204 
lery and old firearms, while a large series of 
ethnographical objects from Nigeria, acquired by Mr. 
M. S. Cockin, has been deposited, The excellent and 
well-illustrated progress reports issued by the curator 
might with advantage be studied by other museum 
authorities as a means of popularising their collections. 
Tue most important contribution to the October 
issue of Man is a paper by Prof. Flinders Petrie 
describing a series of the earliest perfect tombs dis- 
covered at the great cemetery of Tarkhan, forty miles 
south of Cairo. Two of them date from the time of 
King Zet, in the middle of the first dynasty. This 
series of interments was found absolutely undis- 
turbed, and contained burials of the contracted form, 
the head lying north, the face east, on the left side, 
and accompanied by some small pottery and gazelle 
bones. In the tomb walls are two slits, through 
which it was beliéved that the food offerings reached 
the dead. Some 600 skeletons have been unearthed, 
those of the females being homogeneous, while the 
males fall into two groups, indicating that from pre- 
historic times there had been a slow intermixture 
of the dynastic race with the indigenous peoples. 
Since 1911 the Cambrian Archzological Society has 
been engaged on the excavation of a Roman fortress 
in Mid Wales—Castell Collen, ‘‘the fortress of the 
hazel trees,’’ close to Llandrindrod Wells. So far, a 
granary, the principia or headquarters building, and 
the house of the commandant have been unearthed. 
The place, from the evidence of coins and pottery, 
seems to have been occupied from the end of the first 
century to the close of the third, century a.p. Among 
the discoveries are a bronze scabbard-scape of late 
Celtic work, a dolphin-shaped scabbard attachment 
of bronze, a silver ring with the motto ‘‘Amor 
Dvlcis,”” and an intaglio with a Roman horseman 
riding down a barbarian. Much work remains to 
be done, and contributions are invited by Mr. C. 
Venables Llewelyn, Llysdinain Hall, Newbridge-on- 
Wye. 
Tue first report of the Eugenics Record Office of 
Cold Spring Harbour, Long Island, New York, was 
issued in June last by the superintendent, Mr, H. H. 
Laughlin. It contains an interesting account of the 
way in which the work of the office is organised, and 
of the elaborate card system which has been adopted 
for indexing the extensive collection of data in 
process of accumulation. The practical work of the 
office has three aims: (1) to collect and analyse family 
records for the purpose of studying heredity; (2) to 
organise courses for the training of the ‘field 
workers’ to be employed in the collection of data; 
(3) to advise concerning the eugenical fitness of pro- 
posed marriages. For funds the office is principally 
indebted to Mrs. E. H. Harriman, but Mr. J. D. 
Rockefeller has also made generous contributions in 
providing for the salaries of five ‘field workers” and 
for the publication of memoirs and half the cost of 
the training class. 
Major GREIG gives an account of the present 
incidence of enteric or typhoid fever in India in a 
paper contributed to the All-India Sanitary Confer- 
NO. 2294, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 16, 19 13 
ence in Madras, 1912. The disease has greatly 
declined, as the following figures show :—Average 
admission per 1000 in 1895-1904, 22°3, in Ig10, 4°13 
constantly sick per 1000 in 1895-1904, 3°31, in 1910, 
o’91; deaths per 1000 in 1895-1904, 5°62, in 1910, 
0°62. The factors concerned in this decline are 
(a) segregation of the convalescent enteric patient — 
until he is proved to be free from infection, (b) the — 
elimination of the chronic carrier, (c) inoculation, 
(d) general sanitary improvement. 
Tue curator’s report of the Otago University — 
Museum for 1912 records the definite transfer to the 
university of the Hocken library—consisting, it may 
be remembered, of a valuable collection of books, 
pamphlets, manuscripts, plans, and pictures relating — 
to the history of New Zealand and the Maoris. Some 
idea of the size of the library may be gleaned from 
the statement that the printed catalogue of the 
bound books runs to several volumes. 
A piscovEerRY of special importance in connection 
with the problem of the homology of the mammalian 
auditory ossicles is recorded by Mr. R. W. Palmer, 
University College, Reading. In dissecting the 
auditory region of a fcetal Australian bandicoot 
(Perameles) it was found that the ossicles and car- 
tilages lie freely in a hollow of the thin dentary bone 
of the lower jaw, and comparison of their position, 
form, and relations with the corresponding region 
of the skull in certain Triassic anomodont reptiles 
renders it practically certain that the mammalian 
malleus represents the articular bone of the reptilian 
lower jaw, while the incus of the mammal corresponds 
to the quadrate of the reptile and the tympanic to the 
angular element of the jaw. The paper is published 
in the Anatomischer Anzeiger, vol. xliii., p. 512- 
WE have received from the publishers (Herren R. 
Friedlander und Sohn, Berlin) five parts, 34-38, of 
‘*“Das Tierreich,”’ edited by Dr. F. E. Schulze. These 
parts deal respectively with the butterflies of the 
family Amathusiide, the rhabdocelid turbellarian 
worms, the pteropod molluscs, the cecilian am- 
phibians, and the molluscs of the group Soleno- 
gastres; and the mere fact that the second of these 
(No. 35) comprises no fewer than 484 pages of text, 
coupled with the large number of parts already 
issued, gives some indication of the voluminous nature 
of the work. To how many parts it is expected to 
run we have no clue, but it may be mentioned that 
mammals and fishes are not touched in any of those 
already issued. Each part being separately paged, 
the entire work can be arranged in such order as 
may be best suited to the needs of individual students. 
So far as we can judge, the parts before us, which, 
like the rest, are by specialists in their respective 
subjects, maintain the high standard of their pre- 
decessors, As might have been expected in a work 
by different authors, the style of treatment is by no 
means uniform; the diagnoses of the species and 
groups being in some instances models of concise- 
ness, while in others they tend to undue prolixity. 
The attention of ‘zoological recorders’’ may be 
directed to the fact that a new generic name is pro- 
