March i6, 191 6] 



NATURE 



65 



Strait, as he thought, cutting off the northern part 

 from the rest of Greenland. That northern part, pre- 

 viously, in 1882, visited by Lockwood, of Greely's 

 expedition, was termed Peary Land, but the late 

 Mylius Ericksen, on that expedition when he lost his 

 life, discovered that the Independence Strait of Peary 

 is really a bay, and that Pean," Land is joined to 

 ■Greenland. The exploration of that region in relation 

 to former migration of Eskimo to the east of Green- 

 land promises important results. 



A SUMMARY of the weather for the winter season is 

 issued by the Meteorological Office with its Weekly 

 Weather Report, based on the results for the thirteen 

 weeks from November 28, 1915, to February 26, 1916. 

 The winter was wet in all parts of the United King- 

 dom, the greatest excess of rain occurring in the south- 

 east of England, where the fall was 187 per cent, of 

 the average. In the east of England the rainfall was 

 169 per cent, of the average, and in the Channel Isles 

 it was 160 per cent. The smallest difference from the 

 normal was 118 per cent, of the average in the west 

 of Scotland, and 119 per cent, in the south of Ireland. 

 The rainfall for the winter was greater in the north 

 and east of Scotland than in the winter of 1914-15, 

 elsewhere the rains were less, and in the south-east of 

 England the rainfall was 4-32 in. less. The frequency 

 of rain was everywhere greater than the average, the 

 greatest excess in the number of rain-days being 

 18 in the south of Ireland and 16 in the 

 south-east and south-west of England. Tempera- 

 ture for the period was in excess of the average over 

 the entire kingdom, the greatest excess occurring in 

 the east and south-east of England and in the midland 

 counties, the difference from the mean ranging from 

 3° to 4° F. in these districts. The duration of bright 

 sunshine was nowhere very different from the normal, 

 districts with an excess and defect being about equally 

 balanced. 



In the March number of Man Mr. Miller Christy 

 describes a strange stone object found in an interment 

 of the Bronze age in the parish of Newport, Essex. 

 It is fashioned from a block of rather coarse, reddish 

 sandstone, erratic boulders of which abound in the 

 neighbourhood. It is roughly cylindrical in shape, 

 with flat ends, but it was not intended to 

 be stood on end. The most remarkable feature 

 is that its sides are traversed longitudinally 

 by five shallow, narrow, round-bottomed, equi- 

 distant grooves, which divide in transverse section 

 into five approximately equal rounded lobes. At pre- 

 sent the object of this curious specimen is a puzzle. 

 it was not a pounder or muller. One authority sug- 

 gests that it was the head of a club lashed to a 

 handle; another, that it was used as a roller for 

 y braying" flax. Mr. Reginald Smith was struck by 

 its resemblance to an Eg}^ptian pillar, derived from the 

 bud of the lotus. If it is really a product of the 

 Bronze age, it is difficult to account for its transfer 

 from Egypt to Essex. The specimen is now in the 

 museum at Saffron Walden, and it may be hoped that 

 Mr. Christy's article will lead to a further examination 

 of this remarkable specimen, which may disclose the 

 object for which it was carved. 

 NO. 2420, VOL. 97] 



From the report of Mr. T. Southwell in the Journal 

 of Agriculture of Bihar and Orissa for 1915, which has' 

 just reached us, it is plain that the newly-formed 

 Fishery Department of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa has 

 a strenuous future before it, if a reign of plenty is to 

 replace the present shortage of fish. This state of 

 affairs is due to the lack of intelligent control, and is 

 all the more serious since rice and fish are the prin- 

 cipal food-stuffs of the population of these areas. But 

 the Government is taking up the task of reformation 

 with its hands tied, for the fishery rights belong to 

 zamindars, who take no interest in the matter, but 

 lease their fisheries for a nominal sum, the lessee re- 

 leases at a large profit, and this process goes on 

 through yet further stages, .\part from this, in the 

 Bengal area immense numbers of eggs and young fish 

 are washed by the floods into the paddy-fields and 

 destroyed, while a further extensive mortality is caused 

 by the ascent of brackish water. But Mr. Southwell seems 

 to hold out little hope of material improvement until 

 the staff of the newly-established Board is increased. 

 At present there are but three officers to control an 

 area "one and a half times larger than that of the 

 whole of the British Isles." 



The hereditary transmission of degeneracy and de- 

 formities by the descendants of alcoholised guinea-pigs 

 has formed the subject of a long series of experiments 

 by Profs. C. Stockard and G. Papinicolaou. They 

 contribute a ver\- welcome analysis of their results 

 so far obtained to the American Naturalist for Febru- 

 ary. Their experiments show that alcoholic fumes, 

 drawn directly into the lungs and absorbed by the 

 blood, are infinitely more harmful to the offspring than 

 is alcohol taken into the system in the form of drink. 

 •Alcoholic fumes made the animals drowsy, or quarrel- 

 some, according to their individual temperament, but 

 they produced no other evil effects during the lifetime 

 of the animal, nor could any injury to the tissues be 

 traced after death. This is notoriously ^otherwise 

 where men who have been "hard drinkers" are con- 

 cerned. Guinea-pigs kept in an almost continuous 

 state of intoxication during the reproductive period in- 

 variably produce defective offspring, of which very few- 

 arrive at maturity. In spite of the fact that alcohol 

 is withheld from them, the offspring of such defectives 

 are still more defective. All are weak and neurotic, 

 some are grossly deformed, many are anophthalmic 

 monsters. Physical wrecks of this sort continued to 

 appear for three generations, when sterility seems to 

 have extinguished further examples. Attempts to 

 administer alcohol in the form of drink, by means of 

 a tube, or mixed with the food, had to be abandoned 

 owing to digestive and other troubles which vitiated 

 the experiments. But before the authors can claim to 

 have demonstrated the destructive effects of alcohol 

 fumes on the germ-plasm, experiments with non- 

 alcoholic fumes must be tried. 



A SELECTED bibliography of frost in the United 

 States, especially in relation to agriculture, has been 

 published as a pamphlet by the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. It originally appeared in the 

 pages of the Monthly Weather Review (vol. xliii., 

 pp. 512-517). The authors, Messrs. W. G. Reed and 



