450 



NATURE 



[February 2, 191 1 



thought to whatever he undertakes. " The fundamentally 

 valuable thing in scientific study is the mental attitude it 

 engenders. It is doubtless true that we, as a nation, do 

 not spend enough money on pure research and technical 

 instruction ; but behind and beyond all this lies our chief 

 national sin — a contempt for scientific reasoning, a striving 

 after short cuts to knowledge, and a slovenly omniscience, 

 as witnessed in our love for examinations and worship of 

 success, qua success." Particulars concerning the society 

 may be obtained from the secretaries, Messrs. S. W. 

 Bradley and T. R. Brooke, 12 Warren Road, Chingford, 

 N.E. 



Dr. F. Gron makes some remarks in I' Anthropologic 

 •^Tome xxi., p. 625) on the prehistoric operation described 

 by Prof. Manouvrier by the term "T sincipital." This is 

 a T-shaped groove of variable depth that is found in 

 ■certain Neolithic skulls, which extends along the sagittal 

 and lambdoidal sutures. Skulls of all ages, from pre- 

 historic to recent times, and from many countries, have 

 been collected which show indubitable evidence of trepana- 

 tion. These perforations are generally admitted to be 

 surgical operations in order to alleviate pain or to cure 

 certain diseases. Celsius, speaking of malaria of the 

 eyes, refers to a curative operation of cutting the skin by 

 sagittal and frontal incisions, but Dr. Gron does not con- 

 sider that this is the same operation as that under con- 

 sideration. He directs attention to the fact that all the 

 skulls found in France with the " T sincipital " are those 

 of women, and puts forward the view that it was not a 

 prehistoric operation undertaken for medical reasons, but 

 a form of punishment of which the vestige is found in 

 the stigmata of historic times. The author adds : — 

 " Certainly this opinion is only a hypothesis." 



In an interesting paper presented to the research depart- 

 ment of the Royal Geographical Society on January 19, 

 Messrs. A. J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson discuss the 

 "distribution of early civilisation in northern Greece in rela- 

 tion to its geographical features, and in particular the 

 communications through the mountain passes and the 

 forests of Thessaly, which in ancient times seem to have 

 ■extended over a much wider area than that which they 

 occupy at present. These remains generally take the form 

 of high or low mounds, most of them situated in the 

 plains, but a few are to be found in the foothills. Both of 

 these types must be distinguished from the conical 

 mounds covering Hellenistic tombs, which extend into the 

 prehistoric area. The civilisation of the race occupying 

 these sites is of a primitive type, widely different from 

 the more advanced Mi'noan culture of the south, which 

 apparently reached northern Greece in its latest phase, and 

 ■did not replace the local cultures. The co-existence of 

 this northern Neolithic culture with the use of bronze 

 further south must be taken into account in considering 

 the usually accepted view that the Achaeans were invaders 

 from the north. 



The expedition of the Duke of the Abruzzi to the 

 Karakoram Himalayas is described by Dr. Filippo de 

 Filippi in the January number of the Geographical Journal. 

 In spite of many difficulties, much useful and important 

 work was accomplished. Sedimentary and crystalline 

 rocks were found, constituting different portions of the 

 region traversed, and peaks rising well above 20,000 feet 

 occurred in each. Measurements at the beginning and 

 end of the expedition on the Baltoro glacier gave the 

 average movement as 5J feet a day during June and July ; 

 some articles of equipment left on the upper Goodwin- 

 Austen glacier by the Eckenstein-W^ssely-Guillarmod ex- 



NO. 2153, VOL. 85] 



pedition in 1902 furnished another means of measurement, 

 and here the movement was less than a mile in seven 

 years, or an average rate of barely 2 feet a day. Aneroid 

 observations were found to be unsatisfactory, but valuabl' 

 work was done by photogrammetry supplemented by theo- 

 dolite observations, and in this way much was accom- 

 plished in spite of the unfavourable weather. 



Bulletin No. 19 of the Agricultural Research Irstitute 

 at Pusa is devoted to a list of the vernacular, scientific, 

 and English names of the commoner Indian insects. 



The Scientific American for January 7 contains a long 

 illustrated article on the New York Zoological Park, which 

 embraces an area of 264 acres, and contains at the present 

 time more than 5000 wild animals. That the park is 

 highly appreciated by New York people may be inferred by 

 the fact that 1,614,953 persons passed the turnstiles last 

 year. Attention is specially directed to a huge open-air 

 bird-cage, with a ground-area of 152 by 75 feet, and a 

 height of 55 feet, and enclosing three fair-sized forest trees 

 and a pond of 100 feet in length. Naturally, the authori- 

 ties have endeavoured to exhibit a representative series of 

 the animals of North America, among which at the pre- 

 sent time a special feature is the show of the various forms 

 of huge brown bears inhabiting Alaska. A new and note- 

 worthy exhibit is the herd of six musk-ox calves, five of 

 which were recently received from Ellesmere Land, Green- 

 land, as the gift of Paul J. Rainey. " Miss Melville," the 

 sixth specimen, arrived a year ago from Melville Island: 

 These six constitute the only live herd of these animalb 

 in captivity. 



In its January issue, the American Naturalist prints 

 an address on " organic response," delivered by Dr. D. T. 

 Macdougal, the president, before the meeting of the 

 Society of American Naturalists held at Ithaca, N.Y., on 

 December 29, 19 10. The article is of such length that it 

 is difficult to give a precis of its scope within the normal 

 limit of a note in this column. The chief subject is, 

 however, the changes undergone by animals and plants 

 under different conditions of environment, especially as the 

 result of artificial transportation or tnansplantation. After 

 alluding to the peculiar suitability of micro-organisms with 

 a short life-cycle to experiments of this nature, and the 

 results obtained therefrom. Dr. Macdougal refers to the 

 difference in the breeding habits of the spotted salamander 

 according as to whether it lives at high or low levels, the 

 species being viviparous under the former and ovovivi- 

 parous under the latter conditions. It is added that if the 

 Alpine black salamander be kept in a high temperature, its 

 larva; resemble those of the spotted species when in its 

 lower habitat, whereas if the spotted kind be kept in a 

 low temperature, its reproductive habits and young 

 approximate to those of its black relative. Attention is 

 next directed to the results obtained by transporting 

 beetles to habitats unlike their own, after which comes a 

 fuller account of the American experiments in regard to 

 growing selected kinds of plants at different elevations and 

 under different conditions of climate and soil. These 

 experiments are being conducted on a very extensive scale, 

 large " xero-montane-, " " montane," " maritime," and 

 other types of plantations having been established in 

 California, Arizona, and elsewhere. For the results of 

 these our readers must refer to the address itself. 



In the latter part of the article on sexual dimorphism 

 in plants, published in the Biologisches Centralblatt 

 (November 15, 1910), Prof. Goebel describes some 

 anomalous features observable in flowers of the Compo- 

 sitje. Generally, as in Calendula, the female ray florets 



