564 
NALORE 
[AuGusT 1, 1912 
second, and afterwards by a third and fourth, species. 
The matter is clearly one demanding prompt and 
careful investigation. 
New Japanese fishes of the Cyclogaster group form 
the subject of No. 1907 of the Proceedings of the 
U.S. National Museum, in which Messrs. Gilbert and 
Burko describe no fewer than twenty-three species. 
The family is affirmed to be of boreal origin, but ranges 
along the coasts and in shallow water so far south 
as the cold northern currents can be traced. 
In the July number of The Nature Photographer 
the editor bears testimony to the readiness with which 
the majority of owners accede to requests for per- 
mission to photograph birds on their estates, fre- 
quently also offering the invaluable services of their 
gamekeepers. A nest of newly hatched partridges is 
one of the most striking pictures in this issue. 
Mr. J. Ramssortom, of the Department of Botany, 
Natural History Museum, has published (Transactions 
of the British Mycological Society, 1911, reprint) a 
useful and interesting critical summary of works pub- 
lished during 1911 on the cytology of reproduction in 
fungi. It is greatly to be desired that specialists in 
other branches of botanical work should undertake 
the preparation of collective reviews of this kind, 
summarising the publications of each year, and thus 
to these hypotheses the calculated time varies between 
30 and 300 million years, according to the kind of 
rock (gneiss, basalt, or granite) assumed in the cal- 
culations. The difficulty is, of course, our imperfect 
knowledge of the experimental data on which the con- 
clusions are based. 
Wuite the stability of the aéroplane has been suc- 
cessfully made the subject of mathematical investiga- 
tion, some doubt still exists as to the extent to which 
the conclusions affect the behaviour of actual flying 
machines. The fact that several papers have recently 
appeared, treating the problem by practically the same 
methods, seems to indicate that the subject is begin- 
ning to receive more attention than it has hitherto 
received. In the Bulletin de la Classe des Sciences 
(Brussels), 1912, No. 4, Dr. Julien Pacotte gives an 
investigation based on forming the determinantal bi- 
quadratic for the longitudinal and lateral oscillations, 
but he does not discuss the particular cases which 
arise, except the want of lateral stability of a system 
without fins. The same methods were applied in a 
recent paper by Dr. H. Reissner, of Aachen, who, by 
the way, gave the first investigation of lateral steer- 
ing. A series of papers on aéroplane stability (in 
Spanish) is now appearing in the current numbers of 
the Revista de la Sociedad matematica espanola, com- 
recording the progress made in the various depart- | 
ments of the science. As the author points out, the 
question of sexuality in fungi is of peculiar interest, 
for many points arise such as have not to be con- 
sidered in the other groups of plants, and there is a 
greater range of sexual differences in fungi than in 
the whole of the other members of the vegetable 
kingdom. In the case of each memoir which is sum- 
marised and commented upon, the author gives a 
brief account of previous work leading up to that 
under consideration, and a useful bibliography is 
given at the end of the paper. 
Tue second part of the ‘Flora Koreana,’”’ by T. 
Nakai, occupies vol. xxxi. of the Journal of the Col- 
lege of Science, Tokyo. Numerous new species of 
vascular plants are described and figured, the memoir 
being accompanied by twenty fine plates. Through- 
out the work, keys are given to the genera in each 
family, and to the species in each genus, with refer- 
ences to the synonymy and geographical distribution 
of each species. The greater part of the material 
dealt with in this extensive flora has been collected 
by Japanese botanists, and it is to be hoped that they 
will not remain content with a floristic treatment of 
the Korean flora, but will proceed to the ecological 
study of this interesting region. 
A note bearing on the much-debated question of the 
age of the earth is given in the Proceedings of the 
Tokyo Mathematico-physical Society by S. Suzuki. 
The calculation refers to the time taken for the present 
crust of the earth to solidify. A result is obtained on 
the supposition that the heat of fusion liberated by the 
solidification of the crust supplies the heat lost by radia- 
tion, anditis further assumed that the effect of the curva- 
ture of the earth’s surface may be neglected. According 
NO. voL. 89] 
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mencing with the March number. 
In the Bulletin of the Imperial Society of 
Naturalists of Moscow for the year 1911, pp. 93 to 
158, Dr. E. Leyst compares the diurnal inequalities 
of barometric pressure in years of sun-spot maximum 
and minimum at Pavlovsk, Batavia, Irkutsk, Pots- 
dam, and Greenwich. At Pavlovsk and Batavia he 
uses data from nine years of many and nine years 
of few sun-spots between 1877 and 1906. For the 
other stations fewer years’ data are employed. A 
difference appears between the diurnal inequalities for 
both summer and winter in years of many and few 
sun-spots, which Dr. Leyst considers sufficiently 
definite to be accepted as a physical fact. Fourier 
| harmonic analysis indicates that the difference at 
Pavlovsk between years of many and few sun-spots 
is mainly in the twenty-four-hour term. The summer 
data for Greenwich differ markedly in their indica- 
tions from, those at Pavlovsk and Potsdam, but Dr. 
Leyst is disposed to ascribe this to exceptional con- 
ditions at Greenwich, possibly its maritime position. 
If one takes the diurnal inequalities given for the 
individual months of the year at Pavlovsk, one finds 
that in five months of the twelve the range was 
greater in the sun-spot minimum years, though both 
summer and winter half-years show the maximum 
range in years of sun-spot maximum. In December, 
as Dr. Leyst himself remarks, the excess of range in 
the sun-spot minimum years was _ exceedingly 
prominent. Considering the differences between 
January and December at Pavlovsk, and between 
summer at Potsdam and Greenwich, evidence seems 
| desirable that the phenomena are really representative 
of normal average conditions. 
In Symons’s Meteorological Magazine for July Dr. 
Mill, in discussing ‘‘The Rainfall of June,” directs 
