i6o ' 



NORTHERN NEWS. 



The price of ' The Country Side ' has been doubled. 



A contemporary sends an ' invitation to our blind readers.' 



A photograph of ' A Tame Wild Squirrel ' appears in a contemporary.. 



We are glad to see from several West Riding newspapers that credit 

 is due to the Crossbills Naturalists' Society ' for discovering the lesser 

 shrew on the edge of Rombalds Moor, last records of such a bird going back 

 about twenty years.' 



In Memoriam. ' The Naturalists' Quarterly Review ' (Dartford), 

 referred to in these columns in anything but affectionate terms, closed its- 

 career with its eighth number. Its loss is mourned bv the publisher and 

 Mr. P. W. Westell. No flowers. R. I. P. 



We notice from ' The Museum News ' that Mr. F. A. Lucas is to give 

 a lecture at the Brooklyn Institute on ' The Coming Extermination of the 

 Elephant.' We hope the forthcoming big-game hunt of the ex-president 

 of the ITnited States is not to be quite so serious. 



We are glad to see from a report of a recent lecture in Leeds, that ' the 

 lecture was followed by a large number of exhibits of foraminifera and 

 polycystina of species of a genus or of examples of Geneva, so that the 

 members might get an understanding of how, with inheritance, variation 

 invariably follows.' 



In the Eastern Morning News of March 8th, the ' Discovery of a 

 New Elephant ' is announced as having been made in Japan. ' It occurs 

 as small yellow or red crystals,' and ' has been appropriately named 

 Nipporium. Its symbol will be Np., and its atomic weight has been ascer- 

 tained to be probably loo. Evidently ' Nipporium ' is Latin for ' Little 

 Nipper. ' 



Lady Isabel Browne contributes an exceedingly valuable paper on 

 ' The Ph^'logeny and Inter-relationships of the Pteridophyta ' to the ' New 

 Phvtologist,' part VII. of which appears in the February issue. That it 

 is not meant for the ' man (or woman) in the street ' is obvious from the 

 two following sentences taken at random in this lengthy paper : — ' A 

 similar shifting in other directions might have brought about the adaxial 

 position of the Spenophyllaceous sporangiophore, or having produced a 

 marginal and abaxial position of the sorus from an adaxial position. If 

 Mr. Tansley is right in regarding the branching of the frond of many 

 Botryopterideae in more than one plane as a vestige of a primitively radial 

 construction the branching of the Sporophylls of some Sphenopyllales in 

 the dorsiventral and lateral planes may be an indication of primitavely 

 radial symmetry.' 



From the Lancashire newspapers w^e learn that ' a unique fossil ' has 

 recently been found in South Lancashire. At the meeting of the Manchester 

 Geological and Mining Society, recently, Mr. Alfred J. Tonge exhibited 

 a portion of the impression of a fossil tree which has been found in the 

 Chequerbent Arley Mine of the Hulton Collieries, at a depth of 250 yards 

 from the surface. ' It is remarkable,' Mr. Tonge said, ' from the fact that 

 the tree has been traced for a length of 115 feet. It is a lepidodendron. 

 It is lying in the bassy shales about three feet above the Arley seam, and 

 is of flattened ovate form. The measurement, taken at a distance of 14 

 feet from the root end, gives a width across at that point of 2 feet 10 inches 

 or measured along the circumference of the bark a little over 3 feet. The 

 Chairman said the specimen seemed to be unique on account of its length 

 and slenderness. It was characteristic of this kind of fossil for the bark 

 to be preserved when the woody portion of the tree had disappeared. 

 It vj'is so toitli the first fossil vemaiiis of an animal found bv Sir Charles 



^y"^'' 3 m. - 



Naturalist, 



