August 27, 1908] 



NA TURE 



399 



The appropriation for the Bureau of Soils is increased to 

 46,040/., that of Entomology to 36,992!., while the total 

 appropriation for the Office of Experiment Stations is 

 206,924/., an increase of 42S0/. 



According to the report for 1907, the .Albany Museum, 

 Cape Colony, continues to make steady progress, but the 

 congested condition of the collections, owing" to insufficient 

 accommodation, necessarily tends to hinder expansion. By 

 the death of Mrs. George White, of Brakkloof, near 

 Grahamstown, the museum has lost a liberal and constant 

 benefactor. 



In vol. xvii., part v., of the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Physical Society of Edinburgh, Prof. J. A. Thomson 

 records from the Faeroes a large antipatharian coral 

 hitherto unknown from the British area, and provisionally 

 identified with a well-known Mediterranean species, which 

 has been stated to occur in the Bay of Biscay. The single 

 Fjeroe specimen, which is more than a yard in height, was 

 dredged up by a fisherman. 



From the author, Mr. M. Doello-Jurado, we have re- 

 ceived a copy of an " Essai d'une Division Biologique," 

 extracted from Annales de la Sociedad Cientifica Argentina, 

 vol. Ixv., pp. 189 et seq., 1908. In this it is proposed to 

 divide vertebrates into two main groups, according to their 

 mode of fecundation. In the one group fertilisation of 

 the ovum takes place within the body of the female 

 parent, while in the other this process is external. " Ver- 

 t^br^s i fecondation interne " are further divided into an 

 oviparous and a viviparous subgroup. 



In the double July and .August number of Naturen, 

 "J. G." records the capture of a specimen of Sowerby's 

 beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens) at Bergen. These 

 cetaceans seem much less uncommon on the coasts of 

 Norway than on our own shores, three specimens having, 

 to our own knowledge, been taken at Bergen during the 

 last few years. The new specimen is unusually small, 

 and probably, therefore, immature, its length being only 

 2-45 metres, whereas normally adult examples attain about 

 double this length. 



To Mr. B. B. Woodward we are indebted for a separate 

 copy of his presidential address delivered before the 

 Malacological Society in February last, and published in 

 vol. viii., part ii., of the society's Proceedings. The title 

 is " Malacology versus Paljeoconchology, " and attention is 

 specially directed towards an alleged lack of harmony 

 existing between the works of students of recent and of 

 fossil Mollusca. Workers in the existing group are accord- 

 ingly asked to check their results by a comparison of the 

 labours of pabTeontologists, while the latter are urged to 

 desist from the practice of brigading together groups which 

 have been shown by the former to have no near relation- 

 ship. A useful table of the time-distribution of the leading 

 molluscan groups is appended. 



To the August number of British Birds, Mr. C. B. Tice- 

 hurst contributes the results of an inquiry into the recent 

 outbreak of wood-pigeon diphtheria, of which the distribu- 

 tion is illustrated by a map. The disease, it appears, has 

 been familiar to sportsmen and gamekeepers for some 

 years as being liable to occur in seasons when acorns and 

 beech-mast are abundant, but its true cause was unknown. 

 The disease was in the main confined to the Thames 

 valley area, and appears to have been most prevalent 

 among the migratory birds which arrived in autumn from 

 the Continent. It is suggested that the contagion was 

 communicated by one bird swallowing food that had been 

 coughed up from the gullet of another. The course of the 



NO. 2026, VOL. 78] 



malady may be either rapid or lingering. The active cause 

 of the disease is the presence in the mucous membrane 

 of the throat of a bacillus believed to be specifically distinct 

 from the one which causes diphtheria in the human subject. 



The second part of vol. xci. of Zeitschrift fiir wissen- 

 schaftliche Zoologie contains a very detailed account of 

 the minute structure of the eyes — compound and simple — • 

 of the fresh-water crustacean .Apiis productus, by Dr. W. 

 Wenke, of the Zoological Institute, Berlin. The investi- 

 gation was taken up as a further development of Hesse's 

 " Untersuchungen iiber die Organe der Lichtemfindung bei 

 niederen Thiere." Without entering into the results of the 

 investigation, attention may be directed to the elaborate 

 nature of the text-figures illustrating the histology of the 

 compound eyes. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that 

 Apus productus seems to be as capricious in its appear- 

 ance as the British A. cancriformis. In igot females were, 

 for instance, abundant in the neighbourhood of Berlin, but 

 for several years afterwards the author could obtain no 

 other specimens until he found the species common at 

 Fijrstenbrunn in 1906 and 1907. Owing to the cold spring 

 the species at that place has this year attained only two- 

 thirds its normal size. 



Few food problems are more important than the develop- 

 ment of bacteria in milk, and the dairy farmer is fast 

 recognising that micro-organisms are the cause of many 

 of his troubles. Elaborate apparatus has been devised for 

 cooling, pasteurising, and sterilising milk, and is being 

 used to a large and increasing extent in modern dairies. 

 Bulletin No. iii of West Virginia University .Agricultural 

 Experiment Station gives a full description, with illustra- 

 tions, of some of the methods used in America, and will 

 prove very useful to those interested in the technical side 

 of bacteriology. 



.An interesting batch of bulletins has reached us from the 

 •Agricultural Experiment Station of the Purdue University 

 (Indiana, U.S.A.), some dealing with local practical 

 problems and others of more general interest. In No. 119 

 is given a list of the plant diseases occurring in the State 

 for the year 1906, with an indication of their relative 

 prevalence. The basis for the estimation of losses and the 

 distribution of the diseases was a large number of reports 

 furnished by correspondents all over the State. The value 

 of such a list, both from the scientific and the economic 

 point of view, is obvious, and some of our agricultural 

 institutions would do well to draw up similar lists for the 

 areas they serve. 



A NUMBER of the " Progressus Rei Botanicte," prepared 

 by Dr. J. W. Moll, and published for the International 

 .Association of Botanists, is devoted to the review of the 

 progress in microscopic technique since the year 1870. 

 With regard to the microscope and its component parts, 

 water immersion objectives were already in use prior to 

 that date, but oil immersion objectives are innovations 

 and apochromatic lenses are more modern. The author 

 regards the Abb^ condenser and revolving nose-pieces as 

 the most practically useful devices that have been intro- 

 duced. Allusion is made to the investigation of ultra- 

 microscopic particles and microphotography with ultra- 

 violet light, but more information would have been accept- 

 able. A discussion is presented of the opinions held with 

 regard to the value of fixing and staining methods, in 

 which Dr. Moll disagrees in the main with Fischer's 

 criticisms. It is noted that the method for preparing 

 paraffin sections in ribands was first announced by F. Spee 

 in 1885. Reference is made to certain physical tests, of 

 which De Vries's plasmolytic method is the best known. 



