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NATURE 



[July 29, 1920 



The autumn meeting of the Iron and Steel Insti- 

 tute will be held at Cardiff on September 2 1-24, under 

 the presidency of Dr. J. E. Stead. An influential 

 reception committee, of which the Right Hon. the 

 Earl of Plymouth has consented to act as chairman, 

 Mr. E. Steer, vice-president of the South Wales Insti- 

 tute of Engineers, as deputy chairman, and Mr. D. E. 

 Roberts as honorary secretary, has been formed to 

 carry out the necessary arrangements. 



Soon after the signing of the armistice in 1918 the 

 United States Government sent a Commission to 

 France to investigate the war developments in mining 

 and metallurgy and to observe the methods taken to 

 re-establish the collieries and steel works destroyed 

 by the enemy. Mr. G. S. Rice, chief mining engineer 

 of the Bureau of Mines, was a member of this Com- 

 mission, and a valuable account of his observations 

 was communicated to the Franklin Institute last 

 December, and is published in the June issue of the 

 Journal of the institute. The descriptions of the 

 mines and the methods adopted in working them are 

 confined mainly to the Pas-de-Calais district, and 

 many views of the destroyed surface works are given. 

 The author is of opinion that the most satisfactory 

 way of reconstructing the mines is to cut up and 

 remove the tangled ironwork at the top of the shafts, 

 which are almost all badly cratered by explosives, 

 and to reline the shafts themselves at those points 

 where they pass through water-bearing strata and 

 where they had in consequence been blasted by the 

 enemy in order to drown the mines. He believes 

 this method will be less costly than sinking new 

 shafts. He has every confidence in the ability of the 

 French engineers to deal successfully with the 

 problem. 



In his report submitted to the joint session of the 

 Oriental Societies at Paris Sir George Grierson 

 describes the progress which has been made in the 

 Linguistic Survey of India. What may be called the 

 Cadastral Survey of these languages is now com- 

 plete except for the Deccan and for Burma, of which 

 a separate survey is in contemplation. The work so 

 far done includes 179 languages and 544 dialects. 

 The account of the so-called gipsy languages, many 

 of which are secret dialects, is ready for the press. 

 That dealing with the Eranian languages contains 

 much interesting matter, particularly the account of 

 Ormuri, a tongue with Dardic affinities, spoken by 

 a small tribe settled in the heart of the Afghan 

 country. At present Sir George Grierson is engaged 

 upon a comparative vocabulary, representing 168 

 words — numerals, pronouns, common nouns, and 

 declensional and conjugational forms — giving all the 

 equivalents in all languages which have been studied 

 in the course of the Survey, with a few words in 

 some non-Indian languages, such as Japanese, 

 Chinese, Manchu, Turki, Arabic, Avesta, and Per- 

 sian. As a supplement to the Survey a number of 

 gramophone records illustrating the pronunciation of 

 various Indian languages is in course of preparation, 

 and these are being distributed to institutions where 

 they will be available for students. The progress 

 made in this great work is thus most important. 

 NO. 2648, VOL. 105] 



An interesting series of lectures was delivered 

 recently at the London School of Economics and 

 Political Science by Dr. B. Malinowsky, a young Polish 

 anthropologist, who, as a member of the Robert 

 Mond Ethnographic Expedition, spent a considerable 

 time among the people of eastern New Guinea, in 

 particular in the Trobriand Archipelago. Dr. Mali- 

 nowsky 's investigations throw fresh and welcome 

 light on primitive economics. Trade is organised by 

 the influence of the chief, associated with a magician 

 in charge of each department of communal activity. 

 "Primitive economics, as exemplified by the Tro- 

 brianders, present a picture different from, and more 

 complex than, that usually assumed. National economy, 

 as a system of free exchange based on untrammelled 

 competition, where value is determined by the play of 

 supply and demand, does not exist. But a system of 

 production, exchange, and consumption does exist, 

 socially organised and subject to definite customary 

 rules. In addition to activities connected with the 

 quest for food, there are many others, such as circular 

 trading and ceremonial 'enterprise, in which the 

 natives perform organised work, controlled by their 

 conceptions of wealth and value, and therefore dis- 

 tinctly economic. In all these activities there is an 

 interplay of chieftainship, kinship, and social organisa- 

 tion. Ceremonial life, magic, myth, and tribal law 

 control and are controlled by economic elements." 

 Anthropologists will await with interest a full account 

 of this remarkable economic and social organisation. 

 Part of the evidence is surnmarised in a paper by Dr. 

 Malinowsky, " Kula : The Circulating Exchange of 

 Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern New 

 Guinea," published in the July issue of Man. 



Whilst the Crocker Land Expedition explored to 

 the north-west of Greenland, the Canadian Arctic 

 Expedition of 1913-^18 investigated the district lying 

 east and west of the Mackenzie River. The mollusca 

 the Canadians brought back have now been studied 

 and described by Dr. W. H. Dall (Report Canad. 

 Arctic Exped., 1913-18, vol. viii., part A, 1919, pp. 29, 

 3 plates). This collection is of special interest, 

 because, save for a partial exploration about 1863 by 

 Mr. R. Macfarlane, of the Hudson Bay Co., the 

 fauna to the eastward of the Mackenzie River delta 

 has remained entirely unknown. It was thought that 

 probably the great outpour of fresh water from the 

 river might have proved a barrier to the passage of 

 marine species from the western Arctic Ocean, and 

 that the eastward fauna would show a considerable 

 infusion of Greenlandic forms. The result of the 

 study of the collection proved otherwise, for of the 

 hundred Arctic species collected over the whole area 

 in question — a collection, therefore, far richer in 

 numbers than that of the Crockford Expedition (see 

 Nature for July 8, p. 593) — only five were characteris- 

 tically Eastern Arctic. Apparently the narrow, tortuous, 

 ice-blocked passages which lead to the Greenland seas 

 are accountable for the failure of the Eastern Arctic 

 mollusca to colonise in the Bathurst region, while 

 the open sea to the west readily gives access to the 

 Western Arctic forms. Only six new marine species 

 are established, and these are fully described and 



