494 



NATURE 



[February 21, 1918 



Crosby Lockwood and Son. — Lockwood's Builder's 

 Price Book for 1918, edited by R. S. Ayling, illus- 

 trated. Scott, Greenwood, and Son. — A new edition 

 of Grammar of Textile Design, H. Nisbet. 



Miscellaneous. 

 G. Allen and Unwin, Ltd. — Scientific Svnthesis, Dr. 

 E. Rignano, translated by W. J. Greenstreet. Cam- 

 bridge University Press. — The Collected Papers of Sir 

 Benjamin Browne, containing, among others, the fol- 

 lowing contributions : — Education from the Employers' 

 Point of View, Labour Problems, Co-partnership, In- 

 surance, and the Scientific Training of Young Work- 

 men, Constable and Co., Ltd. — Man's Redemption of 

 Man, Sir W. Osier, Bart. ; Science and Immortality, 

 Sir W. Osier, Bart.; A Way of Life, Sir W. 

 Osier, Bart. John Murray. — The Herring : its Effect 

 on the History of Britain, A. M. Samuel, illustrated. 



PRIMITIVE CULTS. 



MISS M. A. MURRAY contributes to Folk-Lore 

 (vol. xxviii., No. 3) a paper on the "Organisa- 

 tions of Witches in Great Britain." The author brings 

 forward certain facts which appear to show a connection 

 between witches and fairies — not the little beings which 

 the fancies of poets have evolved ; the fairies of the 

 witch trials are the fairies of Scotch and Irish 

 legend. The ritual of the witches is like the ritual of 

 the fairies : both sacrificed children to their god, whom 

 Christians stigmatised as the devil ; both stole up- 

 baptised children for the sacrifice ; both sacrificed their 

 god or devil every year, apparently on May Day ; both 

 had ritual dances of the same type. "If, as many 

 authorities contend, the fairies are really the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of these islands, there is nothing surprising 

 in their ritual and beliefs being adopted by the invading 

 race. And in that case I am right in my conjecture 

 that the rites of the witches are the remains of the 

 ancient and primitive cult of Great Britain." 



Mr. T. J. Westropp, who is doing excellent work in 

 investigating on scientific lines the early remains in 

 Ireland, has republished from the Proceedings of the 

 Royal Irish Academy (vol. xxxiv., Section C, No. 3) a 

 paper entitled "The Ancient Sanctuaries of Knockainey 

 and Clogher, Co. Limerick." Here a cairn commemo- 

 rates the cult of the goddess Aine, of the god-race of 

 the Tuatha de Danann. She was a water spirit, and 

 has been seen, half-raised out of the water, combing 

 her hair. She was a beautiful and gracious divinity, 

 "the best-natured of women," and is crowned with 

 meadowsweet (Spiraea), to which she gave its perfume. 

 She is a powerful tutelary spirit, protector of the sick, 

 and connected with the moon, her hill being sickle- 

 shaped, and men, before performing the rites at her 

 shrine, used to look for the moon — whether risen or 

 not— lest they should be unable to find their way back. 

 They used to visit her shrine on St. John's Eve, carry- 

 ing wisps of lighted straw, in order to bring good luck 

 to crops and herds. One day some girls saw her, and 

 she showed them through a ring that her hill was 

 crowded with fairies. Her son, the magic Earl of 

 Desmond, is still seen riding over the ripples of Loch 

 Gur until his horse's golden shoes are worn out. 

 This is a valuable instance of the survival in an 

 attenuated form of the primitive figures of Irish 

 mythology. 



The beginnings of religion are discussed in an in- 

 teresting paper by Dr. E. S. Hartland in the R.P.A. 

 Annual, published by the Rationalist Press Association, 

 on religion among the Indian tribes of Guiana, based 

 on the researches of Mr. Walter E. Roth, Protector of 

 Indians in the Pomeroon district, British Guiana. 

 "This attitude towards their external and material en- 



NO. 2521, VOL. 100] 



vironment is reflected in their religion — if we may call 

 it religion, which is merely distrust and dislike of the 

 spirits that are believed to surround them, for the 

 spiritual environment can be less steadily and distinctly 

 contemplated than the material, and therefore is even 

 more the subject of surmise and distrust. The un- 

 known is magnified ; the strange, the unusual, the un- 

 familiar, is regarded with uneasiness, with anxiety, 

 evolving into hostility, with wonder and awe, leading 

 not to inquiry and deliberate scrutiny, but to aversion 

 and terror. Such is the mood, and such are the ex- 

 periences, to which modern psychology is inclined to 

 trace the beginnings of religion." 



SULPHUR IN THE UNITED STATES. 



T^HE Smithsonian Institution issues for publication 



-*• in the Press interesting descriptive articles upon 



subjects dealt with in many of the bulletins distributed 



by it. These articles keep the people of the United 



States in close touch with the activities of the National 



j Museum and other scientific departments and enable 



i them to appreciate the interest and value of the work 



being carried on. We print below, in a slightly 



abridged form, an article upon the subject of Bulletin 



102, part 3, of the U.S. National Museum, as it deals 



with a subject of particular importance at the present 



I time, and refers to the ingenious method by which 



, two sulphur deposits near the Gulf Coast in Louisiana 



I and Texas are worked. The success of the process is 



such that the Gulf deposits are supplying practically 



all the crude sulphur in the United States, and its 



development has shifted the world's largest sulphur 



industry from Sicily to that country. 



Few people realise the extent to which sulphur 

 enters into the manufacture of the materials of every- 

 day life that surround them. Yet it is not primarily 

 because sulphur is necessary to convert the sap of a 

 tropical plant into resilient and versatile rubber or 

 wood-pulp into miles of news-print paper that this sub- 

 i stance claims our attention at this time ; rather be- 

 i cause it is numbered among those substances of prime 

 importance, absolutely essential to the carrying on of 

 war, as entering into the very fabrication of explosives 

 themselves. Hence it is not only a matter of curiosity, 

 but also one of urgent interest, to inquire into the 

 sources of this war mineral. 



In this connection the appearance is timely of a 

 publication of the U.S. National Museum under the 

 title " Sulphur : An Example of Industrial Independ- 

 ence." This is by Mr. Joseph E. Pogue, of the Divi- 

 sion of Mineral; Technology, and presents in a few 

 pages, in a simple and non-technical manner, the 

 striking aspects of one of the most interesting mineral 

 industries in the United States to-day. At the out- 

 break of the war in 1914 the United States was pro- 

 ducing each year about 3:50,000 tons of sulphur, valued 

 at a little more than 6,000,000 dollars. This quantity 

 not only was sufficient to supply the needs of the coun- 

 try, but also contributed about 100,000 tons to Euro- 

 pean markets. With the development of war activities, 

 however, the production has increased to meet the 

 growing needs of munition-makers, while the exports 

 have decreased as a result of disturbed trade conditions 

 and the need for building up reserves of this essential 

 material at home. 

 j It is a singular fact that the chief raw materials of 

 explosive manufacture are localised in a remarkable 

 manner, and sulphur is no exception to this rule. 

 In the United States practically the entire supply comes 

 I from a number of deposits in Louisiana and Texas, 

 I near the Gulf Coast. These deposits are similar in 



