-52 6 



AM TURE 



[October 28, 1909 



Tun a tilt at judges at horse-shows and other experts, whom 

 he pronounces utterly unfit for their duties. He also seems 

 to possess better vision than most persons, as he asserts 

 that he can see the true position of the limbs of a gallop- 

 ing horse without the aid of photography, while he also 

 accuses Sir Ray Lankester of being in error regarding the 

 position of the legs and feet in a running dog. 



In a paper published in the " Annals and Magazine of 

 ■Natural History " for 1903, Mr. J. L. Bonhote strongly urged 

 the inadvisability of regarding the numerous island forms of 

 chevrotains as distinct species, and pointed out that there 

 are really only four types entitled to specific rank. This 

 -view is entirely ignored by Mr. G. S. Miller in a paper 

 on the mouse-deer (chevrotains) of the Rhio-Linga Archi- 

 pelago, published as No. i6q5 of the Proceedings of the 

 U.S. National Museum, in which a large number of island 

 forms related to the napu are treated as distinct species. 

 Apart from this, Mr. Miller draws some interesting con- 

 clusions regarding the development of melanism and other 

 colour-phases in this group. " The only conclusion that 

 seems justified," he writes, " is that the Tragulus napu 

 group consists of a series of local species whose colour- 

 pattern, probably for some physiological reason, is varying 

 along two main lines of divergence, both of which are in- 

 dependent of external conditions as ordinarily understood. 

 Each series is equally incapable of explanation by the hypo- 

 theses of Lamarck, Darwin, or De Vries. On the larger 

 land-masses such changes as may be taking place are 

 uniform over wide areas and relatively slow, while in the 

 regions which, by submergence, have become divided into 

 small land-areas separated by water the changes are 

 Irregular and rapid, though progressing on different islands 

 at a very unequal rate." 



Messrs. Williams and Norgate have forwarded to us 

 the third and fourth parts of the thirty-ninth volume of 

 tjegenbaur's Morphologisches Jahrbiich, containing papers 

 on the development of the vertebral column in Echidna and 

 In man, by G. P. Frets ; the prothorax of birds and 

 mammals, by T. Funccius ; the saccus endolymphaticus, 

 "by Giuseppe Sterzi ; the segmental theory of the vertebrate 

 Tiead, by B. Hatschek ; the swim-bladder of Malaco- 

 pterygii, by L. F. de Beaufort ; and the brain-pattern of the 

 anterior cranial fossa, by E. Landau. 



We have received from the publishers an essay, by Prof. 

 'O. Grosser, on the methods of fcetal nourishment amongst 

 mammals (including man), forming part iii. of the collec- 

 tion of anatomical and physiological lectures and essays 

 edited by Profs. Gaupp and Nagel (Sammjung anatom- 

 ischer und physiologischer Vortrdge und Aufsatze, Heft 

 iii. ; Jena : Gustav Fischer, 1909, price 60 pf.). 



The investigations of the Challenger and other deep- 

 sea exploring expeditions have long since made us familiar 

 with the fact that many deep-sea fishes possess luminous 

 organs of various kinds, but one would hardly expect to 

 find such organs in species which live habitually in shallow 

 water. It appears, however, from the observations of Dr. 

 Otto Steche, published in a recent number of the Zeit- 

 schrift fi'ir wissenschaftliche Zoologie (Band 93, Heft iii.), 

 that we must modify our ideas on this subject. Anomalops 

 katoptron and Pholohlcpheron palpebratus are two fishes 

 which inhabit the shallow waters of a coral reef in the 

 Malay Archipelago. In each case the luminous organ is 

 a large oval body lying beneath the eye. The author was 

 able to keep the fish in captivity, and gives some interest- 

 ing particulars of the behaviour of the organ in the living 

 animal, as well as a detailed account of its microscopical 

 NO. 2087, VOL. 81] 



' structure. It appears that the fishes are well known to 

 the native Malays, who actually make use of the 

 luminous organs for catching other fish, cutting them 

 out and attaching them to the hook above the proper bait, 

 under which conditions they will remain luminous for some 

 hours, a fact which throws an interesting sidelight on the 

 function of such organs. The fishes themselves are, 

 as one would suppose, predaceous, feeding on all the 

 small inhabitants of the coral reef, especially Crustacea. 



.\ NOTE on tamarisk manna is contributed by Mr. D. 

 Hooper to the Journal and Proceedings, Asiatic Society 

 of Bengal (vol. v., No. 2). The substance is obtained 

 from the halophytic shrub Tamarix gallica and irom 

 Tamarix articulala, while the species Pallasii yields . an 

 inferior sweet gum. It has not been ascertained whether 

 the manna is produced by insect agency of is a natural 

 secretion of the plant. The ordinary method of extraction 

 consists in pounding the branches or leaves ; the saccharine 

 ingredient of the manna was found to be cane-sugar. A 

 curious occurrence of manna was observed on certain land' 

 in Seistan which was subject to inundation ; the manna 

 shed by the tamarisk bushes had apparently dissolved in 

 the water and dried out in lumps as the water evaporated. 



On the subject of nomenclature in connection with plant 

 formations, an article by Dr. R. Gradmann, published in 

 Engler's Botanische Jahrbiicher (vol. xliii., part iii.), de- 

 serves careful attention. It is pointed out that three 

 methods of classification have been advanced, the physiog- 

 nomic, adopted by Grisebach, the pioneer in this branch of 

 botany; the ecological, exemplified by Warming's "Plant 

 Formations"; and the purely floristic. As regards the 

 last-named, it is observed that while the designation of 

 formations according to dominant and subdominant or 

 typical plants has its practical uses, the only comprehensive 

 system is furnished by a complete list of all the plants for 

 each individual formation. Three points arise out of this 

 paper : — first, the basis for a system of classification ; 

 secondly, a convenient designation for each formation ; 

 and, thirdly, the means of differentiation between similar 

 formations. 



The National Geographic Magazine (p. 822) contains an 

 interesting paper, by Mr. G. R. Putnam, of the United 

 States Coast and Geodetic Survey, on modern nautical 

 charts. The article contains a popular account of the 

 methods of hydrographical surveying and chart construc- 

 tion, and charts of different periods are compared. 



The first number of a new volume of the Abhandlungen 

 of the ^'ienna Geographical Society is devoted to a memoir, 

 by Dr. H. Leiter, on the question of changes of climate 

 in northern Africa during historic times. An exhaustive 

 examination from different points of view shows that there 

 is no evidence that any progressive change of climate has 

 taken place. 



We have received Publications Nos. 3 and 4 of the 

 Finland Commission for Hydrographic and Biological 

 Investigations in the Gulf of Finland. In the first of 

 these Dr. Johan Gehrke discusses at length the variations 

 in the mean values of temperature and salinity in the 

 waters of the gulf, from observations made at three stations 

 during the years 1902-7. The second memoir consists of 

 a table giving hourly values of water-level at Hango from 

 1897 to 1903. 



Captain P. K. Kozloff contributes an account of the 

 Mongolia-Sze-Chuan expedition, carried out under his 

 charge on behalf of the Imperial Russian Geographical 



