December 22, 1910] 



NATURE 



247 



The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts for December 9 

 contains a paper delivered to the society by Mr. A. Mont- 

 gomery, State Mining Engineer of Western Australia, on 

 the progress and prospects of mining in Western 

 Australia. Mr. Montgomery states that the metallic 

 minerals occur in ver}- old igneous and sedimentary- rocks, 

 which are almost certainly pre-Cambrian. His conclusion 

 is that Western Australia owes the present shape of its 

 surface largely to submergence beneath the sea within 

 post-Tertiary times. The paper was accompanied by an 

 exhaustive statistical appendi.x, from which we find that 

 for the quinquennium 1903-7 the world's production of 

 gold was 76,000,000/., of which the Commonwealth of 

 Australia contributed 20 per cent, and Western Australia 

 10^ per cent. For the same quinquennium the gold pro- 

 duced has been more than 96 per cent, of the total mineral 

 production, and the mineral export from Western Australia 

 has been 80 per cent, of the total for all the exports from 

 the colony. The value of gold produced per man employed 

 has been more than 400?. during the years 1908-9. In 

 regard to the help afforded by the Government to the 

 mining industr>, attention is directed to . the extensive 

 development of the railway lines and of rhe systems of 

 water supply ; water is sold to the mines at from 45. 9<J. 

 to 8s. 6d. per 1000 gallons. 



The November number of Petermann's Mitteilungen 

 contains an interesting map of Siberia taken from one 

 published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, which 

 shows the distribution of places where remains of the 

 mammoth and rhinoceros have been found. Most of them 

 lie within the Arctic circle, but one of the former and 

 rhrc^ of the latter sites lie further to the south. 



\\ event of much interest in cartography is the com- 

 pletion, after about thirty- years' work, of the i : 100,000 

 map of Germany in 675 sheets. A full account of these 

 maps and the various stages in their development and 

 their production is given by Colonel v. Zglinicki, chief of 

 the cartographic section of the Prussian Survey, in a 

 recent number (No. 9) of the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft 

 fiir Erdkunde. 



The determination of the international boundaries in 

 Africa proceeds apace, and in Heft 4 of the current volume 

 of Mitteilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten are pub- 

 lished the latitudes and longitudes which were determined 

 in 1905-7 along the boundary which divides the Cameroons 

 from the French Congo. Neither the time available nor 

 the funds at disposal sufficed to carry out a chain of 

 geodetic triangulation along the boundan.-. so that it was 

 necessary to rely on astronomical obser\ations alone. 

 Latitudes were determined by circummeridian altitudes of 

 north and south stars, and longitudes by lunar observa- 

 tions, and in three cases only by star occultations. 

 Observations made at the obser\'atories of Greenwich, 

 Paris, and Gottingen were utilised to furnish the final 

 corrections, the uncertainty- of the results being ±2 to 

 ±5 seconds. 



Under the title of " The Burial of Olympia," Prof. 

 Ellsworth Huntington in the Geographical Journal for 

 ^'cember applies the theories advocated in his work 



! he Pulse of Asia " to the problem of the decadence 

 Greek civilisation. This is often attributed to de- 

 station ; but from evidence collected in America by 



jf. Moore, chief of the United States Weather Bureau, 

 denies that this can have played an important part in 

 ruin of the natural resources of Greece. He assumes 



It pulsatory changes of climate, such as the rapid 



-•ccation of parts of Asia, may have occurred in Greece 

 the millenium preceding 600 .a.d. To these he attributes 

 NO. 2147, VOL. 85] 



many of the world's greatest movements of population, 

 such as the attacks of the barbarians on southern Europe, 

 the invasions of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and he 

 connects with these the spread of malaria due to the 

 introduction of the mosquito, for which Greece now be- 

 came a fitting habitat. In the instructive discussion which 

 followed, these views were criticised by Prof. Myres, Dr. 

 Hogarth, Dr. Stein, Prof. Gregory-, and others, most of 

 whom, while admitting the novelt>- and interest of Prof. 

 Huntington's suggestions, desired further evidence. This 

 may perhaps be gained from Prof. Huntington's recent 

 work in the American deserts ; but until the question of 

 North Africa is settled the general problem cannot be 

 finally decided. 



In the Popular Science Monthly for December Prof. 

 S. W. Williston discusses the birthplace of man in the 

 light of the palaeontolc^ical record. The evidence, he 

 suggests, points to the conclusion that it was in India 

 and its borderlands that the chief domesticated animals 

 were specialised — the genus Bos in the Indian Lower 

 Pliocene, the swine, horse, elephant, and the cat tribe ; 

 among birds, the ostrich, jungle-fowl, peacock, and grey 

 goose. Man may have been developed in this region 

 during the Late Miocene or Early Pliocene periods. He 

 believes that within a verv- few years the discover}- of 

 indubitable links in man's ancestrj- will be made in Central 

 Asia. China, or North India, there being no other region 

 to which the palaeontologist looks with more eager expecta- 

 tion for the solution of many profound problems in the 

 phylogenetics and migrations of mammalian life. 



The Transactions of the Leicester Literary and Philo- 

 sophical Society for 19 10 contain two geological papers 

 of interest. Mr. F. Cresswell deals with the frequently 

 discussed question of the origin of the English Triassic 

 strata, with special reference to the Keuper marls. He 

 suggests that the grey bands represent periods of moister 

 climate, when minute organisms reduced the peroxide of 

 iron to protoxide. While regarding the floor on which 

 the English Trias was deposited as a rocky tableland, he 

 falls into a ver}- common error by stating that the Libyan 

 Desert differs from this, being " a unifcwm sandy plain." 

 Mr. Cresswell fully supports the view that desert condi- 

 tions prevailed in Triassic times in England, and urges 

 that the Keuper marls are formed of particles worn from 

 igneous and metamorphic rocks by "' weathering with a 

 ver\- limited amount of w-ater." Mr. J. McKenzie Newton 

 contributes an essay on the crystallisation of igneous 

 rocks. 



In the Bulletin of the Central Meteorological Observa- 

 tor>- of Japan (No. 5, 1910) Mr. T. Okada discusses in 

 great detail the rainy season in Japan, which usually 

 extends from about the middle of June to the middle of 

 July, and is the most important period for the cultivation 

 of rice. To make the investigation more complete, five- 

 day means are given for the whole year for a large number 

 of stations in Japan and adjacent districts, with charts 

 and a short discussion of each of the principal elements. 

 The figures show that in Japan proper the rainfall reaches 

 a maximum at the end of June or in the first decade of 

 July ; it then falls to a minimum in August, and again 

 increases to a maximum in September or October. The 

 rainfall of the season in question is chiefly caused by 

 cyclonic disturbances from the Yangtse Valley and 

 Formosa, and is not a simple monsoon rainfall. The 

 period is characterised by continued cloudy weather, large 

 relative humiditj-, comparatively high temperature, small 

 wind-velocit}.-, and more or less rainfall every day. The 

 discussion extends to eightj-two quarto pages. 



