June 20, 1907] 



NA TURE 



W 



Bv the amalgamation of fiftoen out of the twenty or 

 twenty-five medical societies of London, the Royal Society 

 of Medicine has been constituted, the incorporated societies 

 forming the sections of the new society. A meeting was 

 held on June 14 for the purpose of receiving and adopting 

 a Roval charter. The meeting was presided over by Mr. 

 Warrington Hayward, the president of the Royal Medical 

 and Chirurgical Society, the wealthiest and principal 

 society of the amalgamation, when Sir William Church 

 was elected the first president. Each society (now a 

 section) will carry on its special work as before. The 

 Royal Society of Medicine will commence with a member- 

 ship of 4000, an annual income of nearly Sooo/., and 

 possesses a library of So, 000 volumes. 



.A LIST of the palseontological type specimens in the 

 collection of the Boston (U.S.A.) Society of Natural 

 History, by Mr. J. A. Cushman, has been published as 

 No. fi of vol. xxxiii. of the Proceedings of that body. 



Bulletin No. 4 of the Division of Entomology, Honolulu, 

 is devoted to a further account of the parasites of leaf- 

 hoppers, by Mr. R. C. L. Perkins, together with descrip- 

 tions of certain new Hemiptera, by Mr. C. W. Kirkaldy, 

 the material having been almost entirely collected in 

 .Arizona. 



A TAPER on the ants of Saxony, by Mr. H. N'ipkmeyrr, 

 and one on change of function in various animal organs, 

 by Mr. .A. Jacobi, form the most important zoological 

 contributions to the AbJianJlungen of the Dresden Isis for 

 the second half of 1906 (1907). 



In the May number of Naluren Mr. O. J. Lie-Pettersen 

 concludes his account of Scandinavian thrushes, in which 

 special attention is directed to the dates of arrival of the 

 migratory species. " F. V. H." figures a horse with a 

 supplemental front toe, which was successfully removed 

 in the Copenhagen \'eterinary Institution. 



" Dwellers in our Rock-pools " is the title of a small 

 illustrated booklet describing the common littoral fauna of 

 Folkestone. The author is Mr. F. Rutt, and the pamphlet 

 is published by Messrs. .A. Stace and Sons, of Folkestone, 

 at the price of threepence. We have also to welcotiic a 

 cheap re-issue of Mr. E. W. Wade's " Birds of Bempton 

 Cliffs," published by Messrs. .A. Brown and .Sons, Ltd., 

 of London, Hull, and York, at one shilling. 



The functions of the " spiracles " in skates form the 

 subject of an interesting article, by Mr. H. W. Rand, in 

 the May number of the American Naturalist. Some time 

 ago the author received about half a dozen skates which had 

 been out of the water for nearly an hour, and were con- 

 sequently presumed to be dead. When salt water was dis- 

 charged on them from a hose, they gradually, however, 

 showed signs of returning life, and eventually spouted 

 copious jets of water from their spiracles. As such a 

 phenomenon had not been previously noted by the author, 

 he >et himself to study the functions of the spiracles 

 :;cnerally. Owing to the habit of lying flat on the sand, 

 ih< spiracle, of which the primary function is to take in 

 water, appears of much more importance to skates than to 

 sharks. In addition to serving as an intake, it also acts 

 as an exhalent Orifice, soft substances, such as fragments 

 of seaweed, which have gained an entrance into the gill- 

 chamber, being expelled by spouting through the spiracles. 

 Spouting also appears to be employed as a means of keep- 

 ing the eves clean. 



In the May number of the Zoologist Mr. C. M. D. 

 .Stewart discusses a somewhat mythical snake known to 

 the Zulus as " ndhlondhlo." It was reported to be of huge 

 size, poisonous, very fierce, and furnished with a feather- 

 like crest, while it was also asserted to utter a whistling 

 cry. Its name forms one of the titles of the Zulu king. 

 The main question appears to be whether the creature 

 was a distinct species or whether we have to do with 

 overgrown individuals of the one locally known as the 

 black mamba {Dendraspis aiigiisticcps, var.). A snake 

 shot by the Commissioner of Zululand about 1874, 

 measuring about 16 feet in length, and regarded by that 

 gentleman as a black mamba, was declared by the Zulus 

 to be a ndhlondhlo. Certainly naturalists have no know- 

 ledge of black niambas of that length, but this by no 

 means proves that such may not have existed. The argu- 

 ment used by the author, that as no such giants are now 

 known the ndhlondhlo must have been a distinct species, 

 does not seem to us to- carry much weight. 



In his Huxley meinorial lecture for 1903 (Nature, vol. 

 Ixviii., p. 607), Prof. Karl Pearson showed that the mental 

 and moral characters of man are inherited in much the 

 same manner as the physical characters. " We inherit," 

 he said, " our parents' tempers, our parents' conscientious- 

 ness, shyness and ability, even as we inherit their stature, 

 forearm and span." This conclusion was arrived at as the 

 result of a prolonged investigation of fraternal resemblance 

 between children, based on the estimates of school teachers. 

 -At the Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, 

 University of London, the inquiry has been extended to 

 material derived from class lists of the University of 

 Oxford and the school lists of Harrow and Charterhouse, 

 and the results are given in a memoir — " The Inheritance 

 of Ability," by Edgar Schuster and Ethel M. Elderton — 

 just published (London : Dulau and Co., price 4s.). The 

 definite object of the investigation was to determine as 

 exactly as possible the resemblance between father and 

 son and brother and brother, as iridicated by successes or 

 failures in passing the examination for the B.A. degree at 

 Oxford, or by their positions in school at Harrow and 

 Charterhouse at corresponding times. The results obtained 

 from the Oxford material show that the correlation between 

 father and son is represented by 0-312, and that between 

 brother and brother by 0405, on a scale by which complete 

 resemblance would be indicated by i and no resemblance 

 by o. T"he public-school material gave the value 0-398, 

 which is in close agreement with the Oxford value, for 

 the correlation coelBcient between brother and brother. 

 The general result of the inquiry is therefore to confirm 

 Prof. Pearson's conclusions as to the inheritance o£ 

 psychical characters in man. 



.A REPRINT has been received of an account of the de- 

 velopment of the common mushroom, Agaricus cainpcstris, 

 contributed by Prof. G. F. Atkinson to the Botanical 

 Gazette (September, 1906). Examination of the very early 

 stages indicated that, except for the universal veil, no 

 differentiation was noticeable until the hyinenium or spore^ 

 bearing layer develops and marks off the stem and the 

 cap. The author states that he has found two spores only 

 arising from the basidia in cultivated varieties, whereas 

 he has often identified four spores in normal pasture 

 forms. 



In the Trinidad Bulletin (April) Mr. J. H. Hart, re- 

 ferring to the packing of seeds for the tropics, discriminates 

 between seeds that can be fully dried without injury, such 

 .IS the seeds of tempfrate plants, and the seeds of many 



NO. 1964, VOL. 76] 



