Abstract
MR. W. FALCONER has recently presented to the Department of Zoology males and females of eighty-four British species of spiders all new to the collection. This valuable gift makes the collection of British spiders in the Museum almost complete. Another interesting accession comprises nine spiders' webs mounted between sheets of glass, the webs being made visible by a black background and the judicious application of baby powder. Prof. G. H. F. Nuttall has presented to the Department of Entomology the whole of the material upon which he based his well-known studies on the human louse. His results, published in Parasitology (1917-30), include a very full summary of its relation to typhus, relapsing and trench fever, and other diseases which it carries, and a detailed account of methods of combating lousiness. Among other things Prof. Nuttall demonstrated that the head louse and body louse are not distinct species, but only varieties, possibly showing slight biological differences, of a single species. Recent accessions to the Department of Geology include an extensive series of petrified cones and wood of Araucarian conifers from Patagonia, collected and presented by Dr. F. Mansfield. Many of the specimens have been cut and polished, and the preservation, in chalcedony of various colours, is very good. These fossils were found in the Cerro Alto and Cerro Cuadrado region of Santa Cruz, which has been described as one of the world's most marvellous petrified forests; the material has not yet been fully studied, and the geological age is still uncertain, though it is probably at least as old as early Tertiary. Several hundred invertebrates, mainly corals, from the Palaeozoic of Germany and Bohemia, have been collected and presented by Dr. Stanley Smith. The Mineral Department has received by exchange with the Mineralogical Museum, Moscow, an interesting series of specimens from Kola Peninsula and various localities in Central Asia. Lord Ilchester has given a series of pebbles from carefully defined points on the Chesil Beach, which is probably the most remarkable bank of shingle in the world.
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Acquisitions at the British Museum (Natural History). Nature 138, 964 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138964b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138964b0