H 



NATURE 



[March i, 191 7 



them during the preceding month; (d) scrap or swarf 

 produced by them. No return, however, is required 

 from any person whose total stock of aluminium in 

 hand, and on order for future delivery to him, has not 

 at any time during the preceding month exceeded 

 56 lb.' The variety of uses in which aluminium now 

 finds application is shown by the fact that for the 

 purpose of the order the expression includes ingots, 

 notched bars, slabs, billets, bars, rods, tubes, wire, 

 strand, cable, plates, sheets, circles, and strip. The Air 

 Service claims in one way or pnother at the present 

 time the bulk of the aluminium production. It is in- 

 teresting to note, as a temporary phase of the dist^urb- 

 iinces caused by the war, that a number of aluminium 

 transmission lines were taken down in the latter part 

 of 19 15 and replaced by copper. 



Mr. G. F. Hill contributes to vol. xxxvi., part ii., 

 of the Journal of the Hellenic Society, 1916, 

 i\n elaborate paper on Apollo and St. Michael. 

 He finds a parallelism between them, as destroyers of 

 an evil principle, as light controlling darkness, as the 

 controlling agency of plague. Incidentally, he pro- 

 tests against the common view that the worship of 

 saints is always a mere relic of paganism. There is 

 no doubt that the medieval or modern worship is 

 often engrafted on an old pagan stock, and the choice 

 of the stock may have been assisted by some likeness 

 of name or other association. " But the fact that we 

 must not lose sight of is that, even had the pagan 

 worship never existed, medieval Christianity was per- 

 fectly capable of inventing its own cults and legends." 



The Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research 

 Society is doing excellent work in examining the 

 manners, and customs of the forest tribes of the 

 province. In vol. ii., part iii., the Santals, with their 

 peculiar marriage customs, receive special attention. 

 Among them, according to the Rev. P. O. Bodding, 

 *■ the original, and even now theoretically accepted, idea 

 of woman seems to be that she is a kind of irresponsible 

 and untrustworthy being, a necessary and useful, but 

 somewhat inferior, member of human society." The 

 Birhors, according to Mr. Sarat Chandra Roy, have 

 an elaborate totemistic system, one peculiar feature of 

 which is the belief in the magical power of certain 

 •clans over wind and rain. But the tribe is not at the 

 present day organised, like the Arunta, as a co- 

 operative supply association, composed of grouos of 

 magicians, each group charged with the management 

 of particular departments of Nature. Birhor totemism 

 Tias little influence on the growth of their religion, but 

 its most noteworthv feature appears to be the belief 

 in the vital connection between the human clan, their 

 totem, the hill which is reputea to have been their 

 original home, and the presiding spirit of this hill. 



The Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology 

 for February (vol. x., No. 4) contains two lengthy 

 papers on intestinal protozoa. The first, by Messrs. 

 Malins Smith and Matthews, deals with these organ- 

 Isms in 250 non-dysenteric cases, of whom twenty 

 were found to be carriers of the dysenteric amoeba. 

 The second, by the same observers, together with 

 Mr. H. F. Carter and Dr. Doris Mackinnon, discusses 

 the protozoal findings in 010 cases of dysentery 

 examined at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medi- 

 cine, of whom 410 were found to have protozoal infec- 

 tions. Of these, ninety-four were infected with the 

 dysentery amcEba, 231 with the non-pathogenic Ent- 

 amoeba coli, and 207 with other protozoa. In some 

 of the cases double and triple infections existed. 



Mr. E. E. Lowe, the hon. secretary of the Museums 

 .Association, has for some tinae past been endeavour- 

 ing to induce glass manufacturers in this country to 

 NO. 2470, VOL. 99] 



take up the production of rectangular glass jars, such 

 as are used in museums and other scientific institu- 

 tions, since these have hitherto been made in Ger- 

 many_. I'he results of his labours in this good cause, 

 which have been by no means light, he gives in the 

 Museums Journal for February. Messrs. Baird and 

 Tatlock alone have responded to the invitation to 

 supply our needs in this direction. This they have 

 been induced to do as the resu't of undertakings 

 secured by Mr. Lowe from institutions in this country, 

 India, and America. France, South Africa, and Aus- 

 tralia will also, it seems, be glad to turn to this 

 country fqr their needs in this regard, so that the 

 demand for jars of this description should justify the 

 initial outlay in the matter of making the moulds, the 

 high cost of which has served as a deterrent with 

 other manufacturers. To save this trade from falling 

 again into the hands of the Germans it is to be hoped 

 that all institutions using these jars will, as soon as 

 possible, place orders with Messrs. Baird and Tatlock 

 to encourage them in their venture. 



In a pamphlet entitled "The High Price of Sugar 

 and How to Reduce It" (London: Bale, Sons and 

 Danielsson, Ltd. ; is. net) Mr. Hamel Smith, editor 

 of Tropical Life, directs attention to one of the results 

 of our failure to think out and put into operation 

 in normal times an Imperial scheme for providing 

 necessary supplies of food. There was perhaps 

 some excuse for our failure to encourage the 

 production of corn and meat in this country, 

 but there was none for our neglect to stimulate 

 the production of such materials as sugar in our ■ 

 tropical possessions before the war. The fact of our f 

 dependence on foreign countries for sugar was noto- 

 rious long before the war, j'et practically nothing was 

 done, nor apparently is anything of great importance 

 being now done, to alter this state of things. Almost 

 everywhere throughout the Empire where su^ar is ' 

 grown the yields are low, the chief causes being failure • 

 to grow the best canes available, neglect of intensive 

 cultivation, and adherence to obsolete methods of 

 manufacture. Perhaps the most notorious case is that 

 of India, which, with 2,500,000 acres under sugar- 

 cane, is able to produce only 2,600,000 tons of inferior 

 cane-sugar, an average production of about one ton 

 per acre, against a oroduction of about four tons per 

 acre in Java and nine tons per acre in Hawaii. Mr. 

 Smith's proposals briefly are that the improvement of 

 cane cultivation and of sugar-cane manufacture should 

 receive immediate attention from the Imperial, Colo- 

 nial, and Indian Governments, and he shows that we 

 could without difficulty produce within the Empire all 

 the sugar we require and have a considerable surplus 

 for export. 



In a paper published by the Commonwealth Bureau 

 of Meteorology (Bulletin No. 14) Dr. Griffith Taylor 

 makes a contribution on somewhat novel lines to the 

 much-debated question of acclimatisation. The paper, 

 which is entitled "The Control of Settlement by 

 Humidity and Temperature," discusses the limits of 

 comfortable settlement for the white races. This, Dr. 

 Taj'lor maintains, is decided mainly by the humidity 

 and wet-bulb temperature. Other elements are rain- 

 fall and wind velocity, but as the present in- 

 vestigation ■ deals with colonisation from the 

 point of view of comfort rather than from 

 that of wealth, the influence of rainfall has 

 been omitted. Dr. Taylor has drawn a graph with 

 the twelve monthly means of wet-bulb temperatures 

 and relative humidity at a given place plotted as 

 a twelve-sided polygon, with wet-bulb ordinates and 

 humidity abscissae. This he terms a climograph. In 

 height and area the climograph shows the range of 



