NUARY 20, 1923] 







































Kent’s CavERN ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE ICE 
_AcE.—In the Journal of the Torquay Natural History 
Society (vol. ili. No. 2, 1922), Mr. Hh J. Lowe gives a 
full account of the questions connected with the 
exploration of Kent’s Cavern. The first exploration 
was made by MacEnnery in 1825, but the success 
attained was due to the labours of W. Pengelly, who 
> aah sixteen greets in excavating and recording his 
c veries. Probably the greatest service Pengelly 
did for anthropology was when, with a keen apprecia- 
tion of the importance of the results already attained, 
he secured the right to investigate a newly found 
cavern at Brixham, across the bay from Torquay. 
The writer, comparing the results of excavation at 
Kent's Cavern, Brixham, and Tor Bryan caves, with 
those of a Belgian cavern in about the same latitude, 
as noted by Schmerling, advances the theory that 
their floors mark periods of climatic severity that 
destroyed life so far south, at least, as the latitude in 
which they occur ; and inferentially that they may be 
ed as indications of cosmical changes that need 
to be discovered in order to explain the phenomenal 
coincidences. 
Surunk Human Heaps.—The Lancet (November 
II, 1922) publishes an address, entitled ‘‘ Spolia 
Nemoralia : Shrunk Heads, Ear-plugs, and Labrets,” 
delivered by Sir John Bland-Sutton before the Royal 
Society of Medicine. The art of producing these 
shrunk heads is found among Indians dwelling in the 
dense forests bordering the section of the Amazon 
known as Marajion. The specimens exhibited were 
collected by the lecturer on a visit to the Amazon, and 
further information has been acquired by Mr. G. M. 
Dyott in a recent adventurous journey. As a rule a 
corpse is flung into the river, but when a man is killed 
in combat his body is mummified, wrapped in bark, 
and placed on a stand in the centre of the hut as an 
object of veneration. After the skull is removed the 
flesh of the head is stuffed with hot pebbles or hot 
sand and carefully dried in the sun. en this rude 
taxidermic process is complete, the flesh shrinks to the 
size of an orange, preserving the features. It is clear 
that Amazonian Indians, as well as the natives of East 
Africa, like surgeons in civilised countries, are familiar 
with the elastic properties of the human skin. 
‘© Distripution oF THE BoruttsM ORGANISM.—A 
deal of interest was aroused last year over the 
outbreak of food poisoning at Loch Maree in Scotland, 
where a number of fatalities followed the eating of 
“some potted meat in which, for the first time in this 
country, the Bacillus botulinus was identified as the 
causative agent. The last number of the Journal of 
Infectious Diseases (vol. xxxi. No. 2) contains a series 
re pers from the University of California by Prof. 
K. F. Meyer and his colleagues on the distribution of 
this organism. In 624 samples of soil, vegetables, 
fruit, feeding stuffs, etc., collected in California, the 
bacillus was found in about 30 per cent., and, contrary 
to the common assumption, more abundantly in virgin 
mountain and forest soils than in cultivated places. 
By serological reactions two types, A and B, may be 
distinguished, and it is the former that is particularly 
associated with wild places. Extending their studies 
more widely, they have found it in earth all over the 
United States, more abundantly and more enerally 
of type A in the west than the east, in Canada, Belgium, 
Denmark, Holland, England, Switzerland, China, and 
Hawaii. The bacillus seems indeed to be a common 
‘soil anaerobe ; like other bacteria, it has a world-wide 
distribution, either because it is easily transported or 
use it is ancient. It is not, like the tetanus 
NO. 2777, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
95 
Research Items. 
bacillus, specially associated with the intestinal tract 
and with soil contaminated by excreta, but man must 
very frequently come into contact with it and take 
it in with food. The conditions under which it will 
grow in foods and produce enough toxin to cause 
symptoms in man have not yet been defined, but they 
must evidently be seldom realised, for botulism is, and 
always has been, quite a rare disease. 
DEVELOPMENT OF SOME ABERRANT CTENOPHORES. 
—Prof. T. Komai has recently published studies on 
two aberrant ctenophores—Ceeloplana and Gastrodes 
(Kyoto; 102 pp.). He has had abundant material 
of three species of Coeloplana which need no longer 
be considered a zoological rarity, for the author was 
able to obtain 50 or 60 C. bocki creeping, after the 
fashion of a planarian, on a single colony of Den- 
dronephthya. He gives a careful account of the 
anatomy and histology, and shows that the pharynx, 
at first like that of a Cydippe, becomes divided into 
two parts—a dorsal, which persists as the pharynx 
of the adult, and a ventral part which spreads out 
and forms the surface on which the animal creeps. 
The eggs are kept under the body of the parent, 
where they develop and finally hatch as cydippiform 
larve with mouth, pharynx, and canal system. 
After swimming for about a day the larva begins to 
remain at the bottom and adheres by or glides on 
the everted external portion of the pharynx. The 
cilia of the comb-plates degenerate and the animal, 
which is henceforward incapable of swimming, gradu- 
ally becomes flattened. Cceloplana is an extremely 
modified ctenophore adapted to a creeping mode 
of life, and its resemblance to a planarian is due to 
convergence. Prof. Komai has obtained 120 examples 
of Gastrodes, which lives as a parasite in the mantle 
of Salpa, and has shown that it enters the Salpa as 
a planula and grows there into a cydippiform cteno- 
phore about 3 mm. in diameter. It is believed that 
at this stage it is liberated and sheds its eggs. 
FIXATION OF NITROGEN BY THE WHEAT PLANT.— 
Lipman and Taylor announce (Science, November 24) 
that they have proved conclusively that wheat plants 
can fix nitrogen from the air in amounts up to a 
cent. of the total nitrogen content of the plant. he 
publication of the evidence upon which this startling 
announcement is made will be eagerly awaited by 
agricultural research workers, modifying as it does 
much of the theory upon which current practice 
in the use of nitrogenous fertilisers is based. The 
classic researches of Lawes and Gilbert in the eighties 
of last century have long been deemed to have proved 
conclusively that the Leguminose alone of cultivated 
plants have the faculty of fixing atmospheric nitrogen, 
a power which they exercise not directly but through 
the agency of the nodule organisms on their roots. 
In their preliminary note in Science, the authors 
recall that one of the heresies maintained many 
years ago by Jamieson was that all green plants 
have the power of fixing atmospheric nitrogen 
(Rept. Agr. Res. Assn., Aberdeen, 1905). It is 
interesting to note that another of the heterodox 
views held by this veteran worker was that plants 
have the power of directly absorbing “ insoluble ” 
phosphates. The availability of such substances as 
plant food is no longer in doubt, and, whatever the 
mechanism of their entry may be, it is now admitted 
by botanists and soil chemists that many substances 
insoluble in water can find their way into plant 
tissues. Jamieson’s facts, therefore, appear to have 
been right in this case also, although his deductions 
from them may have been unsound. 
