with a long, sharp, biting apparatus, is also said to be subject to this mould; but I think much less so, as I do not remember to have seen one affected by it. It comes, however, much less indoors, and it is there that one generally sees the dead victims to the disease. The only creature that I have to mention in the fish line (if that be its real position) is a seaserpent, which was seen by several people on board the Dover Castle in the Gulf of Guinea on Oct. 17 last. The head and neck extended at least 14 feet above sea level, and were seen six times in two minutes at a distance of about 1 miles. What the animal was is of course problematical, but it is suggested that the object might have been the arm of one of the gigantic squids which are known to exist, as their bodies have been actually found; or it may, of course, have been one of the monsters unknown to science, which it seems probable that the sea contains, from the many accounts of their appearance. A new bird, the Terek Sandpiper (Terekia cinerea), of which four were killed in Kent, has been added to the British list, and the Dartford warbler has been recorded for the first time in Ireland. Still more interesting is the capture at Utrecht, Natal, on Dec. 23, 1912, of a swallow which had a ring placed on its leg in May, 1911, in Staffordshire. As very little seems to be known of the nesting habits of that curious duckbilled quadruped, the Platypus, I refer to an account of the investigation of three of its burrows, which are made high up in the river bank. One contained two eggs, another one, the third a female and two latelyhatched young, one of which clung very firmly to its mother. When the young are hatched, the female blocks the burrows in two or three places with earth, either against water or enemies. It is satisfactory to be able to state that a thriving colony of the Elephant seal, which was threatened with extinction through being killed in large quantities for its oil up to about 1852, has been lately found on the island of Guadalupe, California, and will be protected. The first living specimens of the Pigmy hippopotamus (H. liberiensis) have reached Europe, and one is established in the Regent's

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Park gardens. An Indian elephant has been born in the Copenhagen gardens, this being only the third instance of the kind in Europe, one of which was in London in 1903. The Field of Nov. 9 last contains a photograph of the nest or sleeping platform of an ourang-outang made by it in a tree near its cage in the London gardens on the evening of Nov. 3. An account has lately been published of the work done in the N. Atlantic during the cruise of the Michael Sars." Besides investigation of ocean currents, the deposits of stones, some glaciated, on the ocean bed, have been sampled, much new information as to the early stages of eels has been obtained, and the extraordinary abundance of minute plant life in some parts of the sea has been shewn, the plants being so small as to pass through the finest silk net. In his Address to the Zoological Section of the British Association the President gives particulars of a melancholy list of animals recently persecuted to extinction by man, and of others which are on the verge, and recommends strict game laws and the establishment of large sanctuaries which would be in the widest sense developments of the Zoological Gardens, in which in all ages it has been the amusement and interest of princes and others to keep the strange animals of foreign countries. It would seem, through information supplied on schedules which were circulated, that a decrease has been taking place during the last few years in certain British migratory birds, especially the whitethroat, redstart, martin, swallow, and wryneck. The cause of this is suggested to be shooting and netting on the Continent, but considering the great variation which occurs in the number of specimens of such birds in any district in different years, we may still perhaps hope that the decrease is only temporary and due to natural causes. Our Hon. Member, Mr. R. Lydekker, has lately brought out a book on "The Sheep and its Cousins" in connection with the work he has done at the Nat. Hist. Museum of collecting together many rare forms of the different breeds of sheep (as well as other domestic animals) which are now on view there and are described in his book.

BOTANY.

