December 2, 1915] 



NATURE 



389 



lation of the limestone : (o) the Umestone diffs ; (b) 

 limestone pasture, with the dominant species, Festuca 

 ovina, accompanied by many of the common chalk- 

 down species. Locally small woods of Quercus sessili- 

 ~ora occur, though usually confined to siliceous soils. 

 (2) The vegetation of the siliceous soils : (a) the Quer- 

 us sessiliflora woods, with associated trees as Betula 

 6pp. and Pyrits aucuparia. Where the water-content 

 is high, but the soil not acid, Fraxinus becomes 

 common. As a result of felling or exposure Betula 

 mpubescens may become the dominant tree. The aver- 

 «age light-intensity in summer is about 7-6 per cent, 

 •of the maximum diffuse illumination outside. The 

 Mshrub layer is usually poor. The flora of the drier 

 ■ parts largely consists of heath species; in the wetter 

 ■ and more acid parts, Vaccinium myrtillus is often 

 abundant; towards the base of the slopes the ground 

 flora is often almost entirely cryptogamic. Epiphytes 

 as Poly podium vulgar, Frullania spp., and lichens are 

 often abundant. In the valley bottom the Quercus 

 sessiliflora woods merge into Alnus woods, with a 

 light-intensity of about 3 per cent or under. (&) 

 Scrub chiefly of Crataegus. (3) The subalpine vegeta- 

 tion : (a) the subalpine lakes with Subularia aquatica, 

 Lobelia dortmanna, Littorella lacustris, and Isoetes, 

 with absence of marginal vegetation ; (6) the subalpine 

 pastures (Nardus, Lycopodium spp., etc.). 



Zoological Society, November 23.— Dr. A. Smith 

 Woodward, vice-president, in the chair. — Prof . A. Dendy : 

 I^and-planarians from West Australia and Tasmania. 

 The collection was made by' members of the British 

 -sociation. Three species were obtained in West 

 istralia, all of which proved to be new, and of six 

 -jjccies collected in Tasmania, two were described as 

 new. — G. A. Boulenger : Snakes of East Africa and 

 Nyassaland, and of north-east Africa and Socotra. 

 Lists were given, with keys to the identification of the 

 :_;<nera and species. — G. A. Boulenger : A new 

 Amphisbaena and a new snake discovered by Dr. 

 H. G, F. Spurrell in southern Columbia. — C. Tate 

 Regan : The morphology of the Cyprinodont fishes of 

 the subfamily Phallostethinae. The author described 

 the structure of these extraordinary little fishes from 

 Johore, and particularly the differences in the pria- 

 pium of the two genera he recognised. 

 Calcutta. 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal, November 3. — H. G. 

 Graves : The invention of fire. An endeavour to trace 

 the stages of the "inventive " power of man by which 

 fire was converted to his use. The first advance con- 

 sisted in the maintenance of a fire by feeding it with 

 fuel ; next came the power of carrying fire from place 

 to place, and then followed the ability to originate fire. 

 The subject is treated in view of the very low mental 

 powers of early man. With analogies drawn from 

 the development in the manufacture of matches, which 

 originated less than a century ago, it is shown how 

 difficult it is to apply the inventive faculties, and after- 

 wards how easy it is to minimise the importance of 

 any past advance in view of knowle.dge at the moment. 

 — S. C. Mitra : Demon-cultus in Mundari children's 

 games. The theory is discussed that a goodly number 

 of European children's games and a few North Indian 

 games, of the well-known "blind man's buff" type, 

 are survivals of demon-worship. It has been suggested 

 that the blindfolded player represents the masked 

 demon who tries to catch the rest of the players, while 

 the latter try to evade being caught. The mask was 

 unprovided with eyeholes either for making the catch- 

 ing more difficult or for warding off the "evil eye" of 

 the demon during the imitation of his activities. It is 

 urged that the demon's attempt to catch the rest of the 

 players and the latter 's evasion of his efforts to seize 

 them cannot certainly be called relics of demon- 

 NO. 2405, VOL. 96I 



worship. It is suggested that the games are not sur- 

 vivals of demon-worship, but embody vestiges of the 

 demor^-lore of primitive times. There appears to be 

 only one game — the "Jack-fruit game," played by 

 children among the Mundas of Chhota Nagpore— 

 which embodies, a travesty of demon-worship. 



