May 27, 1922] 



NA TURE 



69] 



Research Items. 



Sex Development. — Miss R. M. Fleming, of 

 Aberystwyth University, publishes in the May issue 

 of Man the results of her measurements of a large 

 number of women and children, which throw valuable 

 light on the problems of sex development. The 

 results, so far as they admit of tabulation, indicate a 

 decided difference in the rate of development between 

 boys and girls, which may prove of use in their 

 grouping and grading for educational purposes. 

 Until the age of 8 years, girls showed rapid increase 

 in cephalic index and marked changes in colour, while 

 irom 9 years onward, the changes were much slower and 

 less marked. Boys showed only slight alterations in 

 colour or in increase of cephalic index until the age of 

 10, but from 10 years onwards changes were rapid 

 and marked. In the change in the shape of the fore- 

 head, boys and girls differ more than in any other 

 feature. The continuous frontal boss of infancy 

 seems to disappear in girls a year or two earlier than 

 in boys, resolving itself in the case of the latter often 

 into two bosses, which mark the nuclei of growth in 

 the frontal bone and interrupt the general tendency 

 of the forehead to recede. It is hoped that the study 

 of these data may help by making it possible to 

 suggest to boys and girls who are undecided about 

 their future careers, lines of thought which will 

 prevent wasting time in trial of a wrong scheme of 

 life. 



Life Tables. — Dr. Major Greenwood dealt with 

 the scientific value of life tables at a recent meeting 

 of the Royal Statistical Society. He submitted that 

 the value of a life table as an instrument of research 

 has been over-estimated ; a life table is an artificial 

 product and its population is a fiction. It is not 

 correct, for instance, to say that the average length 

 of life of an English male is given by the " expectation 

 of life " of any national table. An " expectation of 

 life " is deduced from the rates of mortality of con- 

 temporaneously observed lives and the comparison 

 of such constants for different life tables is open to 

 criticism. Dr. Greenwood is of opinion that a Medical 

 Officer of Health can learn little more from a life 

 table than from death rates at ages. 



The Dialect of Somersetshire. — The Somerset 

 Folk Press has started a movement for preserving 

 the local dialect by the publication of a series of 

 handbooks, the first of which is entitled " Selected 

 Poems in Somerset Dialect." It contains a number 

 of poems and ballads by James Jennings, born in 

 1772; George Parker, who died in 1888, aged 92; 

 and other local writers. In an interesting foreword 

 the editor, Mr. Walter Raymond, points out the 

 value of the county as a field for research. Within 

 its million acres it contains a richer variet)^ of natural 

 features than almost any part of England. The 

 variety of its natural structure is the reason for 

 the abundance of its flora and bird life. There is a 

 wealth of local legend, both early Christian and 

 Arthurian. " Many races — since forgotten tribes 

 raised tumuli on the crests of our hills — have made 

 their contributions to our lore. Briton, Scandinavian 

 and Saxon all left their mark on the beliefs and 

 superstitions which still linger amongst our folk. 

 Even the lake-dwellers at Glastonbury may have 

 cast their mite into our treasury of folk-lore." 

 Roman roads and masonry, feudal castles, and 

 ancient Christian remains carry on the story. It 

 would be well if other counties followed the excellent 

 example of Somerset in preserving folk-lore and 

 dialect. 



NO. 2743, VOL. 109] 



Earth Smoking-pipes. — Convicts in Indian prisons 

 and coolies marching with their loads through passes 

 in the hills, in the absence of the common hukka or 

 water-pipe, indulge their craving for tobacco by 

 making a small tunnel in the earth ; a little tobacco 

 is set alight at one orifice, and the smoker, kneeling 

 on the ground, sucks up the smoke from the other 

 end. Mr. Henry Balfour, in the May issue of Man, 

 publishes examples of various types of earth-pipes 

 from South Africa and Asia. In South Africa the 

 pipe is either built up on the ground-surface or 

 excavated below it. In Baltistan the tunnel is 

 constructed by thrusting in and then withdrawing a 

 stick from the earth which has previously been 

 patted down. A further extension of the method is 

 illustrated from Natal and Rajputana, where the 

 pipe is a tapering tube of baked clay, sun-dried mud, 

 or camel dung; the wider end serves as "bowl," 

 the" narrower as mouthpiece, and there is no demarca- 

 I tion between the two, the bore tapering gradually 

 from one end to the other. Mr. Balfour inclines to 

 suppose that the similarity of practice between Africa 

 and Asia represents a culture-link between the two 

 widely separated areas ; but it seems not impossible 

 that similar needs may have suggested this simple 

 method of supplying them. The publication of this 

 pdper may lead to the discovery of further examples 

 which may settle the origin of this curious practice. 



The External World. — Physicists and philo- 

 sophers interested in the problem of the hypothesis of 

 the external world as it is discussed in the works of 

 Helmholtz, Mach, and Einstein may be glad to have 

 their attention directed to two articles by Karl 

 Gerhards of Aachen in the Berlin scientific weekl}^ 

 Die Naturwissenschaftcn for April 28 and May 5, 

 entitled " Der mathematische Kern der Auszenwelts- 

 hypothese." It is impossible to explain the author's 

 scheme without his diagrams, but it is certainly in- 

 genious, however unconvinced it may leave us in 

 regard to its theoretical or practical value. He 

 attempts to relate the two parallel series, the flow of 

 sensible appearances and the flow of physical reality, 

 by constructing a mathematical model on the analogy 

 of the kinematograph camera. For the observer 

 behind the camera there is a series of " phanograms " ; 

 these correspond, of course, to Mach's series of sensa- 

 tions. The author then correlates these by a mathe- 

 matical device with the reality presumed to lie beyond 

 the kinematographic panorama in a three-dimensional 

 world and obtains a series of " ontograms." What 

 he claims is that by his purely mathematical scheme, 

 or as he terms it by this mathematical kernel of 

 reality, he has got rid of the arbitrariness of the 

 parallelist hypothesis, and shown the actual relation 

 between appearance and reality. 



The Steel Industry of South Yorkshire. — In 

 an article in the Sociological Review for April, Prof. 

 C. H. Desch traces the geographical and other factors 

 which have led to the origin and growth of the steel 

 industry in and around Sheffield.. The article is of 

 value because these factors are often misstated and 

 their persistence is assumed. The use of local iron 

 ore was encouraged in early times by the abundance 

 of timber for charcoal in the forested valleys, and by 

 the hill-top sites where open furnaces could catch the 

 prevailing winds. These conditions were not con- 

 fined to this particular part of England, but later, 

 when artificial replaced natural draught, the abundant 

 water power of the five streams converging on Sheffield 

 gave unique advantages for bellows driven by water- 

 wheels. The hammer ponds and the ruins of the 



