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NATURE 
[FEBRUARY 10, 1923, 
. Research Items, 
THE FAROE IsLtanps.—The Faroe or Sheep Islands, 
lying half-way between Iceland and the Shetlands, are 
inhabited by people of Norwegian descent. In these 
islands an energetic linguistic movement has recently 
arisen, aiming at elevating the local idiom to the rank 
of a language, a movement which is not political, but 
suggested by the declaration in 1918 of the inde- 
pendence of Iceland. Mr. J. Dyneley Price, in the 
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 
(vol. lxi. No. 2, 1922), describes the linguistics and 
phonetics on information furnished by Miss M. E. 
Mikkelsen, a Faroese lady now resident in Copenhagen. 
It is curious that this movement extends to a new 
form of spelling which, like the stereotyped archaic 
spelling of modern Gaelic, ignores the modern phonetics 
of the spoken dialects. 
AN ANCIENT AUSTRALIAN SKULL.—Anthropologists 
will read with considerable interest a paper in the 
Journal of Anatomy (vol. lvii. part 2) by A. N. St. G. H. 
Burkitt and Prof. J. I. Hunter on “ A Description 
of a Neanderthaloid Australian Skull.’”’ This was 
that of a female, and was “' Neanderthaloid ” only 
in so far as the calvarium was concerned. The 
excessive development of the supraorbital ridges of 
this skull the authors ascribe largely to the action 
of the masticatory muscles; but their arguments 
in favour of this interpretation, which are shared 
by others, are not convincing. In the conclusions 
at which the authors have arrived, we hoped to find 
some expression of opinion as to the precise relation- 
ship of this skull—and of the Australian aborigines 
in general—to Neanderthal man. But on _ this 
matter no direct views have been advanced. /The 
authors applied several tests to discover the alveglar 
index of this skull. ‘“ Flower’s Gnathic Index,” 
they remark, ‘‘ places it well within the limit of 
orthognathic skulls, the index being 95:23.’’ The 
base line devised by Pycraft gives an index of 96, 
when applied to the photograph of the skull on 
Plate I. We venture to think that the authors 
have laid undue stress on the ‘‘ Neanderthaloid ”’ 
characters of this skull, and we are puzzled by the 
cryptic statement that ‘‘ we must regard the cranial 
resemblances as an expression of the principle that 
descendants of a common ancestor show a tendency 
to develop independently similar features.” 

NITROGEN FERTILISERS FOR THE SUGAR CANE.— 
In the Archief voor de Suikevindustrie in Nederlandsch 
Indié (1922, Mededeelingen No. 3) J. Kuyper_de- 
scribes experiments carried out in Java on the relative 
value of several nitrogen fertilisers for sugar-cane 
cultivation. The trials have been carried out for 
several years in comparison with sulphate of ammonia, 
of which the average amount used is about 380 Ib. 
per acre. In all cases the same weight of nitrogen 
was given in the different manures, Urea and nitrate 
of soda proved to be equal in value to ammonium 
sulphate, but the nitrate is too hygroscopic for 
convenient use. The same objection applies to 
ammonium sulpho-nitrate, especially in the tropical 
rainy season. Nitrolim or cyanamide and beancake 
are both of less value. Beancake does better on 
some soils than others, and is improved by the ad- 
mixture of a certain proportion of sulphate of 
ammonia. 
_PastuRE Grass In TropicaL Arrica.—It is 
difficult to overestimate the importance of the 
contributions to colonial development that may be 
made by the work of institutions such as the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Kew Bulletin (No. 10, 
NO. 2780, VOL, 111] 
1922) contains a typical example of the type of 
information which the resources of such a central 
institution can so readily place before various 
interested outliers of Empire. In western tropical 
Africa one of the difficulties in the way of pasturing 
fertile country lies in the ravages of the tsetse fly 
and the epidemics it engenders. Mr. T. M. Dawe, 
making an agricultural survey of Angola in 1921, 
recognised in the native “‘ Efwatakala grass” a 
fodder plant similar to a Brazilian grass already 
known to him as capable of fattening stock. This 
grass was widely distributed in the Portuguese Congo, 
and on its receipt at Kew it proved to be Melints 
minutiflova, Beauv., f. inermis, already reported upon 
in the Kew Bulletin (1900) as ‘‘ Brazilian stink-grass.” 
Dr. Stapf’s report in the present bulletin fully bears 
out Mr. Dawe’s view that the grass should prove a 
rapid coloniser of open ground and then form a fairly 
permanent pasture. Its potential value lies, however, 
in the insecticidal or insect-repelling qualities of an 
oil secreted in glandular hairs upon the leaf-sheath 
and lamina. The grass has now been grown upon a 
small scale at Kew, and the Jodrell Laboratory 
supplies a note upon the structure of the glandular 
hairs while the Wellcome Research laboratories have 
made a preliminary study of the small quantity of 
oil that could be extracted from the available crop of 
the grass. Mr. Dawe apparently hopes that this 
grass may prevent the spread of the tsetse fly at 
the same time that it provides food for stock. If 
such anticipations are realised the ultimate possi- 
bilities of its cultivation in tropical Africa are in- 
calculable. It would be interesting to learn why 
the attempt at its introduction into Australia, 
chronicled in the earlier note in the Kew Bulletin, 
seems to have been without result. 
Ture Patoro Worm.—Dr. Glanvill Corney, who 
was for many years chief medical officer of Fiji, 
contributes an interesting paper to the Journal of 
the Torquay Natural History Society on the 
periodicity of the sexual phase of the ‘ Palolo” 
worm in Fijian waters. This worm (Eunice viridis) 
lives in the coral skeletons. and rocks of the reefs, 
riddling them with its burrows. Like most bottom- 
living marine animals, its eggs are cast on the mercy 
of the waves and currents to be distributed far and 
wide. While most boring worms are content merely 
to shed their eggs into the bottom waters, several 
kinds, including the Palolo, cut off the hinder parts 
of their bodies, which are crowded with generative 
cells; these float to the surface of the water, each 
seement rupturing and setting free its sexual cells : 
this is known as swarming. The first phase of 
development is a floating one, but the larvae soon 
settle and form their burrows. Annually the worm 
sheds its hinder sexual part into the water and 
re-forms it. The peculiarly interesting feature of the 
life history is the regularity with which this pheno- 
menon occurs. As usualin such forms, the generative 
organs are ripe in the spring of the year, when there 
is a peculiar outburst of all life. The Palolo swarm 
on the same day, the surface of the sea at dawn 
becoming thick with their bodies. The day selected 
at Fiji is recorded by Dr. Corney for 25 years and is 
shown always to be on the morning of the seventh 
to ninth days after full moon in November or early 
December; the interval between swarming is some- 
times 353-6 days and at other times 382-6 days, 
either 12 or 13 lunar months. A few may swarm 
a month earlier at the corresponding neap tide, but 
this small swarm is often unrecognisable. The vast 
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