September 8, 1921] 



NATURE 



07 



lished, records the re-opening of a portion of the 

 galleries which had been closed to the public for four 

 years in consequence of their being occupied for the 

 purposes of the war. But although this has rendered 

 it possible to re-arrange some of the collections of 

 scientific instruments and apparatus, the museum as 

 a whole is very seriously handicapped by the in- 

 adequacy of its accommodation, which is but a third 

 of what a committee reported in 191 1 to be imme- 

 diately necessary for the adequate display of the col- 

 kctions. A considerable number of collections have 

 consequently been withdrawn from the exhibition gal- 

 i leries and placed in store, where they can be seen by 

 " visitors who express a desire to consult them. In 

 all sections very considerable additions have been 

 made, including a Newcomen pumping engine of 

 1 79 1, a group of two hundred models of historical 

 warships, a number of aeronautical engines, also a 

 ; gravity torsion balance of the pattern designed by the 

 i late Baron R. Eotvos and the microscope by Powell 



I and Lealand which gained the premium offered by 

 the Royal Society in 1843. The number of visitors 

 showed a considerable increase, but until the new 

 I museum buildings are made available the museum 

 will become increasingly inconvenient for visitors on 

 account of the extreme congestion of the exhibition 

 galleries. Additions to the collections are constantly 

 . being made by gifts and loans of objects of historical 

 ; or technical importance, but their instructional value 

 ' is greatly diminished by the impossibility of display- 

 i ing them adequately under existing conditions. 



j The crafts of spinning and weaving have long been 

 i practised in the Sudan. Fragments of fine linen 



i found by Dr. Reisner at Kerma have been dated 



1 



I about 2000 B.C., and he thinks that they were cer- 

 ' tainly woven in the country, though possibly by sc«ne 

 . Egyptian workmen attached to the household of one 

 of the great noblemen who administered the country. 

 But the manufacture of fine linen has disappeared ; 

 the modern craft is carried on in a very simple way, 

 and the craftsman is not held in honour. A useful 

 account of spinning and weaving at the present day 

 ; is supplied in vol. 4, No. i, April, 192 1, of Sudan 

 ! Notes and Records by Mrs. I. W. Crowfoot, who 

 gives a full account of the appliances used, and com- 

 pares them with those described by Mr. H. Ling 

 Roth in his valuable "Studies in Primitive Looms" 

 . (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 

 I vol. 47, 1917). The trade of thread- and cloth-making 

 has been for some time moribund in the Sudan, and 

 Mrs. Crowfoot pleads for its encouragement as a 

 trade for boys and as a homecraft for girls, particu- 

 larly in view of the high prices and low quality of the 

 machine-made textiles, which alone at present supply 

 the needs of the people of the Sudan. 



SMUGGLING of drugs, such as morphia, cocaine, raw 

 opium, and Chandu, or opium prepared for smok- 

 ing, is strictly forbidden in the Federated Malay 

 , States, but, as might have been expected, the pro- 

 ' hibition has led to the use of many ingenious devices 

 by the Chinese and Malays to evade the revenue 

 authorities. A full list of these, with sketches, is 

 j given by Mr. W. G. Stirling in the Journal of the 

 NO. 2706. VOL. 108] 



Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, April, 192 1. 

 Clothes and walking-sticks, soles of shoes, dried 

 walnuts, dead ducks, the dovetailing of a cabinet, a 

 stack of saucers, a sitting hen on her eggs, a pail of 

 rice — all have been used in some clever way for the 

 storage of contraband Chandu. 



The influence of alcoholic grandparents upon the 

 behaviour of white rats is the subject of an interesting 

 paper by Messrs. E. C. Macdowell and E. M. Vicari 

 (Journ. Exper. Zoology, vol. 33, No. i, 1921, 

 p. 209). A series of rats was alcoholised, and the 

 grandchildren were subjected to a series of tests on 

 finding their way in a circular maze provided with 

 doorways, blind alleys, mirrors, etc. From the point 

 of view of learning their way to the centre and going 

 there for food, the test rats were found to be less 

 successful than the controls. If this be true, a modi- 

 fication of the genetic basis of inheritance has been 

 demonstrated. 



The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdaix, leader of the Oxford 

 University Expedition to Spitsbergen, tells a woeful 

 tale in the Times of August 25 of the depredations of 

 egg-collectors among the nesting-birds of Spitsbergen. 

 The introduction of oil-engines into sealing sloops has 

 enabled them to work practically the whole of the 

 west and north coasts of Spitsbergen with little 

 danger of their being trapped by drift-ice. They 

 have thus been able systematically to clear the nests 

 of the large colonies of eider-ducks breeding there. 

 One boat was met which had 15,000 eggs of the eider- 

 duck on board ! Examination of the colonies showed 

 that the vast majority of the nests contained one 

 or, at most, two eggs. With the brent goose the 

 state of things was even worse. The large colonies 

 which were known to nest on some of the eider holms 

 as lately as 1908 have disappeared entirely, and the 

 survivors scattered to nest in isolated pairs on the 

 mainland, there to fall victims to the Arctic fox. 

 Colonies of eider-ducks on the more inaccessible parts 

 of Spitsbergen provided a welcome coi^rast. Here 

 the nests contained an average of six eggs each, the 

 largest number in a single nest being thirteen, and 

 the busy scene of life on an untouched eider colony 

 provided a glimpse of the Spitsbergen of the past, 

 before the coming of the oil-engine and the coal 

 prospector. The article is illustrated by admirable 

 photographs of nesting birds obtained by the party. 



The American marsupial Caenolestes has always 

 been something of a puzzle to students of mammalia, 

 being variously regarded as a diprotodont, as a special 

 type of subordinal rank the diprotodont characters 

 of which are convergent, and as an aberrant poly- 

 protodont. In view of such divergent views on its 

 affinities, a more detailed study of its characters was 

 desirable, and Mr. W. H. Osgood has supplied this 

 need (Field Museum of Natural Histor\-, Zoological 

 Series, vol. 14, No. i). He regards Caenolestes as a 

 surviving member of an ancient group, retaining many 

 primitive features and exhibiting no marked degree of 

 specialisation. It bears no special affinity to the 

 American Didelphyiidae, but shows many resemblances 

 to the .Australian peramelids, though it has advanced 



