434 



NA TURE 



(JuiNE 9, 1910 



people. This agrees with the experience of other 

 travellers. 



The English expedition has now discovered a pyginy 

 population in Netherlands New Guinea, which pre- 

 sumably is aUied to that inhabiting German New 

 Guinea, and, judging from their stature, which is all 

 we have to go upon, we may regard them as being 

 very little, if at all, mixed with a Papuan element . 

 From the descriptions and illustrations given of t 

 pygmies from German New Guinea, there is little 

 doubt that they are Negritos or Negritos crossed with 

 Papuans, and doubtless the same will be found to be 

 the case for those from Netherlands New Guinea. 



Several travellers, such as Guppy and Ribbe, report 

 the occurrence of very short people in the interior of 

 the larger islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and 

 of the Solomon Islands ; but there is no 

 evidence of a Negrito race still existing there 

 as such, though the very short statures poin 

 to a Negrito mixture. This conclusion is 

 strengthened by the recent investigations of Dr. R. 

 Thurnwald {Zcitschr. filr EthnoL). He refers to very 

 small people in the mountainous interior of Bougain- 

 ville, and he measured (p. 109) one man from Mari 

 mountain with a stature of i'39 m. (4 feet 65 inches). 

 These people speak a non-Melanesian language. He 

 informs us that "In the people nowadays met with 

 in these mountains we have before us, however, no 

 unmixed race, but, besides representatives of a small, 

 short-legged, broad-faced, short-skulled, more hairy, 

 wide-nosed people, we encounter types recalling the 

 Solomon Islanders. . . . Whether thfs mountain type 

 is really dwarfish, as the legend goes, must remam 

 undecided." Rascher states that the existence of 

 dwarfs is commonly believed in New Britain. They 

 are reported to live in clefts in the rocks and steal 

 fruit from the gardens. They are so tiny that one 

 stands on the shoulders of another, and so on, until 

 thev reach the fruit. The fruit is not thrown down, 

 lest a noise would be made, but passed from hand to 

 hand, until it reaches the chief, who is on the ground. 



A. C. Haddon. 



NOTES. 



The annual visitation of the Royal Observatory, Green- 

 wich, will be held on Saturday, June 18. 



At the request of the Association of American Agri- 

 cultural and Experiment Stations, Prof. J. C. Ewart, 

 F.R.S., of Edinburgh, will give a course of lectures on 

 the principles of breeding, at Ames, Iowa, in July. 



M. Darboux, permanent secretary of the Paris Academy 

 of Sciences, has been elected president of the Soci6t^ de 

 secours des Amis des Sciences, and M. Picard, president 

 of the academy, has been elected vice-president of the 

 society. 



With the view of collecting material for the life of the 

 late Prof. Alexander Agassiz, we are asked to state that 

 •anyone having any of his letters will confer a favour by 

 sending them to his son, Mr. G. R. Agassiz, Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. The 

 letters will be copied if desired, and the originals returned 

 to the owner as soon as possible. If any persons are un- 

 willing to part with the original letters, Mr. Agassiz would 

 be glad if they would have copies made at his expense and 

 send them to him at their convenience. 



To-DAY, at the University of Halle, the sixtieth birthday 

 of Prof. W. Roux, the founder of the modern science of ex- 

 perimental embryology, is being celebrated. His numerous 

 pupils and other admirers are expressing their appreciation 

 of the magnificent work which he has accomplished for 



NO. 2 I 19, VOL. 83] 



biological science in the manner customary in German 

 universities, by the publication of a " Festschrift " and the 

 presentation of an address. We do not doubt that we are 

 expressing the feelings of all British biologists in offering 

 to Prof. Roux our heartiest congratulations on this occasion, 

 and in hoping that he will long continue to illuminate the 

 study of animal development by his brilliant investigations. 



A SEV'ERE earthquake occurred in the province of Avellii. 

 east of Naples, at 3.5 a.m. on June 7. The disturban 

 caused considerable damage in Caiitri — about fifty milc,-» 

 east of the town of Avellino — and Calabritto, another small 

 mountain town. The shock was felt also in Naples, 

 Benevento, and other places in southern Italy. 



Dr. David Starr Jordan, the president of Leland 

 Stanford Junior University, California, will leave at the 

 end of the academic year for Europe, where he will spend 

 his first vacation for a quarter of a century. He expects 

 to devote some of his time to the two-fold " holiday task " 

 of promoting a zoological congress and assisting the peao 

 movement. 



America has lost a veteran science teacher by the death, 

 in his seventy-fifth year, of Dr. G. F. Barker, who was 

 professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania 

 from 1872 to 1900. He was appointed U.S. commissioner 

 to the Electrical Exhibitions held at Paris in 1881 and at 

 Philadelphia in 1884, and was a member of the jury on 

 awards at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. In 1879 he 

 was president of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. Prof. Barker was the first person to 

 exhibit radium in .'\merica. The death is also announced 

 of Dr. Franklin Clement Robinson, who had held the 

 chair of chemistry at Bowdoin College, Maine, since 1874. 

 He was president of the American Public Health Associa- 

 tion in 1906. He was a frequent contributor to the 

 American Chemical Journal, and had written text-books 

 on the metals and qualitative analysis. 



During the evening of June 2 Mr. C. S. Rolls travelled 

 with a biplane from Dover to Sangatte, and, after circling 

 over the semaphore station there, he returned to Dover, 

 thus making the first double journey across the English 

 Channel. The whole journey occupied 90 minutes, and 

 was made at an average height of 800 feet. The Army 

 experimental airship Beta made a successful flight from the 

 balloon works at Farnborough to London and back during 

 the night following June 3. On the journey to London 

 the Beta travelled against a light wind from the north- 

 east, and made a speed of 26 miles an hour. The greatest 

 height attained during the flight was 1800 feet, and the 

 mean altitude about 1000 feet. The engines of the air- 

 ship are of 35 horse-power. The journey back from South- 

 wark to Farnborough occupied ih. 28m. 



A BUST of Pasteur was unveiled in the garden of the 

 Ecole Normale Sup^rieure, Paris, on June 5. The Morn-' 

 ing Post Paris correspondent reports that M. Lavisse, ■ 

 the French Academy, made a speech in the name of th 

 Normal School. He recalled the fact that Pasteur spen 

 thirty-seven years in the famous college, and that his firs' 

 laboratory consisted of two garrets in its buildings, 

 spoke of Pasteur's relentless warfare against the forc 

 of nature hostile to man ; it was only after five yea 

 study that he discovered the remedy for rabies. Above 

 things he was an indefatigable worker. " He called 

 interval of night ' hours of waiting,' which always seer 

 to him slow to pass." His method was based on two prin 

 ciples : first, on curiosity ; secondly, on the determinatiW 

 to discover. M. Lavisse dwelt on Pasteur's faith in sciei^ 

 and the fascination of mystery to his mind. 



-A. 



