Junes, 1919] 



NATURE 



269 



lies. The Air Ministry states that it will be glad to 

 eive criticisms and remarks. 



Dr. Charles Goring, late Medical Officer to Man- 

 hester Prison, whose recent death after a short illness 

 • prived the Prison Medical Service of one of its 

 lest members, had a brilliant career as a student 

 -;: University College, London, and from his early 

 years showed a strong bent towards scientific re- 

 search. This tendency led him to the study of medi- 

 cine, and his special interest in psychology and 

 general anthropology found an ample field of work 

 when he was appointed to the staff of Broadmoor 

 Criminal Lunatic Asylum, and later to the Prison 

 Medical Service. During several years Dr. Goring con- 

 tributed a vast number of observations to an inquiry 

 which had been undertaken at several prisons con- 

 cerning certain doctrines as to the relation of crime 

 to physical and mental peculiarities, and he readily 

 undertook the great labour entrusted to him of 

 i tabulating the whole of the observations made and 

 ! of writing the report. This report was published by 

 ' the Government under the title "The English Con- 

 vict : A Statistical Study," and has attracted wide 

 attention, both here and in other countries, among 

 tho<;e interested in the study of crime and criminals. 

 It is impossible in this necessarily short notice to 

 enter into further criticism of the method of research 

 followed by Dr. Goring and of the conclusions arrived 

 at by him than that made in Nature for March 26, 

 T014 (vol. xciii., p. 86), soon after the publication of 

 this work. It must suffice to say that the nature 

 \ and arrangement of the material and the inferences 

 ; drawn therefrom follow closely on the lines of the bio- 

 I metrical school, and that the validity of the conclusions 

 \ depends on the full acceptance of the applicability of 

 [ the method to the material. Dr. Mercier's recent book 

 j on "Crime and Criminals" shows that much can 

 \ be said on this subject from a point of view which 

 differs widely in manv respects from that set 

 forth in "The Statistical Study of the English Con- 

 vict " ; but, looked at from any point of view, this work 

 will remain as a monument to Dr. Goring's untiring 

 industrv, his single-minded enthusiasm for scientific 

 research, and his unquestionably great ability. 



Under the title of "The Dendroglyphs, or Carved 

 Trees of New South Wales," Mr. R. Etheridge has 

 published a memoir, issued by the Department of 

 Mines (Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New 

 , South Wales, Ethnological Series, No. 3). The 

 ' records of these trees begin with a note by Surveyor- 

 General J. Oxley in 18 17, and since that time many 

 specimens have been discovered. They seem to fail 

 into two groups — those which adjoin native graves, 

 and may be considered memorials of the dead or of 

 some important tribal event; and those carved with 

 symbols, apparently in connection with the Bora, 

 ' man-making " or puberty rites. They do not appear 

 to be associated with tree-worship or with any regular 

 cult of the dead. Some of the designs may be of a 

 totemic nature, and they have been compared with 

 those engraved on the inside of skin-cloaks worn by 

 the aborigines. As to the date of these memorials, all 

 that seems clear is that the glyphs were made after 

 the natives became possessed of metal tools. Very 

 little is known of the class of records associated with 

 the Bora rites, but some of the designs seem to be 

 totemistic. An attempt is made, without much suc- 

 cess, to compare the designs used by Dravidian tribes 

 in southern India, with whom the .Australians are 

 supposed to be raciallv connected. The memoir is 

 interesting and well illustrated, and raises many 

 questions in connection with the beliefs and cere- 

 monies of the natives of .Australia. 



NO. 2588, VOL.. 103] 



Dr. a. Gallardo continues his extensive memoir 

 on the ants of the Argentine with a monograph on 

 the Ponerinse (Ann. Mus. Nac. Hist. Nat. Buenos 

 Aires, vol. x.xx., 1918). To the thirty species com. 

 prised in this section he devotes more than a hundred 

 pages of careful description with clear structural 

 figures. 



The greater portion of part 5, vol. xv., of the 

 Records of the Indian Museum is occupied by the 

 second instalment of Mr. E. Brunetti's "Revision of 

 the Oriental Tipulidae." Nearly six hundred species of 

 these insects (the crane-fli^s or "daddy-long-legs") are 

 now known from India and south-eastern Asia, so 

 that the field of study is extensive. Mr. Brunetti's 

 treatment is somewhat rigidly systematic. 



Mr. J. M. SwAiNE issues, as Bulletin 14 of the 

 Entomological Branch of the Canadian Department 

 of Agriculture, what may be regarded as a mono- 

 graph of the Canadian bark-beetles (Scolytidie), deal- 

 ing with structure, classification, habits, and methods 

 of control. A feature of this memoir is the beauty 

 of the illustrations, though some of the plates are 

 overcrowded with figures. 



We have received the first part (January, 1919) of 

 a "Treubia," a new publication issued from the famous 

 Botanical Garden of Buitenzorg, Java. It contains 

 five entomological papers by Dr. W. Roepke, of which 

 one on two new Javan species of Oligotoma is of 

 bionomic as well as of systematic importance, the 

 curious Embiidae— allies of the Termites— to which 

 these insects belong, being of exceptional interest. In 

 his other papers, on various beetles and wasps, the 

 author gives much welcome anatomical detail. 



Some interesting contributions to agricultural 

 zoology have lately been made by workers in India. 

 The report of the Imperial Entomologist (Mr. T. B. 

 Fletcher) for 19 17-18 contains descriptions, with ex- 

 cellent figures, of the larval stages of several beetles 

 and moths of economic importance. Dr. E. J. Butler 

 writes (Mem. Dept. Agric. India, Bot. Series, vol. x., 

 No. I, 19 19) on the rice worm {Tylenchus angustus), 

 and points out that this destructive eelworm can 

 migrate over apparently dry surfaces if the atmosphere 

 be saturated so as to cause the formation of a droplet 

 or film of moisture around the worm's body. This 

 fact accounts for the general immunity of the "boro" 

 or spring rice crop to the disease caused by the worm, 

 as the air is at its driest from Februarv to May. 

 A valuable paper on the Aphididae of Lahore by the 

 late Mr. Bachambar Das appears as No. 4 of vol. vi. 

 of the Memoirs of the Indian Museum. Forty species 

 are described, with critical systematic and bionomic 

 notes, illustrated with sixteen plates. The work 

 shows high entomological ability, and the early death 

 of the author, resulting from his devotion to students 

 attacked by cholera, has cut short a career of great 

 promise. 



Recent geological work in France and her colonies 

 is usefully reviewed by M. J. R^vil in the Revue 

 ginirale des Sciences (January 15 and 30, 1919). 



In Naturen for November, 1918, Hr. N. H. 

 Kolderup records the excursions of the first Scan- 

 dinavian Creological Congress in Denmark, and fur- 

 nishes a good map, after V. Nordmann, of the con- 

 cealed geology of the north of Jvlland (Jutland). The 

 strata range from Scnonian to Miocene. 



The great size of the boulders in the rubble-drift 

 of Brighton leads Mr. E. A. Martin to conclude 

 (Hastings and E. Sussex Naturalist, vol. iii., p. 64) 

 that some form of moving ice occupied the* local 



