770 



NATURE 



[November 24. 1923 



Research Items. 



MVCENAAN ELEMI i HE NORTH iEoKAN. — 



Mr. Stanley Casson has contributed to the November 

 number of Man an interesting analysis of the traces of 

 intrusive Mycenaean culture in Macedonia and Thrace. 

 Mycenwan pottery is dcrive<l from nine mounds in the 

 Thermaic Gulf, mostly in the neighlxjurhood of 

 Salonika, and all but three on the seashore. All this 

 Mycena;an ware belongs, with one exception, to the 

 close of the third I^ate Minoan period. Mr. Casson's 

 conclusion is that probably Mycenaean imports were 

 purely local and were derive<l by trade along the sea 

 route from the south to the Thermaic Gulf. He 

 figures two rapiers from Grevena on the upper waters 

 of the Haliacmon and one from Karaglari in the 

 Central Bulgarian Plain which belong to the type of 

 Mycensean rapier common in the last two Minoan 

 periods. The former appears to have passed up the 

 Vardar Valley or by way of Thessaly ; the latter along 

 the Struma. East of the Struma no traces of Mycenjean 

 culture are recorded along the European shore, and 

 Mycena?an traders appear to have had no port of call 

 between Salonika and Troy. 



Climate and the Nasal Index. — At the Inter- 

 national Medical Congress held in London in 191 3, 

 Prof. Arthur Thomson read a preliminary com- 

 munication on " The Correlation of Isotherms with 

 Variations in the Nasal Index," in which it was 

 suggested as a result of a survey of the nasal indices 

 of the inhabitants of America that the greatest nose- 

 width was to be found near the " heat-equator," and 

 that a narrowing was to be found in passing north 

 and south to Baffin's Bay and Tierra del Fuego. A 

 joint paper by Prof. Thomson and Mr. L. H. Dudley 

 Buxton which appears in vol. liii., pt. i. of the 

 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, gives 

 the results of an extended investigation on these lines, 

 from which it would appear that in fact a platyrrhine 

 nasal index is associated with a hot moist climate and 

 a leptorrhine nasal index with a cold dry climate ; 

 the mtermediate conditions being associated with hot 

 dry and cold moist climates. Both on the living 

 (males) and on crania there is a positive correlation 

 between nasal index and temperature. The same 

 applies to nasal index and relative humidity in the 

 livmg, but in crania the correlation is small. The 

 result of the application of this line of investigation 

 to prehistoric skulls is interesting. The platyrrhine 

 character of the Grimaldi skulls would assign them to 

 a warm Mousterian period ; but the skull from La 

 Chapelle aux Saints, being platyrrhine, should belong 

 to a warm period, whereas it is usually assigned to a 

 cold Mousterian period. 



Freudian Psychology and Evolution Theory. 

 — In the Transactions of the Croydon Natural History 

 Society (vol. ix. pt. 3) there is an interesting article 

 by Mr. C. C. Fagg on the " Significance of the Freudian 

 Psychology for the Evolution Theory." The article 

 consists of three parts. In the first the author out- 

 lines the discoveries of Freud, in the second he sketches 

 the salient features of the evolution theory, and in the 

 third he attempts to interpret the second in the light 

 of the first. The paper is interesting as an indication 

 of a scientific attitude of mind towards the Freudian 

 theory. That theory has suffered almost equally 

 from the uncritical assimilation of all its tenets by 

 enthusiastic supporters and from the still more un- 

 critical attacks of those who found its doctrines un- 

 palatable. Mr. Fagg relates certain aspects of it to 

 phenomena well known in the biological sciences. He 

 interprets the stalk of the fixed infusorian as of the 

 nature of a neurotic s>Tnptom ; some amoeboid forms 



NO. 2821, VOL. I 12] 



reacted to fear, as in the case of the foraminifera, b\ 

 putting on a coat of armour noade of carbonate of ■•" • 

 or silica, a compromise formation which put a 

 to their evolutionary possibilities ; only tnose 

 boid forms which retained their mobility and pla- 

 in the face of danger were able to bridge the gu.: 

 metazoic life. He nolds that there are many instances 

 from palaeontology to show how. in reacting to fear 

 of environmental dangers, races have sold their souls, 

 so to speak, for some measure of security. He 

 believes that a consideration of some of the fii- 

 of Freud would do much to help in the aggra 

 question of the inheritance of acquired cnaract<;rs. 

 He hopes that by an extension of our knowledge along 

 the lines indicated by psycho-analysis we may some 

 day be able to make a world fit for children to live in, 

 a family and social environment in which super- 

 babies may develop into super-men. 



Cattle Feeding. — The idea which appears to have 

 suggested the investigation recorded in " Under- 

 Nutrition in Steers," by F. G. Benedict and E. G. 

 Ritzman (Carnegie Institution of VVashingfton), is that 

 it might iDe economically advantageous to underfeed 

 cattle during the winter, when feeding stuffs are 

 scarce and dear, if it could be demonstrated that a 

 prolonged period of semi-starvation did not inflict on 

 the animals any permanent disturbance of their 

 internal economy such as would hinder their fattening 

 in the succeeding summer. For the purpose of the 

 investigation 14 steers in all were intensively studied, 

 12 of them during the year November 1918 to 

 November 1919, and 2 during the succeeding year. 

 For the first fortnight the ration aimed at bare main- 

 tenance, for the next six months at approximately 

 half maintenance, after which a full fattening ration 

 was given. It was found that although during the 

 six months on half maintenance the animals lost 

 approximately 25 per cent, of their original live weight, 

 they soon regained this when given a full ration, after 

 which they fattened normally, and, when slaughtered, 

 produced saleable beef. Thus the absence of per- 

 manent ill effects of prolonged and severe under- 

 nutrition is clearly demonstrated, but it is unfortunate 

 that the authors were prevented from considering the 

 economic results of their investigation. In the 

 absence of any economic discussion it cannot fail to 

 strike the British reader that the investigation loses 

 much of its importance. Under-nutrition of store 

 cattle during the winter is a common phenomenon in 

 the pastoral districts of the west of England, and when 

 practised on young animals is supposed to be re- 

 sponsible for many of the shortcomings of stores which 

 are transported to the Midlands and the Eastern 

 Counties for subsequent fattening. The publication 

 contains, however, clear descriptions of many very 

 ingenious instruments used in the determination of 

 the digestibility of the feeding stuflfs and in the 

 measurement of gaseous metabolism. Many British 

 experimenters w^ould profit by studying the discussion 

 of the accuracy of live weight measurements on which 

 they are apt to place implicit confidence. 



Plant Propagation. — Mr. C. T. Musgrave has an 

 interesting note in the Journal of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural SocietA", volume 48, parts 2 and 3, issued 

 September 1923, under the title " Methods of 

 Propagation in an Amateur's Garden," which again 

 directs attention to the numerous problems that 

 immediately arise when the empirical data, alone 

 available in this subject, are passed under review. 

 Mr. Musgrave distinguishes between hardwood cuttings 

 of woody perenniak, which have ceased growth for 



