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NATURE 



[July 27, 191 1 



R. W. Hooley. (1) "Siliceous Oolites and other con- 

 cretionary structures in the vicinity of State College. 

 1" (2) "On the Pre-Cambrian Beds of 

 Ontario," Prof. E. S. Moore, of State College, Pennsyl- 

 " Further Work in the Silurian Rocks of the 

 Eastern Mendips," Prof. S. H. Reynolds, (i) " On some 

 New Rha?tic Fossils from Glen Parva, Leics," (2) " On 

 the Shell-layer in Mollusca," A. R. Horwood. 



In The Times of July 12 Mr. W. E. Roth, now Com- 

 missioner of the Pomeroon district, British Guiana, dis- 

 cusses modern men of the Stone age in New Guinea and 

 North Australia. From a comparison of Mr. Goodbody's 

 account of the strange race found in the hitherto unknown 

 interior of Dutch New Guinea with the natives of North 

 Australia, Mr. Roth comes to the conclusion that the 

 latter are " undoubtedly the more primitive, in that they 

 are nomadic and ignorant of any native fermented drink. 

 They are certainly on a level with regard to the treat- 

 ment of their women and in their eating human flesh ; 

 this, however, can hardly be regarded as true cannibalism, 

 in that all the cases that I have met with in North 

 Queensland were due rather to sentiment and affection, 

 nor, indeed, did I come across a single instance where the 

 individual — man, woman, or child — was purposely killed 

 to be eaten." 



Artists and students of anatomy will welcome the 

 elaborate paper entitled " Les proportions du corps pendant 

 la croissance de 13 ans J jusqu'a 17 ans J ainsi qu'a la 

 naissance, a 6 ans i et a 23 ans J representees en ministries 

 de la taille," published in parts iv.-v., for 1910, of 

 Bulletins et mi-moires de la Societe a" anthropologic de 

 Paris. These series of elaborate measurements of the 

 relations of different parts of the human body are illus- 

 trated by statistical diagrams. The memoir is a fine 

 example of the best class of anthropometrical work in 

 which French savants have gained a well-merited reputa- 

 tion. Another similar memoir, contributed to the same 

 journal by Drs. Chaillou and Leon Mac-Auliffe, entitled 

 " Le type musculaire," starts with the examination of 

 cerebral characteristics, and passes on to the consideration 

 of living types and sexual variations. The paper deserves 

 study by all who are interested in physical culture. After 

 pointing out the diseases due to the sedentary life, the 

 authors arrive at the conclusion that its hygiene resolves 

 itself into two words — exercise and rest. 



In the July issue of Man, Messrs. N. F. Robarts and 

 H. C. Collyer continue their report on the excavation of 

 the British camp at Wallington. The numerous loose 

 unbroken flints found on the inner side of the ditch seem 

 to have been used as missiles, and round Tertiarv pebbles 

 were employed as sling-stones. A large collection of imple- 

 ments used in the preparation of food was made, the most 

 common, probably because they were the most indestruct- 

 ible, being saddle-back mealing stones, made of the Lower 

 Greensand sandstone. Many tiles, resembling those from 

 the Swiss Lake dwellings, were discovered. Though there 

 were many flakes and cores, stone implements were scantv 

 in number. A broken axe of diorite indicates foreign 

 commerce. Further exploration of the large remaining 

 portion of the ditch will doubtless provide many other 

 similar articles, but the specimens already unearthed are 

 sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea of the civilisation, 

 arts, and industries of the inhabitants of this Surrey town 

 in the first or second century B.C. 



We have received a copy of No. 3 of the Nature Photo- 

 ker, which contains excellent photographs of a merlin 

 NO. 2178, VOL. 87] 



and her young, and of a group of the tree-fungus known 

 as the "oyster of the woods." 



The first part has reached us of a " Lepidopterorum 

 Catalogus," edited by C. Aurivillius and II. Wagner, and 

 published by W. Junk, of Berlin. The catalogue, of which 

 this part deals with the Chrysopolomidae, purports to give 

 the name of every genus and species, with references. 



After financing a natural history collecting expedition 

 to Alaska, Miss A. M. Alexander recently supplied funds 

 for a similar undertaking in Humboldt County, Nevada, 

 which was duly accomplished in the summer of 1909. The 

 results, so far as mammals are concerned, are record' 

 Mr. W. P. Taylor in a report issued as No. 7 of the 

 seventh volume of the University of California Zoological 

 Publications. One short-tailed field-mouse is described 

 as new. 



Among the more important papers recently published in 

 the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, reference may be made to the third portion 

 of Mr. J. P. Moore's account of the polychaetous annelids. 

 dredged off southern California by the Albatross, which 

 appeared in the April issue. The number of new forms 

 described indicates the richness of the fauna. Later on in 

 the same issue Messrs. Brown and Pilsbry describe the 

 molluscs of the Tertiary Gatun beds, Isthmus of Panama. 



In describing a batch of fourteen newly-born young of an 

 electric ray (Narcine brasiliensis) from Florida, Messrs. 

 Bean and Weed point out, in No. 1816 of the Proceedings 

 of the U.S. National Museum, that these differ in colour- 

 ing from their parents. The young, as shown in a striking 

 plate, are spotted as conspicuously as a leopard, whereas 

 in the adult the spots are much less distinct, and in some 

 cases are formed by the agglomeration of pin-like dots. 

 In No. 1824 of the publication cited, the same authors 

 reclassify the so-called freshwater American sunfishes of 

 the genus Lepomis, belonging to the peccoid family 

 Centrarchidae. The pharyngeal bones and teeth are largely 

 taken as the basis of classification, and a number of ex- 

 amples of this part of the skeleton are figured. 



In an article on the Morocco-Algerian frontier, contri- 

 buted to the Field of July 15, Sir H. H. Johnston repro- 

 duces two outline figures of the extinct north African 

 buffalo (Bos [Buhalu.^ antiquus), incised on rock-faces 

 near Tiout, southern Algeria. The sketches, the age of 

 which is unknown, appear to have been made by a 

 people related to the modern Berbers, but living under 

 conditions similar to those prevalent during the Neolithic 

 or early Metal age in Europe. The horns of the buffalo 

 seem to be of the type of those of the Indian, as distinct 

 from the African, species, and are of immense size. On 

 the other hand, it has been stated that the skeleton, apart 

 from the skull, is more like that of the African buffalo ; 

 and the nasal bones appear to be of the short type distinc- 

 tive of the latter. Sir Harry Johnston states that he was 

 informed by one of the professors at the University of 

 Algiers that other rock-pictures show this buffalo domesti- 

 cated by a tribe acquainted with the use of metal ; a 

 circumstance which renders it all the more remarkable 

 that the species should have become extinct before the 

 time of Carthaginian and Roman history. It may be 

 added that the intermediate characters presented by the 

 extinct Algerian species tend to show that the proposal to 

 separate genericallv (or subgenerically) the African from 

 the Indian buffalo is unnecessary. 



Systematic contributions to the Kew Bulletin (No. 5) 

 comprise a list of Balsaminacea; from the State of Chitral 

 determined by Sir Joseph Hooker, a series of new African 



