Dr Cott's report on the status of the Nile crocodile in Murchison Falls National Park, in Uganda, shows a most alarming situation, with poachers gaining the upper hand. At one place where crocodiles were once so numerous that at times it looked as if the whole beach were moving into the river there are now none at all. In the battle against the poachers it is urgent to equip the park rangers with two-way radio sets to replace the present system of signalling by fire (which also warns the poachers), and the FPS has agreed to provide these sets out of the FPS/WWF Revolving Fund (see page 319). Dr Cott's other recommendations include putting a stop to disturbance by tourist and other launches and the reduction of some predators.

Because the numbers of roan antelope have dwindled seriously, a study project has been started in the Kruger National Park. Sixteen animals were captured by drug immobilisation and then released in a special enclosure where they can be studied. The author, who is a member of the Board of Trustees, assesses the status of the roan where it is found in Africa and describes the project.

Although first noted by E. O. Shebbeare in 1907, the golden langur monkey Presbytis geei was only named and described after E. P. Gee had found and photographed it in 1953 on the east bank of the Manas River on the Bhutan–Assam border. Both India and Bhutan have declared a Manas sanctuary, one on each bank of the Manas River. The author and his wife, who went to the Bhutan sanctuary to photograph and study this rare langur in the spring of 1967, describe the area as still wonderfully unspoiled, a verdict fully endorsed by the members of the FPS tour to India in February this year who visited both sanctuaries.

On several flights and safaris in the lower Omo River valley the authors and others recorded the numbers of larger mammals they saw. The results showed no regular general migration pattern, although certain species showed trends, notably eland, zebra, elephant and Lelwel–s hartebeest which moved into the area after the rains and out again when the grass died. Dr Urban is working in the Department of Biology in the Haile Sellassie I University in Addis Ababa. Leslie Brown, well known Kenya naturalist, is a UNESCO wildlife consultant.

The huge number of wild monkeys used for research purposes, more than half of them in the USA, has alarmed conservationists all over the world. The author of this article shows how wild stocks especially of rhesus monkeys have declined as a direct result, and suggests ways in which the wastage now going on could be avoided until research workers become sufficiently alarmed at the prospect of no more wild animals being obtainable to put money into breeding their own supplies. The author is drawing on more than ten years' experience of collecting zoo animals and research primates in Africa and south-east Asia and twenty odd years of zoo animal maintenance.

In this brief review of the status and conservation needs of the larger mammals of the Arabian peninsula, Dr Harrison, author of the standard work on the subject (volume 2 will be reviewed in the next ORYX) finds the situation not entirely depressing. Arabian oryx still probably number several hundred. The species that are in some danger include genet, lynx, leopard, cheetah, tahr, goat, red sheep, dorcas gazelle, Persian fallow deer and roe deer.

The Ceylon elephant is in serious danger, due largely to the spread of cultivation in the island bringing destruction of its habitat and interruption of the migration routes. As an essential preliminary to devising ways of protecting the elephants, the Smithsonian Institution and the World Wildlife Fund have sponsored a field survey. Dr Kurt is one of the team of zoologists who started work in April 1967, and for whom the FPS/WWF Revolving Fund last year supplied a much needed Land Rover.