October 29, 1903] 



NA TURE 



635 



works pumping engines. As a result of numerous tests it 

 might be roughly estimated that every ton of refuse burnt 

 generated about one ton of high pressure steam, and that 

 with the modern high temperature destructor cells the smell 

 and dust nuisances were practically banished. 



Liquid fuel was the subject of Mr. A. M. Bell's communi- 

 cation ; much information was given as to the various 

 sources of supply and also as to the best types of oil-burn- 

 ing apparatus, and the author quoted some striking figures 

 obtained in recent tests. In a test at Messrs. John Brown 

 and Co.'s works, ib.09 lb. of water were evaporated per 

 pound of Texan oil burnt, the boiler having an efficiency 

 of 84 per cent. ; of course a certain proportion, the author 

 sajs never more than 3 per cent., of the steam is needed 

 for spraying the oil ; with a Stirling boiler, which had an 

 evaporation at standard conditions of 10-55 lb. of water 

 per pound of Welsh coal burnt, the evaporation had been 

 increased to 1542 lb. per pound of Texan oil, when the 

 furnace was suitably modified for oil consumption. It was 

 pointed out in the discussion that still more economical 

 results could be obtained when this oil was used in internal 

 combustion engines. 



Dr. H. R. Mill gave the section some interesting data as 

 to the rate of fall of rain at Seathwaite, and pointed out 

 that in these west coast regions of heavy annual fall the 

 maximum rate of fall was nothing like so great as may 

 occur during heavy summer thunderstorms in drier parts 

 of the country, where it may equal at times 3 inches in 

 the hour. 



The last paper of the day was one by Mr. R. Pearson on 

 natural gas in Sussex, and it will astonish most persons to 

 learn what a large amount of gas is now obtained in this 

 district. At Heathfield some eighty houses are using it for 

 lighting and heating purposes, and gas engines utilising 

 it develop a horse-power on a consumption of about fifteen 

 cubic feet of the natural gas per hour. With the develop- 

 ment of the Kentish coal-fields and the Sussex gas and oil- 

 fields, both by no means improbable in the early future, 

 there is no doubt that the south-eastern corner of England 

 would undergo an industrial revolution ; much as one might 

 regret to see its lovely rural and pastoral character dis- 

 appear, everyone would welcome the advent of manufactur- 

 ing industry into this somewhat sleepy corner of the 

 kingdom. 



The section had, in consequence of its lengthy pro- 

 gramme, to sit on the morning of Wednesday, September 

 16, when a number of very interesting communications were 

 dealt with. Members of the staff of Messrs. Willans and 

 Robinson contributed two papers — Mr. C. H. Wingfield de- 

 scribed experiments on the permanent set in cast-iron as 

 bearing on the design of piston-ring springs, and Mr. Izod 

 a piece of apparatus for testing the brittleness of steel. 

 Both papers are the outcome of the constant experimental 

 research going on in the modern up-to-date engineering 

 workshop, and are a sufficient answer to the reproaches of 

 those who, knowing little or nothing of what they write 

 about, are constantly declaring that trade is leaving the 

 country owing to the apathy and stupid conservatism of 

 our manufacturers. Both communications should be care- 

 fully studied by those engaged in the study of the strength 

 of materials. 



Mr. W. Odell described some experiments he had carried 

 out to determine the power wasted by the windage of fly- 

 wheel and dynamo armatures, and he stated that a o-foot 

 disc running at 500 revolutions a minute would absorb 

 about 10 H.P. Mr. W. Cramp read a paper on single 

 phase repulsion motors, a matter of great practical import- 

 ance in electric tramway work ; he claimed that the problem 

 had been solved, and that a single phase alternating current 

 motor had been designed quite equal to a direct current 

 motor. 



ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 

 HTHE anthropological section met in the Town Hall, 

 •*• Southport, under the presidency of Prof. Johnson 

 Symington, F.R.S., of Queen's College, Belfast, and, as 

 usual, attracted large audiences. The programme was a 

 full one, and the principal communications were in the 

 department of Egyptian, Mediterranean, and British archae- 



NO. 1774, VOL. 68] 



ology, a fact which is partly attributable to the widespread 

 feeling — very clearly expressed by the President of the 

 Association in the course of one of the discussions — that the 

 human sciences, in the older and more academic sense, fall 

 properly within the scope of the Association's work, and 

 merit scientific recognition. 



