February 23, 191 1] 



NATURE 



549 



at Wady Haifa, of which he afterwards published an 

 account, with plan and photographs, in the Proceedings of 

 the Society of Biblical Archaeology. After finishing his 

 work on the temple, he assisted in arranging the monu- 

 ments in the newly-founded Egyptian Museum at Khartum. 

 As a result of his work at the British Museum, Mr. Scott- 

 Moncrieflf had completed the first part of an official publi- 

 cation of hieroglyphic texts from Egyptian stelae, which 

 it is hoped will shortly appear. He had devoted consider- 

 able study to the archaeology of the later periods of 

 Egyptian history, and, as first-fruits of his work, he con- 

 tributed a critical discussion of Plutarch's treatise " De 

 Iside et Osiride " to the Journal of Hellenic Studies. For 

 several years past he was also engaged on an examination 

 of the problems, presented by the early developments of 

 Christianity in Egypt. He approached the subject from 

 the archaeological side, and, at the time of his death, he 

 "had nearly completed the MS. of a volume which he pro- 

 posed to call "Paganism and Christianity in Egypt." 

 His friends hope that arrangements will be made for the 

 publication of this work in the manner and form which he 

 desired. 



The Maya hieroglyphs still await complete decipherment. 

 Some progress towards their interpretation has recently 

 been made by Mr. W. E. Gates, who describes his methods 

 in part i., vol. vi., of the archneological and ethnological 

 publications of the Peabody Museum. The famous Perez 

 Codex, accidentally discovered about fifty years ago in the 

 Biblioth^que Imperiale, Paris, has been reproduced by 

 Prof, de Rosny. But these facsimiles are scarce, expen- 

 sive, and not easily accessible to students. Mr. Gates has 

 now succeeded in reproducing the hieroglyphs in a form of 

 type, of which examples are given in his paper, and has 

 thus greatly facilitated the study of this obscure series of 

 pictorial documents. 



In his treatise on the people of Hungary, " Ethnographie 

 von Hungarn," published in 1877, Paul Hunfaivy describes 

 a race known as the Ishmaelites, whoni he identifies with 

 the Mohammedans. Mr. Leo Wiener, in an article in the 

 number of the Gypsy Lore Journal for last October, review- 

 ing the original authorities on which Hunfaivy relied, shows 

 that there is much to be said against this identification. 

 He comes to the conclusion that these people were gypsies, 

 the original name Ishmaelite becoming merged with 

 Saracen, and the latter in its turn giving way to the more 

 popular appellation Cigan, which, by the beginning of the 

 fifteenth century in southern Europe, completely over- 

 shadows every other designation of the gypsy race. 



The possibilities of the Tuantepec Isthmus as a rival 

 to Panama are seriously engaging the attention of 

 .American geographers. The character of the country, its 

 people, and resources are described in a well-illustrated 

 article, by Miss H. Olsson-SefTer, in the December (1910) 

 issue of the National Geographic Magazine. The native 

 Indian tribes are a singularly fine race, and the beauty of 

 their women, dress, and ornaments is remarkable. As 

 the Tuantepec route reduces the distance, as compared 

 with that via Panama, to Honolulu by 1273 miles, it may 

 become a serious competitor for traffic between the Atlantic 

 and Pacific Oceans. 



To the current number of Scientia Signor Rignano con- 

 tributes an article (in French) on " The Mnemonic Origin 

 and Nature of the Affective Tendencies." The author 

 points out that in every living organism there are physio- 

 logical systems in a state of rest, which it is always tend- 

 ing to maintain or, when disturbed, to return to. He cites 

 various biological instances showing that, when an 



NO. 2156, VOL. 85] 



organism adapts itself to a changed environment, the 

 altered conditions at once tend to become the " optimum " 

 few that organism. Thus he deduces a basis of memor>', 

 a mnemonic origin, for ever}' such optimum, to attain 

 which the organism is always reacting, and subjectively 

 experiences an afTective tendency of want, appetite, or 

 desire. 



In the third part of " Zur historischen Biologie der 

 Krankheitserreger, " published at Giessen in 1910, Prof. G. 

 Elliot Smith and Dr. M. Armand Ruffer give an account 

 of Pott's disease of the spine in an Egyptian mummy 

 belonging to the time of the twenty-first dynasty about 

 1000 B.C. The paper is illustrated with two plates, show- 

 ing a drawing and a photograph of the angular curve of 

 the spine as seen from without and from within the body. 

 The authors claim no novelty in the discovery of a case of 

 Pott's disease in the remains of the ancient Egyptians. 

 They believe it of importance, however, as being the first 

 case which has been thoroughly investigated and proved to 

 be tuberculous in nature, and their case has led to the 

 detection of tubercle as the cause of abnormal conditions 

 found in other bodies since examined. Many ancient 

 Egyptian bodies have shown abnormal curvature of the 

 spine, and some of these have been described as instances 

 of Pott's disease. On examination, however, they have 

 been found to be in reality typical examples of osteo- 

 arthritis, or the disease described and illustrated by Dr. 

 Wood Jones under the name of " spondylitis deformans." 

 This disease was extremely widespread in upper Egypt, 

 particularly in the predynastic age, so much so that signs 

 of it are to be seen in practically every body raised from a 

 common burial ground of that time. This disease was also 

 widespread in the time of the Persian dynasties, about 

 525-332 B.C., and in lower Egypt the skeletons of 

 Macedonian soldiers and their families frequently show 

 unmistakable signs of spondylitis deformans. The mummy 

 described by the present authors shows a very typical 

 angular curvature of the spine, while the interior of the 

 body shows the remains of a psoas abscess, a very frequent 

 complication of tuberculous disease of the spine at the 

 present day. 



An illustrated account, by Mr. W. H. Mullens, of the 

 two Tradescants and the famous Tradescant Museum — 

 which once contained the whole skin of a dodo — forms the 

 first article in Witherby's British Birds for February. 



Vol. vii., No. 2, of the Zoological Publications of the 

 University of California is devoted to an account of the 

 birds and mammals collected during the Alexander expedi- 

 ,tion to Alaska in 1909, two rodents being described as 

 new. 



The fifteenth instalment of the report on the zoological 

 results of Dr. Franz Werner's expedition to the Egyptian 

 Sudan and northern Uganda in 1904 appears in vol. cxix., 

 part vi., of Sitzber. Acad. Wissenschaften, Vienna. In 

 this contribution Dr. E. von Daday commences an account 

 of the microfauna of the Nile and its tributaries, as 

 exemplified by plankton collected by the traveller at a large 

 number of localities, but actually deals only with the 

 E*}'ptian forms. Many of these have been previously 

 identified in other parts of Africa, but half-a-dozen crusta- 

 ceans are described as new. 



The Biological Survey Division of the U.S. Department 

 of -Agriculture has issued (as Bulletin No. 36) an illustrated 

 pamphlet on the practicability and possibilities of breed- 

 ing dee»- and other big game in confinement in the United 

 States in such a manner as would make the experiment 



