July 29, iqc9' 



NA TURE 



' JD 



Bv the will of the late Miss E. S. Wolfe, who died on 

 June 10, leaving estate of the gross value of 71,520/., 

 with net personalty 66,295/., the sum of 1000/. is to be 

 given to each of the following societies among other 

 institutions : — the Royal Anthropological Institute, the 

 Royal Archaeological Society, and the Royal Geographical 

 Society. Subject to the payment of duties on the estate, 

 the residue is left to King Edward's Hospital Fund, the 

 Royal Institution, and the Royal Society. 



The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or 

 Natural Beauty makes an appeal for upwards of looof. 

 10 purchase the central portion of the Cheddar Cliffs with 

 the view of preserving the beauty of that natural monu- 

 ment of scientific interest. There is grave danger that 

 the beauty and grandeur of the gorge may be obliterated 

 before long if the extensive quarrying operations, which 

 have been in progress during the last seven years, are not 

 discontinued. Donations may be sent to the secretary of 

 the trust at 25 Victoria Street, London, S.W. 



The French Association for the Advancement of .Science 

 will meet this year at Lille on August 2-7, under the 

 presidency of Prof. Landouzy, dean of the faculty of 

 medicine in the University of Paris. The gold medal of 

 the association, which was instituted last year, is to be 

 awarded to Prof. H. Poincar^, who will deliver a lecture 

 during the course of the meeting. In addition to minor 

 visits to the industries of the neighbourhood, three more 

 extended excursions have been arranged in connection with 

 the meetings. The first of these will be to Douai, where 

 demonstrations by the best-known aviators are to be 

 given ; the second excursion will be to the mines of Sesse- 

 valle, Aniche, and Gayant, and the third to Gand, Ypres, 

 Bruges, and Furnes. .\ large number of papers will be 

 read at the meetings, among them being communications 

 from Prof. Poincari'', on integral equations ; Prof. .\. 

 Gautier, of Paris, on the existence of water vapour in 

 volcanic gases and the origin of thermal springs ; Prof. 

 h. Bertillon and Dr. \. Chervin, on metrical anthro- 

 pology ; and Dr. Lewkowitsch, on a new refractometer. 

 The secretary of the association may be addressed at 

 28 rue Serpente, Paris. 



.'\n' important paper on the determination of the bovine 

 or human origin of tuberculosis in the human subject is 

 contributed by MM. A. Calmette and C. Gu^rin to the 

 current number of the Comptes rcndus (July 19). They 

 have found that tubercle bacilli of bovine origin can be 

 readily cultivated on a glycerinated o.x bile; tubercle bacilli 

 from human beings or birds refuses to grow on this 

 medium, w'hilst developing readily on human bile or bile 

 from the bird respectively. .Another distinction is afforded 

 by the fact that injection of the infected matter into the 

 mammary gland of a goat causes grave mammitis, lead- 

 ing to the death of the animal, if the tubercle bacilli are 

 of bovine origin, whilst cultures of human origin produce 

 a very mild and non-fatal infection. The method has been 

 applied to the diagnosis of a fatal case of acute tubercu- 

 losis in a child, aged five months, which had been bottle- 

 fed, and both of whose parents were healthy. The result 

 of applying both the above tests was to show that the 

 tuberculosis was of bovine origin. The authors point out 

 the importance of being able to determine with exactness 

 the relative frequency of tuberculous infections of bovine 

 and human origin. 



Fifty years of Darwinism forms the subject of an article 

 contributed by Dr. W. Breitenbach to Nos. 4 and 5 of 

 Neue Weltanschauung. 



NO. 2074, VOL. 81] 



A LIST of the birds, by Dr. G. M. Allen, forms the 

 eleventh part of the " Fauna of New England," now in 

 course of issue in Occasional Papers of the Boston Society 

 of Natural History. 



The dragon-flies of the Mississippi valley collected 

 during the pearl-mussel survey of that river in 1907 are 

 catalogued by Mr. C. B. Wilson in No. 1692 of the Pro- 

 ceedings of the U.S. National Museum. 



The fresh-water sponges in the collection of the U.S. 

 National Museum are in course of description in the Pro- 

 ceedings of that institution by Dr. N. Annandale, the first 

 instalment (No. 1690) dealing with those from the Philip- 

 pines and Australia. 



In vol. v., part vii., of the Annals of the South African 

 Museum, Mr. E. Meyrick describes a number of new local 

 Microlepidoptera, while Mr. L. Peringuey discusses new 

 or little-known Hymcnoptcra of the family Mutilidae from 

 South .Africa. 



In the Irish Naturalist for July Dr. R. F. Scharff 

 describes and figures a speckled otter from Lough Sheelin, 

 recently acquired by the Dublin Museum. Although albino 

 specimens are known, this appears to be the only speckled 

 otter on record. 



In the July number of the Entomologist's Monthly 

 Magazine Mr. G. H. Verrall announces that he is attempt- 

 ing to re-introduce the large copper butterfly {Chryso- 

 fihaiuis dispar), in the shape of its Continental phase 

 rutilus, into Wicken Fen, where he has turned out a 

 number of the \ar\x. 



New fishes from Japan and the Liu-kiu Islands are 

 described by Mr. J. O. Snyder in No. 1688 of the U.S. 

 National Museum Proceedings, while two new electric rays 

 from the South Atlantic coast of the United States are 

 named and described by Messrs. Bean and Weed in No. 

 1694 of the same publication. 



We have recently had occasion to notice several papers 

 on crinoids published by American workers, and we have 

 now to add to the list two by Mr. A. H. Clark, published 

 respectively as Nos. 1691 and 1693 of the U.S. National 

 .Museum Proceedings, the first of these dealing with 

 seventeen new species belonging to various genera, while 

 the second is devoted to four new species of Rhizocrinus. 



The absance of aquatic forms among the mammals of 

 the Miocene beds of Nebraska has led Dr. F. B. Loomis 

 to the conclusion that these deposits are of aerial rather 

 than lacustrine origin, and this view is confirmed by the 

 study of the tortoises, or turtles, as the author calls them, 

 in American fashion, from the Harrison beds, of which 

 several new species are described by him in the July 

 number of the American Journal of Science. All these 

 are land-tortoises of the typical genus Testudo. 



The thorax and the articulation of the wings of insects 

 form the subject of an important memoir, by Mr. R, E. 

 Snodgrass, published as No. 1687 of the U.S. National 

 Museum Proceedings. In this paper, which amplifies con- 

 clusions reached in earlier communications, the author 

 attempts to show the uniformity of thoracic structure pre- 

 vailing throughout all orders of insects, and urges that in 

 no case is there evidence that any of the constituent 

 elements of any one thoracic segment have an origin apart 

 from that particular segment. In his study of the wings 

 he adopts the venation-nomenclature proposed by Comstock, 



The determination of the ages of eels inhabiting the 

 fresh-waters of Sweden and the deductions to be drawn 



