136 



NA TURE 



[July 29, 190^ 



therefrom form the subject cf No. 46 of the Piihiications 

 •de Circonsiance issued at Copenhagen by the Conseil 

 Permanent International pour I'Exploration de la Mer. 

 As the result of these investigations it has been found 

 that the great majority of the five-year-old eels collect at 

 tthe mouths of the rivers discharging into the Gottland 

 and Botten lakes, where they remain in a barren condition 

 from five to seven years, after which they make their 

 way, as ten- to twelve-year-old fishes, via the Kattegat, 

 the Skagerack, and the North Sea to the Atlantic for the 

 purpose of spawning. 



The mystery so long shrouding the young of the 

 sanderling has at length been solved, and in the June 

 ■number of Witherby's British Birds Dr. Eagle Clarke 

 ^ives an excellent coloured plate of four of the long- 

 sought chicks. This brood was discovered by Dr. Bruce 

 on August 3, 1906, in the north-eastern portion of Prince 

 ■Charles's Foreland, Spitsbergen, and the chicks and their 

 parent are now mounted in the Royal Scottish Museum. 

 Other chicks were subsequently obtained, in 1907 or 1908, 

 "by the Danish expedition to N.E. Greenland. In ground- 

 •colour the chicks are greyish-buff, variegated with black 

 and deeper buff, and flecked with white, longitudinal stripes 

 being absent. There is a collar of uniform buff on the 

 "back of the neck, and the under-parts are nearly white. 



The July number of the Journal of Economic Biology 

 is devoted to three papers on injurious insects and their 

 relations. In the first of these Mr. R. S. Bagnall describes 

 certain new British species of thrips (Thysanoptera), with 

 notes on injurious kinds. In the second Mr. H. H. King 

 has notes, with plate, on a boring beetle of the family 

 BuprestidjE, referable to the genus Sphenoptera, the 

 larvae of which are doing considerable damage in the 

 ■Sudan by attacking the stems of cotton. The third paper, 

 by Messrs. W. E. Collinge and J. W. Shoebotham, is 

 devoted to the description of a new genus and species 

 (Amerus normani) of Collenibola, based on specimens taken 

 HI a greenhouse in the garden of the Rev. Canon Norman 

 at Berkhampstead, Herts. A second species of the group, 

 Neeliis murinus, typically from Cambridge, Mass., U.S..\., 

 lias likewise been taken at Berkhampstead. 



The much-discussed problem of the nature of the 

 ■" ciliated funnels " of the leeches is dealt with at length, 

 -and in a very interesting manner, by Rudolf Loeser in 

 the first part of the ninety-third volume of the Zeitschrift 

 fiir wissenschaftliche Zoologie. The author has investi- 

 gated these organs in three species of Gnathobdellidae and 

 four of Rhynchobdellid^. He concludes that in no case 

 can the ciliated funnels be regarded as nephrostomes, their 

 connection with the ncphridium being entirely secondary. 

 They are to be compared with the " ciliated urns " of 

 Ciephyreans, and, like the latter, are primarily blood- 

 purifying organs, in the " central mass " of which phago- 

 cytosis, and also the formation of new amoebocytes, takes 

 place. In the Glossiphonidse the " capsules " are the 

 phagocytic organs, connected with the body-cavity through 

 the funnels, and giving off their products by osmosis to 

 the nephridia. In Herpobdella (Nephelis) and in the 

 Hirudinidae the ciliated organs are the places where blood 

 •corpuscles develop, while the excretory products are con- 

 veyed to the nephridia through botryoidal vessels. The 

 author has also investigated, by injection methods, the 

 relations of the various blood-containing spaces, and his 

 observations tend to support the conclusions of recent 

 authors, such as Oka, on this subject. He regards it as 

 certain that the lateral blood channels of the Gnatho- 

 ■bdellidae are not true vessels, but merely parts of the body 

 cavity with muscular walls. 