Most important, perhaps, among these new accessions to 

 the section's programme was the group of papers on work 

 in Roman Britain, an area where a subject, which else- 

 where can be treated in the full light of written history, has 

 to be explored almost wholly by the methods of prehistoric 

 archaeology ; and the appointment, with a small grant, of 

 a committee of the Association " to cooperate with local 

 effort on Roman sites in Britain " cannot fail to strengthen 

 both the subject and the section at large. 



The president's address, which dealt with the relations 

 between brain and skull, and with the problems which 

 result, has been already printed in full (October i, p. 539), 

 and gave a broad and philosophic tone to the opening dis- 

 cussion ; but the subsequent papers on points of anthropo- 

 graphy dealt almost wholly with detailed work of a some- 

 what specialist kind. Dr. Wm. Wright's account of the 

 skulls from round barrows in east Yorkshire, now in the 

 Mortimer Museum at Driffield, led to the conclusion that 

 the old dictum enunciated by Thurnam — " round barrow, 

 round skull " — is not even approximately accurate for this 

 area, for the cephalic index ranges from 69 to 92, and 

 almost all the European varieties of cranial shape are re- 

 presented. A marked resemblance, however, was frequently 

 noted between the skulls from any one barrow. 



Mr. W. L. H. Duckworth's investigation of the physical 

 anthropology of Crete and Greece, though still incomplete, 

 has brought together a large mass of new material of many 

 periods for the reconsideration of the ethnology of the 

 yEgean area. The bones from the pre-Mycenaean ossuaries 

 of Palaeokastro, in eastern Crete, show a purely Mediter- 

 ranean type, which is shared by those from Mycenaean inter- 

 ments on the Greek mainland ; whereas even in Crete, and 

 universally on the mainland, the modern population betrays 

 by its brachycephaly a large admixture of Albanian, Venetic, 

 or Slav intruders. Eastern Crete, however, is more brachy- 

 cephalic now than the central districts, and this Mr. Duck- 

 worth is inclined to attribute to intrusions from Asia Minor. 

 A further grant made by the Association will, it is hoped, 

 enable Mr. Duckworth to continue this very promising 

 inquiry. 



Dr. E. J. Evatt's observations on the pad* and papillary 

 ridges on the palm of the hand showed that the foetal 

 disposition of these pads resembles that in the mouse and 

 some other lower animals, which is probably morpho- 

 logically equivalent. In the adult the pads are to be re- 

 garded as vestigial. The papillary ridges are produced by 

 the invasion of the corium by the underlying layer ; the 

 interlocking of the two probably serves to connect them 

 more strongly ; and the patterns are due to the stresses of 

 prehension acting on ridges which originally lay trans- 

 versely. 



Mr. N. Annandale, in describing a collection of skulls 

 from the Malay Peninsula, noted the great development of 

 the cerebellar part of the occiput, and a widespread 

 abnormality of growth of the third molar. 



The committees on a pigmentation survey of the school 

 children of Scotland, and on anthropometric investigations 

 among the native troops of the Egyptian Army, presented 

 interim reports of a formal character. In the latter case 

 the 17,000 measurements already taken cannot apparently 

 be worked up for publication without expert clerical assist- 

 ance, and it is much to be hoped either that this may be 

 provided without undue delay, or that the committee may 

 see its way to hand over its data to one or other of the 

 biometrical centres which have such assistance at their 

 disposal. 



The committee appointed to organise anthropometric re- 

 search presented a short but very useful report. A single 

 year's work has sufficed to collect and collate the experience 

 of practically all the centres at which anthropometric work 

 is being carried on, as to objects of research, methods, 

 instruments, schedules, and the like, and it is next pro- 

 posed to inquire under what conditions of rhaintenance and 

 administration a collection of anthropometric statistics 

 could be established as the nucleus of more systematic 

 investigations. The preface to the report, by Prof. Cleland, 



