20 



NATURE 



[July 7, 1923 



Research Items. 



An Egyptian Statuk ok Menkaura in London. 

 — In Ancient Egypt, 1923, part i., Prof. Flinders 

 Petrie describes a remarkable figure in white alabaster, 

 acquired some time ago for University College, 

 London. It shows a further development of the 

 great Khofra statue. There the king's head is 

 shielded by the falcon's wings which are spread out 

 behind the head-dress ; here the king is himself the 

 falcon god, entirely human in front view, entirely 

 bird-like at the back. The lower part is incomplete, 

 but the figure was probably seated. The resemblance 

 to the bourgeois figure of Menkaura is obvious at 

 first sight ; and the development of the protecting 

 falcon would accord with this representing the 

 successor of Khofra. It can scarcely be questioned 

 that it came from one of the two temples of Menkaura. 



Excavations in Upper Sind, India. — A dispatch 

 from the Bombay correspondent of the Times, pub- 

 lished in the issue of June 25, summarises a report 

 of excavations in Upper Sind carried out by Mr. 

 R. D. Banerji, of the Indian Archaeological Survey, 

 on the ruins of an ancient city now known as Mohenji- 

 daro or Mohenjodhari, six miles from Dokri on the 

 North-Westem Railway. The highest mound in 

 these ruins, which cover more than two hundred 

 acres, was selected for excavation. It proved to be a 

 Buddhist shrine on an artificial platform situated on 

 an island in the old bed of the Indus. This platform 

 was protected from the effects of high floods by 

 retaining walls some 40-50 feet high. Two more 

 mounds excavated produced remains of shrines dating 

 from the second century a.d. during the reign of 

 the great Kushan Emperor Vasudeva I., a.d. 158- 

 177. A stratum below the shrine contained what 

 were apparently the remains of an older shrine which 

 had been burnt, possibly by Scythian invaders. 

 There are two most interesting features in these 

 investigations. The first is the discovery of a number 

 of coins representing the earliest copper currency 

 of North-Western India, and differing from any dis- 

 covered hitherto in India in being dye-struck and 

 not punch-marked. These coins also afford the 

 oldest representation of the Fire-Altar of the ancient 

 Persian religion on Asiatic coins, and furnish evidence 

 that this religion and Buddhism flourished side by 

 side. The second point of particular interest is the 

 discovery in one group of coins of inscriptions in 

 unknown characters, as yet undeciphered, which it 

 is maintained are hieroglyphs or ideograms differing 

 from Egyptian hieroglyphs. This is claimed to be 

 the only recorded discovery of a new type of hiero- 

 glyph in Asia; but Sir J. Marshall, Director-General 

 of Archaeology in India, has since pointed out that 

 these pictographs are similar in character to those 

 from Harappa in the Punjab. 



Discovery of a Midden and Fire-hearth at 

 Chark, near Gosport. — In the June issue of Man, 

 Lieut. -Colonel J. H. Cooke describes the result of 

 excavations on Chark Common, about one mile from 

 the shores of Spithead. They included a midden 

 and camp fireplaces which were coeval. The 

 midden is unique of its kind, though it is not as large 

 as some of the great shell-heaps on the Continent, 

 but it is the only example of a midden in Britain 

 in which the contents are unmixed with relics of 

 later cultures. Its principal features are the character 

 of the deposits in which it is embedded, the many 

 species of shells it contains, the well-marked types 

 of implements found in it and around the adjacent 

 fire-hearths, and the total absence of any fragments 



of pottery or metal. It is attributed to the Roben- 

 hausen period of the Stone Age, which immediately 

 preceded the Bronze Age. 



Fossil Crabs from Haiti. — Some Brachyuran 

 Crustacea from the Pleistocene and Miocene deposits 

 of Haiti form the subject of a short paper by Miss 

 Mary J. Rathbun (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., vol. Ixiii. 

 art. 9). One genus, Mithrax, which is widely dis- 

 tributed throughout the West Indies, had not before 

 been found fossil, but is now recorded from the 

 Pleistocene. 



I 



NO. 2801, VOL. I 12] 



Mesozoic Insects of Queensland. — Fossil 

 remains of insects are not usually found associated 

 in great abundance at any one spot, so that the 

 discovery of a six-inch seam full of such remains, 

 and that from so low a geological horizon as the 

 Trias, is a noteworthy occurrence. The layer in 

 question was disclosed at Denmark Hill, Ipswich, M 

 some few miles west of Brisbane, Queensland, and 'm 

 the description of its insect contents has been under- 

 taken by Dr. R. J. Tillyard and Mr. B. Dunstan. The 

 first part, just issued, is by Mr. Dunstan (Queensland 

 Geol. Surv. Publication, No. 273), and deals with 

 introductory matter and the Coleoptera of the 

 deposit. After describing the section from both the 

 physical -geographical and the geological aspect, the 

 author is tempted to speculate on the cause of the 

 wholesale destruction of insects here manifest. From 

 a study of the phenomena occurring at the hot 

 springs at Einasleigh, Northern Queensland, where 

 the edges of the pools are lined with myriads of 

 wings and elytra, from which the soft parts have 

 evidently been removed by the hot bubbling water, 

 while insect fragments float about and then disappear 

 down the stream, Mr. Dunstan infers that similar 

 conditions governed the formation of the Triassic 

 deposit. The major portion of the paper is devoted 

 to full and careful descriptions of the fifty-eight 

 species, belonging to twenty genera, the bulk of 

 which are of course new, referable to some eight 

 families. The Hydrophilidae are the most numerous. 

 One could have wished, however, that the seven 

 plates had been executed in a style more consonant 

 with the rest of the work. 



A New Grass. — In the Kew Bulletin, No. 5 of 

 1923, D. K. Hughes describes and figures an interest- 

 ing grass, Streptolophus sagittifolius Hughes, which 

 has been grown at Kew from fruits recei\'ed from 

 Mr. J. Gossweiler, director of the Botanic Garden, 

 Angola. Conspicuous features of the new genus are 

 the sagittate leaf blades, lifted away froni the leaf 

 sheaths upon slender petioles which are set at a 

 sharp angle to the main stem, and the flowering 

 panicles, which owe their characteristic appearance 

 to the fact that the branchlets are reduced to slightly 

 flattened bristles which are fused at the base into 

 chisters. 



Earthquakes and Pheasants. — Pheasants, it has 

 long been known, are peculiarly sensitive to the 

 effects of slight tremors, and in many earthquake 

 countries they are supposed to give notice of a 

 coming shock. Prof. Sekiya's attempt, nearly forty 

 years ago, to study the behaviour of pheasants before 

 and during earthquakes was unsuccessful, probably 

 because the birds were not under natural conditions. 

 Recently, Prof. Omori (Bull. Imp. Earthq. Inves. 

 Com. of Japan, vol. 11, 1923, pp. 1-5) has been able 

 to observe those living in a neighbouring park, 

 usually within a distance of a hundred yards, and 



