November 14, 1901 



NA TURE 



with the aid of artificial manures. What should be done with 

 phosphate is not clear. Artificial manures are unremunerative 

 on land in poor mechanical condition. It is recommended that 

 energy should be devoted to raising pen manure rather than 

 spend money on artificial manures. Experiments are being 

 undertaken to determine whether it will be remunerative to use 

 artificial manures in growing green dressings. 



Geological surveys in the United States take a more com- 

 prehensive view of geolog>- than is prevalent elsewhere, as 

 they deal generally with natural history. The State Geologist 

 of Alabama has issued a bulky volume on the plant life of the 

 State, by Dr. Charles Mohr. In it are enumerated all the 

 known species of native plants, with their synonymy, localities 

 and mode of occurrence. The author makes some remarks on 

 the spontaneous flora in its relation to agriculture, and observes 

 that the fitness of the land for the production of a special crop 

 can often be ascertained by the farmer from the character of the 

 vegetation alone, without having to resort to costly and time- 

 consuming experimentation. 



The Geological Survey of India has published an account of 

 I he Son Valley in the Rewah State and of parts of the adjoining 

 districts of Jabalpur and Mirzapur, by Messrs. R. D. Oldham, 

 P. N. Datta and E. Vredenburg (Mem. Geol. Siirv. India, vol. 

 xxxi. part i. , 1 901). The report is accompanied by a colour- 

 printed map on the scale of an inch to four miles, and this shows 

 the exposed areas of unfossiliferous and more or less metamor- 

 phosed rocks, a red shale series, and overlying divisions of the 

 Vindhyan and Gondwana groups, which have been regarded as 

 representing Silurian and Jura-Trias respectively. The present 

 work relates almost wholly to the stratigraphical, petrographical 

 and physical questions. There is an almost complete absence of 

 minerals of economic value and apparently also of fossils. 

 Special attention is drawn to the porcellanites of the Lower 

 Vindhyan series, which are regarded as volcanic tufls. 



Dr. Fritz Noetling describes the fauna of the Miocene 

 beds of Burma (" Palsontologia Indica," new series, vol. i. 

 1901). Two groups of Tertiary strata are recognised ; the lower, 

 characterised by a marine fauna, is considered to be of Miocene 

 age, and the upper, characterised by fluviatile and terrestrial 

 forms of life, is regarded as Pliocene. The Miocene deposits 

 yield remains of Anoplotherium, Crocodilus, Python and Mylio- 

 bates, which suggest comparison with higher Eocene and 

 Oligocene strata. The author, however, maintains that the 

 beds are newer than the Bartonian (Eocene), and he has 

 " purposely refrained from mentioning the Oligocene," as, in 

 his opinion, " no evidence warrants the adoption of this name 

 for any part of the Indian Tertiary system." The fauna is 

 composed mainly of Lamellibranchs and Gasteropods, and these 

 exhibit relationships with the Eocene of France and with the 

 recent fauna of the western Pacific. Thirty per cent, of the 

 species are direct ancestors of forms living in the Indian Ocean, 

 but this recent fauna contains also a foreign, probably European, 

 element of Miocene origin. One of the author's conclusions is 

 that there was no direct communication between the Miocene 

 Ocean of Europe and India during the Miocene period, as there 

 is not a single species common to the two areas. The vertical 

 range of the species is very restricted. 



The Report of Mr. Edgar Thurston, superintendent of the 

 Goverment Museum, Madras, for the year 1900-1901 has reached 

 us, and contains much interesting information concerning the 

 work done in the various departments of the institution, 

 particularly in the case of those devoted to anthropology, 

 natural history and industrial economics. During the year 

 under review four parts of the Bulletin of the Museum were 

 issued, the contents of which have already been referred to in 

 these columns. 



NO. 1672, VOL. 65] 



The Baschkirs are an inleresting group of peop who live 

 on the eastern slopes of the Urals ; formerly they were all 

 nomads, but they have been constrained by the Russian Govern- 

 ment to become more or less settled, and they now constitute 

 three groups — the forest- mountain- and steppe-Baschkirs. Hofrat 

 Peter von Stenin gives in Globus (Bd. Ixxx., Nr. 10, p. 150) an 

 ethnographical illustrated sketch of these people, with references 

 to the literature of the subject, but he omits the brilliant essay 

 on their sociology by M. Edmond Demolins in La Science Sociaie 

 (tome ii., 1886, p. 405), which is based upon the observations 

 of Le Play in the second volume of his " Ouvriers Europeens." 

 The difficulty with which a pastoral people take to agriculture 

 is indicated by both the German and French authors in a 

 manner characteristic of their several nationalities. 



The anthropological investigations in connection with the 

 Madras Government Museum are being conducted with energy 

 and ability, the last research being by Superintendent F. 

 Fawcett on the ethnography of the Nayars of Malabar. The 

 account is published in the Bulletin of the Museum (vol. iii. 

 No. 3) and is illustrated with eleven plates. The Nayars, the 

 Narea; of Pliny, were the swordsmen, the military caste of the 

 west coast of India. They are said to be the most complete 

 existing example of inheritance through females. Their 

 average stature is i'656 m., the cephalic index 73'i, and nasal 

 index 76 '8 ; that is, they belong to the somewhat short, long- 

 headed, distinctly dolichocephalic mesorhine group of the 

 non-Aryans of southern India. The customs relative to mar- 

 riage, birth, death are carefully narrated. The religion is 

 described, special mention being made of serpent worship and 

 cettain festivals, and astrology and magic. 



Mr. C.J. Herrick, the well known author of the "Mammals 

 of Minnesota," contributes to the October number of Ihe Joiirtial 

 of Comparative Neurology an important paper on the cranial 

 nerves and cutaneous sense organs of the North American cat- 

 fishes, or siluroids. Starting with Merkel's discovery of the 

 divisibility of the cutaneous sense-organs into two chief types — 

 the "terminal buds" and " neuromasts," or organs of the 

 lateral-line system — the author has endeavoured to ascertain 

 whether these two types are supplied by different nerves, as 

 has been thought probable by other investigators. The inves- 

 tigation has involved the complete working-out of the nervous 

 system of the common American cat-fish, Ameiurus catus. 



The latest issue (vol. xxix. part iii.) of Gegenbaur's Morpho- 

 logisclies Jahrbuch contains five papers, all dealing with the 

 morphology and development of the lower vertebrates. Prof. 

 B. Haller discusses the primitive kidneys of the spiny dog-fish, 

 Mr. H. L. Bruner the respiratory mechanism of amphibians, as 

 exemplified by the myology of two genera, and Mr. J. F. Holm 

 the finer anatomy of the nervous system of the lampreys of the 

 genus Myxine. The first appearance of the olfactory organ in 

 the larva of the true lampreys forms the subject of an article by 

 Dr. \V. Lubosch, while F. Hochstetter describes certain varia- 

 tions in the aortic arch and the bases of the arteries springing 

 from the same in reptiles. 



The August issue (vol. iv. part i. ) of Annotationes Zoologicae 

 Japonenses contains five papers, for the most part on somewhat 

 abstruse biological subjects, and thus bears witness to the 

 thoroughness with which natural science is studied in Japan. 

 In the first communication Prof. Mitsukuri discusses " negative 

 phototaxis" in the Japanese periwinkles and its influence on 

 their habitat. Knowing that these molluscs like shallow water, 

 it is argued that when the depth becomes too great for their 

 comfort they endeavour to escape by crawling in the direction 

 which appears to them the darkest — that is towards the land. 

 In a second paper Mr. S. Ilatta reviews the lampreys of Japan ; 



