July i, 1920] 



NATURE 



557 



Pearson, "The Seed Crushing Industr\-"; S. Preston, 

 "English Canals and Inland Waterways"; Sir J. 

 Currie, "Industrial Training"; Air-Commodore E. 

 Maitland, "The Commercial Future of Airships"; 

 Sir W. S. Meyer, "The Indian Currency System and 

 its Developments"; A. Howard, "The Improvement 

 of Crop Production in India"; Sir F, Watts, 

 "Tropical Departments of Agriculture, with Special 

 Reference to the West Indies"; and Sir J. Cadman, 

 "The Oil Resources of the British Empire." 



The Riberi prize of the Academy of Medicine of 

 Turin has been awarded to Dr. G. Vanghetti for his 

 researches on amputations and kinematic prostheses. 



Major Kenelm Edgcumbe has been elected chair- 

 man of the National Illumination Committee of Great 

 Britain in succession to Mr. A. P. Trotter. A meeting 

 of the International Illumination Committee is to be 

 held in Paris next year to discuss technical subjects. 



A MONUMENT to Wilbur Wright is to be dedicated 

 on July 18 at Le Mans, France, near which town he 

 carried out many of his aeronautical experiments. 



The annual meeting of the Research Defence 

 Society was held on June 23, when an admirable 

 address was given by Col. McCarrison on " Vitamines 

 in their Relation to Health." Col. McCarrison spoke 

 with authority; he made clear the facts already 

 proved, and the intricacies of the study of vitamines. 

 It is strange now to recall the old teaching about the 

 " constituents " of our food ; the proteins and the fats 

 and the starches; the old South Kensington exhibits 

 of an apple or a mutton-chop analysed down to half 

 a dozen phials of chemicals, of water, and of "ash"; 

 but not a word said of these potent and subtle vita- 

 mines which "animate the whole" and safeguard us 

 against rickets and scurvy and beri-beri and epidemic 

 dropsy. After the meeting DV. and Mrs. Mellanby 

 showed specimens of the results which they have 

 obtained in this field of- research, especially in the 

 relation of vitamines to the growth of" the bones and 

 to the development of the teeth. The societv's annual 

 report speaks of increased activity in good educational 

 work. The Jenner Society has become affiliated to 

 the Research Defence Society, and this is a move in 

 the right direction. The Research Defence Society 

 has lately published an address bv Sir Walter Fletcher 

 on the work of the Medical Research Council, and is 

 about to publish an essay by Sir David Bruce on 

 tetanus and the use of tetanus antitoxin. 



Sir Charles Tomes has presented to the museum 

 of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 

 the entire collection of microscooical preparations 

 made by himself and also by his father, the late 

 Sir John Tomes, during their investigations into 

 the structure and comparative anatomv of the teeth. 

 In this important donation are included the prepara- 

 tions—many of great beauty as well as of scientific 

 worth— on which memoirs published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions and Transactions of the Odonto- 

 logical Society were based. The gift thus made is to 

 be known as th<» Tomes Collection, and will be acces- 

 sible to all who are making a study of the comparative 

 anatomy and microscopical structure of the teeth of 

 vertebrate animals. 



NO. 2644, VOL. 105] 



Among the worked flints collected from the ploughed 

 fields of Norfolk and Suffolk Miss Nina F. Layard 

 has lately observed several with well-defined finger- 

 grips, which she describes in the latest part of the 

 Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 

 (vol. xvii., part i.). The implements are beautifully 

 illustrated by photographs, showing how they are 

 adapted by chipping for holding in the hand. They 

 include both scrapers and borers, and one seems to be 

 suitable for cutting hides. The age of the implements 

 is undetermined, and Miss Layard compares them 

 with certain scrapers obtained by the late Dr. Sturge 

 from Luxor, Egypt. She also points out that the 

 North Alaskan Eskimos at the present day carve 

 finger-grips in the wooden or bone handles in which 

 they fix their stone scrapers. 



The problem how to make philology interesting has 

 been solved by Sir George Grierson in two papers on 

 the Indo-Aryan vernaculars reprinted from the Bui- 

 letin of the School of Oriental Studies. The Aryan 

 languages cover, roughly siseaking, the whole of the 

 northern plain of India, penetrating in the case of the 

 Pahdri dialects into the lower ranges of the Hima- 

 layas, while closely related to them is another group 

 of tongues in the mountainous country lying south of 

 the Hindu-Kush, which are here styled the Dardic or 

 modern Pisdcha languages. The most important result 

 of the Philological Survey is that the Indo-Aryan 

 vernaculars fall into three groups : the midland, 

 occupying the centre of the great northern plain ; the 

 outer in a band on the west, south, and east ; while 

 between these lies the intermediate group representing 

 the former shading into the latter. These groups of 

 tongues are obviously the result of successive inva- 

 sions or the peaceful intioduction of foreign cultures. 

 The pressing problem at present is how to combine 

 the philological with the ethnological evidence, and 

 Sir G. Grierson 's papers are a valuable contribution 

 to the solution of it. 



Mr. W. E. Heitland published in the Journal of 

 Roman Studies (vol. viii., part i.) an elaborate, fully- 

 documented article on the conditions of agriculture in 

 Italy in Imperial times. He specially deals with the 

 question whether Italy furnished a large number of 

 farmer emigrants to raise and maintain provincial 

 agriculture. He finds that the evidence does not 

 favour such an emigration. One of the most pressing 

 anxieties of the Emp>erors was to maintain a corn 

 supply from Egypt and other African regions. But 

 for the development of this industry native African 

 farmers would be best qualified. Therefore, while we 

 are entitled to assume that the Emperors were anxious 

 to protect their coloni from the oppression of dealers 

 with the connivance of corrupt officials, we ought not 

 to base far-reaching theories of State-assisted emigra- 

 tion on the occurrence of a few Italian names in 

 provincial inscriptions, the authors of which may not 

 have been themselves coloni. 



Influenza was persistent this year in London for 

 seventeen weeks from February 7 to May 29, the 

 deaths from the disease, according to the returns of 

 the Registrar-General, numbering 20 or more each 

 week. For the previous fifteen weeks, from 



