November 3, 1923] 



NA TURE 



669 



Research Items. 



Gypsy SlaVery. — Dr. M. Gaster, in the Journal 

 of the Gypsy Love Society (Third Series, vol. ii.. 

 Part 2) publishes a remarkable series of facts drawn 

 from a case decided in Moldavia in 1851, which 

 shows that at that time the sale of Gypsies must have 

 been comparatively common, as there seems to have 

 been a fixed, or at any rate normal, price at which 

 slaves were sold. The persons offered for sale fall 

 into four groups, including various trades, some 

 hereditary and others in which the son practises a 

 craft different from that of the father. Sales of this 

 kind go back at least to the beginning of fifteenth 

 century. 



The Secretary House in Maryland. — Mr. 

 L. V. Lochwood contributes to the Brooklyn Museum 

 Quarterly (July 1923) an account of this historic 

 house. The site was granted to Henrj'- Sewall of 

 London, who arrived with his family in Maryland 

 in 1 661 and the house was named after him, Secretary 

 of the Province, a large landowner, and a man of 

 high importance. It was occupied by him and his 

 family imtil his death in 1665 and the remarriage 

 of his widow to Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, 

 third Land Proprietor of Maryland. The house is of 

 brick laid in Flemish bond, and is a typical seventeenth 

 century Virginia or Maryland house of the wealthy 

 class. All the furniture shown in the house at 

 present dates before 1725. Mr. Lochwood's article 

 fully describes this interesting building and its 

 contents, and is illustrated by a series of good photo- 

 graphs. 



Antiquarian Work in Egypt. — In Ancient Egypt 

 (Part 2, 1923) Sir W. Flinders Petrie describes an 

 important tomb on the shore-cliff at Byblos, twenty 

 miles north of Beyrut. A fine obsidian vase bears 

 the name of Amenemhat III. and the tomb may be 

 safely assigned to the period of the Xllth dynasty. 

 The Syrian objects are of even greater importance, 

 as the tomb furnishes a firm starting point for the 

 dating of Syrian types, and for the relations of 

 Eg>'pt with Syria. This paper is followed by 

 a report by M. Noel Giron of the French Embassy 

 on a tomb found at Sheykh Fadl in the eastern 

 deserts, dating from the Old Kingdom and contain- 

 ing Aramaic inscriptions. These point to a Jewish 

 settlement so far up in Egypt as early as the reign 

 of Manasseh, and the mention of Tirhaka shows that 

 the family went back to eighty years before the fall 

 of Jerusalem. Their natural familiarity with Greek 

 words, objects and thoughts through the Greek camp 

 of Tahpenes throws strong light on the criticism of 

 the prophetic books. 



The Chinese Junk and Sampan. — At the ninth 

 Indian Science Congress, the proceedings of which 

 are reported in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, New Series, vol. xviii., 1922, No. 6, Mr. J. 

 Horneli, comparing the Chinese junk and sampan, 

 concludes that the sampan is ultimately derived from 

 a modification of the double canoe in u.se until com- 

 paratively recently for sea work throughout Polynesia, 

 and in a simple form still employed on inland waters 

 in India, and that the junk is in turn a development 

 of the sampan type. The truncate transom bow and 

 stern of the sampan probably represent cross planking 

 fitted between the bows and sterns of the two canoes 

 forming one double canoe, while the two projections 

 that curve upwards from the stem of the sampan 

 appear to be the homologues of the up-curved sterns 

 of the two hulls in the double-canoe form. In the 

 some way, the median rudder of the sampan and 

 the junk and the anchor platform that gives a square- 



NO. 2818, VOL. I 12] 



bow appearance to the junks are what would be 

 expected if these crafts developed from two canoe 

 hulls joined together by a planked deck platform. 

 The facts point to the range of the sea-going double 

 canoe having extended in former days to India and 

 China, the inventors and users being the ancestors of 

 the present Polynesian race, who probably occupied 

 the maritime districts of China at the time the Chinese 

 left their original homeland in north-east Central Asia. 



Cattle and Excitement from Blood. — In the 

 Psychological Review (Vol. 30, No. 5) Prof. G. M. 

 Stratton gives a very interesting account of his 

 attempt to verify a popular belief. It is widely held 

 that cattle react powerfully and perhaps instinctively 

 to blood, and to get definite expression of this view 

 from persons accustomed to observing cattle, he ob- 

 tained testimony from a large number of cattlemen. 

 They all replied to the effect that nothing else is so 

 irritating or exciting to cattle as the smell of blood. 

 As to the kind of emotion aroused, there was less 

 unanimity, some ascribing it to anger, others to fear, 

 aversion, or curiosity. The reports, however, were 

 quite clear that blood did have a marked emotional 

 effect. To determine the truth of these views, ex- 

 periments were carefully conducted on cattle in the 

 Berkeley Hills. Both cow's and horse's blood were 

 used under careful experimental conditions. The 

 experiments proved, however, more exciting to the 

 experimenters than to the cattle. In general, the 

 observations showed that while individual cattle dis- 

 played mild interest, there was little of that excite- 

 ment spoken of by the cattlemen, no herd-seizure of 

 alarm or rage. The author concludes, not that the 

 cattlemen had no grounds for their belief, but that 

 they were wrong in ascribing the excitement to blood 

 alone ; when excitement occurred it was probably 

 due to tlie presence of blood in union with other 

 factors — e.g. with cries of pain, or with the sight of 

 wounded cattle. He believes that the reaction of 

 cattle to blood, and probably of human beings too, 

 is less of a native physiological reflex than is commonly 

 thought, being largely influenced by special experi- 

 ence. 



An Artificial Plant Cell. — Dr. D. T. Macdougal 

 has found an interesting method of attack upon the 

 problem of the permeability of the plant cell and the 

 factors that cause it to vary (Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, 

 vol. 62, pp. 1-25, 1923). He converts a Soxhlet 

 extraction thimble into a semi-permeable cell by 

 impregnating the cellulose with various substances 

 analogous to those entering into the composition of 

 the natural plasma membrane and plant wall, such 

 as pectin, agar, lecithin, etc. Subsequently the rate 

 of endosmose of such cells is noted when they are 

 filled with sugar solution and immersed in external 

 solution containing different salts. The rate of entry 

 of these salts into such cells can be followed by con- 

 ductivity measurements ; the exosmosis of sugar can 

 also be estimated (]uantitatively. Potassium ions 

 show a high rate of penetration mto such cells, with 

 very little action on the colloid in the wall ; calcium, 

 on the other hand, penetrates least, but exerts a 

 powerful aggregating effect upon some of the colloids. 

 The rate of endosmose into the artificial cell increases 

 as the permeability is lessened, and is thus usually 

 most vigorous when immersed in the solution of a 

 calcium salt. 



Oils from Indian Plants. — The Indian Institute 

 of Science, Bangalore, continues to publish in its 

 Journal, under the editorship of Dr. M. O. Foster, the 

 results of the examination of the natural products of 



