478 



NATURE 



[December 8, 192 1 



Gold Coast, for his many valuable gifts to the col- 

 lections from 1904. 



On the arrival of the Quest at Rio de Janeiro Sir 

 E. Shackleton announced a change in the plans of his 

 Antarctic expedition. According to the Times, Rio 

 de Janeiro instead of Cape Town will be the base of 

 the expedition, and the Quest was to sail about Decem- 

 ber 5 direct to South Georgia, arriving there about 

 Christmas Day and leaving at the New Year for 

 Enderby Land via Bouvet Island. An attempt will 

 be made to prove the existence or non-existence of 

 Thompson Island, an island reported to lie in the 

 vicinity of Bouvet Island, but probably identical with 

 the latter, Bouvet Island has been visited only 

 once, namely, by the Valdivia in 1898, since its dis- 

 covery in 1739. No landing has been made, and the 

 island is reported ice-covered and inaccessible. Sir 

 E. Shackleton hopes to enter the ice about January 22, 

 and after visiting Enderby Land, if the ice permits, 

 to arrive again at South Georgia by the end of March. 

 There the Quest will coal and sail for Tristan da 

 Cunha and Cape Town. The change in plans was 

 attributed to the delay due to contrary winds and 

 the weakness of the auxiliary engines. New topmasts 

 were being fitted in order to increase the spread of 

 canvas and allow the vessel to be driven through the 

 pack-ice under sail. On the voyage to Rio de Janeiro 

 a call was made at St. Paul's Rocks, which no ship 

 appears to have visited since the Scotia in 1902. It 

 is not reported if landing was found to be possible. 



The benefits conferred upon the native races of 

 India by the presence in their midst of an energetic 

 body of irrigation engineers were admirably set forth 

 in two articles, entitled "Canals of the Punjab," 

 by Lieut.-Col. Aubrey O'Brien, which appeared in 

 the Daily Telegraph for November 25 and 30. The 

 articles dealt with the great irrigation schemes already 

 carried out and those for which plans have been pre- 

 pared. By the harnessing of the waters of the 

 Jumna, Sutlej, Ravi, Chenab, and Jhelum the area of 

 irrigated land within the Punjab has been increased 

 since the Mutiny from half a million to more than ten 

 million acres. Worked entirely for the benefit of the 

 people of the Punjab, the canals already return to the 

 revenues of the province a profit of 14^ per cent, on 

 the capital spent on them, and this with the lightest 

 of dues. The present value of crops on 10,000,000 

 acres is considered to be not less than 50,000,000/. 

 Great as these achievements are, they bid fair to be 

 surpassed in importance and interest by the schemes 

 due to Mr. W. H. Ives, the Chief Engineer of 

 the Punjab, one of which, the Sutlej Valley Pro- 

 ject, aims at irrigating very large areas in British 

 territory, and also in the native States of Bahawalpur 

 and Bikanir. It is estimated that this scheme, which 

 will cost some 14,000, oooZ., will irrigate 9,000,000 

 acres. On the completion of this it is proposed to carry 

 out another large scheme where the Sutlej emerges 

 from the hills. The river here runs for forty miles 

 in a great loop, piercing a range 3500 ft. high, and 

 then turning back almost parallel to its previous 

 course. At the gorge of Bhakra a dam ^^95 ft. high — 

 NO. 2719, VOL. 108] 



50 ft. higher than any dam at present in existence — 

 will be built, impounding a volume of water about 

 three times greater than that held up by the Assouan 

 Dam on the Nile, and it is anticipated that by utilising 

 the water for driving turbines, power can be obtained 

 up to 300,000 horse-power. 



The Copper Eskimo of Coronation Gulf were 

 studied by the recent Canadian Arctic Expedition. 

 Mr. D. Jenness, the anthropologist of the expedition, 

 gives an account of these people in the Geographical 

 Review for October. Until 1838 these Eskimo, who 

 inhabit Coronation Gulf, Union and Dolphin Straits, 

 and Kent Peninsula, were practically unknown, and 

 after that date they were seldom encountered until 

 the Canadian Arctic Expedition visited them in 1914. 

 Mr. Jenness says that he found them still practically 

 in the Stone age, but changes have occurred in the 

 last few years. Contact with European fur traders 

 has led to the introduction of metal goods, rifles, 

 changes in clothing and mode of life. The habits of 

 the people are changing, and their greater success in 

 hunting bids fair to exterminate the caribou. Mr. 

 Jenness views with some concern the contact of 

 civilisation with these Eskimo, and, by reason of 

 scarcity of caribou and introduced white man's 

 diseases, fears that before long they may dwindle to 

 a degenerate remnant on the way to extinction. 



A DEPLORABLE instance of misdirected energy is 

 recorded in the November issue of British Birds, 

 where Mr. W. Rowan, in the course of a most admir- 

 able account of the breeding haunts and hatuts of the 

 merlin, tells us that on the two moors which formed 

 the area of his investigations "it is but rarely that 

 a hawk attempting to breed survives ... to 

 tell the tale." The moors in question — the Barden 

 and Embsay moors — form a single stretch nearly 

 twenty square miles in area. During nineteen suc- 

 cessive years no less than nineteen pairs of merlin 

 were killed on one nesting-site only — "one pair each 

 year without a miss, and not a single egg was 

 hatched." Moreover, it would appear that every one 

 of these wretched birds was trap;ed. The annual 

 average of breeding merlins on this moor appears to 

 be three or four pairs ; not a single pair succeeds, 

 save perhaps by the merest accident, in escaping 

 destruction. This lamentable state of affairs, we fear, 

 can be remedied only by the help of the owner of the 

 moor, and it is to be hoped that steps will imme- 

 diately be taken to extend protection against this 

 senseless and unwarranted persecution, for there is 

 no justification for the implied game-destroying habits 

 of these birds. 



To the Lancashire and Cheshire Naturalist for 

 July-August Dr. J, Cosmo Melville contributes an 

 interesting series of notes on the Sidebotham collec- 

 tion of Lepidoptera in the Manchester Museum. Very 

 nearly all the British species are represented in the col- 

 lection, and it contains fine series of many varieties, 

 and also material of historical interest. The now 

 extinct butterfly Chrysophanus dispar is represented 

 by twenty-seven perfect specimens, and the very rare 

 hawk moth, Choerocampa celerio, by five examples 



