g6 
NATURE 
were known from this district, but the present one is 
the representation of a ship of a type hitherto un- 
known there, since it is not merely outlined but carved 
on the rock in low relief. About one metre long, 
it represents one of the so-called dragon ships, and 
belongs to the oldest group of such monuments of the 
Bronze age, a conclusion confirmed py its height of 
32:5 metres above sea-level. 
Tue Y.M.C.A. is organising a series of micro- 
scopic exhibitions in the military and naval camps 
for the interest of the men in their leisure hours. An 
organising committee consisting of fellows and mem- 
bers of the, Royal Microscopical Society, Quekett 
Microscopical Club, and the Photomicrographic Society 
has been formed, and already many fixtures have 
been made for exhibitions to be held in the Y.M.C.A. 
huts in various centres throughout the metropolitan 
area and the home counties. The exhibitions gener- 
ally take place in the late afternoons or the evenings, 
and ladies and gentlemen who can spare the time to 
give service with their microscopes are invited to com- 
Municate with the hon. sec., Microscopical Depart- 
ment, Y.M.C.A., Tottenham Court Road, W. 
Sirk Witu1am Ascrort, a pioneer advocate of tech- 
nical education, died on September 29, in his eighty- 
fifth year. He was president of the council of the 
Harris Institute, Preston, for more than thirty years 
(resigning in 1912), one of the original members of the 
council; and one of the trustees. The Preston Guar- 
dian remarks :—‘ Sir Wm. Ascroft’s zeal for education, 
and particularly technical education, made the Harris 
Institute not only an incalculable benefit to Preston, 
but also one of the most. influential pioneers of tech- 
nical education in this country, setting an example 
which has been followed in many other centres. It 
was in recognition of his great services in this connec- 
tion that his name was included in the list of Royal 
birthday honours in 1908.” 
In the South African Journal of Science for June 
the Rev. S. S. Dorman deals with the question of the 
ruins at Zimbabwe and other sites in Rhodesia from 
the point of view of native tradition. He rejects the 
views advanced by Bent, Peters, and Hall that these 
buildings were erected by Semites, or under Semitic 
influence, from 2000 B.c. to A.D. goo. He has recorded 
the evidence of two intelligent natives, who allege that 
the buildings are of comparatively recent age, and 
that they were probably abandoned under pressure 
from marauding tribes. The so-called ‘‘temple’’ is 
now said to be only the residence of the chief, and the 
writer states that the buildings at Zimbabwe have not 
an appearance of antiquity, and that from the amount 
of weathering they do not appear to be more than 
500 years old. He also produces evidence to show 
that gold mining was carried on by the natives at 
sites where these ruins do’ not exist, and he sums up 
by saying :—‘‘As a large part of the Semitic theory 
of the origin of Zimbabwe and its associated ruins 
rests upon the ignorance of the natives of rock mining 
and the excessive antiquity of the mines, the bottom 
is absolutely knocked out of it by these and similar 
facts.” 
In spite of the elaborate survey of Irish stone 
monuments by Mr. W. C. Borlase in his ‘“*Dolmens 
of Ireland,”” much remains to be done in that island, 
where dolmens, stone circles, alignments, and pillar- 
stones (inscribed, uninscribed, holed, and marked) are 
singularly abundant. In the June issue of the Journal 
of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Mr. 
J. P. Condon publishes the first portion of a survey 
of the rude stone monuments of the northern portion 
of Cork County, in which he records many examples 
NO. 2449, VOL. 98] 
hitherto undescribed, and not even marked on the — 
maps of the Ordnance Survey. At Greenhill a new 
ogham stone, with a fragmentary inscription, has been 
recently discovered; the Island group of monuments 
in the parish of Rahan forms a remarkable collection, — 
a 
and the.stone ‘circle at Lissard, in the parish of 
Grenagh, is fairly complete. Of the whole, in this 
<a 
communication as many as eighty-five examples are 
described. This large collection from a small area 
ry 
shows the great abundance of these monuments, and 
the need for a complete survey of the whole of Ireland 
before these valuable antiquities are destroyed. Pore 
Wiru the conception of the-cancer problem as essen-— 
tially a biological problem English readers have been 
familiar for many years, and Prof. L. Loeb’s summary 
of the present position in the September number of > 
the Scientific Monthly will be generally accepted. In 
several matters of detail, however, it is doubtful if his 
formulation of the problems will be useful. The 
attempt to separate the internal and external factors, 
as, for example, heredity and chronic irritation, dis- 
regards the fundamental truth that the influence of 
chronic irritation in the causation of cancer can only 
be conceived as acting through modification of the 
intracellular mechanism. It is a pity that the article 
does not distinguish between hypothetical views and 
generally accepted truths. An example of this is the 
statement that cancer of the mamma in mice cannot 
‘ 
develop in the absence of a rhythmical repeated stimu- — 
lus from the ovaries, although Loeb himself claims to 
have proved that the diminution of spontaneous mam- 
mary cancer in mice by castration can only be obtained 
if it is performed before sexual maturity. The con- 
trast between spontaneous and transplanted caneer 
and the nature of immunity to the latter are well 
brought out. The paper ends with an attempt to 
combine the parasitic hypothesis of cancer etiology 
with the purely biological conceptions of its nature, 
mainly on the assumption that the explanation of the 
proliferation of cancer is to be found in analogies with 
the plant tumours caused by the Bact. tumefaciens and 
the bird tumours discovered by Peyton Rous to be 
due to a filtrable virus. : 
Tue September issue of the Journal of the Board of 
Agriculture contains a useful summary of the results 
of co-operative experiments carried out in the years 
1911-13, under the auspices of the Union of German 
Experiment Stations, with the view of obtaining further 
evidence as to the validity of the so-called “citric 
solubility’ as a measure of the fertilising value of 
basic slag, The question is one which has aroused 
much controversy in recent years in Germany and 
also in this country, and has acquired considerable 
practical importance through the official recognition of — 
the conventional Wagner method of determination of — 
“citric solubility’’ in the Fertilisers and Feeding 
Stuffs Acts and regulations made thereunder. With 
one exception the reports from the five experiment 
Stations co-operating in the tests are unanimous in 
upholding the validity of the Wagner test and justify 
the unanimous resolution of the Union of German — 
Experiment Stations that there are no grounds for 
departing from the customary methods of evaluation 
of basic slag. It may be added that similar, though 
less comprehensive, tests carried out during the past — 
three years at various centres in this country, under 
the auspices of the Agricultural Education Association, 
have also given results which in the main bear out 
this conclusion. 
Tue revised edition of Special Leaflet No, 46, re- 
cently issued by the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries, bears testimony to the vigorous criticism 
sustained from practical agriculturists since the first 
