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nature: 



[February 23, 1922 



Research Items. 



Juvenile Delinquency. — In Psyche (vol. 2, No. 3) 

 Dr. Cyril Burt discusses the causes and treatment of 

 juvenile delinquency. . In studying crime, he points 

 out, we encounter at the outset the fact of multiple 

 determination. Crime in any given person usually 

 proves to be attributable, not to some one all-explain- 

 ing cause such as "inborn criminality," but to a con- 

 verging number of alternating factors. Usually some 

 predominating factor can be singled out as chiefly 

 responsible, which factor may be a legitimate label 

 for classification, but in- treatment it is never safe to 

 deal with one factor only, however crucial it may 

 be. In all cases it is necessary, for any scientific 

 appreciation of the disturbance, to make a complete 

 and comprehensive survey of the whole child and his 

 surroundings ; we must know the child's physical 

 characteristics as well as its emotional and intel- 

 lectual endowment. The author, while assigning a 

 due position to mental defectiveness, does not sup- 

 port the view that all or most criminals are mentally 

 defective. Various methods of diagnosis and of treat- 

 ment are discussed. The article will be extremely 

 valuable to all those who, whether from the point of 

 view of theoretical psychology or of practical life, are 

 interested in the individual and social consequences 

 of delinquency. 



Craniometry in the British Isles. — Prof. F. G. 

 Parsons has done good service to anthropometry by 

 collecting in the February issue of Man all the avail- 

 able records of the cephalic index to be found iq 

 these islands. The record of 3000 criminals is of 

 special interest, as they show the very high cephalic 

 index of 785, and the size of their heads is very low. 

 This suggests that our recent immigrants from Cen- 

 tral Europe have contributed even more than their 

 fair share of crime. It is also remarkable that the 

 average index of a group of Cambridge students is 

 796 as compared with the Oxford average of 780 ; 

 possibly some mistake has crept into the arithmetic, 

 but the question deserves further investigation. Other 

 interesting deductions from these figures are that the 

 average head-shape of people in England differed 

 very little between Saxon times and the eighteenth 

 century, the trifling variations being probably due to 

 immigration from the Continent ; and that these 

 records do not supply any reason to believe that the 

 size of the modern Englishman's head is increasing 

 with its increasing rotundity ; in fact, both the 

 Saxons and the Long Barrow folk, from the fusion 

 of whom most of our blood is derived, seem to have 

 had rather larger heads than the average modern 

 Englishman, and there is no reason to believe that 

 physically they were larger men. Unfortunately, 

 these records, confined to the cephalic index, take 

 no account of head height, which is a serious loss. 

 Further, this collection, large as it is, is inconclusive 

 when compared with a population of some forty 

 millions. In the past, as, for instance, in India, 

 the evidence from craniometry has led to unfounded 

 theories because the number of the subjects was 

 insignificant as compared with the total population. 

 If it is to succeed in justifying its claims, provision 

 must be made for a much larger number of measure- 

 ments, and these must not be confined to the cephalic 

 index. 



Safflower-seed Oil. — Bulletin 124 of the Agricul- 

 tural Research Institute, Pusa, contains an account of 

 safflower oil. Safflower (Carthatnus tinctorins, L.) is 

 widely cultivated in India, both as an oilseed and, to 

 NO. 2730, VOL. 109] 



a much smaller extent, for the reddish dye 

 (carthamin) in the flowers. The crop is extensively 

 grown in the driest areas of the Deccan for its oil- 

 seed. The oil is edible when clarified, and is used as 

 an adulterant for butter. The sweet-oil of Bombay 

 is made by mixing safflower, earth-nut, and til seeds 

 and expressing the oil. After boiling, safflower oil 

 forms a gelatinous mass, and it is a drying oil. This 

 form is used as "roghan," or Afridi wax, for the 

 preparation of wax-cloth. The oil is also suitable 

 for the manufacture of soap. It is suggested that 

 safBower-seed oil could become a valuable commercial 

 product on the home markets. 



Date Cultivation in the 'Iraq. — Under the aus- 

 pices of the Agricultural Directorate, Ministry of the 

 Interior, Mesopotamia (Memoir 3, 192 1), Mr, V. H. W. 

 Dowson has published a very interesting and valuable 

 report on date cultivation on the Shat el Arab, the 

 river which conveys to the Persian Gulf the joined 

 waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Shat el 

 Arab is the most important area of date cultivation 

 in the world ; both banks are lined with date-gardens 

 for a distance of 108 miles, with an average width on 

 either side of about a mile, representing about 138,000 

 acres. In the 'Iraq the date-palm flourishes wherever 

 it is watered and cared for, from Ana on the 

 Euphrates and Samara on the Tigris southwards; 

 north of these .towns the winters are too cold. Mr. 

 Dowson describes in detail the methods of cultivation 

 and marketing, and also enumerates the chief uses of 

 the palm and its products — in the last instance he 

 refers to an old Tamil song which enumerates eight 

 hundred and one uses of the Palmyra palm, and 

 remarks that the number of uses of the date-palm 

 and its products is probably but little short of this 

 number. Compared with many fruit-trees, the date- 

 palm suffers but little from disease ; its one im- 

 portant enemy is the larva of a Gelechiid moth, the 

 adult of which is unknown. Preventive measures 

 against the ravages of this pest, which causes the 

 young green dates to turn brown and drop to the 

 ground, have still to be devised. In a second part 

 of the memoir the author gives a statistical summary 

 of his investigation into the yield of the different 

 varieties, and in a third part (in preparation) he 

 will deal generally with the varieties of date- 

 palms of the 'Iraq, which includes also the 

 Bagdad area, the next largest date-cultivation centre 

 in the country, comprising about twenty miles of date- 

 gardens lining both banks of the Tigris. The memoir 

 is illustrated with numerous photographic reproductions* 



British Mycological Society. — In pt. 3 of vol. 7 

 of the Transactions of this society Mr. Petch, 

 of Ceylon, continues his studies in entomogenous 

 fungi, writing learnedly of the Nectriae para- 

 sitic on scale insects. A number of new species are 

 described, but it is very unfortunate that no cultural 

 data are given. An interesting account of the recently 

 founded Imperial Bureau of Mycology, with a sug- 

 gestive risumi of its functions, is contributed by the 

 director. Dr. E. J. Butler. The establishment of this 

 bureau is somewhat of an epoch-making event in 

 phytopathology, and all support possible should be 

 rendered to it. Messrs. Brooks and Searle give an 

 account of the fungi responsible for certain tomato 

 diseases, emphasising what should be so obvious : the 

 necessity of cultural data in specific determinations. 

 There are also an interesting paper by Miss Mounce 

 on homothallism and the production of fruit-bodies by 



