May 6, 1922] 



NATURE 



593 



Research Items. 



Prehistoric Cooking-places in Norfolk. — At 

 the recent annual meeting of the Prehistoric Society 

 of East Anglia, the president. Miss N. Layard, well 

 known for her archaeological investigations, particu- 

 larly in the neighbourhood of Ipswich, delivered an 

 address on prehistoric cooking-places in Norfolk. In the 

 park at Buckenham Tofts, the discovery of what seems 

 to have been a tribal cooking-place was due to rabbits 

 scratching to the surface a number of cracked and 

 fire-marked flints. The term usually applied to such 

 articles is " pot-boilers," but more probably the 

 heated stones were dropped into water-filled troughs 

 made of the skins of large animals, either suspended 

 from poles or used to hne pits in the ground. Water 

 and meat are easily boiled in these circumstances 

 by keeping up the supply of heated stones, and the 

 result, as shown by experiments made by the lecturer, 

 was a mixture of charcoal, dirt, and ashes, with well- 

 boiled but discoloured meat. 



An Early Iron-Age Village near Devizes. — 

 In the report of the Marlborough College Natural 

 History Society for 192 1, Mrs. Cunnington describes 

 an Early Iron- Age village discovered by chance on 

 All Cannings Cross Farm, about 6 miles east of 

 Devizes. The chief interest and importance of the 

 site Ues in the fact that the pottery as a whole seems 

 to belong to the Hallstatt period, and to be through- 

 out of the Hallstatt type. The site seems to have 

 been occupied for a comparatively short and definite 

 period, perhaps for some three centuries. Not a 

 single fragment of anything Roman has been found, 

 so that the occupation seems to have ended well 

 before the Roman conquest, perhaps even some cen- 

 turies earlier. A full report of the excavations will 

 he found in the Antiquaries Journal, January 1922. 



^Missionaries as AiNirtKOjeoLOGisTS. — Sir James 

 Frazer in his introductory lecture of a course on the 

 Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead 

 in Polynesia, published in Science Progress for April, 

 discusses the general principles of anthropological 

 inquiry, and notes that missionaries, men of educa- 

 tion and character, who usually live for years among 

 people of the lower culture, learn their language, and 

 gain their confidence, have special opportunities for 

 observing and recording the habits of savage races. 

 He refers in particular to Anthropos, edited by an 

 Austrian priest. Father W. Schmidt, and composed 

 mainly of articles contributed by Catholic missionaries 

 in many parts of the world. "It is much to be 

 desired that the varous missionary societies of Eng- 

 land would combine to produce a journal of the same 

 scope and the same scientific character. Perhaps, in 

 view of our sectarian differences, that is too much 

 to hope for. But in any case it is highly satisfactory 

 to know that our Protestant missionaries are awaken- 

 ing more and more to the importance of anthropology 

 in the training of missionaries and are taking active 

 steps to remedy what till lately was a most serious 

 defect in their mental equipment." 



A Human Cranium dredged from the River 

 Trent. — In the March issue of the Journal of the 

 Royal Anthropological Institute (vol. U.) Prof. L. Glad- 

 stone describes a human cranium which was dredged 

 from the bed of the river Trent, near Hatfield, in 

 19 1 6. It differs considerably from the average type 

 of skull found in recent and medieval burial-grounds 

 in England, and from the average living types. The 



NO. 2740, VOL. 109] 



circumstances of its discovery indicate that it has 

 affinities with the type of skull found in round 

 barrows associated with bronze implements and pot- 

 tery of the Beaker class. This race is believed to 

 have made their appearance on our eastern and 

 southern coasts about 2000 B.C., and these large- 

 headed, brachycephalic invaders mingled with the 

 indigenous small and narrow-headed Neohthic popula- 

 tion and with subsequent invaders, including the 

 Romans and those from the adjoining European 

 shores. " As a result of inter-marriage of individuals 

 belonging to these races, we find descendants from 

 the original stocks who possess the characters of 

 either one or the other of the ancestral races, in a 

 more or less modified form, or intermediate types." 

 The mid-European or Alpine stock and the broad- 

 headed people of south-west Norway are modem 

 representatives of the Bronze-Age race, modified by 

 intermixture, change of environment and conditions 

 of life, the eating of soft food affecting their jaw form 

 and facial type. 



Self-fertilisation in Mollusca. — In Nature of 

 January 5, p. 12, Mr. G. C. Robson directed atten- 

 tion to some records of self-fertilisation in Gastropod 

 mollusca and pointed out their importance. Stress 

 was laid in the letter on the desirability of further 

 investigation of this phenomenon. We have lately 

 received an apparentl^'^ unpublished communication 

 from Mr. S. Manavala Ramanujam, of the Zoological 

 Department, Madras Christian College, in which he 

 describes what appears to be a structural adaptation 

 for self-fertilisation in a family of Pulmonate Gas- 

 tropoda. In the Vaginulidae a connection is found 

 between the vas deferens and the receptaculum 

 seminis in the same animal. This connection (the 

 " canalis receptaculo-deferentinus " of Keller) has 

 been described by previous authors (Keller, Pelseneer), 

 but, so far as can be ascertained, without comment. 

 Mr. Ramanujam does not advance any objective 

 evidence that self-fertilisation is effected through this 

 canal, but he is probably right in suggesting that it is 

 used to conduct the animal's own sperm to the re- 

 ceptaculum seminis, if it should fail to receive a 

 supply from another individual. The existence of 

 this connection perhaps indicates that self-fertilisa- 

 tion is of common occurrence in the family. 



The Direction of the First Movement in an 

 Earthquake. — It has been known for some years 

 that the first impulse in an earthquake may appear 

 as a rarefaction at one station and as a condensation 

 at another. Mr. S. Nakamura {Journ. Meteor. Soc, 

 Japan, February 1922) has studied recently several 

 examples of such variations in Japan, In an earth- 

 quake at Miyosi (near Hiroshima) the disturbed area 

 was divided into four quadrants by two slightly 

 curved lines. In the south-east quadrant the direc- 

 tion of the first movement was inwards, and in the 

 north-east and south-west quadrants outwards, the 

 remaining quadrant being occupied mostly by the 

 sea. In the Tokio earthquake of December 8, 1921, 

 the distribution was somewhat similar, the curved 

 bounding Unes, however, being not quite at right 

 angles ; in two opposite regions (north-east and south- 

 west) the movement was inwards, in the other two 

 regions outwards. The great Chinese earthquake of 

 December 16, 1920, seems also to belong to this type, 

 the impulse being outwards in Formosa and inwards 

 in Japan and at Zi-ka-wei. A second type was 



