October 4, 19 17] 



NATURE 



85 



Origin of Flints. 



Having paid some attention to the study of flints, 

 Ktth in England and Australia, 1 have read with 

 merest the recent letters to Nature on this question, 

 ind think that possibly some facts' from this side of 

 tlie globe may be worth noting. In the Cainozoic of 

 South Australia and Victoria black flints occur which 

 have the characteristic white coating of the English 

 examples, and, in fact, are indistmguishable from 

 them. They are found both in nodular and tabular 

 form, and occur in lines parallel to the bedding. At 

 Port Macdonell, South Australia, sheets of flint are 

 found 2 in. or 3 in. thick, and, according to Tenison 

 Woods, they are quarried and used for flagstones. 

 These Cainozoic flints appear to be confined to the 

 -Miocene (Janjukian) beds, and are closely associated 

 with the polyzoal limestone, a white, chalky deposit 

 consisting of polyzoa and foraminifera. 



The evidence of a microscopic examination of these 

 Hints goes to prove that the position held by Prof. 

 G. A. J. Cole, that chalk flints represent a more or 

 less complete replacement of the chalky ooze, is the 

 only one tenable from the Australian point of view. 

 The Australian flints are often crowded with the 

 silicified remains of polyzoa, foraminifera, shell-frag- 

 ments, and occasional sponge-spicules, the last merely 

 included as a component of the ooze and not as selected 

 material. During the formation of the flint the cal- 

 careous bodies are frequently dissolved, and only rem- 

 nants are seen in some cases in the flint sections. 



Another point in corroboration of Prof. Cole's con- 

 tention (based on Liesegang's experiments) is the pre- 

 sence of an impervious bed underlying these Tertiary 

 flint layers. This was pointed out long ago by Tenison 

 Woods, who stated that well-sinkers in South Austra- 

 lia have observed that a layer of flint is always found 

 immediately above the water-level. The factor of an 

 impermeable layer inducing deposition of diffused silica 

 IS an important one, and is strongly supported in those 

 instances where I have had an opportunity of observ- 

 ing it. Fredk. Chapman. 

 National Museum, Melbourne, Victoria, 

 August 17. 



Butterfly v. Wasp. 



I HAVE Spent a good many hours lately in a Devon- 

 shire garden in which there was a border of massed 

 mauve asters which was a great attraction to butter- 

 flies. The border measured 27 ft. by 2^ ft. only, but 

 it was no unusual thing to see on it 150 butterflies — 

 Peacocks, Red Admirals, Tortoiseshell, Clouded Yellows 

 — a very wonderful sight. The object of my letter is 

 to describe to your readers two "scraps" which I wit- 

 nessed between tortoiseshell butterflies and wasps, in 

 each of which the butterfly was victorious. The 

 method adopted was the same in each case. The 

 butterfly sprang on to the back of the wasp, the head 

 of each being towards the tail of the other, and a 

 furious rough-and-tumble took place some 6 ft. from 

 the ground. The w^asp was unable to use its sting, 

 as the butterfly was on its back, and at the end 

 of perhaps five seconds the butterfly, which had been 

 buffeting the wasp with its wings, dropped to within 

 a foot of the grass, relaxed the hold which it had 

 exerted, and allowed its enemy to drop breathless and 

 l>eaten on to the lawn. 



Nature had taught the butterfly to adopt the same 

 tactics (that of concentrating all its energy on the 

 body of its adversary) which enabled G. Carpentier 

 to win his fight with Bombardier Wells. 



Arthur F Clarke. 



The Vicarage, Rochdale, Lancashire. 

 September 20. 

 NO. 2501, VOL. 100] 



The Convolvulus Hawk-moth. 



I REGRET that 1 must ask leave to correct a state- 

 ment in my letter on this moth in Nature of September 

 27. I find that it was not in the present year, but in 

 1902, that the lady counted seven convolvulus hawk- 

 moths flying about the tobacco plants in her garden. 



Monreith, September 29. 



Herbert Maxwei.i. 



THE ETHNOLOGY OF SCOTLAND. 

 TT is as a fightingf man that the Scot make* 

 -■- his first appearance in written history ; 

 Tacitus depicts him as ruddy in colour, big in 

 body, strong in limb, and Germanic in origin. 

 In 1866, when Huxley ^ described the human 

 remains discovered by Mr. Samuel Laing in a 

 long-cist cemetery at Keiss, Caithness, which 

 the discoverer regarded as of early Neolithic date, 

 but which are now rightly assigned to a much 

 later period — an early phase of the Iron age — he 

 had clearly reached a conclusion very similar to 

 that of Tacitus : — 



But the existence of a tall, long-headed, fair ele- 

 ment becomes intelligible at once if we suppose that 

 long before the well-known Norse and Danish in- 

 vasions a stream of Scandinavians had set in to Scot- 

 land and Ireland and formed a large part of our 

 primitive population (p. 134). 



Huxley regarded the Scottish people, the Irish, 

 the Norwegians, and the Swedes as possessing a 

 common basal stock or type. Prof. Bryce, of 

 the University of Glasgow, who has done so 

 much to build up an accurate knowledge of the 

 early inhabitants of the south-west of Scotland, 

 accepts Huxley's hypothesis, and supposes that 

 in early Neolithic times — before the long-barrow 

 people, of Mediterranean origin, had reached 

 Arran— Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia 

 were already peopled by the same tall, fair, 

 dolichocephalic stock.^ Dr. W. C. Mackenzie ' 

 has also come to a somewhat similar conclusion 

 from a study of the place-names of Scotland and 

 Ireland, but supposes that the arrival of the 

 Scandinavian or Germanic people occurred at a 

 post-Neolithic date. The same hypothesis has 

 also been sturdily advocated by Mr. John Munro.* 



Huxley preferred the term " Scandinavian " to 

 " Germanic " when he wished to designate the 

 tall, big-boned, fair, long-headed Scotsman, 

 because he was well aware that this type prevails 

 only in the western fourth of the modern Ger- 

 man Empire. "Celt" and "Celtic," "Teuton" 

 and "Teutonic," "German" and "Germanic," are 

 terms which the modern anthropologist has had 

 to abandon ; all have been applied to the type of 

 man Tacitus and Huxley had in mind, and also to 

 physical types which are totally different. To the 

 tall, long-heade3 Xanthochroi most modern 

 anthropologists would apply the term " Nordic " 

 in preference to "Scandinavian." 



When we seek for evidence as to the time and 

 manner in which the Nordic type reached Scot- 



1 " Prehistoric Kemains of CaithncM." By S;.mu«l Laing, M.P. (1866.) 



2 "The Cairn<;of Arran." Proc. Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland, jqoj, p. 75 ; 

 Seettish Histrrical Revinv, 190$, p. 175. 



S "The Races of Ireland and Scotland." (1916.) 

 * "The Story of the British Race." (1899.) 



