i8o 



NATURE 



[August ii, 1910 



in which intelligence tests in school children will be dis- 

 cussed. Among those who have promised papers written 

 from the special point of view of the anthropological 

 section are Dr. Lippmann, of Berlin, Dr. C. S. Myers, 

 of Cambridge, Mr. W. Brown, of King's College, London, 

 Mr. Burt, of the Liverpool Psychological Laboratory, and 

 -Mr. J. Gray. Dr. Kerr, medical officer (education) of 

 the London County Council, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, and 

 others will take part in the discussion. 



In the Long Vacation number of the Oxford and Cam- 

 hridge Review Dr. A. Smythe-Palmer begins an elaborate 

 study of the luck of the horse-shoe, " a veritable fetish, 

 maintaining ils reputation for magical potency with un- 

 abated influence into the twentieth century." He agrees 

 that the belief in its power is largely based upon the 

 mystical respect for iron, dating from its introduction as 

 an innovation at the close of the Neolithic period ; but he 

 also supposes that in shape it is " only a rough-and-ready 

 substitute for the old and long venerated symbol of the 

 crescent," the use of which as a protection against the 

 evil eye and other demoniacal influence is illustrated by 

 numerous examples. He postpones to another article the 

 further question of the mode in which the crescent acquired 

 its magical significance. 



In Travel and Exploration for August Mr. W. J. Clutter- 

 buck publishes an interesting and well-illustrated account 

 of the little known Great Lu-Chu Island, or, as the 

 Japanese, who now occupy it, call it, Okinawa, the most 

 important of the Lu-Chu group. He considers the islanders 

 to be a finer race than their conquerors ; the shape of 

 the eye is different, being wide open and seldom oblique 

 at the corners, while the women reminded him of southern 

 Europeans. The distinguishing feature of the landscape is 

 the tombs ; and at a funeral he noticed the professional 

 female mourners wailing as they marched along enveloped 

 in sackcloth bags, the intention obviously being to conceal 

 them, and thus avoid the unwelcome attentions of the 

 ghost. The corpse is deposited in a tomb for three years, 

 after which the bones are removed, washed, and placed 

 in a highly ornamented earthenware urn, which has a 

 curious resemblance to the house-shaped funeral urns found 

 in other parts of the world, the intention in all cases being 

 to provide a home for the spirit resembling that which the 

 deceased occupied in this life. 



Nattiren for July and August (Nos. 7 and 8 of vol. 

 xxxiv.) contains a well-illustrated account of the recent 

 eruption of Etna, by Mr. A. Hoel. 



We have to acknowledge the receipt of vol. .xxxiii.. 

 No. I, of Notes from the Leyden Museum, which, in 

 addition to other articles, contains a continuation, illus- 

 trated by two coloured plates, of Mr. C. J. H. Biermann's 

 account of the Homoplera of the Dutch East Indies. 



The amphipod crustaceans of Bermuda and the West 

 Indies, according to a memoir of 115 pages by Dr. W. B. 

 Kunkel, published in vol. xvi. of the Transactions of the 

 Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, have apparently 

 received but scant attention at the hands of naturalists. 

 Recent collecting in Bermuda — by Prof. Verrill and others 

 — has enabled the author to put matters on a very different 

 footing. The most striking peculiarity of the amphipod 

 fauna of Bermuda is ils close affinity to that of the 

 Mediterranean. Of forty-five Bermuda species, nineteen, 

 or possibly twenty, are common to the Mediterranean. 

 Eighteen out of the forty-five are peculiar to Bermuda, and 

 only seven which are iiot endemic are unknown in the 

 Mediterranean. In contrast to this abundance of European 

 NO. 2128, VOL. 84] 



types, the presence of only nine species common to South 

 and Central America is remarkable, especially in view of 

 the fact that 93 per cent, of Bermuda decapods have been 

 recorded from the West Indies and Florida Keys. " This 

 paucity of forms from Central and South .America probably 

 has little significance, however, and is due simply to the 

 small amount of collecting of Crustacea from these 

 waters." 



The difficult, if not indeed unanswerable, question as to 

 the limitations of species and races is again raised by Mr. 

 G. Dalgliesh in the case of the yellow-necked field-mouse. 

 In this instance the writer maintains that this mouse ought 

 to be regarded as specifically distinct from the ordinary 

 long-tailed field-mouse {Miis sylvaticus) under the name of 

 M. flavicolHs, basing his arguments, not only on the 

 physical dilTerences between the two forms, but likewise 

 on their distribution and their divergence in habits and 

 disposition. It may be remarked in this connection that 

 naturalists are by no means in accord as to the proper 

 name for the yellow-necked form. Mr. Dalgliesh uses 

 Melchior's flavicollis ; but in his recently published " Faune 

 des Mammifires d'Europe " Dr. Trouessart regards this 

 term as a synonym of the true sylvaticus, and employs 

 wintoni for the British form. On the other hand, Mr. 

 Millais, as quoted by Mr. Dalgliesh, regards the British 

 yellow-neck as a distinct local form of the Continental 

 flavicollis, under the name of M. /. uiintoni. Mr. Pycraft, 

 again, in his " Guide to the British Vertebrates in the 

 British Museum (Natural History)," alludes to the one 

 form as Apodcmus sylvaticus and to the other as .4. flavi- 

 collis. The question of species or race is of infinitesimal 

 importance, but the eccentricities in nomenclature are 

 perplexing. 



Mlxh interest attaches to an article by Dr. Felix Oswald 

 in the July number of Science Progress on the area termed 

 by Dr. Sven Hedin the Trans-Himalaya, an area bounded 

 on the north by the chain of lakes first discovered by the 

 explorer Nain Sing, and on the south by the Indus-Tsan-po 

 valleys. Throughout the area the trend of the mountains, 

 as shown by a map, is quite distinct from the north-west 

 and south-east direction of the Himalaya proper, this 

 alone being held sufficient to justify Dr. Hedin's proposal 

 of the term Trans-Himalaya. There is, however, much 

 more than this, for, in the author's opinion, the Trans- 

 Himalaya rL-presents a block of ancient rocks thrown into 

 folds at a very remote epoch, but at the date of the folding 

 of the Tibetan plateau so intractable that they yielded to 

 niountain-n-.aking force by first becoming fractured and 

 then uptilted. If this be granted, " it follows that the 

 natural continuation of the parallel ranges of the block 

 now lies sunk beneath the Brahmaputra Valley, at the base 

 of the great fault-scarp, to which the river flows in parallel 

 alignment. ."Accordingly, this valley must be of the nature 

 of a rift-valley or sunken trench, especially since the 

 opposite (southern) wall of the valley lies parallel to the 

 northern wall, and in like manner possesses an average 

 height of 23,000 feet." In conclusion. Dr. Oswald traces 

 a curious parallelism — which he believes to be more than 

 accidental — between the structure of the .^rabian-.'Vrmenian- 

 Caucasian area on the one hand, and the Indian, Tian 

 Shan, and Siberian region on the other, each having an 

 anterior and posterior table-land separated by three systems 

 of " waves." 



The ninety-fifth volume of the Zeilschrift fiir wisscii- 

 schaftliche Zoologie is completed by the number published 

 on June 21. The papers which this volume contains deal, 

 as usual, with a great variety of subjects, from pure 



