December 12, 1907J 



NA TURE 



139 



Physiology. — The Montyon prize in experimental pFiysio- 

 logy is divided between Maurice Nicloux and Denis Brocc- 

 Rousseu, the former for his work on the physiological 

 saponification of fatty substances, and the latter for his 

 researches on the alterations of seeds, cereals, and forage. 

 H. Hierry receives the Philipeaux prize, for his studies in 

 cytoxines ; Gaston Seilliere the Pourat prize, for his memoir 

 on the utilisation of the pentosans by the animal organism ; 

 M. Laulani^ the La Caze prize, for the whole of his work 

 in the field of general physiology, the Lallemand prize 

 being divided between E. R^gis and Etienne Rabaud. 



Statistics. — A memoir on statistical methods and their 

 applications, by Lucien March, is accorded the Montyon 

 prize in statistics. J. A. Fleury receives a very honourable 

 mention for his memoir on the statistics of the city of 

 Rouen, and Dr. Conor an honourable mention for his 

 memoir on hysteria in the army. 



History of Science. — Prizes are awarded to Gino Loria 

 and !•". Brunei, F. de M^ly being accorded a very honour- 

 able mention. 



General Prices. — .Adolf von Baeyer receives the Lavoisier 

 medal ; MM. Blaise, Deli5pine and Hamonet, Berthelot 

 medals; Charles Fremont, the Tr^mont prize; J. H. Fabre, 

 the liegner prize ; .Mmes. Beclard, Cusco and Ruck, the 

 Lannelongue prize ; Charles Nordmann and Jean Brunhes, 

 the Wilde prize ; MM. Gonnessiat and de Seguier, the 

 Sainlour prize; Pierre Duhem, the Petit D'Ormoy prize 

 (mathematical sciences), J. Kiinckel d'Herculais, the Petit 

 D'Ormoy prize (natural sciences) ; A. Cotton, the Pierson- 

 Perrin prize ; L^on Dauni, the prize founded by Mme. la 

 Marquise de Laplace; .ind L^on Daum, Georges Jean 

 Painvin, Charles Marie Joseph Cambournac, and Louis 

 Eugene Galatoire Mal^garie, the prize founded bv F6lix 

 RIvot. 



The Leconte prize is not awarded this year. 



THE JOURA'.iL OF THE ROYAL ANTHRO- 

 POLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 

 'PHE new volume of the Journal of the Royal Anthropo- 

 logical Institute is dedicated, on the occasion of his 

 seventy-fifth birthday, to Prof. E. B. Tylor, of whom a 

 tine portrait forms the frontispiece. The dedication 

 dwells on his classical contributions to the science of 

 anthropology — his " Researches into the Early History of 

 Mankind" and "Primitive Culture" — works which enjoy 

 the almost unique distinction of never having been super- 

 seded by the studies of later writers ; on his career as 

 professor of anthropology at Oxford, where, as the result 

 of his teaching and personal initiative, a diploma course 

 in the science has been established ; and on the generous 

 encouragement bestowed by him on the students of a 

 younger generation. This compliment to a scholar who 

 stands in the foremost rank is graceful and well deserved. 



The president. Prof. Gowland, in his annual address 

 continues his studies of burial mounds in Japan which 

 were begun by his well-known paper contributed to vol. Iv. 

 of " .Archaaologia." Here he deals with the remark- 

 able structures which cover the remains of the early 

 emperors. Some of these are of enormous extent ; one 

 when first erected must have been not less than looo feet 

 long and 600 feet broad, while in spite of denudation its 

 summit now rises to the height of 84 feet. It seems 

 certain that several of these mounds are as earlv as the 

 first or second century of our era, and their construction 

 continued for some five or six centuries after that date. 

 It ceased with the establishment of Buddhism, when the 

 custom of inhumation was replaced by cremation. The 

 examples of metal work found in these monuments — iron 

 armour, swords, horse-trappings of iron covered with thin 

 gilt copper foil — illustrate the national skill in metallurgy 

 in those early times. Terra-cotta figurines mark the 

 transition from the custom of burying attendants with 

 the dend sovereign, a reform which the " Nihongi " 

 Chronicle attributes to the Emperor Suinin, who reigned 

 at the beginning of the Christian era. .At manv of these 

 monuments the Japanese, ardent worshippers of ancestors, 

 still perform annual rites, and the mounds are protected 

 from desecration. 



