616 
NATURE 
[May 5, 1923 


Research Items. 
THE CoIn COLLECTION AT HuLLt.—The Wilberforce 
House Museum at Hull contains an interesting collec- 
tion of local coins and tokens, a catalogue of which 
by Mr. W. Sykes has now been published. A mint 
was established in the city by Edward I. in the year 
1300, and two silver pennies, the only variety of coin, 
so far as is known, struck in this mint, are included 
in the collection. The inscription on the obverse is 
““Edwardus Rex Angliz Dominus Hybernie,”’ “ Ed- 
ward, King of England, Lord of Ireland,’’ and on 
the reverse “‘ Vill. Kyngeston,” ‘“‘ Town of Kingston- 
upon-Hull.”” The collection of seventeenth century 
tradesmen’s tokens is fairly complete, containing 30 
out of 34 examples. 
THE Roman WALLS IN NoRTHERN BRITAIN.—The 
study of the Roman Walls has been considerably 
advanced by two papers published in the Journal of 
Roman Studies (vol. xi. part 1, 1921). In the first 
paper Mr. G. Macdonald discusses the building of the 
Antonine Wall, with a fresh study of the inscriptions ; 
in the second Mr. R. G. Collingwood enters upon the 
history of Hadrian’s Wall. These two exhaustive 
papers must form the basis of all later attempts to 
discuss the problems involved in their construction. 
Mr. Collingwood suggests that Hadrian’s Wall was 
not, as one is apt at first sight to suppose, a military 
work intended to give tactical advantage to troops 
on the defensive, but a police work, intended to 
facilitate the patrolling of the frontier-line against 
unauthorised crossing. 
THe NorRTHMEN IN ENGLAND.—An admirable 
article in the April issue of the Quarterly Review, by 
Mr. Reginald Lennard, shows that so far from the 
warrior West Saxon kings like Alfred the Great being the 
protagonists in this period, it was the intrusion of the 
Northmen which changed the fabric of Anglo-Saxon 
society. This view is based partly on the work of 
sociologist-historians like Maitland and Vinogradoff, 
but mainly on that of philologists like Mr. Allen 
Mawer, who have been working at the place-names 
of northern England. The extent of the Norse 
vocabulary on place-names is a new and important 
discovery, and the writer points out that in the early 
English kingship, taxation, and the judiciary, the 
Norse influence was great. The explanation suggested 
is that the Norsemen gained by travel and commerce 
an experience denied to the home-loving Saxon. 
They were champions of freedom: the growth of the 
English manor was largely influenced by them: and 
in art the Norse spirit is now widely recognised. 
Our Teutonic ForBEARS.—Under this title Prof. 
F. G. Parsons contributes a valuable article, in which, 
from the point of view of an anatomist, he describes 
in the Times of April 14 the results of the exploration 
of Saxon burial-grounds at Margate, Mitcham, and 
Bedford-on-Avon. At Margate the dead are found 
buried in regular rows, as in a modern cemetery, a 
habit the Jutes brought with them from the continent, 
where the so-called ‘“‘row-graves”’ or Reihengraben 
have been long recognised in North-West Germany. 
The Jutes’ burials may be always recognised from 
their habit of burying an earthenware bottle, usually 
near the face of the dead: it possibly contained ale 
or mead for the refreshment of the ghost. From the 
arms and other adornments it is certain that at 
Mitcham and Bedford-on-Avon the sites were 
occupied by pagan Saxons, long-headed, long-faced 
members of the Nordic race, though every now and 
then a broad head of Mid-European origin turns up, 
warning us that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were 
NO. 2792, VOL. IIT] 



not an altogether pure race. The average height 
5 ft. 6 in. contrasts with 5 ft. 9 in. of the average 
Englishman of our day. The well-worn teeth show 
that much of his food consistéd of grain, roughly 
ground by soft stones; he suffered terribly from 
chronic rheumatism or osteo-arthritis, and among 
the men fractures, often wonderfully well set, appear ; 
old head injuries are common, showing the rough, 
adventurous life they led. Most of them died before 
40, and the proportion of adolescents between 15 and — 
20 was very great. ; 
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF FATIGUE PROBLEMS.— 
In Psyche (vol. iii. No. 3) Miss Mona Wilson discusses - 
the ‘‘ Problem of Industrial Fatigue’”’ in Great 
Britain. She states that she wishes to treat the sub- 
ject from a sociological, rather than from a technical 
point of view, because, however valuable the results 
of scientific research into fatigue may be, they cannot 
be adequately utilised without a fundamental change 
in the relations between employer and employed. 
Until recently no systematic study of industrial 
fatigue had been undertaken in Great Britain. The 
War, however, with its urgent demands for maximum 
output, compelled the Government to consider the 
problem of fatigue in relation to output, and ulti- 
mately the Industrial Fatigue Research Board was 
established to study the human side of industry. 
Fatigue showed itself to be a very complicated prob- 
lem, and already it has had to be considered in rela- 
tion to problems of vocational selection, training, and 
motion-study, as well as to the more obvious problems 
of hours of labour, speed of production, division of 
the working day. As the problems are too detailed 
for a single body to undertake them all, the writer sug- 
gests that while the Industrial Fatigue Research 
Board might initiate lines of inquiry, some of the 
better organised trades might form Joint Research 
Associations responsible for their-own investigations, 
and that for this purpose they might co-operate with 
the Institute of Industrial Psychology as well as with 
the Board. General conditions for working such 
Associations are given, and in particular there is 
emphasised the need for giving: guarantees to the 
employees that, should the result of the research work 
be to employ fewer people, those displaced will be 
absorbed elsewhere. The article is worthy of careful 
consideration both by technical researchers, who some- 
times tend to become absorbed in a too narrow as 
of their investigations, and also by the student of 
social problems, who not infrequently tends to neglect 
the scientific problems inherent in them. 
New Eocrenre Motiusca From TExas.—Appended 
to “A geological reconnaissance in the Gulf coastal 
plain of Texas near the Rio Grande,” by A. C. Trow- 
bridge, is an account of the “‘ New species of Mollusca 
from the Eocene deposits of south-western Texas,” 
by Julia Gardner (U.S. Geol. Surv. Professional Pa‘ 
131-D), They are few in number but decidedly in- 
teresting. A subspecies of Ostrea alabamiensis seems” 
the most abundant form, and Cucullea one of the 
more conspicuous. There is a doubtful example of 
Cerithium, which on the plate has been styled 
“ Melania ?’’ and a handsome nautiloid referred to 
the genus Enclimatoceras, although as pointed out — 
by Foord in 1891 (Cat. Fossil Cephalop. Brit. Mus., 
Pt. ii.), this should have borne the prior name of 
Hercoglossa. 
GEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN SWEDEN.—Volume 18 
of the Bulletin of the Geological Institution of the — 
University of Uppsala (1922) bears the name of 

