26 



NATURE 



[September 2, 1920 



Notes. 



We have received from a correspondent in India a 

 letter which states that the present director of the 

 Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, Sir Alfred 

 Bourne, is to be succt^eded by an administrator with 

 no scientific experience. Such an appointment would 

 be greatly deprecated by scientific workers, and we 

 trust it is not too late to prevent it. In our view the 

 head of such an institution should be a man who 

 combines scientific experience with administrative 

 ability; and if this principle is deliberately ignored in 

 the case of the directorship of the leading scientific 

 institution in India, the strongest protest should be 

 made to the authorities responsible for the appoint- 

 ment. 



When Mr. B. B. Woodward retired from the 

 British Museum (Natural History) last June he was 

 still occupied with the proofs of the supplement to 

 his well-known catalogue of the natural history 

 library. Naturalists will be glad to learn that his 

 services have now been temporarily retained for the 

 completion of this valuable work. 



We learn from the British Medical Journal for 

 August 28 that the fifth Congress of Physical Therapy, 

 instituted by the Belgian societies of physical therapy 

 and radiology and the Antwerp Association for Physical 

 Therapy, will be held at .'Xntwerp on September ii 

 and 12; also that the nineteenth Flemish Congress of 

 Medicine and Natural Science will be held at Ghent 

 on September i8 and 19. 



The thirty-first annual general meeting of the In- 

 stitution of Mining Engineers will be held at Man- 

 chester on September 15-17, under the presidency of 

 Col. W. C. Blackett. The institution medal for the 

 year 1919-20 will be presented to Dr. John Bell 

 Simpson, and the following papers will be presented : 

 The Normal Occurrence of Carbon Monoxide in 

 Coal-mines, J. Ivon Graham; The Better Utilisation 

 of Coking Slack, A. E. Beet and A. E. Findley; 

 Richard Trevithick : His Life and Inventions, J. Har- 

 vey Trevithick ; The Froth Flotation Processes as 

 Applied to the Treatment of Coal, Ernest Bury ; and 

 An Improved Method of Determining the Relative 

 Directions of Two Reference Lines or Bases for Min- 

 ing Surveys, T. Lindsay Galloway. 



Early last year a Speleological Society was founded 

 in the University of Bristol, and a record of its 

 activities has now been published in the first part of 

 its Proceedings. The society is fortunate in being 

 within easy reach of the' Mendip Hills, where so 

 many important caves have already been explored, 

 and it has been able to obtain special facilities for 

 field-work. It has also been favoured with a course 

 of lectures by several leading authorities on prehistoric 

 archaeology. In his presidential address Prof. E. 

 Fawcett describes some human skulls found by the 

 society in a cave, associated with Late Palaeolithic 

 flint implements and remains of red deer, wild cat, 

 and brown bear. The skulls are both dolichocephalic 

 and brachycephalic, and Prof. Fawcett compares the 

 NO. 2653, VOL. 106] 



discovery with one made at Ofnet, near Munich. 

 Mr. L. S. Palmer gives an account of the exploration 

 of another cave, in which numerous I^ate Celtic 

 objects were found. There are also brief reports of 

 the lectures at the meetings. The society is to be 

 congratulated on its first year's work, and will have 

 the best wishes of all who are interested in the study 

 of early man, but its publication could be improved 

 by more careful editing and by a judicious selection 

 of illustrations produced in better style. 



We have just received from Dr. Hornaday, the 

 director of the New York Zoological Park, a very 

 interesting and important summary of the results of 

 the five-year close season which was deemed neces- 

 sary in 1912 for the replenishing of the herds of the 

 fur seal of the Pribilof Islands. The results have 

 been everything that the close-season advocates fore- 

 told. This conclusion is supported by figures. In 1912 

 there were 215,738 seals of all ages; in 1917 they had 

 increased to 468,692, and by 1919 these numbers had 

 risen to 530,237. This protection was devised for 

 purely commercial ends, and the result is most 

 emphatically satisfactory. This much is shown by 

 the fact that at the St. Louis fur auction held on 

 February 2, 1920, there were sold for the United 

 States Government 9100 skins of fur seals which 

 averaged 140.98 dollars per skin. Skins of the same 

 quality in 1918 averaged no more than 46.34 dollars, 

 but in 1919 the price had risen to 78.38 dollars. Thus 

 the cost of this fur has risen by leaps and bounds, and 

 it is anticipated that it will rise yet higher. " In the 

 future," Dr. Hornaday remarks, " when all other 

 bearers of good fur have been utterly exterminated — 

 as they soon will he — the protected fur seal herds 

 will produce ... a really vast quantity of the finest 

 fur in the world. It needs no stretch of prophecy 

 to foretell the annual increment to the three nations 

 (the United States, England, and Japan) who are now 

 so sensibly preserving the fur seals of Alaska from 

 killing at sea." 



The Forestry Commission has made considerable and 

 satisfactory progress both in the acquisition of land 

 and in planting. Landowners have shown consider- 

 able sympathy with the objects of the Commission, 

 and in several cases free gifts of land or long leases 

 on specially favourable terms have been obtained. 

 The area of land acquired in the United Kingdom is 

 as follows: — England, 9177 acres; Wales, 6329; 

 Scotland, 23,472; and Ireland, 4716. This excludes 

 lands acquired by the Department of .Agriculture for 

 Ireland, administered by the Commission. In addi- 

 tion, without taking into account estates which are 

 merely under consideration, negotiations are pro- 

 ceeding in respect of the following areas : — England, 

 24,973 acres; Wales, 7900; Scotland, 6956; and 

 Ireland, 7000. During the season 1919-20 the area 

 of land planted, most of which is showing satisfactory 

 progress, was 850 acres in England, 535 in Scotland, 

 and 200 in Ireland. To meet the heavy cost of trans- 

 port and the shortage of plants, new nurseries are 

 being set up in the more important planting areas. 

 Everv effort is being made to increase the supply of 

 seed and of seedlings. In conjunction with the 



