Desert Formation on Strand Three or Four Hundred Years Old near Travertine Point. Ancient high level shore-line of Blake Sea on cliffs.
strands and abandoned shores of the present lake are additional facts of interest in this connection.
Not since the sterilization of the island of Krakatoa by a volcanic explosion has an opportunity been offered for the study of the biological reoccupation of such an area, and in this case the entire course of change has been kept under careful observation. Sixty species of plants appeared in dense strand formations on the beaches during the first seven years. Successions were rapid toward the desert, and within three years after the emergence some strands bore two species which were characteristic of the beach ranks four centuries old.
Even greater interest attaches to the revegetation of hills emerging as islands and which had been seed-sterilized. To these were borne seeds by winds and waves, but not with certainty by birds. Conjoined observation and experiment showed that the seeds for many plants which float or sink germinate, and the buoyant seedlings float for weeks, when stranded by chance their active roots strike into the mud within a few hours, making this an effective type of dissemination which appears to have escaped attention hitherto.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of James Ellis Gow, professor of botany in Coe College; of Mr. Alfred John Jukes-Brown, F.R.S., lately of the English Geological Survey; of Dr. Edouard Reyer, professor of geology at Vienna, and of Lieutenant Sedoff, while leading an Arctic expedition to Franz Josef Land.
The American Chemical Society is unable to hold the meeting which had teen planned for Montreal in September. Nearly all international scientific congresses and conferences, including the International Congress of Americanists, which was to have met in Washington in October, have been postponed. The New Zealand meeting of the British Association has been abandoned. A number of distinguished American men of science went to attend the meeting as guests of the New Zealand government.
