Marcu 11, 1915] 
NALURE. 
43 

necessary equipment, including a motor-boat. Mr. 
L. P. W. Renouf, of Trinity College, Cambridge, has 
‘been placed in charge, and as he is desirous of 
making the laboratory a thoroughly convenient centre 
for research work upon the wonderfully rich marine 
fauna and flora of the Clyde estuary, he will be grate- 
ful for the gift of books and pamphlets bearing upon 
marine zoology and botany. Any such gifts should 
be forwarded to the Bute Museum, Rothesay, N.B. 
Tue death is announced, in his seventieth year, of 
Dr. C. E. Bessey, professor of botany since 1884 at 
the University of Nebraska. For fourteen years pre- 
viously he had held a similar post at the Iowa Agri- 
cultural College. From 1880 to 1897 he was botanical 
editor of the American Naturalist, and since 1897 he 
had been botanical editor of Science. Prof. Bessey 
had at various times occupied the presidential chair 
of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, of the Botanical Society of America, of the 
Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, of 
the American Microscopical Society, and of the natural 
science department of the National Education Asso- 
ciation. He was the author of ‘‘ The Phylogeny and 
Taxonomy of Angiosperms,’” ‘Plant Migration 
Studies,’ and ‘‘ Outlines of Plant Phyla,’”’ as well as 
of several botanical. text-books for schools. 
We referred in Nature of February 4 (p. 622) to 
reports from a number of correspondents that the 
battle in the North Sea on January 24 was accom- 
panied by much disturbance among pheasants in 
Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and even in Cumberland. 
The disturbance was most noticeable between 9.45 and 
10.30 a.m., that is, as we know from Sir David 
Beattie’s report, at the time when the Bliicher re- 
‘ceived its principal injuries before sinking. In woods 
near Burgh-le-Marsh in Lincolnshire, the guns were 
heard simultaneously with the crowing of the 
pheasants. Canon Rawnsley, who has collected many 
reports on the subject, infers that ‘‘the pheasant’s 
ear is capable of receiving impressions from sound- 
waves that the human ear cannot respond to” (Times, 
February 22); but, in a later issue (March 6), Dr. 
Davison suggests that the disturbance might be 
caused by the sudden swaying of low trees and under- 
growth during the passages of the air-waves. He 
directs attention to the fact (see Nature, vol. Ixii., 
pp. 377-9) that, during a naval review at Cherbourg 
on July 18, 1900, the reports were heard for 107 miles, 
while windows for another thirty miles were shaken 
by the inaudible air-waves. 
On Tuesday evening, March 9, Mr. George E. 
Brown, the editor of the British Journal of Photo- 
graphy, at a meeting of the Royal Photographic 
Society, described a method of colour photography that 
has recently been worked out at the Eastman Kodak 
Company’s research laboratory at Rochester, N.Y. 
It is a two-colour method, and as blue is suppressed 
or represented in only a modified way, the process is 
not claimed to be suitable for other worl: than por- 
traiture. The many fine examples shown prove that 
it gives excellent results, and that the lighter tones, 
such as those of flesh tints, white kid gloves, pearls, 
and so on, are particularly well rendered. The darker 
NO. 2367, VOL. 95 | 


colours, such as the browns, are very rich, but in the 
absence of the original materials photographed, it is 
not possible to say how nearly the colours are imitated. 
The process consists in taking two negatives, one 
through a red and one through a _ green screen, 
developing and fixing them, then dissolving away the 
silver image, and staining the films, the red record 
green, and the green record red. The dyed plates 
are placed face to face (one is taken reversed to permit 
of this) and constitute the portrait. It has to be 
viewed as a transparency, those shown being adjusted 
in colour for incandescent electric lamps behind a 
diffusing ground-glass screen or its equivalent. If 
preferred, the original negatives may be kept as such, 
and ordinary positives prepared from them. These 
positives may then be made to furnish any number of 
negatives for conversion into colour portraits. We 
learn that the process has already been taken up 
enthusiastically by American portrait photographers. 
THE most interesting contribution to vol. vii., part 4, 
of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society is the first 
part of an account translated from the Arabic of 
Father Anastas, the Carmelite, describing the Nawar 
or Gypsies of the East. The description of them is 
the reverse of complimentary: “swindling rogues, 
lewd adventurers, wicked nomads, heedless ruffians,”’ 
preserving a language of their own but destitute of 
any religion—the last statement interesting if it be 
correct. They are believed to be a mixture of Indians, 
Persians, Kurds, Turks, and Tartars, with the off- 
scourings of the regions in which they have lived. 
Their name, Nawar, is, it is suggested a corruption 
of Lur, the Persian wanderers who are noted for their 
skill in thieving, sleight-of-hand, and powers of witch- 
craft, and they may possibly be ultimately traced to 
the Indian peninsula. The author writes from per- 
sonal knowledge of them, and he gives full references 
to the literature of the subject. 
AccorpinG to the Museum Journal for September. 
1914, a fine piece of art metal-work from the cele- 
brated Dictaean Cave in Crete has found its way to 
the Philadelphia Museum. It is a unique bronze 
blade with incised designs, to which the nearest 
parallel is’ supplied by the inlaid daggers from the 
shaft graves at Mycenz, but these are more elaborate 
in design and more beautiful in technique. The blade 
is 6 in. in length and is covered with a fine green 
patina, It probably belongs to the Late Minoan III. 
period. On one side a hunter is attacking a mighty 
boar with a spear, the jungle being indicated by a 
tuft of fern-like sprays between the sportsman and his 
victim. On the other side is represented the critical 
moment of an exciting bull fight, one bull clearly 
getting the worst of the encounter. Similar fern-like 
sprays on the quarters of one animal possibly repre- 
sent the furry lines of his coat where the direction of 
the hair changes. The museum has also acquired a 
fine series of reproductions of the gems of Minoan 
and Mycenzan art—several swords and daggers, gold 
and silver cups from Mycenz and Vaphio, faience 
objects from the shrine of the serpent goddess at 
Knossos, and reproductions of some of the frescoes, 
including the famous cup-bearer, 
