December 23, 1920] 



NATURE 



543 



and many people imagine that this can be effected by 

 State afforestation alone. The 1,770,000 acres which 

 the Government has decided to acquire and plant with 

 trees during the next eighty years are quite inadequate. 

 Much of the planting must therefore be done by 

 private owners, who control about 3,000,000 acres of 

 woodlands. Owing to the war and other causes, the 

 great bulk of mature timber on these estates has dis- 

 appeared, and in all probability only 750,000 acres are 

 fully stocked with trees more than twenty years old. 

 Certainly a great part of the conifer woods has been 

 either clean-felled or thinned to such an extent as to 

 be no longer productive. The remedy is the encourage- 

 ment of replanting by ptrivate owners, who are now 

 deterred by high wages, the enhanced cost of plants, 

 etc. The Forestry Commissioners are prepared to assist 

 private owners in two ways : either by entering with 

 them into partnership in profit-sharing schemes or 

 by giving grants in aid of planting and of establishing 

 a crop under approved conditions. These grants are 

 fixed at 2/. per acre for conifers and 4/. per acre for 

 broad-leaved trees, and are repayable whenever an 

 owner makes ultimately a profit exceeding 4 per cent. 

 .\s the new planting season is in full swinj,', applica- 

 tions for grants should be addressed direct to the 

 .Assistant Commissioner concerned : For England and 

 Wales — 30 Belgrave Square, London, S.W.i ; for 

 Scotland — 25 Drumsheugh Gardens, Edinburgh ; and 

 for Ircland^-6 Hume Street, Dublin. 



The annual exhibition arranged by the Phvsical 

 Society and the Optical Society is to be held on 

 Wednesday and Thursday, January 5 and 6, at the 

 Imperial College of Science, South Kensington, and 

 will be open both in the afternoon (from 3 to 6 p.m.) 

 and in the evening (from 7 to 10 p.m.). Sir W. H. 

 Bragg will give a discourse on " Sounds in Nature " 

 at 4 p.m. on January 5. Dr. .Archibald Harr will 

 lecture on "The Optophpne : An Instrument which 

 Enables the Totally Blind to Read Ordinary Print " 

 at 8 p.m. on January 5 and at 4 p.m. on January 6. 

 •After the lecture a demonstration will be given by a 

 totally blind person. At 8 p.m. on January 6 Prof. 

 ('. K. Darling will give a discourse on "Some Unusual 

 Surface-Tension Phenomena." All the lectures will 

 be illustrated by experiments. About fifty firms will 

 be exhibiting, and a number of experimental demon- 

 strations have been arranged. We understand that in- 

 vitations have been given to the Institution of Elec- 

 trical Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical En- 

 gineers, the Chemical Society, the Faraday Society, 

 the Wireless Society of London, and the Rontgcn 

 Society. Admission in nil cases will be by ticket onlv, 

 and therefore members of the societies just mentioned 

 desiring to attend the exhibition should apply to the 

 secretary of the society to which they belong. Others 

 interested should apply direct to Mr. F. E. Smith, 

 hon. secretary of the Physical Society, National 

 Physical Laboratory, Teddington, S.W. 



The Imperial Bureau of Mycology is the outcome of 

 a proposal unanimously adopted by the Imperial War 

 Conference in 1918 that n central organisation should 

 be establishe<l for the encouragement and co-ordina- 

 tion of work fhrouKhout the Empire on the diseases 

 NO. 2669, VOL. 106] 



of plants caused by fungi in relation to agriculture. 

 The committee of management consists of some of 

 the foremost biologists in the country, with Viscount 

 Harcourt as their chairman, and includes the fol- 

 lowing members : — Prof. I. Bayley Balfour, Dr. W. 

 Bateson, Prof. V. H. Blackman, Prof. F. O. Bower, 

 Mr. R. D. Cotton, Prof. H. H. Dixon, Prof. J. B. 

 Farmer, Capt. A. W. Hill, Prof. W. H. Lang, Sir 

 Daniel Morris, Mr. J. Murray, Mr. G. H. Pethy- 

 bridge. Sir David Prain, Dr. A. B. Rendle, Mr. 

 H. N. Ridley, Prof. R. A. Robertson, Sir A. E. 

 Shipley, Prof. W. Somerville, and Dr. H. W. T. 

 Wager. Dr. E. J. Butler, late Imperial Mycologist, 

 Director of the Research Institute, Pusa, and Agri- 

 cultural .Adviser to the Government of India, has been 

 appointed Director, and has started work at the head- 

 quarters of the Bureau, 17-19 Kew Green, Kew (tele- 

 phone Richmond 603). The Bureau will work broadly 

 on the lines of the existing Imperial Bureau of 

 Entomology at South Kensington, and will aim at 

 doing for the other great class of destructive agencies 

 in agriculture, namely, the diseases and blights of 

 plants caused by fungi, what the older Bureau has 

 so successfully done in regard to injurious insects. 

 It will be a central agency for the accumulation and 

 distribution of information and for the identification 

 of specimens sent in from all parts of the Empire. 



Dr. R. H. Pickard, principal of Battersea Poly- 

 technic, has been appointed director of research to the 

 British Leather Manufacturers' Research Association. 



In the November issue of A/an Miss M. E. Durham 

 supplements Dr. W. Crooke's article (Journal of the 

 Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. xlix.) on nudity 

 in India by some notes of similar practices in North 

 Albania. When a new house is built and ready for 

 habitation, the hearth has to be kindled for the first 

 time ceremonially. Tlie fire is laid and the master 

 of the house strips stark naked, enters the house, and 

 ignites the fire by firing a pistol into it, after which 

 the family takes possession of the house. When a 

 new pair of oxen are ^oked together for the first time 

 the owner must be nude when he ploughs the first 

 furrow. Miss Durham also notices that there is r.o 

 feeling against nudity in the case of men crossing 

 rivers by the aid of inflated sheepskins or of those 

 in charge of ferries. The above two cases, which she 

 regards as probably the only cases of ritual nudity 

 in Europe, if, indeed, they are slill practised in a 

 region devastated by war, are deserving of record. 



Mr. C. G. E. Bi;nt discusses it) AncUni Egypt 

 (1920, part iv.) the genesis of Coptic twists and plaits, 

 with the result that he traces them to Sumcrian 

 origin. Prof. Flinders Petrie sums up the question 

 thus : " These conclusions on ttw Sumerian being the 

 earliest forms of the twists and plaits accords with 

 other facts of their distribution. The formula which 

 seems to agree with all the cases is that the twist and 

 plait is a Central .Asian motive (see the wickcrwork 

 screens In Kirghiz tents); that from there it passed 

 down the Euphrates, also into Syria, and first Into 

 Egypt under Hyksos influence. Plaits and twists 

 were unknown in Italy until the Dacian captives 

 were brought in and set to mosaic work j plaits were 



