474 



NATURE 



[September 5, 1907 



Medicine in Relation to the W'elfare of the State"; at 

 University College Hospital, on October 2, the inaugural 

 address will be given by Sir R. Douglas Powell ; and at 

 the Seamen's Hospital Society, on October 21, Sir Lauder 

 Brunton will give the inaugural address. The session 

 of the Pharmaceutical Society will be opened on 

 September 30, when Prof. R. Meldola will speak on " The 

 Scientific Training of the Pharmacist." 



Preliminary particulars of the ninth International 

 Geographical Congress, to be held at Geneva from July 27 

 to August 6, 1908, are given in the September number 

 of the Geographical Journal. Ten scientific excursions, 

 some of which will take place before, others after, the 

 congress, have been arranged for, each being conducted 

 by an expert. Dr. J. Friih, of Zurich, will lead a 

 party, of riot more than twenty, for the study of the 

 morphological phenomena of the Alps and their foot- 

 hills. Another party, conducted by Dr. Lugeon, will study 

 the phenomena of inverted folding in various parts of 

 the Alps. .^n excursion will be des'oted to high-level 

 forestry, and will be led by M. Ernest Muret. The 

 structure of the Jura, the plateau, and the Alps will be 

 studied under the direction of Dr. H. Schardt. A 

 botanical excursion will be made under the direction of 

 Dr. C. Schroeter, the well-known authority on the flora 

 of the Alps. A study of vegetation contrasts and the 

 technique of botanical distribution will be undertaken 

 under the guidance of Dr. J. Briquet, and one of glacial 

 morphology under the guidance of Prof. Bruckner. Prof. 

 J. Brunhes and others will direct attention to the con- 

 trasts between fluvial and glacial erosion, while Prof. 

 Schardt will explain the structure of the southern portion 

 of the crystalline Alps. Lastly, a party under the 

 guidance of Prof. E. Chaix will study the phenomena of 

 chemical erosion, especially as displayed in the surface 

 forms known as lapi^s, or Karreiif elder, and in the Karst. 

 The place of meeting is particularly favourable for the 

 arrangement of instructive excursions, and these may be 

 expected to be one of the most prominent features of the 

 congress. 



The Philippine Journal of Science for June (ii.. No. 3) 

 is entirely occupied with a paper by Dr. Richard Strong 

 on studies in plague immunity. The author concludes 

 that general vaccination in endemic centres would be a 

 valuable means in accomplishing the extermination of this 

 pestilence, an important pronouncement at the present 

 juncture, when plague is rampant in India. 



Preventive inoculations against hydrophobia were re- 

 ceived at the Pasteur Institute of Paris in 1906 by 773 

 persons, only two of whom died from the disease, and as 

 one of these may be excluded for statistical purposes, 

 seeing that hydrophobia manifested itself in less than a 

 fortnight after the conclusion of the treatment, the results 

 show the low mortality of 0-13 per cent. Only one of 

 the patients came from England. The person who died 

 in less than fifteen days after treatment had received a 

 severe penetrating wound on the face ; the other fatal 

 case had been severely bitten on the nose on August 3, was 

 treated at the institute from August 5 to 26, and died 

 from hydrophobia on October 12. 



The second report of the Natal Government Museum — 

 covering the year 1905 — has just been published by Messrs. 

 Adlard and Son, and tells of progress in all departments. 

 In the period under review the following additions to the 

 specimens in the museum were made ; — in ethnology, 145 ; 

 mammals, gS ; birds, 81 ; anatorny, 82 ; reptiles and fishes, 

 19 ; invertebrates, 425 ; pal£eontology, 4 ; geology and 

 NO. 1975, VOL. 76J 



minerals, 1445. A native blacksmith's complete outfit, 

 including a good specimen of skin-bellows, has been 

 acquired by the ethnology department of the museum 

 through the misbehaviour of its former owner, the police 

 authorititj of the colony having acted on the request 

 made to them to forward to the museum all native articles 

 which have been confiscated for wrongdoing. 



In a letter to the Times of August 28, Mr. James 

 Brand slates that intravenous injections of a mixture of 

 aqueous solutions of methylene blue and corrosive 

 sublimate cure trypanosome infections in horses, and 

 suggests that this may be found to be a remedy for sleep- 

 ing sickness, a Trypanosoma infection, in man. Prof. 

 Moore and his co-workers have found that corrosive 

 sublimate enhances the curative value of atoxyl, another 

 anilin dye, in experimental infections with the human 

 trypanosome, but it does not follow that methylene blue 

 would be of service in sleeping sickness, since Nicolle and 

 Wenyon have found that an anilin dye which is curative 

 for an infection with one trypanosome is not necessarily 

 curative for other trypanosome infections. 



The fifth annual report of the Imperial Cancer Research 

 Fund, which has been recently issued, contains the re- 

 ports of the executive committee, of the general super- 

 intendent. Dr. Bashford, and of the honorary treasurer. 

 The fund now possesses a capital sum of 118,275/. for 

 the purposes of the work, including the munificent gift 

 of 40,000/. by Mr. and Mrs. Bischoffsheim on the occasion 

 of their golden wedding. Dr. Bashford gives a risumi 

 of the experimental and other researches carried out during 

 the past year. .Attention has been given to testing various 

 alleged cancer cures ; unfortunately, it is impossible to 

 assign a curati\'e value to any of them. The much- 

 vaunted trypsin is incapable of curing inoculated cancer in 

 mice, or even of influencing the progressive growth of the 

 tumours. The only means capable of freeing the in- 

 oculated mice from cancer is the surgical removal of the 

 tumours. 



.In an illustrated pamphlet published at La Plata (" La 

 Reforma " Press, 1907), under the title of " El 

 Origen del Hombre," Dr. Florentino Ameghino re- 

 iterates his opinion that South .America was the birth- 

 place of the human race. Man is traced back to the 

 supposed Cretaceous family Microbiotheriidae — in other 

 words, to Miocene opossums ! 



Among numerous articles in part i. of the fiftieth 

 volume of Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, atten- 

 tion may be directed to a description, by Dr. Leo Walter, 

 of Prague, of the structures by means of which the fore 

 and hind wings of hymfnopterous insects are linked 

 together. .After pointing out that homologous structures 

 exist in the wings of certain other insects, such as many 

 Lepidoptera, Cicadidae, and Thricoptera, the author 

 observes that in none of these is the development so full 

 and so complicated as in the Hymenoptera. Strange to 

 say, these structures in the latter group appear never to 

 have been worked out in full detail — an omission which 

 Dr. Walter has endeavoured to supply. Facts of con- 

 siderable interest have been discovered during the investi- 

 gation, and it has been found that these organs possess 

 much importance from a systematic point of view. Their 

 object is, of course, to enable the two wings to act during 

 flight as a single unit, and, as might have been e.xpected, 

 it turns out that the strongest flyers among the Hymeno- 

 ptera are those in which the connection between the wings 

 attains its fullest development. The halting and uncertain 



