June lo, 1909J 



NA TURE 



435 



was supported by Dr. Wiley, of the U.S. Department of 

 Affriculture, and F'rof. R. Meldola, F.R.S., representing 

 tile Society of Chemical Industry, and was accepted with 

 acclamation. IVof. E. \V. Morley was elected the 

 honorary president of the eighth congress, and Dr. W. H. 

 Nichols the acting president. The official American 

 delegates to the seventh congress were constituted the 

 organising committee of the eighth congress, with power 

 to .idd to their number. 



.At a meeting of subscribers to the statue of I^ord 

 Kelvin for Belfast, held on June 2, it was resolved 

 unanimously that the statue be erected in the grounds of 

 the City Hall instead of in the grounds of the new 

 Queen's University as recommended by the executive 

 ronimitlee. 



Prof. A. Lauricnck Rotcm, director of Blue Hill 

 Meteorological Observatory, U.S.A., has been elected an 

 honorary member of the .Austrian Meteorological Society. 



Prof. T. A. J.^ggar, of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 leclnology, has completed his geophysical investigations 

 in Japan. He will spend the summer in observing volcanic 

 plienomona in Hawaii, with special reference to the re- 

 ported activity of Kilauea. 



The U.S. Xavy Department is about to construct, in 

 Rock Creek Park, Wa.shington, a concrete tower, fioo feet 

 high, for the purposes of wireless telegraphy. This will 

 be higher than the \A'ashington Monument. Indeed, no 

 other American building will have a greater height, with 

 the exception of two high structures in New York. The 

 plant that will be installed is to send messages to a 

 distance of 3000 miles. 



.A NOTE in a recent issue of Science says that it has 

 been estimated that the amount of wood annually con- 

 sumed in the United States at the present time is twentv- 

 three billion cubic feet, while the growth of the forest is 

 only seven billion feet. In other words, Americans all 

 over the country are' using more than three times as much 

 wood as the forests are producing. The figures are based 

 upon a large number of State and local reports collected 

 by the Government and upon actual measurements. 



The American Geographical Society has accepted Mrs. 

 Collis P. Huntington's gift of a 50,000/. site for a new 

 building in New York City, overlooking the Hudson River. 

 We also learn from Science that Mr. \. M. Huntington, 

 the president of the society, has given 10,000/. toward the 

 building fund, which will be increased by further sub- 

 scriptions and the proceeds of the sale of the old building, 

 which should be about 50,000/. 



A NEW society — the Illuminating Engineering Society — 

 has been formed to make the subject of illumination as 

 a whole its special province, to collect together the 

 scattered data bearing on the subject, and to provide a 

 platform for the impartial discussion of all methods of 

 lighting. .Anyone interested in the subject of illumination 

 and the aims of the society may become a member, and 

 may be of either sex and any nationality. The first 

 session will commence in November ne.\t. All particulars 

 may be obtained from the hon. secretary, Mr. L. Gaster, 

 editor of the Illuminating Engineer, 32 Victoria Street, 

 London, S.W. 



According to the report for 1908, the Horniman Museum 

 at Forest Hill continues to make rapid and marked progress 

 as a public educator, the Saturday afternoon lectures being 

 so well attended that a large number of persons have to 



NO. 2067, VOL. 80] 



be refused admission. As the average number of dis- 

 appointed individuals at each lecture is stated to be about 

 fifty, the urgent need of a lecture-hall is self-apparent. 

 At present the lectures are delivered in the insect-room, 

 much to the disadvantage of its proper function. The 

 natural-history collections are in course of re-arrangement, 

 and it is intended to illustrate the adaptation of different 

 groups of vertebrates to various kinds of progression and 

 work, such as swimming, flying, and burrowing, by 

 specially arranged series. 



\'oL. xix. of the Journal of Comparative Neurology and 

 Psychology opens with an article by Mr. J. B. Watson 

 on experiments in connection with colour-vision in 

 monkeys. After reviewing the work of Kinnaman on the 

 same subject, the author arrives at the conclusion that 

 tests by means of coloured papers are practically value- 

 less, and considers that trustworthy results can be attained 

 only by the aid of a continuous spectrum. Next follows 

 the description of the apparatus employed in the experi- 

 ments. The most surprising result was the failure of the 

 three monkeys experimented upon to react to red ; on the 

 other hand, the blue-yellow discrimination arose more 

 rapidly than the red-green, and in one case the habit of 

 reacting to blue (which may prove to be a " preferred " 

 colour) was formed with remarkable rapidity. The writer 

 refrains, however, from drawing any definite conclusions, 

 and winds up as follows : — " With such questions raised 

 is it any wonder that we find it impossible to accept the 

 uncritical results which have been obtained by the use 

 of filters, coloured papers, &c., as evidence for the presence 

 of colour vision in animals? " 



TiiE .Anaspidacea have lately loomed large in zoological 

 literature, and zoologists will welcome the valuable mono- 

 graph on this group of primitive Crustacea which Mr. 

 Geoffrey Smith contributes to the May number of the 

 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. Carcinologists 

 are, unfortunately, rather apt, while dealing in great detail 

 with the appendages of the Crustacea, to pay but little 

 heed to internal anatomy. In this memoir, however, we 

 are furnished with a full description of the anatomy of the 

 remarkable Tasmanian mountain shrimp, both external 

 and internal, for which zoologists will be duly grateful. 

 .As a result of his recent visit to Tasmania, Mr. Smith 

 has been able to secure ample material, not only of 

 Anaspides tasmaniae, first described by Thomson in 1893, 

 but also of a new genus and species, Paranaspides 

 lacustris, discovered by himself. He also discusses the 

 only other known modern representative of the group, 

 Koonunga cursor, recently discovered near Melbourne by 

 Mr. Sayce, and the fossil species from the Carboniferous 

 and Permian formations of various parts of the world. 

 He concludes that the Anaspidacea are a very primitive 

 group of Malacostraca, combining in themselves characters 

 which, in the course of evolution of the more specialised 

 groups, have become "segregated out." In other words, 

 they are of a generalised type. The memoir illustrates in 

 a striking manner the rapidity with which our knowledge 

 of the Crustacea has grown during recent years, largely 

 as the result of work carried out by local or visiting 

 naturalists at the .Antipodes. 



The May number of the Quarterly Journal of Micro- 

 scopical Science contains also an interesting paper, by Mr. 

 C. Clifford Dobell, on spore-formation in the disporic 

 bacteria. The author's researches tend to throw doubt 

 on the occurrence of " sexuality " in the bacteria, for he 

 sees in the sporulation of the disporic forms, not a 