NO. 2074, VOL. 81] 



An illustrated pamphlet of forty-seven pages, describing 

 how Rio de Janeiro has been freed from yellow fever, has 

 reached us; its title is "Comment on assainit un Pays. 

 L'Extinction de la Fiivre jaune a Rio de Janeiro," by 

 Nereu Rangcl Pestana. The pamphlet is issued by La 

 Mission Br^silienne d'Expansion ^conomique, and is pub- 

 lished in Paris by MM. Aillaud et Cie. The deaths from 

 yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro were 1078 in 1S98, whereas 

 in 1908 there were only four. The sanitary budget has 

 risen from one million to seventeen million francs. Sani- 

 tary works on a large scale were carried out, such as port 

 works, canalisation of marshes, construction of new 

 avenues and roads, with proper alignment through the 

 old unhealthy parts, re-construction of drainage, fumiga- 

 tion of houses, oiling of pools, introduction of pipe water- 

 supply, and so on, and, perhaps as important as any- 

 thing, a sanitary code, rigorously enforced against 

 obstinacy, ignorance and ridicule, the usual means 

 employed for resisting such measures. As illustrating the 

 activity of the sanitary staff, more than 153,000 breed- 

 ing-places of mosquitoes were dealt with in 1906. < 

 In 1907 the death-rate was 19-2. The general mortality 

 is now no greater than that of Vienna. It must be 

 remembered that occasionally yellow fever disappears quite 

 independently of an attack on the mosquito, but it can 

 hardly be doubted that these splendid triumphs of tropical 

 medicine in Rio de Janeiro, in Santos, and in other places 

 have been entirely due to the war without mercy waged 

 against Stcgomyia fasciata, and that soon yellow fever will 

 be a disease of the past. 



An account of the American mistletoe, Phoradendron 

 fla-^'csccns, dealing with the anatomy and some of its 

 biological aspects as a hemiparasite, is presented by Mr. 

 H. H. York in Bulletin No. 120 of the University of 

 Texas. Dissemination is attributed to the agency of birds 

 that eat the seeds. The commonest host plants are hack- 

 berry, mesquite, elm, and osage orange. The seedling 

 first forms an attachment disc on the outside of the host, 

 then sends in a primary haustorium which spreads in the 

 cortex ; from the haustorium sinkers are developed, which 

 penetrate the wood along the medullary rays. The growth 

 of the parasite is very slow, but it may attain a length 

 of 3 feet in about twenty years. The host plants become 

 misshapen, but are not seriously injured, unless indirectly 

 by wood-boring insects, which first attack the mistletoe. 



The expectation that many striking new plants would 

 be discovered in the collection made by Mr. E. Ule in 

 the State of Bahia is fully borne out by the first list of 

 diagnoses published in Engler's Boianische Jahrbiicher 

 (vol. xlii., part ii.). Two xerophytic bromeliads from the 

 mountains furnish the types of new genera, Sincoraea and 

 Cryptanthopsis, allied to Fascicularia and Cryptanthus ; 

 new species, chiefly rock-inhabiting, are added to Encho- 

 lirion, Hohenbergia, and other genera. Two root-climbing 

 parasites are additions to the genus Struthanthus, and a 

 new bushy Phoradendron was taken on a Ccesalpinia. 

 Dr. H. Harms, one of the collaborators with Mr. Ule, 

 describes a number of new species for the Leguminosae, 

 notably species of Calliandra, Mimosa, and Cassia. 

 Under Euphorbiacex, new species of Euphorbia, Jatropha, 

 and Manihot are recorded, and Dr. I. Urban distinguishes 

 a new species of Loasa. 



A HIGHLY interesting number of the Proceedings of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History (vol. xxxiv., No. 7) is 

 devoted to the flora of the islands of Margarita and Coche, 

 lying off the mainland of Venezuela. The author, Mr. 

 J. R. Johnston, has twice visited the islands, and has 