The most important contribution to physical anthro- 

 NO. T989. VOL. 77I 



pology is the account, by Prof. Cunningham, of perhaps 

 the most remarkable head of one of the Australian 

 aborigines which has ever reached this country. It is that 

 of a man who died in 1905 in a lunatic asylum, and it 

 was most skilfully prepared by Dr. Ramsay Smith by 

 means of injections of formalin. This head is dis- 

 tinguished by the great prominence of the supraorbital 

 regions of the forehead, which is receding and sloping, 

 by the width of the zygomatic region, and by the retreat- 

 ing chin and almost complete absence of a mental 

 prominence. The type does not, as might have been ex- 

 pected from the reported cause of death — organic disease 

 of the brain — seem to be abnormal. 



Mr. H. Balfour contributes a good museum article on 

 what he terms the friction drum, a curious musical instru- 

 ment consisting of a drum with a single membrane, to 

 the centre of which is attached a string, horsehair, or 

 short stick, which on being rubbed with the moistened 

 or rosined forefinger and thumb creates rapid vibrations 

 communicated to the membrane. The instrument appears 

 in Europe, North and South America, -Africa, Japan, and 

 India. It seems impossible to discover the original centre 

 of dispersion ; in fact, there appears no reason why it 

 should not have been independently discovered in Africa 

 or India, where it appears earlier than in other regions. 



Archseology is represented by an account, by Canon 

 Greenwell, of a remarkable find by Major Sykes of bronze 

 weapons, implements, and vessels at Khindmdn, in south- 

 east Persia. " It is impossible," he writes, " to over- 

 estimate the interest and value of this discovery. This 

 arises not only from the nature of the articles themselves, 

 but from the light it throws upon the early metallic stage 

 of cultivation in that country, about which our inform- 

 ation is very scanty." The axes are the most important 

 and interesting. They could never have been used in war 

 or for any other useful purpose, but were representative 

 weapons made to be buried with the dead man in place 

 of those which he used in life, or more probably were 

 employed in processional rites, to be carried as a mark 

 of dignity before a personage of rank. In the ornament- 

 ation, as in the case of two similar weapons previously 

 discovered within the same Asian area, the lion appears 

 as a prominent feature of the design. 



EXPERIMENTS ON WIND-PRESSURE. 

 "PURTHER experiments on wind-pressure were described 

 ^ by Dr. T. E. Stanton before the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers on December 3. The first part of this research, 

 of which the results were communicated to the same institu- 

 tion in December, 1903, was the investigation of the result- 

 ant pressure and distribution of pressure on flat plates 

 normal to and inclined to the direction of a uniform current 

 of air. The value of the constant K in the pressure velocity 

 relation P = KV- was found to be 0-0027, ^ result some- 

 what smaller than those found by Dines, Frowde, and 

 Langley. On the completion of this part of the work it 

 was decided to make observations on flat surfaces of areas 

 ranging up to 100 square feet when exposed to the wind, 

 since general experience tended to show that in actual 

 winds the velocity of which was not uniform over time or 

 space, the mean pressure per square foot on a large surface 

 was considerably less than that on a small one. For the 

 purpose of the work a steel windmill tower was erected 

 in the grounds of the National Physical Laboratory at 

 Teddington. The experimental boards and models of 

 structures were attached to a light framework carried by 

 the cap of the tower, the height of the centre of the boards 

 from the ground being 50 feet. 



The results of observations on three pressure-boards, 

 one 5 feet by J feet, one 5 feet by 10 feet, and one 

 10 feet by 10 feet, gave practically identical values of 

 the constant in the pressure-velocity relation. In units 

 of pounds per square foot and miles per hour, the 

 mean value of this constant for the three boards was 

 00032. Further observations on the intensity of the 

 pressure at the front and back of the boards appeared 

 to show that the cause of the higher value of the con- 

 stant compared with that obtained in the case of the 

 small plates of the earlier experiments was the rela- 

 tively greater intensity of the negative pressure at the 



