April 5, 1906] 



NA TURE 



549 



to a considerable extent with the educational instruction 

 of at least 5 per cent, of scholars. 



The necessity for increased endeavours to obtain better 

 physique is sufficiently obvious to anyone visiting the 

 schools, and it is satisfactory to find that the school exer- 

 cises are being improved. 



Dr. Kerr deals in this report with the question of the 

 exclusion of children from school attendance between the 

 ages of three and five years. He appears to favour the 

 existence of the present state of things, but in this view 

 he will probably not receive much support from medical 

 officers of health. Doubtless school attendance affords 

 facilities for the spread of certain communicable diseases 

 (70 per cent, of the infants under five who are at present 

 admitted to the Council's schools have not yet had measles 

 or whooping-cough), and the advantage to the child of 

 postponing attacks from these diseases for even a year or 

 two is so great that it offers one strong argument in 

 favour of excluding children under five from school attend- 

 ance. Dr. Kerr states that children learn more in the years 

 three to five than they will learn in the same period at 

 any time subsequently. But in children between three and 

 five the reasoning from what they see and hear is very 

 slight indeed, and in the opinion of many the child does 

 not really stand in need of school-teaching before it reaches 

 the age of five. 



Increasing solicitude is shown in regard to the personal 

 cleanliness of the children attending the public elementary 

 schools, and Dr. Kerr discusses some of the problems 

 underlying the difficult question of dealing with underfed 

 children. The nurses working under the Council are 

 accomplishing a highly important work of considerable 

 educational value in examining for cases of ring-worm, 

 vermin, and unwholesomeness, and in many cases they 

 follow up their school work by home visits. In connection 

 with the campaign now being carried on in favour of 

 personal cleanliness in schools, the provision of school 

 washing-baths, as distinct from swimming arrangements, 

 is becoming increasingly necessary in many parts of 

 London. 



The more important facts dealing with infectious disease 

 in this report relate to the subjects of diphtheria and 

 measles. From the result of much observation and many 

 carefully recorded facts, Dr. Kerr concludes that when 

 a school becomes a source of infection it is generally 

 found that the cases of diphtheria are connected with a 

 class or classes in which the average age of the children 

 is between five and eight. Rarelv do cases below five 

 or above eight become sources of infection, and never has 

 it happened in the investigations that a class the average 

 age of which is less than four or above ten has been 

 found to be acting as a disseminating centre. These 

 classes appear to become sources of infection because the 

 children at these ages have the power of partial resist- 

 ance to the onslaught of diphtheria bacilli, and a 

 large proportion of them are capable of attending school 

 while suffering from slight attacks. Dr. Thomas, the 

 assistant medical officer, in a valuable report upon measles 

 and school closure, concludes that in London at present 

 th>- disease only spreads in classes under five years of age, 

 except in certain better-class districts, and that to effect 

 any useful purpose school closure must take place before 

 the " first crop " falls. The old practice of waiting until 

 the attendance fell to a certain limit was useless in arrest- 

 ing the spread of measles, and did absolutely no good. 



STUDIES OF NATIVE TRIBES. 



THE American ethnological work in the Philippines is 

 making steady progress. The first part of vol. iv. of 

 the publications has just appeared. It deals with Moro 

 history, law, and religion. Mindanao and Sulu were con- 

 quered in the Middle Ages by Mohammedans, who estab- 

 lished a new form of government and introduced a written 

 code of laws. Previous to this there was no written 

 history, but thenceforth the datus or chiefs kept their 

 genealogies, and these, brief though they be, are the only 

 sources for Moro history. Prior to the American acquisi- 

 tion of the islands the tarsila or genealogies were rigidly 



NO. 1901, VOL. 73] 



kept out of sight of all foreigners and non-Mohammedans, 

 but the Ethnological Survey has been successful in getting 

 copies of many of them ; these have now been translated, 

 and are published in the volume before us. The Moros 

 comprise various tribes, which differ as considerably as 

 the Ilocano and the Igorot ;' the language is Malayan, but 

 the characters employed are Arabic, which makes the work 

 of transliteration no easy one. Some pages of the codes 

 are published here in facsimile ; the genealogies are re- 

 produced in the ordinary form, and an exact translation. 

 of the genealogy and commentary is also given. There 

 are introductory sections, but perhaps it would have beert 

 well to add explanatory notes to the translations in 

 addition. 



In vol. xxxix. of the Proceedings of the Royal Society 

 of New South Wales, and also in the Journal of the 

 Geographical Society of Queensland for 1905, Mr. 

 R. H. Mathews maintains (1) that Australian tribes do 

 not practise exogamy ; (2) that the eight clan tribes trace 

 descent through the mother ; and (3) that there is a cross- 

 division, cutting through phratries and classes, in the 

 eastern tribes. His first and second points are based on 

 the alleged possibility of marriage with any woman of the 

 same generation. His third point, confirmed by Dr. 

 Howitt ("Native Tribes," p. 106 n.) in some measure, 

 may be correct, but seems to point rather to totemic 

 exogamy within the phratry. Mr. Mathews would do well 

 to give (1) the names of all correspondents, and (2) actual 

 genealogies, so that his statements can be verified. He 

 should also explain the object of phratries and classes, if 

 they are not regulative by marriage ; success in this would 

 greatly strengthen his case. His researches, if correct, are 

 subversive of much that has been written of late years, 

 but he cannot expect the anthropological world to accept 

 his unsupported statements. If anthropology were officially 

 recognised by the British Empire, evidence on the point 

 would soon be forthcoming. As it is, only untrained 

 observers are available, and much reliance cannot be placed 

 on them. 



POLONIUM AND RADIO-TELLURIUM. 



CINCE the discovery of polonium — the first radio-active 

 substance investigated by Madame Curie — much doubt 

 has existed as to its true nature and as to its relationship 

 with radio-tellurium, subsequently separated by Prof. 

 Marckwald from radio-active bismuth salts. Several papers 

 which have recently been published throw considerable 

 light on the problem, without, however, giving to it a 

 definite solution. Madame Curie (Phy.-.ikalische Zeitschrift, 

 No. 5) has determined the constant of decay characterising 

 her "polonium," and finds that it is practically identical 

 with that ascribed by Prof. Marckwald to his radio- 

 tellurium ; in both cases the activity falls to half its value 

 in about 140 days, so that there can be little doubt that 

 the two substances are identical. In discussing the 

 chemical properties of " polonium," Madame Curie con- 

 cludes that there is no ground for considering that it more 

 closely resembles tellurium than bismuth. In No. 4 of the 

 Berichte of the German Chemical Society, Prof. F. Giesel 

 has investigated the radio-activity of a " 0-polonium " 

 which differs from the older polonium or radio-tellurium 

 by its emitting rays instead of o rays ; the activity 

 of this substance falls to half its value in 6-14 days. This 

 value does not correspond with the rate of decay of any 

 of the known degradation products of radium. Meyer and 

 von Schweidler, on the other hand (Proceedings of the 

 Vienna Academy of Sciences, February 1), have obtained 

 a radio-active bismuth which appears to behave as a 

 mixture of radium D, radium E, and radium F ; but 

 Madame Curie (Physikalische Zeitschrift, No. 6), in dis- 

 cussing this result, considers that polonium cannot be 

 identical with radium D or radium E, but only with 

 radium F. Closely connected with these researches must 

 be mentioned an investigation by Prof. H. Becquerel 

 (Physikalische Zeitschrift, No. 6) of some of the characters 

 of the a rays emitted by radium, and by substances 

 rendered active by radium. 



