52 



NATURE 



[March 9, 191 1 



mearne, on the Kagoro, a naked, head-huntinj;* West 

 African tribe occupying a mountain ridge running from 

 the Bauchi into the Nassarawa province of northern 

 Nigeria. They are notorious head-hunters, and there is a 

 curious analogy between the objects and methods of the 

 practice among them and the Nagas of Assam. Among 

 both races it is a mark of social evolution, a young man 

 showing his fitness for marriage by producing a head. 

 Further than this, it appears, as in the case of the Meriah 

 sacrifice of the Khonds or Kandhs, to be a means of pro- 

 moting the fertility of the soil, a fowl in Nigeria being 

 now the surrogate of the human victim which was not 

 long since sacrificed by the Indian tribes. 



Parts v. and vi. of the Treasury of Human Inheritance 

 (London : Dulau and Co., Ltd., iqii), issued by the Galton 

 Laboratory for National Eugenics, consists of a mono- 

 graph on the subject of haemophilia, by Drs. W. Bullock 

 and Paul Fildes. The authors are to be congratulated on 

 the very thorough manner in which they have performed 

 a task the magnitude of which can be realised when it is 

 stated that the literature list contains full references to 

 and descriptions of 949 separate works. Two hundred and 

 thirty-five pedigrees are diagrammatically represented, and 

 such available clinical notes are provided for each person 

 said 10 have suffered from the disease as would enable a 

 medical man to form an opinion as to the validity of the 

 diagnosis. Many of these pedigrees deal with a very large 

 number of individuals ; thus that of the Tenua families 

 includes eight generations and about 400 persons. Enough 

 has been said to show that a rich mine of material has 

 been opened up, and we hope that it will be worked by 

 the experts in heredity. If they desire fuller information 

 on any point or doubt the accuracy of what is contained 

 in this voluTie, the excellent bibliography will make refer- 

 ence to the original sources easy for them. 



In an article on natural hair-balls in The Field of 

 February 25, Mr. Lydekker records the fact — apparently 

 not referred to in any book on reptiles or general 

 natural history — that the stomachs of South American 

 alligators (caimans) not infrequently contain large balls of 

 hairs, derived, doubtless, from mammals which formed 

 their prey. The evidence rests on the testimony of Mr. 

 J. S. da Costa, who brought home a specimen — now in 

 the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons — and who 

 states that, in the belief of the natives, such accumulations 

 eventually lead to the death of the reptiles. A hair-ball 

 composed mainly of tenrec-hair, brought to England from 

 Madagascar by Mr. A. Dobr^e, may indicate that Old 

 World crocodiles are afflicted in the same manner, 

 although this cannot at present be regarded as certain. 



Breeders should be much interested in an article, by 

 Mr. R. Bunsow, in the second number of the new serial 

 The Mendel Journal, on the inheritance of coat-colour in 

 thoroughbred horses. Taking up the subject from the 

 established fact that bays (including browns) may be 

 either pure as regards the power of transmitting their 

 colour, or impure, when they may give rise to chestnuts, 

 the author states that bays, as being capable of producing 

 offspring of a colour different from their own, are a domin- 

 ant type (D), while chestnuts, which lack this capacity, are 

 recessive (R). Chestnut horses, as having but one kind of 

 sexual cells, may accordingly all be symbolised as RR, 

 whereas bays may be classed either as DD or DR, 

 according ?o whether they are pure \^" whether they con- 

 tain an admixture of chestnut cells. Now if a DD stallion 

 be mated with an RR mare, all the foals will be DR bays. 

 Op the other hand, the foals of "an RR mare by a DR 

 NO. 2158, VOL. 86] 



stallion will, in the long run, consist of bays and chestnuts 

 in nearly equal numbers. When- chestnuts are bred 

 together, their offspring should be all chestnuts (RR), 

 but if chestnuts be crossed with bays, the foals may b*- 

 either all bays or half chestnuts (RR) and half bays (I)R|, 

 the former case, as mentioned above, being due to the fart 

 that the parent bays were DD, and the latter to their being 

 DR. Certain exc<ptions to these conditions occurring in 

 the Stud-book are shown to be due to incorrect registration 

 of colour, and it is probable that the same is the case with 

 the rest. As regards greys, it is asserted that one of the 

 parents must be of this colour. 



A SUMMARY, by Mr. A. B. E. Hillas. of reports r.-(.<;iv.<l 

 relative to the movements of eel-fry during the year end- 

 ing September 30, 1909, has been received from the Irish 

 Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (Fisheries, 

 Ireland, Sci. Invest., 1910, vi.). This summary, which is 

 a continuation of that of the previous year, presents thf 

 substance of replies given to four questions, widely circu- 

 lated among those likely to be able to give information of 

 the movements of eel-fry in the various river systems. 

 The information at present available is not sufficient to 

 permit the author to state with certainty whether the 

 successive immigrations of fry form parts of one con- 

 tinuous annual series or are divisible into two or more 

 seasonal runs ; the facts reported from Wexford seem to 

 support the latter view, whereas in the Coleraine district 

 there was a run from March to June, which was practicaliv 

 continuous from April 21. 



A LIST of wild flowers recorded from Barmouth and the 

 neighbourhood is published by Mr. James Kvnoch, 

 Brighton. The most interesting part is the list of plants, 

 including cryptogams as well as phanerogams, compiled by 

 the Rev. T. Salwey, and published in 1863, in which 

 localities in the county of Merioneth outside the Barmouth 

 district are given. 



Proceeding from the appearance of a variant CEnothera 

 rubricalyx, distinguished from its progenitor CEnotheta 

 rubrinervis by increased red coloration in parts of the 

 plant, Dr. R. R. Gates communicates to the American 

 Naturalist (.April, 1910) an article in which he discusses 

 the bearing of what is regarded as an instance of quanti- 

 tative colour inheritance, concluding that in many cases 

 the difference between Mendelian hybrids must be simply 

 quantitative, involving a difference either in the amount 

 of certain material substances or in the energy content of 

 certain constituents. 



Continuing his revisions of fungal species in tlie 

 Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akadentie der Wissen- 

 schaften, Vienna (vol. cxix., part v.). Prof. F. von Hohnel 

 discusses a number of .Ascomycetes, and presents a scheme 

 for classifying the Microthyriaceae. To the same number 

 Miss J. Menz contributes a paper on the morphology of 

 the genus Allium, in which the taxonomic value of the 

 leaf bundles is considered, and a relationship between the 

 Allioideae and Amar\ llidoideae is suggested, primarily 

 owing to the development of mucilage canals and cells 

 containing raphides. 



A FIRST contribution to the flora of Siam, published in 

 the Kew Bulletin (No. i), is jointly provided by Dr. 

 A. F. G. Kerr, who collected the plants and has written 

 an introductory sketch of the vegetation on Doi Sootep, a 

 mountain in northern Siam, and by Mr. W. G. Craib, 

 who is responsible for the identifications. Different types 

 of fcrcbt a e associated with Pentactne siamensis, Diptero- 

 carpus tuberci.Uitiis, species of Quercus and Castanopsis, 