Cape Town. 

 Royal Society of Soutli Africa, October 20. — Dr. L. 

 Pdringuey, president, in the chair.— E. J. Goddard and 

 C. S. Grobbelaar : Description of a South African 

 species of Pelodrilus. This is the first record of the 

 genus Pelodrilus in South Africa. The specimens were 

 obtained from Sneeuw Kop, near Wellington, at a 

 height of about 4500 ft. The genital pores were dis- 

 tinctly made out. The occurrence in South Africa is 

 interesting, as the genus has a distribution restricted 

 to the Antarctic region.— S. H. Haughton : Preliminary 

 note on ancient human skull remains from the Trans- 

 vaal. A description of the skull remains found at 

 Boskop, Transvaal, and of the manner of their occur- 

 rence. The remains consist of the .greater part of the 

 skull-cap, a temporal bone, and a portion of the lower 

 jaw. No estimate can be given as to their age. The 

 bones are fossilised, and were found embedded in a 

 subsoil which overlay and partially consisted of the 

 lateritic "ouklip" characteristic of some parts of the 

 Transvaal. The skull-cap is the longest known, with 

 the exception of that of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. Its 

 greatest affinities are with the skulls of the Cro- 

 Magnon type — a Negroid type which lived in southern 

 Europe after that of Neanderthal. The back of the 

 skull is elongate, a feature displayed both by the Nean- 

 derthal man and the Cro-Magnon man, while the 

 forehead and anterior half of the skull agree with the 

 Cro-Magnon and Bantu types, and not at all with the 

 Neanderthal. The temporal bone is primitive in its 

 characters, and seems to indicate a more degraded 

 type than does the skull-cap, a semblance which may 

 be due to sex. The lower jaw is small and akin in 

 character to that of the Bantu or Bushman type. 

 Fragments of limb-bones fcund in the neighbourhood 

 of the skull-cap are described as human. — A. N. Hen- 

 derson : The elastic arch continuous over several spans, 

 capable only of small rotary motions at the supports. — 

 H. Bohle : The heating coefficients of rheostats and the 

 calculation of resistances for currents of short and 

 moderate duration.— J. C. Beattie : Further magnetic 

 observations in South Africa during the years 1914-15. 

 The declination, dip, and horizontal intensity are given 

 for twenty-seven stations, including two repeat stations 

 in the Free State, Transvaal, and Cape provinces. — 

 J. C. Beattie : True isogonics and isoclinals for South 

 Africa for the epoch July i, 1913. The results at 

 about 700 stations have been reduced to the epoch 

 from observations at about forty repeat stations fairly 

 distributed over the greater part of the region. The 

 greater number of the observations was made in 1903 

 and 1909. The westerly declination has decreased in 

 the ten years 1903-13 by about i^° in the west, and 2° 

 in the east. In the same period the southerly dip has 

 increased by approximately 1° in the east and i^° in 

 the west. — I. B. Pole Evans : Descriptions of some new 

 aloes from the Transvaal.— J. T. Morrison : A new 

 harmonic analvser. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 



First-year Mathematics for Secondary Schools. By 

 E. R. Breslich. Pp. xxiv + 344. (Chicago: Univer- 

 sity of Chicago Press ; London : Cambridge Univer- 

 sity Press.) 4s. net. 



The Theory of Valency. By Dr. J. Newton Friend. 

 Second edition. Pp. xiv -1-192. (London: Longmans 

 and Co.) 55. net. 



