SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19833, 31 December 1927, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

STUDY OF LAMP-SHELLS. •: jj ■■ i *—'' In the early day* of biological and geological research in New Zealand, the attention of local scientists was naturally directed mainly to the description and classification of the geological formations and the flora and fauna of our own country, and to the elucidation of local problems, while studies embracing world problems or the comprehensive classification of important divisions of animals and plants were usually made by scientists in Europe or America. During the present century, however, students in the Dominions have been taking a greater share in this more comprehonsiva work, and the volume issued by the director of the Dominion Museum, Dr. J. Allan Thomson, ia a nctable contribution to palaeontology and zoology in this wider field. The lamp-shells or brackiopoda, with which the book deals, are of interest and importance to both these sciences, to zoology on account of their peculiar structure, which shows that although they possess a bivalve shell, they are not molJusca at all, and to palaeontology because they appeared at a very early g oologies! ago, and because they are very characteristic fossils, b wh.cb rocks at great distances, whether in New Zealand or Spitsbergen, in the Himalayas or 'Yndea, can be identified without it jj.iing necessary for the palaeontologist to visit the district from whence the fossils are derived."

Tha reliance placed upon bracbloyjoo! fossils in determining the age of stvata demands that the classification of these animals be on a sound basis. The earlier students thought they were dealing with a group composed of fairly simple and straightforward orders and families, but later research has shown that forms which outwardly resembled one mother were not really related, but hsd descended from very different ancestral groups. Dr. Thomson has made an extensive study of every detail of the structure of the lamp-shells, and has worked out the tortuous ramifications of the ancestry of the different groups in order to place the classification on a sound basis. The book contains a full account of the structure of the brachiiopoda and cA their

development, followed by a ocherae of classification for the whole group, leading up- to a definition of each of the seventy genera recognised and a list of the species of each genus. This excellent arrangement, together with the illustrations of nearly every genus, will make Dr. Thomson's book the research student's standard of reference for the group for some time to come. INSECT GARDENERS, White ants of Indo-China have their own gardens, where they tend what might be called pumpkin patches. These insect gardeners raise microscopic pellets like pumpkins, made of a sort of fungus, somewhat similar to the mould on stale bread. A bed consisting of fragments of leaves and grass is prepared and weeded by the ants. These they chew into fine material into which they place the germs of fungus. FIGHTING FIRE WITH SOAP. Soapsuds are used to extinguish fires by a new German device. Particularly useful in smothering petrol or benzine fires, where streams of water would be useless, this machine carries two large foam generators filled with powdered soap. High-pressure jets of water race through the soap chamber, operating water wheels that churn the soap into suds, to issue in a foaming blast from the hose nozzle. MOVING PICTURES OF STARS. Motion pictures of moving stars revealing their intricate paths so slowly that the eye may follow them with case have recently been shown in New York in the first Arnercian exhibition of the supe_ slow motion picture camera developed in Japan. These photographs present such complete detail that the flight of a pistol bullet through an electrio light globe looks like a gradual bending and final glow disintegration of the glass.