January 2,0, 190SJ 



NA TURE 



299 



gave generous assistance to various expeditions and other 

 scientific enterprises. 



Lord Avebury has been elected president of the Royal 

 Microscopical Society, and will deliver an address on seeds, 

 with especial reference to British plants, at the March 

 meeting of the society. 



We learn from the British Medical Journal that the 

 Secretary of State for the Colonies has appointed Dr. 

 \V. J. Simpson, professor of hygiene at King's College, 

 London, to proceed to the Gold Coast to assist in com- 

 bating the present outbreak of bubonic plague at Accra. 

 Prof. Simpson left for the Gold Coast on January i8. 



To the Tirrtes of January 22 Miss L. L. Veley con- 

 tributes a letter on the subject of luminous barn-owls, in 

 which it is suggested that the emanation is due to the 

 feathers of the birds having come in contact with 

 luminiferous decaying wood in their roosting-places. This 

 suggestion, which has doubtless occurred to many 

 naturalists, affords a probable and satisfactory explanation 

 of the phenomenon. 



The Philosophical Society of Washington held its 643rd 

 meeting at the Hubbard Memorial Hall, in the City of 

 Washington, on January 18, the entire evening being 

 devoted to commemorati\'e addresses of the life and work 

 of Lord Kelvin. Prof. A. G. Webster spoke of Kelvin's 

 life and work, Prof. R. S. Woodward confined his address 

 to Kelvin's contributions to geophysics, and Prof. Simon 

 Newcomb devoted his remarks to Kelvin's character and 

 personality, to which topic the British Ambassador also 

 contributed some reminiscences. The president of the 

 society. Dr. L. A. Bauer, presided. 



Dr. G. A. DoRSEY, curator of anthropology in the 

 Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, has recently 

 visited Cambridge before embarking on a protracted tour 

 through the East Indian Archipelago, .'\ustralia, and 

 Melanesia. After visiting the Philippines, where three of 

 his students are engaged in ethnological researches, he 

 will return to Chicago by way of China, Japan, and the 

 Hawaiian Islands. He expects to be away from Chicago 

 for about one year. This is merely a tour of inspection, 

 but it may not unreasonably be expected that it will lead 

 to future investigations by others in certain localities. 



In the Rev. Dr. Lorimer Fison, who died near Mel- 

 bourne on December 29, 1907, Australian anthropology has 

 lost one of its earliest scientific workers. He was born 

 in England on November 9, 1832, and went up to Caius 

 College, Cambridge, but never took a degree ; after 

 residing some time in Australia he became a Wesleyan 

 missionary and went to Fiji, and it was from him that 

 Lewis Morgan drew important information for his 

 " Systems of Consanguinity." Returning to Australia, 

 Dr. Fison met Dr. A. W. Hewitt, and a joint work on 

 .Australian marriage customs, &c., " Kamibaroi and 

 Kurnai," appeared in 1880. Whatever his views at that 

 date. Dr. Fison subsequently dissented from Morgan's 

 interpretation of the facts in favour of' primitive pro- 

 miscuity, for in an address to the Australasian .'Association 

 for the Advancement of Science he took the view that the 

 group marriage did not mean more than marital right or 

 qualification by birth. Dr. Fison, unfortunately, found 

 little time for writing; papers by him on Fijian customs 

 and kinship systems appeared in the Journal of the 

 Anthropological Institute ; he dealt with Fijian land 

 tenure in the Expository Times of 1905, and a year earlier 

 he published in " Tales of Old Fiji " a small part of his 

 NO. 1996, VOL. '/j] 



great store of knowledge of that island. Some years ago 

 he received a Civil List pension, but, to the loss of 

 anthropologv, broken health forbade him to do much 

 literary work. 



In the Engineer and in Engineering of January 24 a 

 large amount of space is devoted to the Board of Trade 

 inquiry into the facts relating to a disastrous explosion 

 of a thermal storage-drum in connection with a Babcock 

 and Wilcox boiler at Greenwich. The explosion took place 

 on December 20, 1906, and the inquiry (one of the longest 

 on record) ended on January 22, 1908, when judgment was 

 given by the commissioners. The finding was that the 

 primary cause of the explosion was a crack which had 

 been formed in the end plate, owing to the bad treatment 

 to which the plate had been subjected while being fitted 

 into the drum. .\ny fears that existed as to the peculiar 

 liability of thermal storage-drums to fail were removed. 

 Many points of scientific interest occurred during the 

 inquiry, notably in the reports by Mr. W. Rosenhain and 

 Dr. T. E. Stanton, of the National Physical Laboratory, 

 showing from the results of chemical, microscopical, and 

 mechanical tests that the plate in question was of good 

 normal commercial quality, but that it had received severe 

 treatment in the hands of the boiler-makers. 



Last spring Dr. J. Elberts, the German geologist, con- 

 ducted an expedition to investigate further the fossiliferous 

 deposits of the Bengawan River, near Trinil, in Java, 

 rendered famous by the discovery of Pithecanthropus 

 crectus by Dr. Eugene Dubois in 1891-2. Although 

 extensive collections were made and fresh forms discovered, 

 no trace of Pithecanthropus was found ; but, according to 

 the correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette (January 17), 

 Dr. Elberts found roughly fashioned implements of bone, 

 " a fireplace, and the remains of extinct animals, from 

 which he became convinced that the ape-man must have 

 existed at a remoter period." Unfortunately, this state- 

 ment is so vague that nothing can be accepted until more 

 information comes to hand. The implication is that some 

 beings made fires and cooked animals, now extinct, before 

 the gravel beds were deposited which contain Pithecan- 

 thropus and other e.xtinct forms. In the province of 

 Madium a fireplace was discovered 20 feet below the surface 

 containing stone arrow'-heads and fragments of pottery, 

 broken and partly burned bones, and charred teeth of a 

 fossil buffalo, together with the bones of deer, pigs, and 

 a fossil elephant (Stegodon) ; some of these bones had been 

 split open in order to extract the marrow. Dr. Elberts 

 computes that these people lived 20,000 years ago, but, as 

 the correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette does not give 

 the data upon which this estimation is based, this date 

 must await the publication of all the facts. It is evident 

 that we may congratulate our German colleagues on 

 having discovered remains of early inhabitants of Java 

 who were apparently in their " Neolithic " stage of culture. 

 It is to be hoped that when the finds are published in 

 full it will be possible to learn what manner of men they 

 were. We understand that the expedition is now in south 

 Sumatra, where fossil plants will also be collected, in the 

 hope of determining whether Sumatra had an Ice age. 



The correspondence on the winding of rivers in plains 

 which followed the letter from Sir Oliver Lodge published 

 in these columns on November 7 last (vol. Ixxvii., p. 24), 

 and to which Mr. J. Lomas contributed on December 5 

 (vol. Ixxvii., p. 102), has led Dr. D. T. Smith, of Louis- 

 ville, Ky., to remind us that the subject is discussed in a 

 book of his entitled " Philosophy of Memory," which was 

 reviewed in Nature of May 18, 1899 (vol. Ix., p. 51). 



