134 



NA TURE 



[June 6, 1907 



longer bodies and "shells." The question as to whether 

 these hypothetical ancestral types are represented by the 

 belemnites is discussed towards the close of the paper. 



Jl'dging from the annual report for 1905-6, affairs have 

 not been working quite smoothly at the Indian Museum. 

 .K proposal has been made that the museum should be 

 divided into several sections (including one devoted to art), 

 and that the whole establishment should be presided over 

 by a director, who should not be a zoologist. Exception 

 is taken to this proposal by the superintendent of the 

 natural history section, who also expresses himself some- 

 what strongly with regard to the uses to which some of 

 the galleries under his charge have recently been put. " I 

 feel it my duty," he writes, " to record that this section 

 has of late been seriously embarrassed and discouraged 

 by a series of sudden evictions from its galleries and by 

 constant schemes of Museum reorganisation in which its 

 well-established claims, and the interests of zoology in 

 general, have not received sufficient consideration." The 

 zoological collections, with the e.xception of the insects 

 (which suffer from the climate), are in the main in satis- 

 factory condition, and have largely increased during the 

 period under review. 



The annual return of experiments performed under the 

 Vivisection Act has just been issued. In all, 46,073 experi- 

 ments were performed by 279 licensees, of which 43,287 

 were of the nature of simple inoculations, hypodermic in- 

 jections, &c. Nearly 6000 experiments were performed for 

 Government departments, county councils, municipal cor- 

 porations, and other public health authorities; 2144 experi- 

 ments were performed for the Royal Commission on 

 Tuberculosis, 8659 for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, 

 4732 for the preparation and testing of therapeutic sera 

 and vaccines, and 1079 for the testing and standardising 

 of drugs. Irregularities occurred in the case of four 

 licensees, the result of inadvertence or misunderstanding. 

 The inspectors report that they have made the usual visits 

 of inspection of registered places, and found the animals 

 suitably lodged and well cared for, and the licensees 

 attentive to the requirements of the Act. 



\ NUMBER of excellent illustrations of Maoris and others 

 at the New Zealand International Exhibition are given 

 in the WeeWy Press (Christchurch, N.Z.) for December 12, 

 1906. One scries shows the "Canoe dance," in which an 

 elaborate story is told in pantomime by means of the poi, 

 a small ball of ratipo, at the end of a string of flax. 

 Another series deals with the Fijian fire-walkers, whose 

 performances were discussed in N.\ture some years ago, 

 and were the subject of a paper in the Proceedings of the 

 Victorian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of 

 .•\ustralasia in 1892. There is also an excellent full-page 

 plate of a Fijian dancing party. 



The Journal of the .•\nthropologica! Institute, vol. xxxvi., 

 part ii., contains Prof. Petrie's Huxley lecture, illustrated 

 by twenty-eight maps, mainly of Central Europe, with an 

 appendix on the interpretation of curves. Mr. Torday 

 continues his excellent series of papers on the tribes of the 

 Congo, and, in collaboration with Mr. Joyce, deals with 

 the Bahuana. Dr. C. S. Myers publishes two parts of his 

 anthropometric survey of modern Egypt, treating of the 

 Mohammedans and comparing them with the Copts and 

 the " mixed " group. Mr. G. U. Yule attacks the validity 

 of Dr. Karl Pearson's statistical methods in cases where 

 ill-defined qualities, such as shades of colour, are in ques- 

 tion. MM. Fric and Radin deal with the Bororo of 

 central Brazil ; a great part of their paper is devoted to 

 NO. T962, VOL. 76] 



ornaments, weapons, and music. Other papers in this 

 part are by Miss Layard on the Ipswich Palaeolithic site, 

 and by Mr. Parkinson on the Ibos ; Major Sykes publishes 

 a second vocabulary of the Gipsies of Persia, giving words 

 from three districts for comparison with Prof, de Goeje's 

 Armenian and Egyptian lists. The number contains twenty 

 plates, which, as usual, are of a high standard, both as 

 regards interest and workmanship. 



Those mysterious prehistoric excavations — the dene-holes 

 — are found in great numbers in the neighbourhood of 

 Bexley, some five miles from Woolwich, and in smaller 

 numbers near Grays, in Essex, and numerous other locali- 

 ties in east, south-east, south, and south-west of England. 

 Some recent explorations have unearthed a few more 

 interesting evidences of their antiquity, and thrown a 

 little more light on the problem of their origin. In sink- 

 ing a shaft at Gravesend lately, the workmen discovered 

 the nether cavity of a dene-hole, which had been almost 

 entirely filled in by subsidences. The shaft was quite 

 filled up, but the bee-hive chamber at the bottom is now 

 being cleared of rubbish, and in the sand and earth a 

 number of partially worked a.xe-heads of flint have been 

 found, together with the bones and skull of an animal, 

 probably a wolf, which are now being identified. The 

 walls are covered with pick-marks, which seem to have 

 been made with an instrument of either wood or bone, 

 possibly a pick made of an antler. 



In the Biologischcs Ccntralhlatt (May i) Prof. Haber- 

 landt returns to his theory that the leaves of certain plants 

 are enabled to perceive the stimulus of light because their 

 epidermal cells are domed and function as lenses, whence 

 he calls them "ocelli," since they resemble a primitive 

 eye. He has somewhat modified his previous explan- 

 ation, as follows : — If the light falls obliquely on the leaf, 

 the rays act as a " tropic " or directive stimulus on the 

 plasma-lining of the cell, causing the leaf to turn until 

 it lies at right angles to the incident rays. In support of 

 his theory, Prof. Haberlandt demonstrated that the cells 

 can be prevented from functioning as lenses if the leaves 

 are immersed in water, because the convexity is nullified 

 by the water having a refractive index almost equal to 

 that of the cell sap ; to meet the arguments of critics he 

 now shows that a continuous film of water on the surface 

 is sufficient to prevent the leaf from turning. 



An article on the liyliridisation of wild plants was con- 

 tributed by Prof. D. T. MacDougal to the Botanical 

 Gazette (January). The principal subject of examination 

 was the oak tree, Oiierciis heterophylla, characterised by 

 the veining and indentation of its leaves, that has generally 

 been accepted as a hybrid. The author adduces evidence 

 from the cultivation of seedlings in favour of regarding 

 the species as a hybrid between Ouercus Phellos and 

 Oucrcus riihra. The article is, however, more important 

 on account of the general remarks as to the methods of 

 tracing supposed hybrids. Occasionally a hybrid may be 

 synthctised from its supposed parents ; sometimes evidence 

 may be obtained from anatomical examination of the 

 hybrid and parents, or, as in the present case, from 

 cultures of the seedlings. These methods are, however, 

 fraught with pitfalls that are better understood since the 

 elaboration of the Mendelian principles. 



In connection with the silting up of Karachi harbour, 

 Mr. G. K. Betham advances the opinion, in the Indian 

 Forester (March), that much advantage might be derived 

 from calling in the services of the forestry department. 



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