334 



NATURE 



[September i, 1923 



Research Items. 



Skeleton fkom an Ancient Working in 

 Rhouksia. — In the Proceedings of the Rhodesia 

 Scientific Association, vol. xxi., 1922-23, Mr. G. Arnold 

 publislics a report by Sir Arthur Keith on a skeleton 

 found in an ancient working near the Gwanda Mine. 

 Sir Arthur Keith thinks that the skeleton may be ten 

 centuries old. The remains are those of a young 

 woman about 20 "years old, and the character of the 

 face and cranium show that she was a negro of the 

 type so often seen among Matabele and Zulu women. 

 It is to be remarked that the outer margins of the 

 crowns of the more anterior teeth have been chipped 

 during life, as if hard nuts or bones had been cracked 

 in the mouth. One remarkable feature is the non- 

 development of the upper wisdom teeth : they have 

 never been formed, a common occurrence among 

 European women, but uncommon among negroes. 



A Saxon Gold Ring from Yorkshire. — Many 

 years ago the late Canon Greenwell informed Mr. T. 

 Sheppard, Curator of the Hull Museum, that a 

 massive gold ring had been found in a Saxon burial 

 ground near Drifi&eld, East Yorkshire. Inquiries 

 were made from a person who was believed to hold 

 it, but in vain, until recently it appeared in the 

 window of a Piccadilly jeweller, whence it was pur- 

 chased for the Hull Museum. It weighs 15 grains and 

 has a large oval bevel, in the centre of which is a 

 fine garnet held by a plate of gold ; the face of the 

 ring is decorated with ornamentation made of fine 

 gold wire. This seems to be the third record of a 

 ring of this type, other specimens being deposited in 

 the Ashmolean and British Museums — the two latter 

 rings bearing the inscription " Nomen Ehlla Fides in 

 Christo." Objects of a similar type are described by 

 Mr. Sheppard in pamphlet No. 134 of the useful series 

 issued by the Hull Museum. 



The Easter Island Statues. — The interest of 

 archaeologists has been excited by the account by 

 Mrs. Routledge of the remarkable statues of Easter 

 Island. Mr. H. G. Beasley, in the August issue of 

 Man, describes an image only gf inches high, which 

 he was lucky enough to pick up at a shop on the 

 Continent. It seems to be of the technique of the 

 Easter Island statues, the material being a piece of 

 volcanic ash, once covered with red ochre, which 

 appears to be the effigy of some worthy, in honour 

 of whom it was smeared with red, like images in 

 India, the red being the survival of a blood sacrifice. 

 The domed head of the image is remarkable, as 

 Mrs. Routledge found only one example of this type 

 in the course of her excavations. Her inquiries show 

 that, in addition to the great statues raised on plat- 

 forms in Easter Island, a variety of smaller stone 

 objects were made for personal use, and as niches 

 are found in the inner walls of the houses, small 

 images such as this may have been placed therein. 



The Evolution of the Paleozoic Flora. — In 

 recent years considerable attention ha? been given 

 by botanists to the lines along which the Upper 

 Devonian flora developed, and the characters of the 

 Middle Devonian flora of the cherts of Rhynie in 

 Aberdeenshire have given attraction and urgency 

 to research into still older plant-remains. This point 

 is emphasised by Dr. A. C. Seward as president of 

 the Geological Society of London, in his address 

 published in the Quarterly Journal of that Society 

 tor July, 1923 (vol. 79, Proc, p. Ixvi). Unfortunately, 

 he can hold out but little hope of terrestrial plant- 

 remains of pre-Devonian age. Vegetation still clung 

 to the swampy fringes of the continents and islands 



NO. 2809, VOL. 112] 



until the epoch of the Rhynie beds. It was not till 

 Upper Devonian times (p. ciii) that it " had come 

 into its own, and had colonized the higher and <lrier 

 ground." The " change in the geological background 

 had its reflex in the development of green foliage in 

 place of the almost leafless condition of the older 

 plants." The rest of this sentence ( 1 to live 



m localities either physically or phys: , dry ") 



seems to have got somehow out of place, in dealing 

 with the Archaeopteris flora, Dr. Seward asks how 

 such plants were adapted to survive the long months 

 of arctic darkness ; but he feels that we are not yet 

 " in a position to demand as a necessity either a 

 shifting axis or a wandering crust." The critical 

 horizon indicated by the Rhynie peat-bog has been 

 discussed by F. O. Bower and D. H. Scott (Nature, 

 vol. 105, p. 681, 1920, and vol. 108, p. 153, 1921) : 

 and Dr. Scott has recently contributed a paper on 

 the early history of the land floras (vol. no, p. 606, 

 1922), which should be compared with Dr. Seward's 

 address. Dr. Seward, however, carries the survey 

 farther back, and reviews evidence that is rarely 

 brought together as a whole. He remarks (p. Ixxv) 

 that Cryptozoon may be the skeleton of an animal, 

 but is not a plant. Dr. O. Holtedahl has always 

 viewed this genus and its allies with suspicion {A titer. 

 Journ. Sci., 4th ser., vol. 47, p. 85, and vol. 201, 

 p. 195 ; see Nature, vol. 103, p. 330, and 107, p. 795), 

 and Dr. Seward has come independently to his con- 

 clusion that a comparison of its nodular masses with 

 those formed of calcite in the Magnesian Limestone 

 of Durham is fully justified. It seems that Crypto- 

 zoon, with its allies from Huronian to Carboniferous 

 strata, is destined to go the way of Eozoon. 



Crystal Cleavage and Crystal Structlkk. — 

 Under the above title, Mr. Maurice L. Huggins has 

 published in the American Journal of Science{vol. 206, 

 p. 203, 1923) a number of diagrams and descriptions 

 of crystal-structure, showing the probable position of 

 electrons along lines representing bonds between the 

 atoms, and he concludes that (i.) cleavage tends to 

 occur so as to leave two new crystal surfaces that 

 are electrically neutral ; (ii.) if some bonds in the 

 crystal are weaker than others, cleavage ruptures the 

 weaker bonds in preference to the stronger ones ; 

 (iii.) if all the bonds are equally strong, cleavage will 

 occur between the planes connected by the fewest 

 bonds per unit area of the cleavage plane. Readers 

 of Nature have had their attention directed to the 

 question of crystal strength and crystal weakness in 

 Sir William Bragg's recent paper on crystal analysis 

 (Supplement, June 9, 1923, p. v). Mr. Huggins con- 

 ceives, however, that the splitting of a crystalline 

 structure occurs between an atomic kernel and a 

 group of electrons, or between two electron groups or 

 two electrons in a pair, rather than merely between 

 two atoms or planes of atoms. A simple illustration 

 is seen in the two-dimensional diagram of bismuth 

 structure in Fig. 7. The risk that we run — we who 

 are not gifted with transcendental powers of intro- 

 spection — seems to lie in regarding the circular atomic 

 nuclei, and the smaller electron circles, in such dia- 

 grams as known physical entities, instead of as points 

 at which something happens. 



An Antarctic Meteorite. — The latest to be issued 

 of the scientific reports of the Australasian Antarctic 

 Expedition,"i9ii-i4 (series A, vol. 4. pt. i), is devoted 

 to a description of the Adelie Land meteoric stone. 

 The finding, on December 5, 191 2, about twenty miles 

 west of Cape Denison, of this small black object resting 



