562 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLII 



The establishment of a separate department of medical zoology 

 in the curriculum of the Philippine Islands Medical School is a 

 natural result of the extreme prevalence of animal parasites, 

 and of the diseases to which they give rise. About 80 per cent, 

 of the entire population is infected, or counting different spe- 

 cies separately, 200 infections occur to each 100 inhabitants. 

 While the severe results of such infection noted in Porto Eico 

 and elsewhere are not found, yet the population of the Philip- 

 pines presents a higher percentage of infection with intestinal 

 worms than has ever been definitely reported from any other 

 people and the condition is essentially a chronic one, the results 

 of which manifest themselves indirectly in the general physical 

 impoverishment of the people and the high rate of morbidity 

 and mortality accredited to other diseases. 



THE PATAGONIAN FAUNA 

 Results of the Hamburg Magellan Expedition. 1 — The importance 

 attaching to a knowledge of the fauna and flora of the southern 

 extreme of South America — especially in connection with the 

 so-called "bipolarity" theories, and with the newly explored 

 Antarctic fauna — has been recently more fully recognized. For 

 a long period this region was neglected. Its great distance from 

 the centers of scientific activity, the inclement climatic condi- 

 tions, the unfriendly native population, the difficulties of naviga- 

 tion which led every navigator to breathe more freely when he 

 had seen the Magellanic mountains sink below the horizon in his 

 , wake— all these factors contributed to the difficulty and cost of 

 scientific exploration, and tended to turn the scale unfavorably, 

 when projects of collecting expeditions were discussed in Europe. 



Yet the little that was known hinted of great interest in what 

 remained to be discovered. The surveying expeditions of Fitz- 

 roy, King, Wilkes, of Nares and Coppinger, the circumnaviga- 

 tions of U. S. S. Hassler and Albatross, the work of the Chal- 

 lenger and of the French Mission to Cape Horn, in connection 

 with the international polar meteorological stations— each in its 

 turn added something to the sum total of information about these 

 regions. The growth of commerce, with the gradual exploita- 



1 - - Xnturhistorisehen Museum zu Hamburg. Bde. I-III, 



1906-7. 



