April 14, 192 1] 



NATURE 



215 



In accordance with the provisions of the will of 

 the late Dr. R. T. Nichols, the Royal Society of 

 Medicine will offer triennially a prize of the value of 

 250^., open to any British subject, for the most valu- 

 able contribution towards "the discovery of the 

 causes and the prevention of death in childbirth from 

 septicaemia." The society is open to receive com- 

 peting essays for the first award until, at latest, 

 June 30, 1924. The works submitted must be type- 

 written or printed in English, marked " Nichols 

 Prize," and accompanied by the name and address of 

 the author. Work already published will be eligible 

 provided it appeared not earlier than June 30, 192 1. 

 Further particulars of the prize are obtainable from 

 the Secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine, 

 I Wimpole Street, W.i. 



At the fourth annual meeting of the National Asso- 

 ciation of Industrial Chemists, held at Sheffield 

 recently and presided over by Mr. A. B. Searle, the 

 general secretary's report on the activities and pro- 

 gress of the association during 1920 was read. At 

 present there are nearly iioo members on the register, 

 and a slight gain in membership has been made. The 

 economic status of the members has been considered 

 by a special committee, and a scale submitted to, and 

 approved by, the national council. These endeavours 

 to obtain better remuneration were upset by unfore- 

 seen circumstances, but the experience gained shows 

 that the association has prospects of doing good work 

 in this direction when trade is more normal. Another 

 committee discussed preliminaries with the British 

 Association of Chemists in order to try to bring about 

 an amalgamation, and negotiations are still proceed- 

 ing. In the interests of the industrial chemist it is 

 regarded as essential that every effort should be made 

 to obtain an organisation strong both numerically and 

 financially, and one that is fully representative of the 

 industrial chemists of Great Britain. It is possible 

 that much headway may be made in this direction by 

 ^amalgamation with the British Association of 

 Chemists, and possibly by affiliation with the Non- 

 manual Workers' Federation. All communications 

 with reference to the association should be addressed 

 to the General Secretary, The White Building, Fitz- 

 alan Square, Sheffield. 



Under the title of "La Dame de Parable " in 

 L'Anthropologie (vol. xxx., Nos. 3-4) M. L. Siret 

 publishes an elaborate, fully illustrated paper on the 

 cult of trees in Druidism. The author reviews the 

 occurrence of tree cults in ancient France, with com- 

 parative illustrations from the East as far as Nineveh, 

 and certain allied questions such as the extension of 

 Eneolithic commerce towards the north and the ex- 

 portation of precious metals to the west. 



The myths of the Alsea Indian tribe of Oregon are 

 collected, with the original texts, by Mr. L. I. 

 Frachtenberg in Bulletin No. 67 of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology. Generally speaking, this mytho- 

 logy is characteristic of that area of the north-west 

 which embraces northern California, Oregon, and 

 Washington. It is typical of the north-west in so 

 far as it is lacking in migration myths such as are 

 NO. 2685, VOL. 107] 



found among certain tribes of the south-west and 

 oast. On the other hand, it is intimately connected 

 with the mythology of the tribes of northern Cali- 

 fornia, and it exhibits special points of contact with 

 the folk-lore of their neighbours to the north, especially 

 the Salish. These points of resemblance and contrast 

 are carefully worked out in the introduction to the 

 present volume. 



In the March issue of Man Mr. Ainsworth Dickson 

 describes the only survivals of the regalia of the Wa- 

 Vumba tribe in the delta of the Umba River, which 

 formerly marked the coastal boundary of German and 

 British East Africa. They are descendants of a party 

 of Persians who migrated about a.d. 1200 to this 

 district from the plains of Sheraji. About a.d. 1700 

 the country was swept by a horde of cannibals from 

 the south, and many of the people removed for safety 

 to the adjacent Island of Wassein, where they founded 

 a city. The objects now described consist of drums, 

 horns, and cymbals used at the enthronement of a 

 sultan, and with the ruins of a few mosques and 

 some Durbar customs they form the only material 

 evidence of a once-flourishing Persian colony on 

 African soil. 



Some interesting notes made on a cuckoo during 

 the deposition of its eggs appear in British Birds for 

 March. The author, Mr. Edgar Chance, kept a 

 single female under observation throughout the whole 

 of this time, which lasted until no fewer than twenty- 

 one eggs had been laid. All were dropped, at intervals 

 of forty-eight hours, into the nests of meadow pipits, 

 save in the case of the fifteenth egg, for which the 

 nest of a tree-pipit was selected, there being no 

 meadow-pipit's nest available. Deposition always 

 took place in the afternoon, and an egg was never 

 left in a nest until after the first egg of the foster- 

 parents had been laid. On each occasion, after 

 dropping her egg into the nest, she removed one of 

 her dupe's eggs, and this was either swallowed at 

 the nest-side or borne away and disposed of. Ap- 

 parently only when forced by dire necessity will she 

 leave an egg in a nest in which incubation has 

 commenced. 



The value of the statistics of variation for the study 

 of fossils is discussed at great length by Dr. Hans 

 Klahn in the " Berichte " of the Natural History 

 Society of Freiburg im Breisgau (vol. xxii., part 2, 

 1920). Numerous tables of measurements of brachio- 

 pods, ammonites, and species of Helix are given, and 

 various mathematical treatments are attempted to 

 determine the limits of species and varieties. Part of 

 the memoir is a criticism of Wedekind's work on the 

 principles and methods of biostratigraphy. 



We have received some parts of the seventh volume 

 of Iberica, a weekly review of the sciences and their 

 applications published in Tortosa. The periodical is 

 well illustrated and written in an attractive manner, 

 containing general articles and summaries besides the 

 usual news and reviews of recent publications. In 

 Spain it cannot fail to spread an interest in the pro- 

 gress of science, while to other countries it affords a 



