524 



NA TURE 



[September 30, 1897 



locust scourge there have proved only partially successful, with 

 the exception of the plan of poisoning with arsenic, which, it is 

 asserted, has met with absolute and unqualified success. The 

 mixture used is prepared by heating four gallons of water to 

 boiling point, and then adding i lb. of caustic soda. As soon as 

 this is dissolved, i lb. of arsenic is added, after which the liquid 

 is well stirred and boiled for a few minutes, care being taken 

 that the fumes are not inhaled. When required for use, half a 

 gallon of the liquid is added to four gallons of hot or cold water, 

 with 10 lb. of brown sugar. A still better preparation is made 

 by adding half a gallon of the poisonous liquid to five gallons 

 of treacle. Maize-stalks, grass, &c., dipped in the mixture, are 

 placed along the roads and in the fields, and the material can 

 also be splashed with a brush upon anything which the locusts 

 are known to have a liking for. Attracted by the odour of the 

 sugar or treacle over a distance of as much as lOO yards, the 

 locusts will eat of the mixture and die. These are eaten by 

 other locusts, and in a few days' time the ground may become 

 strewn with the dead bodies of the insects. With ordinary care no 

 risk of poisoning any human being is incurred, whilst the small 

 quantity of the material on a piece of grass or maize-stalk is said 

 to be insufficient to injure stock of any kind— fowls have been 

 known to feed without injury on the arsenic-destroyed locusts. 

 The evidence adduced indicates that "hoppers," however 

 numerous, can be destroyed in a few days, and the crops thus 

 saved from their ravages. 



Petermann^ s Mittheihingen promises accounts of much im- 

 portant geographical work recently done in Asia. M. de 

 Dechy has explored some interesting and little-known districts 

 of the Caucasus. Dr. Sven Iledin is to publish (in the Mit- 

 theihingen) a series of articles on the Mustagh-ata, the Deserts 

 of Eastern Turkestan, the Lob-Nor problem, and on Northern 

 Tibet. The Hungarian geologist, Dr. Eugen von Cholnoky, 

 has made some progress with an investigation of the hydrography 

 of the great plain of China. 



SiGNOR Francesco Chinigo contributes, to the BoUetlino 

 delta Societa Geograjica Italiana, a note on the salt deposits of 

 Lungro, on the slope of the Calabrian Apennines. The de- 

 posits have been worked to a depth of 220 metres, and probably 

 extend to a much greater distance below the surface. Analyses 

 show a composition of 977 per cent, of sodium chloride, the 

 principal other constituent being sodium sulphate. The output 

 is at present much restricted, chiefly on account of deficient 

 railway communication, but there is no real obstacle to prevent 

 these deposits supplying the whole of Italy with salt of the 

 highest quality. 



The Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde zii Berlin con- 

 tains a short summary, by Dr. Carl Sapper, of available in- 

 formation about the first campaigns of the Spaniards in Northern 

 Central America. The material at hand is in many respects un- 

 promising, many accounts are directly contradictory, and there 

 are traces of much priestly interference with the documents ; 

 but a good deal can, nevertheless, be made out with fair chances 

 of accuracy. Dr. Sapper shows on a sketch map the courses of 

 Francisco Hernandez (1517), of Juan de Grijalva (1518), and of 

 Ferdinand Cortes (1519) by sea, and the land routes of 

 Ferdinand Cortes (1524-25), of Pedro de Alvarado (1524), of 

 Luis Marin (1523?), and of Adelantado Francisco de Montejo 

 <i526-27); and shows hypothetical boundaries of the great 

 kingdoms of Mayapan and Quiche, which fortunately for the 

 Spaniards came to an end before their day. 



Attention has been drawn by Dr. G. A. Dorsey {American 



Anthropologist, x. p. 169) to the frequency of Wormian bones 



in the coronal suture in artificially deformed skulls of the 



Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island. He explains their 



NO. 1457, VOL. 56] 



occurrence by bandaging in early life, and he finds that the 

 percentage of frequency becomes the greater as we ascend 

 the scale of length of the cranium due to artificial elongation, 

 and just in direct proportion to a deep well-defined groove 

 behind the coronal suture. The long bones of the Kwakiutl 

 and Salish Indians of British Columbia have also been studied 

 by Dr. G. A. Dorsey in the same journal. The radio-humeral 

 index is 75*5 ; the lengthening may be due to intermixture with 

 Indians of the east or south. The tibio-femoral index is 79*1, 

 the intermembral index is 707, and the femero-humeral index 

 is 72*8. These indices approach very closely, and indeed often 

 equal, those which have been determined for the Eskimos, the 

 Samoyeds, and the Lapps. 



Attention has previously been drawn (Nature, vol. liv. 

 p, 404) to the good work in Indian anthropology that is being 

 done by Mr. Edgar Thurston, the superintendent of the Madras 

 Government Museurn. The second volume of the Museum 

 Bulletin opens with an account of the Badagas and Irulas of 

 the Nilgiris, the Paniyans of Malabar and the Kuruba or 

 Kurumba ; there are numerous tables of measurements, and 

 seventeen plates. The Paniyans are a dark-skinned tribe short 

 in stature (1574 mm., 5 ft. 2 in.), dolichocephalic (74), with 

 broad noses (min. 837, max. io8'6, av. 95'i), and curly hair. 

 The common belief that they are of African origin is erroneous. 

 They are wholly uneducated, and do not associate with other 

 tribes. A short account is given of the customs and manner of 

 living of this primitive Dravidian tribe. The other tribes men- 

 tioned by the author also exhibit Dravidian characters to a 

 greater or less extent. In the interesting summary which closes 

 this small but valuable memoir the author draws attention to 

 the rapid modification of the natives through contact with the 

 European, and to the need for immediate ethnographical inves- 

 tigations before it is too late. He says : " I was lately shocked 

 by seeing a Toda boy studying for the third standard in Tamil, 

 instead of tending the buffaloes of his mand. The Todas, 

 whose natural drink is milk, now delight in bottled beer and a 

 mixture of port wine and gin. Tiles and kerosine tins are em- 

 ployed instead of the primitive thatch. A Bengali babu, with 

 close-cropped hair and bare head, clad in patent-leather boots, 

 white socks, dhuti, and conspicuous unstarched shirt of English 

 device ; a Hindu or Parsi cricket eleven engaged against a 

 European team ; the increasing struggle for small-paid appoint- 

 ments under Government — these are a few examples of changes 

 resulting from the refinement of modern civilisation." 



The first part of a Report by M. Ch. Rabot (International 

 Commission on Glaciers) on the variation in the length of 

 glaciers in the Arctic regions, has been published in the Arch. 

 Sci. Fhys. et Nat. , Geneva. All available evidence is here col- 

 lected from many scattered sources, and though the evidence is 

 admittedly imperfect, it enables some interesting conclusions to 

 be drawn. There is no sign of a general retreat corresponding 

 to that of the Alpine glaciers after 1850. In Greenland the ice 

 seems to be stationary at a-maximum now. In Iceland, the 

 eighteenth century was marked by a general increase, interrupted 

 by a partial decrease, only to be followed by a very extensive 

 advance which has lasted through most of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. A slight retreat began in the north of the island about 

 1855-60, and twenty years later in the south ; but this is not 

 comparable with the marked retreat in the Alps. Grinnel Land 

 and Jan Mayen are also dealt with in this instalment of a 

 valuable report. 



The double number of Speliinca, which completes the third 

 volume, maintains the high standard of its predecessors. 

 Among other articles are one on the Kentucky Mammoth Cave, 

 and one on the caves of County Leitrim. 



