470 



NATURE 



[August 15, 19 18 



The antiquated and germ-infected method of purvey- 

 ing water in leathern bags through the agency of the 

 water-carrier is now superseded by a series of stand- 

 pipes at various points in the city, fed by a main 

 leading from an untainted source in the hills, where 

 there is a group of springs yielding some 14,000 gallons 

 per hour, which was previously running to waste. 

 During the long period of Ottoman misrule, with its 

 characteristic indifference to health and cleanliness, 

 no attempt had been made to deal with this funda- 

 mental question of water-supply. Domestic require- 

 ments were met, in a haphazard fashion, from under- 

 ground cisterns, replenished during the winter rains, 

 most of them polluted and encrusted with dirt, and 

 some even in a ruinous condition. Pending further 

 developments, the British authorities have arranged 

 to refill these domestic reservoirs as .often as may be 

 necessary on the preliminary stipulation that they shall 

 be thoroughly cleansed and put in order; a British 

 sanitary officer takes good care to see that this require- 

 ment is rigidly observed. The inhabitants can have 

 as much water as they need, and the consumption 

 is stated to be ten times as great as it was last year. 

 The hospitals receive a supply direct from the main. 



The fine series of Maori burial-chests in the Auck- 

 land Museum, with a few isolated specimens in other 

 collections, are described in Man for July by Dr. 

 W. H. R. Rivers and Mr. H. D. Skinner." The 

 chests were used in secondary burial, the bodies being 

 first placed in trees and the desiccated bones collected 

 for re-interment. The custom of placing the dead or 

 their bones in caves is widely spread in Oceania, but 

 neither elsewhere in New Zealand nor in any other 

 part of Polynesia do we know of such chests. 

 Receptacles, often in human form, are, however, used 

 in Melanesia, notably in the Solomon Islands, to pre- 

 serve the skull or skeleton. In the case of the New 

 Zealand chests, similarity with Melanesian culture 

 comes out in the nature of the chests themselves. In 

 many respects in which the carving departs from the 

 usual charac<^eristics of Maori art it approaches that 

 of Melanesia ; and it is noteworthy that the part of 

 the northern island of New Zealand where these 

 chests have been found is characterised by the pro- 

 minence of negroid or Melanesian characters in' the 

 physical features of the inhabitants. 



A VIVID description of caribou hunting in New- 

 foundland appears in the Brooklyn Quarterly (vol. v., 

 No. 2). The author, who signs himself " R. H. R.," 

 is chief taxidermist to the Brooklyn Museum, and re- 

 counts his experiences during a trip undertaken for 

 the purpose of providing six specimens for the 

 museum. Incidentally, he has some hard things to 

 say of the professional hunter. "These men who hunt 

 for meat are a bloodthirsty lot. They do not hesitate 

 to kill in excess of their legal allowance of three 

 caribou. The wholesale butchery ... in Newfound- 

 land is a revolting sight." This state of affairs calls 

 for immediate measures if the extinction of the herds 

 is to be prevented. The author fears that they will 

 go the way of the bison if the present rate of destruc- 

 tion is not speedily checked. 



Mr. R. C. Murphy, in Sea Power for June, gives 

 a brief but Illuminating account of the whale fishery 

 of South Georgia, and the part it has played in fur- 

 nishing glvcerine for the manufacture of high ex- 

 plosives. Even before the outbreak of war the hump- 

 back whale had been dangerously reduced in numbers, 

 and the announcement in this article that the oil of 

 this animal is particularly rich in glycerine gives occa- 

 sion for grave forebodings as to the fate of this par- 

 ticular species. But the exigencies of the times have 



NO. 2546, VOL. lOl] 



also demanded a very heavy toll on the rorquals of 

 Antarctic waters. This much is apparent from the 

 statement that by the beginning of 1917 no fewer than 

 660,000 barrels of whale-oil had been dispatched to 

 British ports. For the sake of. the future of the 

 whaling industry, not only in these waters, but also 

 at the Cape — for the one depends upon the other — we 

 trust that the issue of whaling licences will be 

 thoroughly revised on the advice of scientific experts, 

 who, until now, have not been consulted in the matter, 

 which has been administered entirely bv the Colonial 

 Office. 



The improvement of the natural indigo industry is 

 a subject which is receiving much attention from 

 scientific workers in India, and one aspect of the 

 question is dealt with by Mr. C. H. Hutchinson in 

 a paper entitled "The Importance of Bacterial Action 

 in Indigo Manufacture" (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 

 and Co., 1917, pp. 11). The yield of indigo frOm a 

 given weighty of fndigo plant is found to depend upon 

 the intervention of bacteria during the steeping pro- 

 cess, and while some bacteria operate beneficially. 

 Others are detrimental. In the absence of the former 

 the yield is reduced, and the author considers that the 

 presence of these beneficial forms could be secured by 

 artificial inoculation. Some alterations in the shape 

 of the steeping-vats are also suggested in order to 

 bring the bacteria normally present in the walls of 

 the vats into closer connection with the indigo plant. 



Kew Bulletin Nos. 2 and 3 were published together, 

 mainly because they contain a valuable paper by Sir 

 David Prain on the genus Chrozophora (Euphorbiaceae), 

 one species of which is a Languedoc plant, the source 

 of one of the litmus dyes known as turnesol. Both the 

 history of the genus and careful accounts of all the 

 species are given. The paper occupies some seventy 

 pages, but is much too technical for a brief review. 

 In the same Bulletin there is an interesting account 

 of experiments which have recently been made in 

 breeding the West African oil-palm Elaeis guineensis, 

 both on the Gold Coast and in the Seychelles. The 

 object in view in these experiments was to see if the 

 soft-shelled variety of the oil-palm would breed true, 

 but it has been found that this is far from being the 

 case under the conditions of the experiments. Palms 

 grown from soft-shelled seed have yielded both hard- 

 and soft-shelled nuts even in the same bunches of fruit, 

 and it is clear that no decisive results can be obtained 

 until care is taken to hand-pollinate the flowers of a 

 soft-shelled tree with pollen from a tree of similar 

 character and to protect the flowers, as cross-fertilisa- 

 tion must be of constant occurrence. Not only is it 

 desirable to produce nuts with thin shells easy to be 

 cracked, but it is also necessary to breed varieties of 

 palms which shall be prolj[fic bearers of fruit yielding 

 the finest quality oils. Hitherto the oil-palm has only 

 been a wild crop, but it is of interest to note that 

 recent attempts to cultivate it on the Gold Coast have 

 met with remarkable success, the yield from palms 

 grown in tilled soil at fair distances apart being more 

 than three times as large as that from palms under 

 native conditions. The establishment of plantations 

 in the Federated Malay States and the Seychelles may 

 therefore lead to far-reaching results, and under these 

 more favourable conditions the oil-palm may so flourish 

 that the native industry, unless properly cared for, 

 mav collapse and disappear. 



On October i, 1917, & disturbance, evidently due 

 to an air-wave, was reported at certain places on the 

 Dutch coast. Doors flew open and shut, pictures 

 swung on the walls, and windows clattered. The 



