September 8, 1923] 



NATURE 



0/0 



Research Items. 



Excavations at Cirencester. — Some recent im- 

 portant discoveries at Cirencester are described by 

 Mr. St. Clair Baddeley in vol. xliv., 1922, of the Trans- 

 actions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeo- 

 logical Society. The remarkable fact results from 

 the excavation of the city wall that portions of it, at 

 any rate, are not of Roman Imperial construction or 

 formed, as has been hitherto accepted, during the late 

 Empire, so as to enclose the then far-expanded, but 

 not yet endangered, Corineum ; but that they are 

 of precisely identical character with the dry-walled 

 mounds that encircle many other Cotteswold settle- 

 ments, made by pre-Roman tribes. In the former 

 case the probability seems to point to the Dobuni, or 

 a previous people, the Comavii, as the makers of the 

 wall ; these mound-enclosures have been in later times 

 occupied in the extension of Roman Cornubium. Mr. 

 Baddeley's paper is illustrated by photographs of the 

 excavations. 



Tablet -WEAVING in Ancient Egypt. — Mrs. 

 Crowfoot and Mr. H. Ling Roth have reprinted a 

 paper from the Annals of Archaeology and Anthropo- 

 logy (vol. X., Nos. 1-2), entitled " Were the Ancient 

 Egyptians conversant with Tablet-weaving (Brett- 

 chenweberei, Tissage aux Cartons) ? " They dispute 

 the theory that tablet-weaving is the origin of all 

 weaving, as has been asserted by Herr H. Pralle. 

 No authentic tablet-weaving tools have yet been 

 found, and the art is not known to be depicted on 

 any wall or other illustration in Egypt. After a 

 careful review of weaving technique, illustrated by 

 numerous drawings, the writers arrive at the con- 

 clusion that no tablets have been found earlier than 

 Coptic days, and those of doubtful provenance, and all 

 ancient Egyptian textiles examined by them were 

 certainly not tablet-woven ; there is at present no 

 evidence whatever for tablet-weaving in ancient 

 Egypt. 



Wood Carvings from the Congo and West 

 Africa. — Mr. H. V. Hall continues in the June 

 issue of the Philadelphia Museum Journal his account 

 of a collection of wood carvings from the Congo and 

 West Africa. The article is fully illustrated and 

 describes some remarkable specimens of West African 

 work. The question of foreign influence on this type 

 of native art is not clear, but most of the specimens 

 seem clearly to be indigenous work. The Kroos, a,t 

 any rate, have been for a long period closely associ- 

 ated with Europeans, and one image seems to repre- 

 sent a Captain Hunt, the master of a steamer, who is 

 seated on a barrel which may have contained nails, 

 or its contents may have been of a liquid nature. 

 The characteristic carelessness of the Negro craftsman 

 in matters of detail is shown by the fact that though 

 the opening of the tight jacket is carefully indicated 

 by a line down the front, yet this is shown folding 

 right over the left, there are no buttons, and no 

 division is marked between jacket and trousers. 



Appreciation of Time. — " An Experimental Study 

 of the Appreciation of Time by Somnambules " is the 

 title of an article by Mr. Sidney E Hooper in the 

 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 

 July. It is known that some hypnotic subjects 

 display what appears to be a supernormal power of 

 appreciating the passage of time. If, for example, 

 such a subject is told during hypnosis to perform 

 some simple act at the end of 5006 minutes he will do 

 so, at or about the correct time, although in the period 

 intervening between the hypnosis and the perform- 

 ance of the act he has had no conscious knowledge 

 of the suggestion that has been given to him. Experi- 



NO. 2810, VOL. 112] 



ments demonstrating this peculiarity of the hypnotic 

 state have been recorded by Gurney, Delboeuf, Milne 

 Bramwell, and IMitchell, and Mr. Hooper takes up the 

 inquiry at the point at which it was left by these 

 observers. Two main problems are presented by the 

 results of these experiments : (i) the subliminal 

 calculation by which the subject comes to know the 

 time at which the suggested act is to be performed ; 

 (2) " true time-appreciation," by which the subject 

 knows when the time so calculated arrives. When a 

 long time-interval is given in minutes the subject 

 usually calculates subliminally so as to find out when 

 the suggested act falls due. Mr. Hooper's experi- 

 ments corroborate this ; but one of his subjects 

 maintained that as soon as the suggestion was given 

 she began to count rhythmically and continued to 

 do so until the suggested number of minutes had 

 elapsed. It is to such a capacity for accurate counting 

 of seconds by a subconsciousness on which the 

 pendular rhythm of the clock has been faithfully 

 inscribed that Mr. Hooper looks for an explanation of 

 " true time-appreciation." 



Californian Polych^tes. — Dr. J. Percy Moore 

 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, vol. 75, 1923) 

 completes the account of the polychaetes dredged 

 off the coast of South California. His three previous 

 papers, published respectively in 1909, 1910, and 191 1, 

 dealt with the Nereidiformia, and the present report 

 contains the systematic account of the other sub- 

 orders. Thirty -three new species are described. 



Alpine Water-mites. — Dr. C. Walter's memoir 

 on the Hydracarinae of alpine waters (Denkschr. 

 Schweiz. Naturforsch. Ges., Bd. 58, 1922), together 

 with previous accounts of Italian investigators of the 

 more southern forms, provides a fairly complete 

 account, at least of the faunistic aspect, of these 

 fresh- water mites. The author has been collecting 

 since 1906, and specimens have been obtained from 

 433 localities in the basins of the Rhone, Rhine, 

 Danube, and Po. The systematic descriptions are 

 followed by a short comparative account of the eggs 

 and of the larval and nymphal stages. Attention is 

 directed to the great importance of the larval stage in 

 regard to the distribution of many of the species ; the 

 larva fixes itself to some insect, inserts its mouth-parts 

 through the skin of its host and so feeds, being mean- 

 time transported by the host. The author gives 

 interesting notes on the adaptations met with, e.g. 

 the rich development of hairs on the legs of swimming 

 species, the dorso-ventral flattening of the body — and 

 with this a hardening of the dorsal chitin — usual in 

 fiuviatile species. The Hydracarinae of alpine waters 

 may be divided into two groups — the eurythermic 

 species, mostly living in still water, highly adaptive 

 and resistant, and widely distributed ; and the steno- 

 thermic species, not tolerant of extensive changes of 

 temperature but finding their optimum in water of 

 low temperature, more limited in their range, and 

 found chiefly in the springs and on the shores of high 

 alpine lakes. The author discusses the origin of these 

 two groups— the first largely composed of species 

 which in post-glacial times spread westwards from 

 Central Asia, and the second for the most part a 

 remnant of the glacial fauna. He puts forward 

 anatomical and other evidence indicating the origin 

 of these fresh-water mites from marine mites 

 (Halacaridae). 



Nematodes of Sheep and Chickens. — The two 

 principal communications in the current issue of the 

 Journal of Helminthology (vol. i. pt. 3, 1923) are a 

 careful account by T. W. M. Cameron of the anatomy 



