NA TURE 



[May 13, 1909 



read before the Leicester Literary and Philosophical 

 Society, and reprinted, with amplification, in the Trans- 

 action's (vol. xiii., part i.)- The author offers some general 

 remarUs on distribution, and provides a list of new records 

 since the publication of the county flora in 1886 for all 

 the crytogamic groups. Two well-marked regions are 

 distinguished, the Charnwood Forest ' and the lowland 

 region overlying Coal-measures, Keuper Marl, Lias Clay, 

 or Sandstone. In these areas the chief plant associations 

 are the calciphilous, the humus and peat dwellers, or 

 oxylophytes, and the silicicolous. The lichens, liverworts, 

 and mosses have been well worked, but there is opportunity 

 for adding considerably to the records of fungi. 



As a first step towards the preparation of a handbook 

 on the trees of the Transvaal for the use of foresters, Mr. 

 J. Burtt-Davy has compiled a preliminary catalogue of 

 the native trees, that is published in the Transvaal Agri- 

 cultural Journal. The species are catalogued according to 

 their occurrence in four phytogeographical zones, the mist- 

 belt, high-veld, middle-veld, and low-veld, and are also 

 enumerated with vernacular names in systematic sequence. 

 The mist-belt is the true forest region, and contains many 

 species common to that part of the Transvaal and the 

 eastern province of Cape Colony, such as the two species 

 of Podocarpus, Curtisia faginea, Olea laurifolia, and 

 others. The high-veld and middle-veld are steppe and 

 savannah regions, but in the low-veld such important trees 

 as the baobab, Excoecaria africana, Afzclia quanzcnis, and 

 Copaifera mopane are found. 



We have received the first part of the Eugenics Review, 

 a new quarterly journal issued by the Eugenics Education 

 Society (6 York Buildings, London, W.C). In a short 

 " foreword " by Mr. Francis Galton, it is explained that 

 the review is not intended to rival the more technical 

 publications of the Eugenics Laboratory, but rather to 

 supplement them by demonstrating the bearing of eugenics 

 on legislation and practical conduct ; the review is con- 

 sequently rather of a popular than a strictly scientific 

 character, and the reader will hardly look for original con- 

 tributions to knowledge in its pages. In the present issue 

 Mr. Montague Crackanthorpe contributes an article on 

 the eugenic field, the Rev. Dr. Inge an address on some 

 moral aspects of eugenics, and Dr. Saleeby writes on the 

 psychologv of parenthood. Sir Edward Brabrook also 

 deals briefly with the eugenic aspects of the Report of the 

 Poor Law Commission. The address by Dr. Inge is of 

 special interest as a thoughtful contribution to the subject 

 with which it deals from a professor of divinity. 



Dr. J. J. DoBBiE, F.R.S., director of the Royal Scottish 

 Museum, Edinburgh, in his report for 1908 gives a good 

 account of the progress made in extending and re- 

 arranging the important collections under his charge. In 

 the archaeological section the most valuable additions are 

 the prehistoric Japanese collection of Dr. N. G. Munro, 

 which is of the same type as that of Prof. Gowland, now 

 in the British Museum, and a Babylonian clay tablet, 

 which is believed to contain a missing portion of the 

 Creation epic. Those of Dr. Felkin from the Upper Nile 

 and of Dr. M. Pirie from the Burun country are interest- 

 ing additions to the ethnographical series. The natural- 

 history cabinets now contain the large collection of eggs 

 of British birds made by Mr. O. A. J. Lee; a fine pair 

 of Californian sea-elephants {Macrorhinus angustirostris), 

 long supposed to be extinct, but lately re-discovered on the 

 island of Guadalupe, some 200 miles off the coast of Lower 

 California; and an example of the rare deep-sea oar-fish 

 or ribbon-fish (liegalecus glesne), cast ashore at Dunbar. 

 NO. 2063, VOL. 80] 



It is disquieting to learn that the safety of the collections 

 is seriously endangered by the close proximity to the main 

 building of two spirit stores, and it may be hoped that the 

 Government will take early steps to acquire and demolish 

 them. 



Under the title of " The Romanichels, a Lucubration," 

 Mr. Bob Skot issues privately through Messrs. R. McGee 

 and Co., of Liverpool, a reprint of a lecture delivered 

 before the Clevedon Naturalists' Association, in which he 

 discusses the history, persecutions, character, and customs 

 of the Gypsies. In this pamphlet he has brought together 

 much curious information on this interesting people from 

 sources not easily accessible, and he has reproduced, with 

 the musical score, eleven characteristic Gypsy melodies, 

 which were sung, probably for the first time before a 

 learned society, during the delivery of this lecture. It is 

 curious to find among the Gypsies survivals of the rule 

 of concealed burial of the dead, streams, it is said, having 

 been diverted, and the corpse buried in their beds, after 

 which the water was allowed to resume its ordinary course. 

 The writer attributes the custom, occasionally practised in 

 this country at the present day, of burning the effects of 

 deceased members of the tribe, not to the belief that these 

 follow the dead man to the spirit world, but to the theory 

 that the soul is so firmly attached to the body and its 

 possessions that it cannot obtain freedom until these are 

 destroyed. The custom of abstaining during life from 

 the favourite food of a lost relation, and the belief that 

 vessels are defiled by the touch of a dog's tongue or of a 

 woman's skirl, suggest reminiscences of customs and 

 taboos derived from the eastern home of the race. 



Prof. G. Mercalli has recently published a short 

 account of the destructive Calabrian earthquake of October 

 23, 1907. The centre of the earthquake appears to have 

 been near Ferruzzano, a small town on the east coast 

 near Gerace. Here, 158 persons (or S per cent, of the 

 inhabitants) were killed, and, immediately after the shock, 

 the sea advanced inshore 30 metres, and then retreated. 

 The district is one in which few earthquakes originate, 

 but five preparatory shocks occurred in it, the first on the 

 day after the earthquake of 1905, the last three minutes 

 before the principal earthquake. Though the ground was 

 fissured in places, there were no faults ; there was no 

 marked shifting of railway-lines, and no permanent dis- 

 placement of the earth's crust. The number of after- 

 shocks was small. Prof. Mercalli attributes the excessive 

 damage at Ferruzzano to its erection on an isolated 

 eminence and on a slope, and to the friable nature of the 

 ground on which the houses were built. 



The Publications of the Iowa Geological Survey are 

 usually devoted to economic subjects, but the eighteenth 

 volume, just received, consists chiefly of a memoir of 

 general scientific interest. This work, by Dr. Charles R. 

 Eastman, of Harvard University, is entitled " Devonian 

 Fishes of Iowa "; but it is, in fact, a discussion of the 

 Lower PaUcozoic fishes in general, with special reference 

 to those found in North .'America. It is a critical summary 

 of the subject, with many quotations from the latest 

 memoirs, and a brief statement of Dr. Eastman's own 

 opinions, which have already been published in scattered 

 papers. The Devonian rocks of Iowa itself have yielded 

 only fragmentary fish-remains, but one quarry in the upper 

 beds has furnished an astonishing number of the teeth 

 of Chimasroids and Dipnoans, which exhibit much variety. 

 Dr. Eastman thinks that, when well-preserved skeletons 

 are found, the Devonian Chimseroid fishes will prove to 

 have been armoured with thin dermal plates and with 



