June 24, 1920] 



NATURE 



527 



Dr. R. S. Morrell has been elected president of 

 the Oil and Colour Chemists' Association in succes- 

 sion to Dr. F. Mollwo Perkln. 



Dr. V. H. Manning, lately director of the U.S. 

 Bureau of Mines, has been appointed director of re- 

 search in the American Petroleum Institute. 



Dr. J. R. Angell, chairman of the U.S. National 

 Research Council and professor of psychology in the 

 University of Chicago, has been elected president of 

 the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 



Mr. E. C. R. Armstrong describes in the June 

 issue of Man an interesting acquisition by the Royal 

 Irish Academy of two penannular rings with cup- 

 shaped ends, two bracelets, and an elaborately 

 decorated disc— all of gold — found last year in a bog 

 in Co. Cavan. The gold disc is of special value. The 

 ornamentation, which was probably made by pressing 

 the gold plate into a bronze matrix, is so i^ne that it 

 is scarcely going too far to describe it as the most 

 delicately decorated gold .object belonging to the 

 Bronze age that has up to the present been acquired 

 by the Irish National Collection. The use of these 

 discs has been a matter of doubt, but we have a 

 parallel in a bronze sp>ecimen found at Trundholm 

 Moss, in the north of Zeeland, and another of Irish 

 origin in the British Museum. The ornamentation is 

 probably connected with sun worship, but the Cavan 

 discovery is of additional importance in that now 

 for the first time a gold disc has been found in 

 Ireland associated with objects, such as the gold 

 rings and bracelets, which can be dated in the later 

 portion of the Bronze age. 



In the same journal Mr. J. Reid Moir describes the 

 discovery of an earlv Neolithic " floor " in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Ipswich. On the surface of the gravel 

 underlying a stratum of peat a flint implement of 

 grey material, not rolled or patinated, representing 

 a well-recognised type of an early Neolithic axe of 

 the chipped and polished variety, was unearthed. In 

 association with this, flakes, apparently of the Mous- 

 terian order, almost certainly more ancient than the 

 Neolithic axe, were discovered. The mammalian 

 bones associated with the "find" were examined by 

 Prof. Arthur Keith, who identifies two varieties of 

 the horse, large and small, of oxen, red deer, a wolf 

 or large dog, pigs, and sheep. The horse-bones had 

 been smashed up, apparently for the extraction of 

 marrow. 



In Sudan Notes and Records (vol. iii.. No. 2, April, 

 1920) the Rev. D. S. Oyler describes the Shilluks' 

 belief in medicine men. They undergo a rite of 

 initiation. A fact of interest connected with them is 

 that "many of the medicine men have physical 

 defects, their children are usually rickety, and many 

 of them are deformed. The natives say that this is 

 caused by the fact that the shades of his victims 

 bring a curse on the medicine man, and also on his 

 family." Few Shilluks will admit that they believe 

 in his powers, but they seek him constantly, and their 

 whole manner of life is influenced by the witch 

 doctor. " So long as the Shilluks are dominated by 

 NO. 2643, VOL. IO5I 



the medicine men they will make very slight advance- 

 ment in their mode of thought and their manner of 

 living." 



The twenty-sixth Report of the Danish Biological 

 Station to the Board of Agriculture (Copenhagen, 

 1919) contains two valuable memoirs. The first, bjj 

 Mr. P. Boysen Jensen (" Valuation of the Limfjord, 

 I. : Studies on the Fish-food in the Limfjord, 1909- 

 1917"), summarises the work of several years based 

 on valuations of the bottom invertebrate fauna with 

 its special significance as fish-food. The study of the 

 amount of food present in each year, its variation, 

 rate of growth, and connection with the plaice fishery, 

 shows interesting results. The fauna varies from 

 vear to year in both amount and kind, and the 

 breeding seasons of the most important species differ, 

 some breeding yearly, others apparently only once in 

 several years. A careful comparison of the annual 

 production and consumption shows that in certain 

 areas the food is not sufficient to support an unlimited 

 transplantation of plaice, and that the years which 

 were specially bad for fishing were those in which there 

 was an unusually small amount of food available. 

 Prof. C. G. J. Petersen, in the second memoir ("Our 

 Gobies (Gobiidae) from the Egg to the Adult Stages "), 

 adds much to our knowledge of the young stages of 

 these little fishes, so numerous in our seas and so 

 difficult to identify in their early life. We note with 

 satisfaction that he finally allows the specific value 

 of Gohius tninutus and G. micro-ps, hitherto usually 

 regarded as distinct forms of one species, and shows 

 that they can be distinguished throughout their life 

 by skeletal features and by pigment. The very beauti- 

 ful plates, both coloured and plain, illustrating the 

 various stages in the life-history of the Danish gobies 

 add much to the value of this work. 



In part iii. of their remarkable series of memoirs on 

 Old Red Sandstone plants from the Rhynie chert-bed 

 of Aberdeenshire (not younger than Middle Devonian) 

 Dr. Kidston and Prof. Lang give a full and abun- 

 dantly illustrated account of a third generic type, 

 Asteroxylon Mackiei, of vascular Cryptogams dis- 

 covered by Dr. Mackie, who figured a single trans- 

 verse section of the stem. Like Rhynia and Homea, 

 Asteroxylon was a terrestrial plant which grew in a 

 peaty soil. The subterranean portion of the plant 

 consisted of slender rhizomes, 1-6 mm. in diameter, 

 without absorbent hairs, having a broad cortex dif- 

 ferentiated into an outer and an inner zone, and_a 

 simple vascular strand of spiral tracheids surrounded 

 by a cylinder of phloem. Branches of the rhizome 

 passed through a transitional region characterised by 

 the presence of scale-leaves into aerial foliage shoots 

 I cm. to I mm. in diameter, bearing numerous 

 spirally disposed small leaves; and it is probable that 

 certain slender leafless branches occasionally associated 

 with them represent fertile shoots which bore pear- 

 shaped terminal sporangia without an annulus, and 

 dehiscing at the broad free end. No actual connec- 

 tion between the leafless axes and sporangia or 

 between either and the shoots of .\steroxylon has 

 been demonstrated, but there is little doubt that they 

 were parts of one plant. The vascular cylinder of the 



