November 2, 191 1] 



NATURE 



17 



obtained upon application to the Secretary, 82 Victoria 

 Street, S.W. 



The council of the Royal Institute of Public Health has 



accepted an invitation from the Chief Burgomaster of 



Berlin to. hold the congress next year in that city on July 



25-28. The congress will include the following sections 



and presidents : — State medicine, Sir T. Clifford Allbutt, 



K.C.B., F.R.S. ; bacteriology and comparative pathology, 



Prof. G. Sims Woodhead ; child study and school hygiene. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, F.R.S. ; military, colonial, and 



naval, Major Sir Ronald Ross, K.C.B., F.R.S. ; and 



municipal engineering, architecture, and town planning, 



Mr. P. C. Cowan. Facilities will be afforded for visiting 



! the various public health and educational institutions in 



; Berlin in connection with the Imperial Board of Health, 



I the Municipality, and the University. 



I In connection with the 200th anniversary of the founda- 

 i tion of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, in 1709, the 

 ! society has recently built a home for its library and 

 ! museum, which also includes a magnificent lecture theatre, 

 I committee rooms, &c. The new building was opened on 

 { October 25 by Sir Henry H. Howorth, K.C.I. E., F.R.S., 

 ! who referred to the extraordinary fact that a society should 

 i have carried on its work for two centuries and should 

 i then be in a position to purchase a building for its treasures. 

 I In the evening there was a public lecture on " The Romans 

 1 in Lincolnshire," by Mr. T. Sheppard, in which he 

 \ described many thousand relics of the Roman period, now 

 ji in the museum at Hull, from a little-known site on the 

 |. north Lincolnshire coast. Sir Harry Howorth occupied the 

 chair. During the day Mr. Sheppard also gave an address 

 on the use and value of local museums. 



In The Quarterly Review for October M. Salomon 

 Reinach reviews the present condition and progress of 

 mythological study. He shows how the earlier explana- 

 tions of myths suggested by writers like Fontenelle, 

 De Brosses, David Hume, and Dupuis gave way before 

 the researches of Grimm and Mannhardt, to be succeeded 

 by the theories of Kuhn and Max Muller. These last, in 

 their turn, were superseded by the anthropological school, 

 under the leadership of " that wittiest of scholars and most 

 scholarly of wits," Mr. Andrew Lang. This revolt against 

 the philologists was largely due to the advance in the 

 knowledge of philology, which no longer accepts the 

 identifications of the names of many Greek and Roman 

 deities with those of India advanced by Max Muller him- 

 self and extended by his more ardent followers, like 

 De Gubernatis and Sir G. Cox. It was also the result of 

 the colonial policy of England which tended to extend the 

 horizon of research from Aryan gods to the mythologies 

 of savage races. The methods of the anthropological 

 school were still further extended by W. Robertson Smith 

 and J. G. Frazer. But the views of these last authorities 

 are already disputed by the psychologists and sociologists. 

 M. Reinach closes his instructive survey of the situation 

 by the remark that " underlying and stimulating the work 

 of criticism, as applied to the chief results of the anthropo- 

 logical school, I see, at all events in my own country, the 

 ever-active upholders of tradition and established creeds." 



At a meeting held in Norwich on October 26, 1908, a 

 society was established for the study of prehistoric archaeo- 

 Jogyi especially with reference to the eastern counties, and 

 shortly afterwards it adopted the title of " The Prehistoric 

 Society of East Anglia." We have lately received the first 

 part of its Proceedings, an octavo of 121 pages, containing 

 a report of the work of the first two sessions, with several 

 original papers printed in full. In a communication on 



NO. 2192, VOL. 88] 



the flint implements of sub-crag man, Mr. J. Reid Moir 

 describes his well-known discovery of flints, reputed to 

 have been worked by man, in deposits that, in some cases, 

 are admitted by distinguished geologists to be undisturbed 

 Red Crag. Dr. W. Allen Sturge, M.V.O., the first presi- 

 dent of the society, contributes not only an appropriate 

 inaugural address, but also a rather voluminous paper on 

 the chronology of the Stone age. Although the views 

 expressed in this paper are based to a large extent on the 

 study of his extensive collection at Icklingham Hall, in 

 Suffolk, as well as on local field-work, they are likely to 

 evoke no little opposition, both from the geological and 

 the archaeological sides. The superficial scratches on 

 many worked flints of Neolithic age he refers to glacial 

 action, and thence concludes that an ice period, with 

 several phases, must have occurred in Britain since the 

 incoming of Neolithic man. Similar evidence in the case 

 of certain palaeoliths is accepted as proof of at least one 

 Glacial period during Palaeolithic times. Dr. Sturge 

 ventures to suggest that the Neolithic age may have begun 

 about 300,000 years ago, and the Palaeolithic perhaps a 

 million years ago. In forming these startling conclusions, 

 he relies on CroU's hypothesis, which, although abandoned 

 by most geologists, he does not admit to have been yet 

 disproved. 



Naturen for October contains an article by Prof. A. W. 

 Brogger on prehistoric stone implements, the rock-shelters 

 where some of them were found, and the remains of 

 mammals and birds by which they were accompanied. 



According to the report of the New Zealand Scenery 

 Preservation Board for 1910-11, a total of 25,442 acres 

 was reserved during the year under review, this bringing 

 up the total of the reserved areas to 65,989 acres. It is 

 pointed out " that by virtue of past legislation all scenic 

 reserves and national parks in New Zealand are practically 

 sanctuaries for the native birds and game, and no shoot- 

 ing or killing whatever is permitted on them. The 

 greatest care is taken to keep them free from noxious 

 weeds, and wherever practicable and advisable the fencing 

 of the external boundaries has been proceeded with, par- 

 ticularly when the reserve adjoins settled land or a road 

 in general use." 



In Himmel tind Erde for October (Jahrg. 24, Heft i) 

 M. Ficker contributes the first of a series of popular articles 

 on the bacteria as the friends and foes of man. After a 

 brief historical introduction, the classification and structure 

 of the bacteria are considered, with illustrative figures. 



A Bulletin (No. 146) has been issued by the Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station of the Rhode Island State 

 College, U.S.A., on the cholera-like diseases occurring 

 among poultry. It is shown that, in addition to the well- 

 known micro-organism of chicken cholera, first studied by 

 Pasteur and Toussaint, several other microbes cause similar 

 diseases among poultry, some of which possess extreme 

 power of infecting. 



Botanists engaged in systematic work, or interested 

 therein, will find in the catalogue No. 22, " Botanica 

 Geographica, " issued by Messrs. Dulau and Co., Soho 

 Square, Lon'don, an extensive assortment of second-hand 

 literature offered for sale. The items are most numerous 

 under the sections devoted to Europe and North America ; 

 contributions to the botany of Africa are also well repre- 

 sented. 



A second contribution to their studies of Indian fibre 

 plants, prepared conjointly by Mr. and Mrs. A. Howard, 



