4o6 



NATURE 



[Seitemulk 29, 1910 



for old age pensions, the Government chemists were asked 

 if possible to ascertain the date of entries made in family 

 Bibles, old letters, and certificates. In some cases they 

 were able to show, from the nature of the ink employed, 

 that the writing was comparatively recent, and that the 

 entries had been made for the purpose of manufacturing; 

 evidence in support of the claim. 



The total number of analyses and examinations made 

 during the vear at the two main laboratories (Clement's 

 Inn and Custom House) was 170,033, the greater number 

 being in connection with dutiable articles. Legal pro- 

 ceedings were taken in 223 cases for contraventions of 

 revenue laws, and the total amount of fines paid was 2877/. 



THE ARCH^OLOGICAL SURVEY OF NUBIA. 

 'T'HE last Bulletin of the .^rchjcological Survey of Nubia 

 -'■ describes excavations in the cemeteries and buildings 

 of the ancient district of Pselchis, which will become sub- 

 merged when the new Nile barrage is completed. The 

 results are to some degree unsatisfactory, owing to the 

 prevalence, even from ancient times, of the practice of 

 ichafch-digging by agriculturists in order to obtain fresh 

 supplies of rich' soil to re-fertilise the land, which is 

 periodically covered by a layer of fine sand drifted by the 

 prevailing wind. This results in the destruction of many 

 interesting remains ; and treasure hunters have also done 

 much damage, but the operations of the latter can be 

 easily distinguished from the ruder methods adopted by 

 the farmers. 



The anatomical reports by Prof. G. Elliot Smith and 

 Dr. . D. E. Derry are, as usual, exhaustive, and present 

 much valuable information. They disclose the advance in 

 the Byzantine-Pagan period, between the second and fourth 

 centuries A.D., of a group of negroes from the south with 

 distinctive physical characteristics, customs, and arts. 

 Their occupation of these new settlements was certainly 

 not altogether pe.iceful, many skeletons showing evidence 

 of death by wounds, and one, in particular, with such 

 extensive cranial injuries that it is difficult to understand 

 how the victim could even for a short time have survived. 

 One of the negresses whose remains were discovered in 

 this cemetery displays an ex-tremely abnormal type of 

 prognathism. While the alveolar index of adult Europeans 

 is 96-2, and that of .African negroes 104-4, this specimen 

 gives an index of 1233, which is little below that of the 

 chimpanzee, 128-8. It would be interesting to identify 

 this abnormal type with that of some modern race ; and 

 a clue may be found in the fact that the negroes whose 

 remains were found here practised the custom of filing 

 the teeth, which, with removal of some of the incisors, 

 still prevails among the Masai and some of the Kavirondo 

 Bantus. 



It seems to be generally believed that the latter races 

 derived this custom from the Dinka and other allied 

 Nilotic peoples, some of whom may have supplied the 

 individuals whose remains have now, in such strange 

 circumstances, been subjected to scientific examination. 

 The question of the ancient prevalence of tuberculosis is 

 also advanced by the fact that many of these people 

 suffered from spinal disease due to this maladv. It must 

 have been common among them, because the high average 

 of cases found in these cemeteries cannot be accounted for 

 by the supposition that this site was used as a sanatorium 

 for this class of disease. 



MANGANESE- ORE DEPOSITS. 



T 



HE paper referred to below gives an elaborate and 

 interesting account of the occurrence of manganese 

 ore in Sandur, one of the States of the Presidency of 

 Madras; its value lies mainly in the abundance of detail 

 given respecting this one particular occurrence, and it thus 

 lacks the broader economic interest that attaches to that 

 recent admirable memoir dealing with the manganese 

 deposits of the whole of India, " The Manganese-ore 

 Deposits of India," by Dr. L. L. Fermor, Mem. Geol. 

 Surv. India, xxxvii., which appeared at the commencement 

 1 " Mangane«e-ore Depo-^it-i of the .Sandur tstate." By A. Ghose. 

 Excerpt from the Transactions of the Mining and Geological Institute 

 of India, vol. iv., pp. 155-204 -f-21 plates. Part 3, February, 1910. 



