May 26, 1910] 



NATURE 



38r 



t:oIonnade of concave plan backed by a wall parallel to it. 

 ^t either end of this are square open halls decorated 

 internally with coloured marbles, and supporting quadriga 

 groups. Among the many works of sculpture by Italian 

 artists is a fine series of statues personifying the provinces 

 of Italy — Latium, Lombardy, \'enetia, and so forth. The 

 architect was Count Giuseppe Sacconi, who died in 1906 

 without having seen the completion of the monument. 



In the Cairo Scientific Journal for February Mr. Harold 

 Sheridan gives an account of that curious musical instru- 

 ment, the rabdba, which was introduced into Europe by 

 the Crusaders, and, with a slight modification of the 

 original name, is now known as the rebeck. It has 

 certainly been evolved from the one-stringed lyre of the 

 early monuments, the single string twanged with the 

 finger developing into the present double-stringed instru- 

 ment played with a rude bow and provided with a body. 

 Even in its present state it is a most primitive instrument, 

 made up in the rudest way out of a long iron nail, a 

 cocoa-nut. a few strands of horse-hair (that of the living 

 animal being most in request), a piece of fish-skin, and 

 sundry pieces of wood. The last are coarselv glued 

 together, and the body is made of half the cocoa-nut, over 

 which a piece of moist skin— that of the Nilotic fish known 

 as the bayad— is tied tightly until it dries. The tone is 

 regulated by incisions made in the body, those being most 

 numerous when the tone is intended to be loud, and this 

 is further regulated by moving the bridge. The rabdba 

 is thus of considerable interest as marking an early stage 

 in the evolution of the modern violin. 



A ME^fOIR issued in the Eugenics Laboratory Series 

 (Dulau and Co.), by Miss Ethel M. Elderton, assisted bv 

 Prof. Karl Pearson, discusses the influence of parental 

 alcoholism on the physique and ability of the offspring. 

 The memoir is based on two series of data, the one con- 

 tained in a report of the Edinburgh Charit>' Organisation 

 Society, the other in an unpublished report, bv Miss M. 

 Dendy. on the soecinl schools of Manchester, and relating 

 only to families in which one child was sufficiently defective 

 to be educated in such a school. \^ery little trace of any 

 unfavourable influence of the parental alcoholism is found. 

 The mean heights and weights of the children of sober 

 parents are, on an average, slightly greater than those of 

 tne children of alcoholic parents, age for age. but the 

 difference is extremely small, and the general health of 

 the children of intemperate parents aopears to be rather 

 the better of the two ; cases of tuberculosis and of epilepsv 

 are stated to be markedly less frequent than amongst the 

 children of sober parents. Xo marked relation of either 

 sign IS found between parental alcoholism and the intelli- 

 gence of the child. The data of the Edinburgh reoort as 

 regards the extent of parental alcoholism are rather re- 

 niarkable.^ A school of a "widely representative 

 character " was chosen for investigation, and the fathers 

 of more than half the children in this school, and the 

 mothers of more than one-third, are classed under the 

 headings "drinks" or "bouts." i.e. are Judged to be 

 drinking more than is good for them or their homes. 



•According to the report for iqog, the Field Museum at 

 Chicago extended its operations, and at the same time 

 largely increased its collections, by the dispatch of ex- 

 peditions to Tibet, the South Sea Islands, and the Philip- 

 pines, and smaller parties to Guatemala, New Guinea. 

 Fiji. &c.. while important collecrions have been acquired 

 by purchase from Egypt and New Guinea. To make room 

 for these, obsolete and unsatisfactory specimens have been 

 removed from the exhibition galleries, while economy of 

 NO. 2 II 7, VOL. 83"] 



space has been gained by re-arrangement of the store- 

 collections. Among striking additions to the public 

 galleries, special reference may be made to the Tonopah 

 meteorite from Nevada, weighing nearly two tons, to a 

 pair of African elephants mounted in striking attitudes, 

 and likewise to a line male gorilla. 



.■\fter mentioning his regular attendance, when Prince- 

 of Wales, at the meetings of the trustees at the Natural 

 History branch of the British Museum, the Field of 

 May 14 states that in the early 'nineties, when Sir William 

 Flower commenced to replace the old specimens in the 

 mammal galleries by well-selected examples of modem 

 taxidermy, the late King gave instructions that a series 

 of rats, rabbits, and hares should be trapped on the 

 Sandringham estate and forwarded to the museum, and 

 it is these by which the species are still represented in 

 the British saloon. To the late King the museum is also 

 indebted for the skull and the mounted heads of three 

 Spanish draught oxen, an Indian wild boar, and, in some 

 degree, the makhna (tuskless) male Indian elephant, Jung 

 Pershad. King Edward's last gift to the museum was the 

 skeleton of Persimmon. The only specimen in the birrf 

 gallery presented by his late Majesty, w^hen Prince of 

 Wales, is a fine Reeves's pheasant, shot in the Sandring- 

 ham coverts in 1890. It was, however, at the late King's 

 suggestion that Mr. Andrew Carnegie presented the model 

 of the skeleton of Diplodocus to the museum. 



In the May number of the .American Naturalist Dr. 

 W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum, Pitts- 

 burg, discusses the views recently expressed — particularly 

 those of Dr. Tornier — with regard to the proper position 

 and pose of the limbs of Diplodocus and other sauropod 

 dinosaurs. Early in his criticism the author takes occasion 

 to emphasise the marked distinctness of the Dinosauria 

 from all other reptiles, a circumstance which is of itself 

 in some degree sufficient to render it probable that their 

 limbs may have approximated to the mammalian type irr 

 regard to the relative position of their bones. Important 

 evidence in support of this is afforded by the compressed, 

 instead of depressed, form of the thoracic cavit>-, which 

 appears absolutely incompatible with limbs arranged after 

 the crocodilian fashion. It is also shown that if the femur 

 is placed, as Dr. Tornier suggests, in a horizontal plane, 

 its head cannot be made to enter the acetabular cavity of 

 the ilium, while, on account of projections, no movement 

 would be possible. Further, in this mode of restoration 

 the distal articular surfaces of both humerus and femur 

 would project at right angles to the axes of the bones of 

 the lower segment of the limbs without being opposed to 

 the corresponding articular surfaces of the latter, .\fter a 

 reference to the extraordinary position which would be 

 assumed in certain circumstances by the fore-limbs of 

 Diplodocus according to the new restoration. Dr. Hollancf 

 maintains that the form given to the limbs in the skeleton 

 in the Natural History Museum is in all essential features 

 correct. 



Eggs with two yolks occur not uncommonly, but eggs 

 with three yolks are exceptionally rare. Such an egg was 

 recently laid by a barred Plymouth rock pullet at the 

 Maine Experiment Station, and is described in some detail 

 in a Bulletin recently issued. The egg was somewhat above 

 the average size, but no other abnormal feature was 

 noticed. 



In past years, when sugar cultivation was the only 

 industry of importance in Barbados, it was customary to 

 issue annually a bulletin on sugar-cane experiments, but 

 now that the cotton industry- is developing so rapidly, it 



