November 18, 1922J 



NA TURE 



677 



Children's Museum, but also at the Central Museum. 

 Here it is the higher grade schools that receive chief 

 attention, and an attempt is made to correlate the 

 demonstrations with their curriculum. Besides the 

 classes at the Museum, full use was made of the 

 collection of lantern slides, more than 2800 being 

 sent out on loan. The department of ethnology 

 continues to furnish suggestive material to the 

 American clothing and allied industries ; four rooms 

 have been constructed and equipped for the increasing 

 number of artists and manufacturers consulting these 

 collections. 



One way in which the Smithsonian Institution 

 pursues " the increase of knowledge " is by explora- 

 tion and field-work. A richly-illustrated pamphlet 

 describing the work so accomplished during 192 1 has 

 been issued as Publication 2669. The prevailing 

 high costs restricted the number of expeditions, but 

 fourteen of the more important ranged from China 

 to Chile and brought back large collections to the 

 United States National Museum. Our own museums 

 do their share of exploration, but the great advantage 

 possessed by the museum at Washington is that it 

 seems able to detail its own staff for this purpose. 

 This is to the benefit of both the individuals and the 

 eventual study of the collections. Dr. C. D. Walcott 

 continued his exploration of pre-Devonian strata in 

 the Canadian Rockies. Dr. Bassler collected fossils 

 in Tennessee for study and for exhibition. Mr. 

 Gilmore collected fossil vertebrates in New Mexico, 

 and Mr. Gidley did the same in Arizona, California, 

 and Nebraska. Dr. Hitchcock collected and studied 

 grasses and bamboos in the Philippines, Japan, and 

 China. Dr. Bartsch visited the Tortugas and the 

 Bahamas in connexion with his breeding experiments 

 on the mollusc Cerion. Dr. Aldrich was sent to 

 Alaska to collect insects. Seven other expeditions 

 were devoted to archaeological field-work in the 

 United States and Dominica, and on them also many 

 members of the staff were engaged. The health and 

 enthusiasm gained by this contact with Nature in the 

 open air must be a great help to the workers during 

 the rest of the year. 



The Geological Survey of South Africa has earned 

 the thanks of a wide circle by publishing, as Memoir 

 No. 18, "A Bibliography of South African Geology- to 

 the end of 1920 " (Pretoria, 1922, price 10s. 6d.). 

 Mr. A. L. Hall has undertaken what must have been 

 an arduous task, and Miss M. YVilman has generously 

 supplied him with the data collected by her since the 

 publication of her " Catalogue of Printed Books, 

 Papers, etc.," in 1905. The result is a clearly printed 

 list, classified by authors, of 5794 entries, and covering 

 even remarks put forward in the discussions that are 

 so usefully printed in the Proceedings of the Geo- 

 logical Society of South Africa. The only slips that 

 we have noticed are in one or two initials of authors, 

 and here and there the omission of the place of pub- 

 lication or of a date. " Liege," which is used through- 

 out, is of course a repetition of a common error. The 

 whole question of a uniform system of abbreviations has 

 still to be considered. " Jl." for Journal and " Ro." 



NO. 2768, VOL. I io] 



for Royal are unusual and unnecessary. " G.S., 

 U.S.A." is misleading for a publication that has 

 nothing to do with the senior Union across the 

 Atlantic, and " Minn." means Minnesota and should 

 not be used for Minneapolis. There should be no 

 comma, though this has been systematically inserted, 

 after the first " S " in " G.S.S.A." However, the 

 complete list of serials quoted at the outset helps us 

 over these small difficulties, and Mr. Hall's energy has 

 cleared away a thousand greater ones from the path 

 of the student of South African geology. 



With the enormous increase in the production of 

 petroleum and the widely different uses to which the 

 commercial products are put, the various inter- 

 national congresses which met prior to the war, 

 realising the importance of standard methods of 

 testing, attempted to deal with the question inter- 

 nationally, but little practical success was achieved. 

 With such products so many of the tests are empirical, 

 depending, like the flash point and so-called viscosity, 

 on the form of apparatus and conditions of testing, 

 that standardisation is absolutely essential if the 

 tests are to have real value. It remained for the 

 greatest producing country, the United States of 

 America, through that valuable body the American 

 Society for Testing Materials, to accomplish success- 

 fully the work of standardisation of methods, and 

 defining as accurately as possible the desired char- 

 acters of the various products. In this country, 

 which although not a producing country is one of 

 the largest consumers and controls many important 

 oil fields, the Institution of Petroleum Technologists 

 decided last year that standardisation must be taken 

 in hand, and at a meeting of the Institution on 

 October 10 Dr. A. E. Dunstan gave a summary 

 of the progress which had been made. Hearty 

 support and assistance was given by all the Govern- 

 ment Departments concerned with the use of oil 

 products, and by the British oil companies, and 

 co-operation with the British Engineering Standards 

 Association, a body representing a most important 

 section of users, has been arranged to deal with 

 specifications. The work of standardisation has been 

 divided between the six following sub-committees : 

 naturally occurring bituminous substances (crude 

 oils, etc.) ; distillates up to kerosene ; kerosenes and 

 intermediates ; lubricants ; liquid fuels ; asphaltum 

 and artificial residues. It is anticipated that the 

 methods recommended will be issued early next 

 year. 



Referring to the article on " The Sense of Smell 

 in Birds " in Nature of June 17, Dr. B. S. Neuhausen, 

 of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, writes to 

 direct attention to a paper by Dr. H. H. Beck on 

 "The Occult Senses in Birds " (Auk, 1920, xxxvii, 

 55). In this communication Dr. Beck gave an 

 example of the great food-finding powers of carrion- 

 eating birds. At a hunt, one frosty morning in 

 Pennsylvania, a dog went mad and had to be shot : 

 the body was thrown into a limestone sinkhole close 

 at hand, where it was speedily located by turkey 

 vultures, the nearest haunt of winch was eight miles 