Probably all who have ever had to do with gardens are aware that different seeds vary very much in the time they take to germinate, from the mustard and cress which when children we used to put on damp flannel before the fire in the fond hope that it would spring up in a night, to such seeds as Canna, which, enclosed in a very hard skin, take months. A paper on some experiments in germination of 278 seeds was lately read before the Royal Dublin Society, hawthorn taking a year and a-half. I am not aware that the question of the dormant state in which some seeds are believed to remain for many years when deeply buried has ever been satisfactorily solved, but certainly when new ground is turned up, fresh plants do sometimes appear either from freshly imported or long dormant seeds. Another recent set of experiments was detailed to the Linnean Society on the pollination of hardy fruits. Strawberries can produce good fruit without the aid of insects-raspberries, currants, and gooseberries require them. In some fruits a flower cannot be fertilised with its own pollen but requires pollen from another blossom or even another tree. 19 only out of 65 apples were self fertilising; in pears four out of 30; in plums 21 out of 41; in cherries 5 out of 12. Thus it might happen that in a garden containing only a few apple trees, all might be sterile from this cause. Of 3,000 insects visiting various fruit blossoms, 88 per cent. were hive bees, 5 per cent. humble and other wild bees, and 6 per cent. flies and other insects, which last chiefly ate the pollen and did not carry it usefully to other flowers. In a botanical garden, so far as I have seen them, it is generally attempted to grow all sorts of flowers, whatever their natural habitat, and the difficulties incident to this are more or less overcome by greenhouses, heated to various temperatures, ponds, &c. But in Japan a botanical garden for the Alpine flora has been lately established in the mountains, thus providing the natural habitat of the plants in a way which could not well be done

for mountain plants at a low altitude. The question of State forestry in this country has been debated, but as yet I believe very little has very little has been done, though there are large suitable tracts of land available. Though it is an investment that takes a long time to shew profit, it is a valuable one for the future, and would give employment to many unskilled labourers in the present. The State can look forward a generation or two with much more satisfaction than private individuals, and many countries have found it most profitable. Improvements have lately been made in the varieties of Indian wheats and cottons which tend to benefit the Indian farmer. In America some cacti are used as food for cattle, the chief objection being the quantity of saline matter contained in them. A curious experiment carried out at Woburn shews that the presence of grass underneath a tree interferes with its growth, even when the grass is not growing in the soil but in pans of earth resting on it. The heating of soil to a temperature considerably above that of boiling water appears greatly to favour the growth of plants in it, but the cause, which is ascribed in some way to bacteria, does not seem clear.

GEOLOGY.

The catalogue of earthquakes compiled by Prof. Milne from various historical records from the beginning of our era to the end of last century is necessarily defective in the earlier portions, but would probably contain most of the more violent earthquakes in the then more civilised portions of the earth and would help in any attempt to ascertain any laws of periodicity which may govern them. Some of the oldest records are in Corea where they date back to 57 B.C. A very destructive earthquake occurred in Turkey on Aug. 9 last, the epicentre lying somewhere to the N.W. of the Sea of Marmora. It affected an area of about 20,000 square miles and killed 3,000 persons. With regard to the luminous

appearances which were observed in the Valparaiso earthquake of Aug. 16, 1906, and to which I alluded in my address last year, the evidence, on being sifted, has proved somewhat contradictory, and as a storm was raging over part of Chile at the time, it is considered that there is no sufficient proof that the luminosity was connected with the earthquake in any way. A violent eruption took place at Katmai in the Aleutian Isles on June 6 last, when a terrific explosion is said to have taken place, followed by a steady stream of volcanic fragments and ash which are estimated to have covered 300 square miles of fertile country and fell in a thick layer on the decks of a vessel 70 miles away. The Address of the President of the Geological Section of the British Association dealt with the relation between the Cambrian faunas of Scotland and N. America, and is full of interest to geologists, one of the conclusions being the resemblance of the Lower Cambrian fauna of the N.W. Highlands to that of N. America, whereas it differs essentially from the Lower Cambrian fauna of the rest of Europe. From this and other facts the arrangement of land and water at that period is deduced, reference being made to our Hon. Member, Mr. Jukes-Browne, whose work in this branch of Geology is well known. From a boring near London were lately obtained at a depth of over 1,100 feet specimens of Upper old red Sandstone with characteristic fossils. Recent discoveries in Texas and New Mexico have demonstrated the existence in the Permian strata of reptiles and amphibians, which have also been found elsewhere of this very early date, thereby complicating the theories of descent in these groups and making us hesitate to express opinions until more facts have been brought to light. The development of the higher fossil plants seems equally unknown, and Angiosperms have lately been found as far down as the Lower Greensand. In Cambrian rocks in British Columbia, at an elevation of about 8,000 feet, there is a spot where the fossils are in a most wonderful state of preservation. They consist chiefly of crabs, marine worms, and even jelly fish, which latter actually