356 
NATURE 
[JANUARY 4, I917 
wonderful colour combinations in any fabrics hitherto 
known, Compared with them, we are told, ‘the 
Coptic fabrics represent a very limited development, 
and even the interesting cloths recently excavated in 
Turkestan by Sir Aurel Stein are but a fragmentary 
record of the art they represent. In Peru every process 
of decoration of which we know is found, every trick 
of the weaver’s art, every skilful blending of colours. 
Nor is this a record of scattered fragments. Even the 
rarer techniques are well represented, and there is 
enough material to furnish inspiration for a century 
of design.” The article contains good photographic 
reproductions of these interesting fabrics. 
Dr. W. E. Roru contributes to the thirtieth annual 
report of the Bureau of American Ethnology a com- 
prehensive paper on the animism and folklore of the 
Guiana Indians, of which the best hitherto known 
accounts are those of Brett, im Thurn, and Wallace. 
He finds no evidence of a belief in a Supreme Being, 
but the Spirits of the Bush are held in great respect. 
He describes a remarkable Carib String Puzzle, de- 
signed to deceive these Bush Spirits, the object being 
to remove, without cutting or breaking, an endless 
string from two sticks upon which it has been placed. 
If an Indian loses his way in the forest, the Spirit 
is the cause. So he leaves this puzzle on a pathway, 
and the Spirit, passing by, sees it, starts examining 
it, and tries to get the string off. So engrossed does 
he become that he forgets all about the wanderer, 
who is now free to find the road again. Brett de- 
scribes an analogous case of a boy on the Lower 
Amazon, who, in order to protect himself from the 
Curupari, took a young palm-leaf, plaited it, and 
formed it into a ring, which he hung on a branch 
in the track of the party. 
Tue American Museum of Natural History, New 
York, continues to make good progress with the pre- 
paration and study of the remarkable Dinosaurians 
discovered in the Upper Cretaceous fresh-water deposits 
of Alberta, Canada. In the latest Bulletin (vol. xxxv., 
_art. 38) Mr. Barnum Brown’ describes perhaps the 
strangest of the Trachodonts, Corythosaurus casu- 
arius, which is a reptile about 20 ft. long, shaped 
much like the familiar Wealden Iguanodon, but with 
a high, rounded, bony crest along the top of its head. 
One well-preserved skeleton is covered with remains 
of the skin, proving that it did not bear any bony 
armour. The whole body must have been invested 
with small epidermal tubercles, which are without any 
definite pattern over the sides, back, and tail, but are 
partly modified into rows of larger limpet-shaped 
tubercles over the ventral surface, If these herbivorous 
Dinosaurs had any marked external features, it is now 
clear that they must have been due to colour rather 
than to special developments of the skin itself. 
Pror. S. W. Wituiston, of the University of 
Chicago, continues his important researches on the 
osteology of American Permian reptiles, and has just 
published a useful synopsis of all the American Permo- 
Carboniferous Tetrapoda (Contributions from the 
Walker Museum, vol. i., No. 9). The various families 
are defined, and the diagnosis of each genus is accom- 
panied by a statement as to the parts of the skeleton 
by which it is known. There is still much difficulty in 
defining and naming the higher groups, owing to the 
discovery of intermediate forms and the imperfection 
of the fossils on which the nomenclature was origin- 
ally based. It becomes, indeed, continually more evi- 
dent that the Permo-Carboniferous Tetrapoda are the 
generalised forerunners of several later groups which 
soon became very distinct. Prof. Williston’s work is 
illustrated by numerous excellent figures, from which 
NO. 2462, VoL. 98] 
it is possible to realise how many of these strange 
ancestral land animals are now known by nearly 
complete skeletons. = 
Tue Carnegie Institution of Washington has just 
published an important monograph of the Coal 
Measures Amphibia of North America, by Dr. Roy 
Lee Moodie (Publication No. 238). It is a most ex- 
haustive work, sumptuously illustrated, and not only 
adds much to our knowledge, but also provides a 
synopsis which will form a useful basis for future 
researches on the rare fossils with which it deals. 
The technical and descriptive part of the monograph 
is preceded by a historical sketch, notes on the locali- 
ties whence the fossils were obtained, and a general 
chapter on the anatomy of the group. Many forms 
were discovered by the late Sir J. William Dawson in 
decayed tree-stumps in the South Joggins coalfield, 
Nova Scotia, but the author remarks that no geologist 
appears to have collected in this locality during recent 
years. Other specimens in ironstone nodules from 
Mazon Creek, Illinois, are so beautifully preserved that — 
the black pigment of the choroid can be seen in the 
orbit, and the course of the alimentary canal may be 
traced in the trunk, arranged almost exactly as in a 
modern salamander. The whole of the ossified skeleton 
is well known in many families, and dermal scales 
occur in several genera of the Branchiosauria and 
Microsauria. There is remarkable uniformity in the 
structure of all these early four-footed animals, not- 
withstanding the numerous variations in general out- 
ward shape and the relative proportions of parts. Some 
are even so much specialised as to have lost their 
limbs and become snake-like. 
WHILE some animals exhibit wide powers of accom- 
modation to their environment, and hence are numeric- 
ally abundant, others display very limited responses — 
in this regard, and hence are restricted in numbers. 
This is well illustrated by Miss Maud Haviland in 
British Birds for December, in the course of a brief 
but illuminating account of her observations on Tem- 
minck's stint, made during her stay at Golchika, on 
the estuary of the Yenisei. For miles along the river 
bank not a specimen would be seen, but it was abun- 
dant wherever running water and dwarf willow were 
found in association. Similarly, she found the 
little stint, Tringa minuta, breeding near running 
water only when this occurred in association with a 
sphagnum swamp. During the pairing season Tem- 
minck’s stint gives utterance to a long-sustained trill- 
ing, which “is musical enough to deserve the name 
of song.”’ It is ‘“‘louder and less mechanical than the 
note of the grasshopper warbler, more musical than 
the whir of the fisherman’s reel, and may be likened 
more truly to the croaking of many natterjack toads 
in chorus.”’ This song is heard at its best when the 
bird hangs suspended some qo ft. in the air, but it is 
also uttered while it is perched on a tree-trunk or on 
a block of ice. But on such occasions the trill is less 
perfect. 
Tue new part of the Proceedings of the Prehistoric 
Society of East Anglia (vol. ii., part ii.) contains 
several papers on flint implements illustrated in the 
usual effective manner, besides two important discus- 
sions of the wider problems of British late Tertiary 
geology. 
returns to the subject of Grime’s Graves, and after 
describing and figuring a considerable number of. 
newly discovered implements from these old flint 
mines, reiterates his opinion that they are all of Palzo- 
lithic type. He thinks their date would never have 
been doubted had they not been associated with a 
mine and a recent fauna. Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott, 
in a rather discursive paper, claims that both marine 
Mr. A. E. Peake, in a presidential address, — 
