serious 

 catastrophe for the nation. Were it not for a diminishing 

 death-rate, particularly among infants, this contingency 

 would already have come to pass. It is especially among 

 the middle and upper classes that the birth-rate has de- 

 clined, partly owing to selfishness and love of pleasure, 

 but also partly due to the strenuousness of the conditions 

 of modern life. 



Sir J. Crichton-Browne delivered his presidential 

 address to the conference of the Sanitary Inspectors' 

 .Association on August 17. He dealt with the problem of 

 the sanatorium treatment of consumption, and expressed 

 the opinion that splendid results had been obtained by it, 

 and that Dr. Maudsley at the British Medical Association 

 meeting (see X.^Tl:RF., August 3, p. 331) had spoken too 

 despondently about it, which was to be regretted, as it 

 might tend to check a movement of great promise. He 

 proceeded to consider the question of physical deterior- 

 ation, and then dealt at length with the housing 

 problem, and pointed out the advantages from a health 

 point of view of country life as compared with town life. 

 That the townsman was shorter lived than the countryman 

 was, he said, incontrovertible. 



The relief ship Terra Nova returned to Tromsb on 

 August 10 with the members of the Ziegler North Polar 

 Expedition on board. Mr. A. Fiala, the leader of the 

 expedition, landed at Hull on Tuesday on his way to the 

 United States, and gave a representative of Reuter's 

 Agency an account of the experiences of the expedition. 

 The America, with the members of the expedition on 

 board, left Vardo on July 10, 1903. At the end of August 

 the vessel reached Teplitz Bay, Crown Prince Rudolf 

 Island, the most northerly harbour in Franz Josef Land, 

 where magnetic and astronomical stations were erected. 

 The ship was frozen in during October, and was wrecked 

 by great ice pressure in the following month, so that the 

 entire party had to be taken ashore on sledges. In 

 January, 1904, during a gale, all the old ice in Teplitz 

 Bay, with several miles of the glacier face, were broken 

 and carried away, and with the bay ice disappeared all 

 Ihat was left of the America. Three attempts were made 

 to reach the Pole by sledges, but the highest point attained 

 was 82° 13' north latitude. Mr. Fiala states that although 

 the avowed purpose of the expedition — to reach the North 

 Pole — was unsuccessful, the members have brought back 

 data which should prove of scientific value, and have 

 explored and surveyed the archipelago from Crown Prince 

 Rudolf Land to Cape Flora, discovering four new channels 

 and three large islands. 



The fifteenth International Congress of Americanists will 

 be held at Quebec on September 10-15, 1906. The work 

 of the congress will be concerned with the indigenous 

 races of America, their origin, geographical distribution, 

 history, physical characters, languages, civilisation, myth- 

 ology, religion, manners, and customs ; indigenous monu- 

 ments and archaeology of America ; history of the discovery 

 and European occupation of the New World. The presi- 

 dent of the committee of organisation of the congress 

 is Dr. Robert Bell, F.R.S., director of the Geological 

 Survey of Canada, and the general secretary is Dr. N. E. 

 Dionne, Quebec, Canada. 



Trials of a system of signalling by bells under water, 

 which has been developed by the Submarine Signalling 

 NO. 1869, VOL. 72] 



Companv, of Boston, U.S.A., were made by the Trinity 

 House authorities on .\ugust 11. This invention, which 

 was described in Nature of April 20 (vol. Ixxi. p. 595), has 

 been used experimentally by the United States Lighthouse 

 Board at several of their light stations during the past 

 few years ; it has also been adopted by the Canadian 

 Government as an aid to navigation in the St. Lawrence. 

 For the purpose of these trials the North Goodwin light- 

 ship was fitted with a submarine bell, and the Trinity 

 steamship Irene with the necessary sound-receiving 

 apparatus. At distances of from three to five miles the 

 signals given by the bell were distinctly heard, and the 

 direction whence they emanated could be readily noted. 



Mr. C. R. Crosbv has favoured us with a copy of a 

 catalogue of the North American spiders of the group 

 Erigonese, contributed by him to the Proceedings of the 

 Philadelphia Academy. 



The fourth and final part of vol. xxv. of Notes from 

 the Leyden Museum contains, among other papers, the 

 concluding portion of the preliminary description, by Miss 

 C. M. L. Popta, of new fishes collected in Borneo by 

 Dr. Nieuwenhuis, and likewise one by Dr. Lidth de Jeudi 

 on new Bornean lizards. 



We have received the report of the Trivandrum Museum 

 and Public Gardens for 1903-4, which is signed by the 

 new director. Major F. W. Dawson. In addition to state- 

 ments in regard to the condition and progress of the 

 establishment, some interesting details are given with re- 

 gard to the amount of food consumed by some of the 

 reptiles in the gardens ; and Mr. Lydekker's paper, in 

 the Joi:rnal of the Bombay Natural History Society, on 

 certain dolphins recently taken on the Travancore coast is 

 reproduced in full. 



The report of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, 

 for the period 1903-4 contains reproductions from photo- 

 graphs of some of the chief objects of interest added during 

 the year. The wide scope of the exhibits, and the beauty 

 and thoroughness of the installation, are very noteworthy. 

 Among the exhibits special reference may be made to one 

 of a group of wild duck being stalked by a lynx, and to 

 a second illustrating the ingredients entering into the 

 composition of curry-powder. In the latter no less than 

 thirty-one trays of distinct specimens are shown. 



In the course of last week's notes, reference was made 

 (p. 385) to the web-making ants of the genus CEcophylla. 

 In the latest issue (.\ugust i) of Biologisches CentralblatI 

 Dr. F. Doflein gives a detailed description of the habits 

 of CE. smaragdina, a species widely distributed in the 

 Oriental region, accompanied by original sketches of the 

 ants and their larva: at work. When the edges of a leaf 

 are to be joined, or when a rift appears in the nest, a 

 small company of the workers place themselves in a line 

 across the fissure, holding on to the one edge with their 

 mandibles and to the other with their legs, which are 

 stretched backwards to their furthest extent, and then 

 with a united pull drag the two edges into contact. A 

 second party then comes, and trims and fits the edges 

 until they meet exactly, while finally comes a third party, 

 each member of which carries a larva in its jaws. The 

 larva;, being put to work, immediately spin a " criss- 

 cross " web by means of which the two edges of the 

 leaf are firmly united. — In another paper in the same 

 issue Mr. F. E. Zierler, of Dorpat, discusses the molar 

 dentition of the fossil Suidte in connection with their 

 phylogeny. Apparently the author makes no reference to 

 the theory that the crown^structure of the suilline molar 

 is a degradation from the selenodont type. 



