; 
i 
— 
NovEMBER 30, 1916] 
armour, torpedoes, and solar evaporators, and he in- 
vented the double-forging process of armour and 
other improvements in its manufacture. 
Tue President of the Board of Agriculture desires to 
direct public attention to the urgent need that exists 
for the assistance of women, not already connected 
with agricultural industry, in the work that is required 
for food production on the land, and to replace agri- 
cultural labourers who have been called up for mili- 
tary service. Hundreds of women have already ren- 
dered valuable service in maintaining the home-grown 
food supply, but thousands are now needed to meet 
the national emergency. Educated women are espe- 
cially invited to offer their services, and short courses 
of training can be provided for them. Application 
should be made to the secretaries of the Women’s 
War Agricultural Committees in the various counties, 
or to the Women’s National Land Service Corps, 50 
Upper Baker Street, London, N.W. 
Tue collections of the State Natural History 
Museum of Sweden have for some time past been in 
process of transference from their old quarters in 
Drottninggatan, Stockholm, to the fine new building 
in the suburb of Frescati, where they have been re- 
arranged in accordance with modern ideas, special 
attention being paid to the education of the public. 
At intervals during the present. year the palazonto- 
logical, zoological, and mineralogical collections have 
been made accessible. The botanical galleries have 
just been completed. On November 13, in the pre- 
sence of the Crown Prince and other royalties and 
many notabilities, the whole of the public galleries 
were declared open by the King of Sweden, who con- 
ferred distinctions upon the director of the museum, 
Prof. Einar Lénnberg, the vice-director, Prof. Hjal- 
mar Sjogren, and the architect of the museum, Mr. 
A, J. Anderberg. 
Tue first meeting of the current session of the Royal 
Society of Arts was held on November 15, when Dr. 
Dugald Clerk, the chairman of the council, delivered 
his inaugural address on some conditions of the 
stability of the British Empire. Dr. Clerk illustrated 
the economic strength of the United Kingdom by the 
growth of her trade, her capital, and her income; he 
indicated the relative weakness of Germany by com- 
parative statistics of a similar character. While 
honouring Mr. Hughes, the Premier of Aus- 
tralia, for his courage and his enthusiasm, he 
urged a broader and bolder policy. ‘‘No, the 
Colonies are wrong in the idea of a self-contained 
Commonwealth, and Britain is right in her idea of 
expansion in trade over every part of the world."’ Then 
turning to the fountain-head of the prosperity he antici- 
pates, he urged with strength and conviction the neces- 
sity of two things, generous payment of labour, and 
generous work by labour. Both his optimism and his 
courage were inspiring, and it would, perhaps, have 
been an artistic error to have pared the imperfections 
from a fact or modified the meaning of a figure. But 
in our moments of cooler thought it is well to remem- 
ber that figures showing the growth of a country’s 
wealth must be read together with the curve of money 
values, that the national incomes of any two countries 
are dangerous insimilitudes, and that, whatever our 
income in war-time may be in terms of money, it is, in 
fact, what Mr. Flux has well called ‘‘an inflated 
expression in money of a reduced income in goods.” 
Dr. Etsiz Crews Parsons describes, in the Novem- 
ber issue of Man, a method for the detection of crime 
among the Zunis. Anyone could use this method 
with the curious condition that he had never been 
bitten, a disqualification which appears in other Zuni 
NO. 2457, VOL. 98] 
NATURE 
255 
rites. The detective, who is by profession a seer, 
takes a dose of a narcotic, and during the trance 
which follows a picture of the situation or incidents 
by which a missing article has been mislaid or stolen 
will unfold itself to him. So fully is this believed 
that a thief will smoke during the act of stealing 
so that the smoke may surround his head and prevent 
identification. The narcotic used is known as the 
Jamestown weed (Datura meteloides). An overdose 
is exceedingly dangerous, and the seer who takes it for 
the purpose of detection suffers for some time; his 
head and eyes are heavy, his nerves on edge, and 
though the fee charged for his services is considerable, 
one practitioner has retired from business, and recently 
declined to act in the case of a lost horse, 
Waite it has long been known that the woodcock 
carries its young, not merely under the spur of sudden 
emergency, but as a matter of everyday practice, when 
the feeding ground is distant from the nest, this does 
not appear to be the case with the snipe. At need, 
however, it is clear that this species will also bear its 
young aloft to a place of safety. A brief but vivid 
description of the manner in which this is done ap- 
pears in the Irish Naturalist for October, by Mr. W. J. 
Nash, who saw a snipe rise from a mud-bank in a 
bog drain near Lissoy carrying a young one, which 
was set down some thirty yards off. It seemed to 
fly with considerable difficulty, and before it alighted 
the young one was dangling down, held, apparently, 
by the head only, and seemed to be slipping from its 
parent’s grasp. The burden seemed to be supported 
by both bill and feet. Another nestling of about three 
days old was discovered, just dead from drowning, 
beside the spot from which the first had been rescued. 
The young birds had, it is surmised, been driven into 
the water by fright, caused by a dog which was hunt- 
ing near the spot alone when the narrator arrived. 
From the evident labour of the parent in the perform- 
ance of this rescue work it seems clear that such 
flights are but rarely undertaken, while the woodcockx 
is an adept from long practice. 
Tue fifth and last of Mr. J. H. Owen’s valuable 
series of notes on the breeding habits of the sparrow- 
hawk appears in the October issue of British Birds, 
These notes are the result of long and patient observa- 
tions from a concealed hut, and are illustrated by 
some very remarkable photographs. While it is a 
matter of common knowledge that this bird will use 
the deserted nest of another hawk, of a crow, or 
of a wood-pigeon, this is the case only when its own 
nest has been destroved, and not, as is generally sup- 
posed, as a matter of caprice. As soon as the young 
are hatched it seems to be a common practice for 
the female to eat the empty eggshells, though as 
often perhaps they are carried away and dropped at 
a distance from the nest. How greatly fertility is 
reduced by the strain of increased egg production is 
shown by the author’s observations to the effect that 
if the first clutch be.removed more than 25 per cent. 
of the second will prove infertile, while the number 
of eggs in the clutch is also reduced. Late in Decem- 
ber, or early in January, these birds will often build 
flimsy platforms, which are supposed to be used solely 
for the purpose of dining-tables, though in many 
cases, it would seem, they serve neither this nor any 
other purpose. Possibly it would be more correct to 
regard them as indications of an incipient sexual 
activity. 
Tue timber resources of South America are dis- 
cussed by Mr. Raphael Zon in the Geographical Re- 
view for October, 1916 (vol. ii., No. 4). South America 
is principally rich in hardwoods, of which the so-called 
