546 



NATURE 



[October i, 1908 



treated. Eight cases are reported from the United 

 Provinces of the successful use of Dr. Cahnette's anti- 

 venene. In two of these cases the permanganate of potash 

 treatment was also employed. 



The new session of the Royal Geographical Society will 

 open on November 2, when Mr. D. G. Hogarth will give 

 the first of a series of papers on the unexplored world, 

 his subject being Western .\sia. This will be followed 

 by the undermentioned communications : — Some aspects 

 of the River Parana and its watershed, by Mr. W. S. 

 Barclay; an account of his investigations on the Panama 

 Canal, by Dr. Vaughan Cornish ; a paper on his two 

 expeditions into Bhutan, by Mr. J. Claude Wniie; the 

 Western Pacific, by Sir E. F. im Thurn ; on a recent 

 journey in North Central Arabia, by Captain S. S. Butler ; 

 South America and its .Antarctic relations, by Prof. 

 G. F. Scott Elliot ; earthquakes and geography, by 

 Mr. R. D. Oldham ; and a paper on Australia, by Prof. 

 J. W. Gregory, being the second of a series of lectures 

 on the geographical conditions affecting the development 

 of the British Empire ; while Prof. W. M. Davis, of 

 Harvard University, is to lecture in March on the 

 Colorado Canyon and some of its lessons. Lectures 

 may also be expected from Dr. Sven Hedin, Dr. M. A. 

 Stein, Col. R. G. T. Bright (on the results of his ex- 

 pedition for the delimitation of the boundary between 

 Uganda and the Congo Free State in the region of Mount 

 Ruwenzori, Lakes ."Mbert and .\lbert Edward, and the 

 Semliki Valley), Lieut. .A. TroUe (on the Danish expedi- 

 tion to north-east Greenland). On December 14 will be 

 commemorated the jubilee of Speke's discovery of the 

 Victoria Nyanza, and on that occasion Sir William Garstin 

 is to read a paper on fifty years of Nile exploration and 

 some of its results. 



Mr. George Nicholson, formerly curator of the Royal 

 Gardens, Kew, w'hose death occurred on September 20 at 

 Richmond, Surrey, as announced last week, was the son 

 of a Ripon nurseryman. He was born in 1847, and after 

 gaining experience in English and French nurseries was 

 appointed a member of the Kew staff in 1873 as assistant 

 to the curator, the second John Smith. He succeeded 

 Smith as curator in 1886, and remained in this office until 

 1901, when he retired through enfeebled health. Nicholson 

 was a prolific writer on horticultural matters, and his 

 monographs of Ouercus and Acer, published in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, are testimonies to his conscientious 

 and capable work. His memory, however, will live in the 

 " Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening," published in four 

 volumes, which he edited more than twenty years ago. Of 

 all modern books, Nicholson's " Dictionary " has e.xerted 

 the most influence in spreading horticultural knowledge. 

 Nicholson was a first-rate gardener, an enthusiastic and 

 critical British botanist, and a man who had studied 

 chemistry very closely. He was greatly interested in 

 natural history, particularly in insects, and contributed 

 maiiy papers to the Kew Bulletin on the fauna of the Kew 

 Gardens. Nicholson was a Veitch medallist, and was 

 amongst the first sixty who were awarded the medal of 

 honour in horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society 

 in 1897. He was also an elected associate of the Linnean 

 Society. It may be added that in 1901, when his retire- 

 ment from the curatorship took place, Nicholson presented 

 his excellent collection of British plants to the .Aberdeen 

 University. 



No. 10 of vol. iv. of Circulars and .Agricultural Journal 

 of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, is devoted to an 

 account of the life-history and ravages of white ants, 



NO. 2031, VOL. 78] 



which are closely connected with botany through the 

 cultivation by these insects of " fungus-gardens." 



No. 10 of the " Fauna of New England " (Papers 

 Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. vii.) is devoted to the Pseudo- 

 scorpionida, Acarina, &c. New genera and species of 

 local Thvsanoptera form the subject of article 2, vol. viii., 

 of the Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural 

 History. 



\\'e have to acl^nowledge the receipt of a copy of a 

 suggestive historical address (published by G. Fischer, of 

 Jena) entitled " Alte und Neue Naturgeschichte," delivered 

 on July 30 by Prof. Ernst Haeckel at the meeting to 

 celebrate the opening of a " Phyletische Museum " at 

 Jena on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the 

 University. 



Japanese locusts, by Messrs. S. JIatsumura and T. 

 Shiraki, and the earlier stages in the development of the 

 vascular system of .Ammocoetes, by Mr. S. Halta, form 

 the subjects of vol. iii., part i., of the Journal of the 

 College of Agriculture of Tohoku Imperial University, 

 Sapporo, Japan. 



A preliminary catalogue of the birds of Missouri, by 

 Mr. Otto Widmann, forms the subject of vol. xvii.. No. i, 

 of the Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. 

 Louis. The subject is treated in considerable detail, with 

 a preliminary account of the physiography of the district, 

 but is, of course, mainly of local interest. 



The report of the Natal meeting (1907) of the South 

 African Association has just reached us. In issuing the 

 volume, the editorial committee regrets that it has been 

 compelled to reduce many of the contributions to an abstract 

 or a mere title, the reason being the lowness of the 

 association's funds occasioned by the non-payment of their 

 subscriptions by many of the members. 



The annual report of the acting superintendent of the 

 Indian Museum, Industrial Section, Calcutta, for the year 

 1907-8 has reached us, from which we learn that the 

 work of analysing samples has increased from about 100 

 samples per annum in 1897 to 340 in the period under 

 review, which analyses are distributed as under : — natural 

 exudations, 89 ; oils and oil-seeds, 66 ; dyes and tans, 35 ; 

 fibres, 55 ; medicinal products, 25 ; food-stuffs, 58 ; 

 minerals, 12. 



A FINE example of an adult female Mcsoflodon hideiis, 

 Sowerby, fully 16 feet long, was stranded on the West 

 Sands, St. .Andrews, on May 28. As one flipper seemed 

 to be paralysed, it is possible that it had been struck 

 by a spent shot or had collided with the ram or other 

 part of a vessel of the fleet which was then in St. 

 .Andrews Bay. The specimen was at once secured by Dr. 

 Tosh for the University Museum. Teeth were only visible 

 in the mandible after maceration. The skeleton will be 

 described by Sir William Turner. 



The valuable deodar-forests of the Simla area are suffer- 

 ing from a severe attack of four bark-boring beetles, two 

 of which belong to the genus Scolytus, while a third, 

 PolygrapliKs minor, is a species usually restricting its 

 attentions to the blue pine, and the fourth is a buprestid. 

 The last-named is new to Mr. E. P. Stebbing, who has 

 contributed an illustrated account of the visitation to the 

 Indian Forest Zoologv Series. 



In the chief article in the August issue (part iv.) of the 

 Journal ol the Royal Microscopical Society, Mr. VV. 

 Wesch^ discusses the microscope as an aid to the study 



