August 29, 1918] • 



NATURE 



509 



marked : " Palstaves of the adze form, having- the 

 blade at right angles to the septum between the 

 flanges, are seldom found in Great Britain." He 

 figures examples from Cumberland and Lincolnshire, 

 and mentions other specimens. The Doncaster 

 example is different from any described by Sir J. 

 Evans, but approaches nearest to that from Lincoln- 

 shire. 



! In the Museums Journal (vol. xviii., No. 2, August, 



19 18) Mr. Harlan I. Smith, archaeologist, Geological 

 Survey, Canada, in a paper entitled "Archaeological 

 Museum Work and the War," remarks that the war 

 has cut off from many firms in Canada and the United 

 States the supplies of new designs in many" indus- 

 tries, such as the textile trades, which were supplied 

 by foreigners. To meet the sudden stoppage of the 

 design supply, the writer has prepared an album of 

 archaeological specimens found in Canada suitable as 

 motives for distinctive Canadian decorative and sym- 

 bolic designs and trade-marks. In the same way in 

 America designers have been developing designs from 

 aboriginal objects in the United States museums, 

 specimens from Peru, Mexico, the South-Western 

 States, Siberia, China, etc. Though the colour com- 

 binations in silks woven from some of the designs 

 developed from New World specimens are poorer than 

 aboriginal colour combinations, yet these silks met 

 with a ready sale, thus proving that aboriginal designs 

 are not, as some have believed, crude, but can be 

 successfully used in modern industries. 



The July issue of Science Progress contains an in- 

 teresting article by Sir Henry Thompson on the food 

 requirements of a normal working-class family. A 

 comparison is instituted between the physiological 

 values of the diets reported upon by the Board of 

 Trade in pre-war times and some data collected by 

 the W^ar Emergency Committee in 19 17. In reducing 

 the family diets to man-values Sir Henry Thompson 

 has employed a more liberal scale of requirements for 

 children than the older standard of Atwater, which 

 is now generally recognised to be unsatisfactory. The 

 three diets do not differ greatly in respect of energy- 

 value ; the liighest average is that of the urban 

 working-class families (1913), yielding 3410 calories; 

 the lowest, the 1917 sample, is 3160 calories, a reduc- 

 tion of but 250 calories. Sir Henry also provides 

 ration scales based upon his estimate of the food con- 

 sumption of Great Britain in 1908, upon that of the 

 Royal Society's Food Committee for 1909-13, and 

 upon the committee's estimate for the war-year 1916. 

 Making allowance for loss in distribution, the calorie 

 values of the diet scales calculated in this way do not 

 differ very much from the observed values in the 

 samples, although, as might be expected, the propor- 

 tion of energy derived from breadstuffs is rather larger 

 among the working-class families which provided the 

 sample budgets than in the country as a whole. 



A BRIEF, but very admirable, summary of the factors 

 causing "grouse disease" on Scottish moots appears 

 .* in British Birds for August. The author, Mr. Dugald 

 Macintyre, surveying the conditions of heather-moors 

 and their relation to " heather-blight," is of opinion 

 that when, in exceptional years, heather suffers from 

 frost in June, drought in July, and an excess of wet 

 weather and too little sunshine during the early spring 

 months — a combination of adverse conditions aggra- 

 vated by the ravaj^es of the heather-beetle— grouse 

 disease is inevitable, and for the reason that the 

 birds succumb to the drain on their vitality caused 

 by their internal parasites, which in normal years of 

 plenty cause them little or no discomfort. A practical 



NO. 2548, VOL. lOl] 



remedy for grouse disease, he suggests, would be 

 artificial feeding in those years when the heather crop 

 fails. This he tried with a fair measure of success 

 in 1912. The food supplied to the birds, after they 

 had been trained to visit oat-sheaves laid out on the 

 moors, was small, round maize, which the birds. ate 

 greedily. The ravages of the disease, he considers, 

 are to be attributed largely to the fact that the birds 

 are now artificially numerous ; that is to say, the 

 moors are carrying more birds than would be the 

 case if they were left to "run wild." 



So little is known generally of the vast and varied 

 flora of South Africa that the short sketch of "The 

 Plant Geography of South Africa," written by Mr. 

 I. B. Pole Evans, chief of the division of botany and 

 plant pathology in the Department of Agriculture, is 

 very welcome. The sketch was printed in the official 

 " Year Book " for last year, and has now been reprinted 

 as a separate pamphlet. The vegetation is considered 

 under the three main heads of woodland, grassland, aiKi 

 desert. .^11 three types are well represented in the Union 

 of South Africa, which includes almost all the area 

 lying south of latitude 22° from the valley of the great 

 Limpopo River and the Tropic of Capricorn to the 

 sea. The article is accompanied by a good vegetation 

 chart marking the forest and scrub area in the south 

 and south-west, the palm belt along the Natal and 

 Mozambique coast, with the thorn-veld extending from 

 the south coast from Port Elizabeth to East London, 

 and then to the west of tlie palm belt as far as the 

 Transvaal. Basutoland and the Orange Free State 

 Colony are almost entirely high veld, while the Trans- 

 vaal is marked as bush veld, and the centre of the area 

 is the Kalahari grassland. The Karroo and Namaqua- 

 land are, as is well known, extensive desert areas. 

 Brief descriptions of the more prominent types of 

 vegetation are given, and lists of the typical trees, 

 grasses, and other plants, with particulars as to where 

 such plants may be found. Not the least valuable 

 portion of the article are the twenty-four excellent 

 plates showing features like the natural Drakensberg 

 forest, the silver trees on Lion's Head at the Cape, 

 the acacia thorn veld, the Euphorbias of the bush veld 

 in the Transvaal, and some very interesting photo- 

 graphs of the high veld grassland near Johannesburg 

 and Pretoria. All the photographs have been taken 

 by Mr. Pole Evans, and are verv well repro- 

 duced. It is much to be hoped that a systematic 

 botanical survey of the whole region may shortly be 

 undertaken before any further changes in the vegeta- 

 tion due to the disturbing influence of man take 

 place. 



Much light is thrown on Balkan problems by a map 

 compiled by Prof, Jovan Cvijic of the zones of 

 civilisation in the Balkan peninsula. The map, which 

 appears in the Geographical Review for June (vol. v.. 

 No. 6), is accompanied by a short article, and follows 

 a map and paper by tlie same author in the previous 

 number of the review on the distribution of Balkan 

 races. Studied side by side, these maps are most 

 instructive. In the present map Prof. Cvijic distin- 

 guishes three main civilisations : the old Balkan or 

 modified Byzantine, distributed in Thrace, Macedonia, 

 and Greece in the main ; the Turko-Oriental, prin- 

 cipally in the south-east, in the Vardar valley, and in 

 parts of Bosnia; and, lastly, the patriarchal rdgitne in 

 the north and west of the peninsula. Attempts are 

 also made to map the various contacts between these 

 civilisations and those of Central and Western Europe. 

 Western civilisations reached the Balkan peninsula 

 chiefly by sea routes, and, according to Prof. Cvijic, 

 nowhere, except along certain easy routes, penetrated 



