354 



NATURE 



[November ii, 1920 



The Eugenics Education Society is organising a 

 lecture to be given by Dean Inge on Tuesday, 

 November i6, at 5.30 p.m., at the VVigmore Hall, 

 Wigmore Street, W.i, entitled "Eugenics and 

 Religion." The lecture will be free and open to the 

 public. 



The annual Huxley memorial lecture of the Royal 

 Anthropological Institute will be delivered by Dr. 

 A. C. Haddon in the lecture-room of the Royal 

 Society on Tuesday, November 23, at 8.30. 'llie 

 subject will be " Migrations of Cultures in British 

 New Guinea." 



The New Yortc correspondent of the limes states 

 that the fifth quinquennial election to the American 

 Hall of Fame has resulted in the choice, from among 

 177 names submitted, of six, which include James 

 Buchanan Eads, a famous engineer, and William 

 Thomas Greene Morton, the Boston dentist who intro- 

 duced sulphuric ether as an anaesthetic. Of the 

 27 women nominated, one, Alice Freeman Palmer, 

 the educationist, was chosen. 



The following have been elected officers of the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society for the session 

 1920-21 :— President: Prof. Seward. Vice-Presidents: 

 Sir E. Rutherford, Mr. C. T. R. Wilson, and Dr. E. H. 

 Griffiths. Treasurer: Prof. Hobson. Secretaries: 

 Mr. H. H. Brindley, Prof. Baker, and Mr. F. W. 

 Aston. New Members of the Council: Prof. Marr, 

 Mr. C. T. Heycock, Mr. H. Lamb, Prof. Hopkins, 

 Dr. Bennett, and Dr. Hartridge. 



Mr. Arthur MacDonald has reprinted from the 

 Medical Times of July last an interesting paper on 

 "The Anthropology of Modern Civilised Man." He 

 describes the conclusions at which he has arrived 

 after a long course of study. He dwells upon the 

 importance of head measurements as a test of mental 

 ability. The smaller circumference of the head among 

 children of mixed nationalities in America is held to 

 indicate an unfavourable result of race intermixture. 

 One of the main objects of the study of humanity 

 is to lessen pain through the knowledge gained by 

 the study of pain itself. Investigations into sensi- 

 bility give some interesting results. Coloured children 

 are more sensitive to heat than white children, and 

 bright children as compared with dull children. All 

 children are more sensitive to heat and locality on 

 the left than on the right wrist, probably because 

 the greater use of the right hand causes obtuseness 

 of feeling. Girls are less sensitive to heat and more 

 sensitive to locality on the wrist than boys, and all 

 children are more sensitive to heat and locality on 

 the wrist before than after puberty. 



In the issue of Man for October Mr. L. W. G. 

 Malcolm describes a settlement of Tasmanian half- 

 castes on Cape Barren Island, included in the 

 Furneaux group of islands in Bass Strait, between 

 Tasmania and the Australian continent. The settle- 

 ment dates from the latter half of the seventeenth 

 century, when Bass demonstrated that Furneaux 

 Land was a group of islands, and not, as was 

 generally supposed, connected with the mainland. 

 The sealers who visited it carried off aboriginal 



NO. 2663, VOL. 106] 



women from Tasmania, and from them the present 

 population has sprung. Among them Mr. Malcolm 

 found two old men who claimed descent from 

 aboriginal Tasmanian mothers. There were only nine 

 families on the island, comprising in all about one 

 hundred persons. One noticeable fact about these 

 people is the pronounced odour of their bodies, which 

 was decidedly fishy owing to the character of their 

 diet. Their chief industry is catching and salting 

 mutton-birds, which are exported in casks to the 

 mainland. The Government provides medical attend- 

 ance, and a school has been established. This sur- 

 vival of half-castes derived from a race now extinct 

 is of considerable interest to anthropologists. 



The Museums Journal for November contains a 

 useful history of the Winchester City and Westgate 

 Museums by Mr. R. W. Hooley, who as honorary 

 curator has of late been devoting much time and 

 labour to putting the collections in order. In the 

 course of his inquiries Mr. Hooley has made the 

 lamentable discovery that the original bushel measure 

 deposited in the city by King Edgar, and still in its 

 possession only fifty years ago, is now missing. 



It is an excellent custom of the Smithsonian 

 Institution to print as an appendix to its annual 

 report a selection of papers covering a wide range 

 of sciences and each of some general interest. The 

 volume for 1917, recently received, devotes 546 p.iges 

 and 242 plates to twenty such papers, of which eleven 

 are original. Except for one original memoir and 

 two of the reprints, all are by .\merican authors, and 

 about half deal with American subjects. It is scarcely 

 possible to abstract such an assemblage, but we would 

 direct the special attention of British readers to two 

 of the papers — in the first place to "The Correlation 

 of the Quaternary Deposits of the British Isles with 

 those of the Continent of Europe," a hundred-page 

 memoir by Mr. C. E. P. Brooks. This does not 

 reveal a first-hand acquaintance with the deposits, 

 but it is a most useful summary of the voluminous 

 literature. Dr. T. Wayland Vaughan has an intimate 

 knowledge of "Corals and the Formation of Coral- 

 reefs," and his paper should interest the countrymen 

 of Darwin, whose atoll hypothesis Dr. Vaughan is 

 unable to substantiate in fact. The advocates of a 

 new Challenger expedition may note his conclusion 

 that "further investigations of the phenomena tsso- 

 ciated with coral-reefs are among the pressing 

 desiderata of geologic research." 



An account of the round-headed apple-tree borer 

 {Saperda Candida) and its control is given in Bul- 

 letin 847 (1920) of the U.S. Bureau of Entomology. 

 This insect is a Longicorn beetle which is indigenous 

 to the United States and Canada. Its larva bores 

 into the bark and wood of apple, pear, and quince, 

 thus causing a great deal of injury. Certain wild 

 trees are also affected, including crab, hawthorn, 

 mountain ash, etc. The complete life-cycle of the 

 insect occupies, as a rule, two years, but the develop- 

 mental period may be lengthened or shortened 

 according to locality and other factors. No easier and 

 cheaper method of control was found than the 



