72 



NATURE 



[September 27, 191; 



his career has he acquired highly complex and 

 specialised instincts which impelled him, without any 

 prompting from other peoples, to build megalithic 

 monuments or to invent the story of the deluge inde- 

 pendently of other people who do the same arbitrary 

 things, as modern speculations would have us believe." 

 Again, Prof. Elliot Smith urges that "these facts seem 

 to emphasise how confusing is this use of the word 

 'age.' Thev also reveal how devoid of foundation is 

 the misnamed ' evolutionary ' theory that claims all 

 these phases of culture as so many natural stages 

 through which every people has passed in virtue of the 

 operation of the blind forces of an arbitrary and in- 

 evitable process of evolution." 



The altitudinal distribution of birds in Europe repre- 

 sents an almost unworked field. Hence we welcome a 

 most interesting and suggestive paper by Mr. C. J. 

 Alexander in British Birds for August. Mr. Alexander 

 confines himself to " Notes on Zonal Distribution in the 

 Mountains of Latium, Italy." He divides this area 

 into five zones, ranging from the Mediterranean, which 

 extends from the sea-level up to between 300 and 

 500 m., to the Alpine, represented by exposed moun- 

 tain peaks from 2000 to 2150 m. The only bird which 

 runs the whole gamut is the black redstart. The 

 wren, Alpine pipit, chough, wheatear, and linnet are, 

 save the black redstart, the only residents of the sub- 

 Alpine zone. The montane zone he finds the best 

 characterised ornithologically of the three woodland 

 zones. The dipper and the grey wagtail scarcely range 

 out of the sub-montane zone. ' As might be expected, 

 there is a vertical migration of the several inhabitants 

 of these zones in accordance with the seasons, as 

 well as a horizontal migration during the spring and 

 autumn of birds passing to and from their breeding 

 quarters further westward. 



Moles in captivity are notoriously difficult to 

 manage. But Miss Frances Pitt has been remarkably 

 successful in this undertaking, which she describes in 

 the Scottish Naturalist for September. The extra- 

 ordinary voracity of this animal is well known, but yet 

 it is probably not generall}' realised that it will eat 

 more than its own weight of earthworms in twenty- 

 four hours. One of Miss Pitt's captives, weighing no 

 more than 4 oz., ate during one month 75 lb. of 

 worms. Finding it difficult to maintain a supply for 

 her captives, she experimented with raw beef, mutton, 

 fowls' heads, and the livers of rabbits, with varying 

 success. Cheese always, seemed to be acceptable. 

 Placed in glass boxes, she was able to watch them at 

 nest building and excavating. When burrowing, the 

 earth dug by the hands was thrown out by the 

 hind feet, which were also used in cleaning the fur 

 and the hands. But this paper, which has not yet 

 reached its completion, is too full of interesting matter 

 to be briefly summarised; it must be read at length 

 by all who are engaged in the studv of animal 

 behaviour. 



In his account of the Echinoderms other than Holo- 

 thurians obtained by the British Antarctic {Terra Nova) 

 Expedition, 1910, and recently published by the British 

 Museum, Mr. Jeffrey Bell lays great stress on the 

 extraordinary variety in the characters of most of the 

 Echinoderms collected in the Antarctic regions, although 

 the conditions of depth and temperature are practically 

 uniform. So astounding are the variations of the star- 

 fish, Cycethra verrucosa, that " if a mystic wanted a 

 type of human life he might well take this species." 

 A whole plate is devoted to these variations, and 

 another to the variations of the brittle-star, Ophio- 

 steira. The most interesting forms described are per- 

 haps the three new species of Astroporpa, Astroschema, 

 and Astrotoma, and it is rather strange that neither these 

 nor the new starfish, Luidia scotti, should have been 

 NO. 2500, VOL. 100] 



accorded any illustration. The course followed by Mr. 

 Bell runs counter tj that now strongly advocated by 

 many systematists, but there is something to be said 

 for it all the same. We note that Mr. Bell refers to 

 his three new brittle-stars as " Astrophiurids." His 

 original term was " Astrophiurae, or Cladophiurae." 

 His present term implies that they belong to the same 

 family as Astrophiura, which, as he well knows, is a 

 totally different thing. 



In Naturen for May and June Hr. Jan Petersen, 

 describes and illustrates a number of newly discovered 

 figures of animals incised by Stone-age artists on rock- 

 surfaces in southern Norway. 



The vexed question of the age of the Borrowdale 

 volcanic rocks, which add so much to the picturesque 

 scenery of Cumberland, rises again in a paper by Mr. 

 J. F. N. Green on "The Age of the Chief Intrusions 

 of the Lake District" (Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xxviii., 

 p I, 1917). The Borrowdale lavas are placed in the 

 Llanvirn series. The Carrick Fell complex is shown, 

 on the evidence of pebbles in the Watch Hill beds, to 

 be older than the Bala rocks, and, with the Eskdale 

 granite, it is regarded as belonging to a late phase of 

 the Borrowdale activity. 



In a short paper on "The Geology of the Fiji 

 Islands" (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., vol. iii., p. 305, 1917), 

 Mr. W. G. Foye, of Middlebury College, Vermont, 

 indicates that the present coral-reefs of the Fijis de- 

 pend for their form on Pleistocene and recent move- 

 ments, and that the growth of atolls and barrier reefs 

 in this region is due to local and not to widespread 

 subsidence. The submergence is more recent than the 

 return of the waters to the ocean after the Glacial 

 epoch. The author's paper on the same subject in the 

 American Journal of Science has already been noticed 

 (Nature, vol. xcix., p. 471). 



Prof. J. W. Gregory's lecture on "The Flowing 

 Wells of Western Queensland," delivered in Australia 

 in 19 14, has been printed in the Queensland Geo- 

 graphical Journal, vol. xxx., p. i (1916). The vital 

 question of the duration of these wells and the pro- 

 gressive diminution in their output is seen to be un- 

 answerable at present. The discussion on the resolu- 

 tions which followed the lecture shows that the diminu. 

 tion in supply may be due to escape in the bore-holes 

 and choking of the inlets, and that there is a tendency 

 to regard with favour Prof. Gregory's view as to the 

 plutonic nature of the water-bodies. 



In the issiie of Scientia for August, Mr. W. B. 

 Wright, of the Geological Survey of Ireland, furnishes 

 a useful review of 'The Interglacial Problem," in 

 which, following and extending the views of Penck, 

 he shows that interglacial deposits indicate a 

 v/oodland phase, followed by a steppe phase. 

 He urges that the latter points to the oncoming 

 of a glacial epoch, but extends well back into inter- 

 glacial time. The single interglacial episode recorded 

 in many northern areas, such as North America, may 

 be explained by the fact that the longer of the Alpine 

 interglacial epochs alone had any marked effect on 

 the larger and more stable ice-sheets. 



A REPORT published by the Royal Cornwall Poly- 

 technic Society gives meteorological tables for Falmouth 

 Observatory for the year 1916 and lustrum tables for 

 sea temperatures, 1911-15. Mean sea temperatures are 

 also given for the period of thirty-six years for each 

 month. The lowest mean is 47-1° F., in February, 

 and the highest 597° F., in August, the mean for the 

 several seasons ranging 12-6"^ F. during the year. De- 

 tailed values for the several elements are given in the 

 meteorological tables, and compvarisons are made with 

 the averages for a long period of years. The new units 

 of millibars for the barometer, millirretres for rainfall^ 



