222 



NATURE 



[December 14, I'^i i 



who is at work on this )iubj«ct. The other '* find '* \% • 

 iiritish gold stater, dished nnd plain on one side, and 

 b»-.irin(( on the other the impn-ss of a die not to be found 

 in Willetl's or Evans's worl<s, and which, until Mr. Heron- 

 .Mlfii deposited hi» coin at the British Museum, wns un- 

 known and unrepresented in the national collect!' 



Is d<'srribing {Archaeologia /Eliana, scr. 3, voi. vii.; 

 th'- animal remains obtained during the excavations on the 

 site of the Roman city of Corstopitum, near Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, in 1910, Messrs. A. Meek and R. A. II. Gray 

 litate that the bones and skulls of many of the oxen agree 

 very closely with those of the white cattle of Chiilingham 

 :in<l other British parks. A peculiarity said to characterise 

 both is the absence or early shedding of the antepenulti- 

 mate lower premolar. On this ground both the Chilling- 

 ham and the Roman cattle are declared to represent a new 

 wild species, for which the name Bos sylvestris is pro- 

 posed ; but whether this is typified by the former or the 

 latter the reader is left to decide for himself. They ignore 

 th»' fact that park-cattle already possess a scientific name 

 — L'rus scoticus of Hamilton Smith — and likewise that the 

 colour of these cattle is decisive as to their domesticated 

 origin. Most naturalists would likewise regard the alleged 

 absence of the anterior premolar as a feature due to 

 domestication. 



In a study of the Pacific Ocean in its relation to ethno- 

 graphy, contributed by Dr. J. M. Brown, regent of the 

 Lniversity of New Zealand, to part i., vol. ii., of The 

 Journal of Race Development, the writer lays special stress 

 on the region of subsidence. This he believes to account 

 for one of the most singular phenomena in human culture. 

 " These central groups are occupied by a people, the 

 Polynesians, who in some of their arts, the masculine, 

 those of war, navigation, architecture, and carving, rise 

 to the highest levels of the barbaric stage. And yet they 

 have adliered to arts that are purely Palaeolithic : these 

 are the art of thread-making, that of fire-making, and the 

 fictile art ; they have never had a spindle : they have a 

 pump-drill, but they have never applied it to the production 

 of fire ; and though they have plenty of clay, they have 

 never made pottery. In early stages of culture these belong 

 to the women's department, and w-oman, guided as she 

 is by emotion oftener than by reason, is more conservative 

 tlian man. This Palaeolithic element in the household 

 culture seems to indicate that man has been in Polynesia 

 since Palaeolithic times, and that woman came into those 

 regions only in those times, when there were still only 

 short canoe voyages to make to land that could be seen on 

 the horizon." 



Nos. 46 and 47 of the Scientific Memoirs of i n- 



nient of India deal respectively with " Malaria in the 

 Punjab," by Major Christophers, and " Dysentery and 

 Liver Abscess in Bombay," by Major Greig and Captain 

 Wells. Malaria in the Punjab is manifested in two ways, 

 as " endemic malaria " and as " autumnal epidemic or 

 fulminant malaria," the latter — the more important — being 

 associated with a high mortality. The determining causes 

 of epidemics are excessive rainfall and scarcity, though the 

 epidemic areas are not necessarily coincident with those of 

 heaviest rainfall. The determining factor of epidemic and 

 fulminant malaria is found to be flooding, and the villages 

 are attacked almost exactly in proportion as they have been 

 flooded. Experiments with sparrows and the Proteosoma, 

 a parasite analogous to the malaria parasite of man, and 

 similarly conveyed by mosquitoes, show that severity of 

 infection is largely dependent on the dose inoculated, and 

 the latter depends not merely on the number of mosquitoes 

 NO. 2198, VOL. 88] 



biting, but on the number of sporozoite* injected at «:• 

 bite, and this, again, depends on the rkhneat in paracii 

 of the blood of the individual from whom the moM|U: 

 derives the infection. The memoir contains a number 

 plans and illustrative chartsi. As regards Memoir 47, ' 

 dysentery, though bacillary dysentery occurs in Bomb:: 

 it is infrequent, and the form associated with ama-i 

 is more prevalent. The prevalence of amceba: show* a 

 marked seasonal variation, which follows the humidity, 

 and not the temperature, curve in B^^t ! lie 



amcebsc can be cultivated, and are not Ent. Ir. or 



colt, but are probably the same form as that observed 

 Noc in Cochin China. Apparently the same anuxtba: < 

 be cultivated from tap water in the districts, and ; 

 evidence at present available indicates that water is pro:, 

 ably the channel by which this form of dysentery is dis- 

 seminated. 



To vol. iv., part iii., of the Transactions of the Hull 

 Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club, Mr. T. Sheppard 

 contributes notes on the post-glacial, glacial, and pre- 

 glacial faunas of East Yorkshire. The glacial beds h. 

 yielded remains of mammoth, straight-tusked elephant, >■'. 

 reindeer, red deer, Pleistocene bison, aurochs, rhinocen 

 and walrus. 



The question of the nature of the diet of the exti: 

 giant phalanger (Thylacoleo carnifex) has been incident.: 

 revived by Messrs. Baldwin Spencer and R. H. Walcott 

 a discussion as to the origin of cuts on bones of exti: 

 Australian marsupials (Proc. R. Soc. Victoria, vol. xxi. 

 pp. 92-123). Such incised bones occur at considerable 

 depths — sometimes beneath beds of tufa — and the authors 

 consider that the cuts were probably made by the t^ ■ 

 of Thylacoleo. The name given to the giant phalanger 

 Owen indicated his opinion as to its carnivorous hab: 

 but this view was disputed in 1868 by Sir W. H. Flov. 

 who thought that its diet was probably vegetar: 

 although it might have included flesh. Thirty years la; 

 Dr. R. Broom argued that Owen was right; and if Mes^r^. 

 Spencer and Walcott are correct in their view as to r' 

 origin of the aforesaid cuts, the carnivorous habit ~ 

 giant phalanger are definitely proved. 



In the volume on mammals in the " Fauna of Brit 

 India," the late Dr. W. T. Blanford stated that the bla 

 buck {Antilope cervicapra) living on a spit of sand betw- 

 the Chilka Salt Lake, in Orissa, and the sea, never dra: 

 as there is no water on the spit except in deep wells. J 

 statement has been strongly controverted by various writ' 

 one at least of whom has suggested that the antelo: 

 obtain water from sheep-troughs. Of late years it 1 

 however, been conclusively shown that giraffes, kudu, . 

 gemsbok live for a considerable portion of the year in 

 Kalahari Desert without drinking, obtaining such moist, 

 as they require from the succulent roots of certain plar 

 In a letter published in The Field of November 25 I 

 Drake-Brockman records a very similar instance in 

 case of the maritime gazelle (Gazella pelzelni) in Son. 

 land. In July, 1910, five of these gazelles were placed 

 the island of Saad-ud-din, which is absolutely water, 

 save on the rare occasions when showers fall. There 

 however, a succulent Schweinfurthia, of which 

 gazelles are fond, and a lily with a large onion-like ri 

 which is scraped out of the sand and eaten by the gazel. 

 These are absolutely the only sources of moisture obtainable 

 by the antelopes, which have now lived on the island for 

 about eighteen months, since it has been clearly proved, 

 by the absence of their tracks from the shore, that th-^-v 

 do not drink sea water. The case of the Chilka bl. 



