Je 
eee own 
January 8, 1914] 
NATURE 537 
that the Dacca Review has been founded for the 
publication of information on these subjects from 
eastern Bengal. Mr. H. E. Stapleton, in vol. iii., 
No. 5, of the review, gives an interesting account of 
Ghazi Sahib, the patron saint of boatmen, the first 
Musalman invader of Sy'het. Round this worthy a 
mass of curious legend has collected, which deserves 
the attention of students of folklore and peasant 
religions. 
In the December issue of Man Prof. G. Elliot 
Smith revives the question of the origin of the dol- 
men. According to his theory, it is a degraded form 
of the Egyptian mastaba, ur stone sepulchre. It is, 
he believes, ‘‘altogether inconceivable that the more 
or less crude, though none the less obvious, imitations 
of the essential parts of the fully-developed mastaba, 
which are seen in the Sardinian ‘ Giants’ Tombs,’ 
the allées couvertes of France and elsewhere, the 
widespread ‘holed dolmens,’ and all the multitude of 
“vestigial structures,’ to use a biological analogy, 
represented in the protean forms of the Algerian and 
Tunisian dolmens, could have been invented inde- 
pendently of the Egyptian constructions.” At the two 
last meetings of the British Association, this view 
failed to command the acceptance of authorities like 
Profs. Boyd Dawkins and Flinders Petrie. The pre- 
sent exposition, though interesting and suggestive, 
does not deal with the more obvious objections which 
have been from time to time advanced in opposition 
to it. 
Mr. Rosert Monn, who founded the Infants’ Hos- 
pital, Vincent Square, S.W., in an interview reported 
in The Times of December 29, expresses a very decided 
opinion that infants should be fed on fresh, raw milk. 
He states that children thrive far better on untreated 
milk, that there is little risk of tuberculous infection 
therefrom, and that children fed on sterilised or pas- 
teurised milk, are weak and ill-nourished and pre- 
disposed to tuberculosis. Mr. Mond has an experi- 
mental farm at Sevenoaks, at which full records and 
memoranda are kept, which are at the disposal of any 
farmer or dairyman who desires to consult them. 
Dr. G. McMuttan and Prof. K. Pearson describe, 
in the October (1913) issue of Biometrika, a pedigree 
of split-foot or ‘‘lobster-claw.’’ The pedigree extends 
over four generations, and includes more than a 
hundred individuals. The deformity is always trans- 
mitted only by the affected, but appears in consider- 
ably more than half the members of affected families; 
for example, in the three largest families there are 
eight affected and none normal, six affected and four 
normal, five affected and four normal. The extent of 
the abnormality varies greatly in different cases, as 
is shown in the photographs with which the paper is 
illustrated. 
Enriicu’s well-known method of intra vitam stain- 
ing by means of methylene-blue is proving itself 
extraordinarily fruitful in investigations of the nervous 
system of the lower animals. Adolf Gerwerzhagen 
has recently applied this method to the study of the 
nervous system of the Polyzoa, or, as some authorities 
prefer to call them, Bryozoa (Zeitschrift fiir wissen- 
NO. 2306, VOL. 92] 
schaftliche Zoologie, Bd. cvii., p. 309). Students of 
zoology have hitherto had to content themselves with 
very scanty information on this subject, and will 
doubtless be surprised at the complexity of the nervous 
system now for the first time demonstrated. It 
appears that, in addition to the cerebral ganglion and 
the main nerves supplying the lophophore, &c., there 
is a rich network of nerve fibres and ganglion cells, 
not only in the body-wall of individual zooids, but 
extending throughout the whole colony, while the 
lophophore and tentacles are provided with an elabo- 
rate system of nerve fibres and sense cells, and there 
is also a so-called ‘‘sympathetic’’ system ramifying 
over the alimentary canal. The present communica- 
tion deals with the nervous system of the well-known 
fresh-water form, Cristatella mucedo, and the remark- 
able coordinated creeping movements of the entire 
colony are rendered intelligible by the discovery of 
the common colonial nervous system. 
In vol. Ixiv. of Vidensk fra den naturk. Foren Mr. 
H. Blegvad describes, under the name of Lepto- 
cephalus hjorti, the smallest leptocephalid, or eel-larva, ' 
at present known. The specimen, which was taken 
by the writer in the Atlantic during a voyage to the 
Danish West Indies in 1g10-11, measures only 
19-8 mm. in total length. The next smallest example 
taken had a length of 21-5 mm. 
IN an article published in the December issue of 
the Museums’ Journal, Mr. C. Hallett, the official 
guide at the British Museum, alludes to some of the 
difficulties connected with the work of guide-demon- 
strators in museums. One curious point is that, in 
Mr. Hallett’s opinion, the majority of the visitors to 
the museum are drawn from the classes least fitted 
to appreciate its contents. Among those who form 
the guide-led parties, there may be a few with some 
knowledge of the objects under review, while there 
will generally be many with a little knowledge, which 
they desire to increase. The bane of such parties are 
those who are not only utterly destitute of knowledge, 
but have no desire to acquire any. Noise and over- 
crowding form other difficulties, but the gravest 
question to be faced is the extent (if any) to which a 
guide-conducted party ought to take precedence over 
other visitors to a museum. 
THE 1914 issue of the ‘Live Stock Journal: 
Almanack”’ fully sustains the high reputation of that 
publication as a trustworthy and up-to-date guide to 
all important matters connected with British horses, 
cattle, sheep, &c., during the previous year. Special 
interest attaches to an article by Col. Ricardo-on the 
horse-problem, particularly in respect to Army re- 
mounts; and although there may be a shortage in 
horses suitable for this particular kind of work, it is 
satisfactory to learn from other articles that the trade 
in shire and other working horses was never better. 
In connection with cattle, reference may be made to 
an article on “free-martins,” by Mr. C. J. Davies, 
in which a common misunderstanding is corrected. A 
“free-martin’’ is generally stated to be an infertile 
female twin calf, the fellow of which is a male; but, 
according to Messrs. Geddes and Thompson, such an 
infertile calf is really a hermaphrodite male, the 