NO. 2135, VOL. 84] 



of the present year, and which has given so much valuable 

 inforination regarding the occurrence and distribution of this 

 ore. Mr. Ghose gives no figures at all to show the output 

 of inanganese from the State of Sandur, and thus avoids 

 directing attention to its relative unimportance ; it may 

 therefore be as well to make up here for his shortcomings 

 in this respect : — 



Production of manganese ore during igoS in the State of 

 Sandur, 23,413 -tons. 



Production of manganese ore during 1908 in the 

 Presidency of Madras, 513,845 tons. 



Production of manganese ore during 1908 in the whole 

 of India, 2,584,525 tons. 



The production of ore, of which the paper treats, is 

 therefore less than i per cent, of the output of India, and 

 may be looked upon as economically negligible ; it would 

 accordingly be difficult to justify the concluding sentence of 

 Mr. Ghose 's paper, in which he characterises these Sandur 

 deposits as " ainong the largest and most remarkable 

 manganese-ore deposits of the world." Such exaggeration 

 of language is out of place in a scientific paper, especially 

 seeing that, as a matter of fact, the Sandur deposits are 

 considerably smaller than those of Nagpur or Balaghat, 

 whilst the ore is also apparently of inferior quality. In 

 the same way, the estimates of the probable ore reserves 

 may be dismissed as resting on very slight foundation. 



The interest of the paper centres essentially in the 

 geological description of the occurrences, and in the 

 author's views as to their formation, which differ entirely 

 from those put forward by the India Geological Survey 

 authorities. Dr. Kermor looks upon these manganese 

 deposits as having " been formed by the replacement at the 

 surface of Dharvvar schists, phyllites, and quartzites " in 

 such a manner as to form a capping approaching to laterite 

 in its character, and he accordingly designates these ores 

 as " lateroid replacement masses"; this view appears, 

 moreover, to be endorsed by Sir Thomas Holland. Mr. 

 Ghose, on the other hand, considers that these " deposits 

 primarily owe their origin to sedimentary deposition from 

 magmatic solution. Their economic value has been 

 enhanced by secondary enrichment." It should be noted 

 that he does not use the term " magmatic solution " in 

 the sense in which it has generally been employed by 

 writers on ore deposits, but means in this case hot solu- 

 tions containing iron and manganese, flowing in horizontal 

 currents over the floor of an ocean. 



Apart from all other considerations, it is obvious that 

 these two theories would assign widely different economic 

 values to the ore deposits in question. If the former is 

 correct, the extension of the ore bodies in depth is strictly 

 liinited, whereas the latter theory, according to which the 

 deposits are syngenelic, would itnpose no such limits upon 

 their extension, and the suspicion cannot be avoided that 

 the author's promulgation of his theory may have been 

 unconsciously influenced by his desire to magnify the 

 economic value of ore deposits, in the opening up of which 

 he has taken a leading part. Seeing that the result of 

 future mining operations will demonstrate without doubt 

 which of these two conflicting theories is the correct one, 

 whilst at present decisive evidence is lacking, it is hardly 

 worth while to examine critically the bases upon which they 

 rest, and the question may well be left for the future to settle, 

 it being suflicient to record here that, whether his theories 

 arc right or wrong, the author has produced a full and 

 interesting description of this system of deposits, and has 

 thus contributed to our knowledge of the occurrences of 

 ores of manganese. H. L. 



ZOOLOGICAL WORK IN INDIA. 

 TN vol. ii.i No. 8, of the entomological series of the 

 Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture, the Govern- 

 ment entomologist, Mr. H. Maxvvell-Lefroy, commences a 

 lavishly illustrated account of the life-history of Indian 

 insects, dealing in this instance with beetles. Hitherto, 

 it is stated, little definite information has been recorded 

 with regard to the life-histories of the beetles of India, 

 and entomologists will therefore welcome the particulars 

 given by the author in the case of eight of the commoner 

 species. In seven out of the eight, the egg, larva, pupa, 

 and imago are illustrated by coloured plates, executed in 

 first-class style by the Calcutta Phototype Company. 



