434 

meeting of the society on June 3, the president 
announced that he had appointed Mr. H. W. Monck- 
ton, Dr. A. B. Rendle, Prof. A. C. Seward, and Dr. 
A. E. Shipley vice-presidents for the ensuing year. 
Tue Daily Chronicle published on June g a long tele- 
gram from its New York correspondent, quoting from 
the New York Tribune the chief passages in a despatch 
from Mr. D. B. Macmillan, of Harvard University, 
the leader of the American expedition which has been 
at work to the north-west of Greenland since the 
summer of 1913. The main object of this expedition 
was to explore ‘‘ Crocker Land,” which Rear-Admiral 
Peary thought that he sighted from the north-west coast 
of Grant Land in 1906. The despatch now published 
was written a year ago, and the most important state- 
ment in it—that the appearance of land was seen in 
the direction indicated by Admiral Peary, but vanished 
as the explorers journeyed towards it, so that they 
concluded it was only a mirage—merely repeats in- 
formation which was made known last winter through 
a despatch addressed to the American Museum of 
Natural History by Mr. W. E. Ekblaw, geologist and 
biologist to the expedition. Mr. Macmillan mentions 
that he has recovered records left behind by the Kane 
expedition and the Nares expedition. He also found 
in good condition milk and pemmican cached by Capt. 
Sverdrup twelve years ago. The work planned for 
this year included a journey by Mr. Macmillan him- 
self for the exploration of the region south of the 
islands discovered by the Sverdrup expedition, and a 
journey by another party for the exploration of Greely 
Fiord and the Lake Hazen region in Grant Land. 
Tue death was recently announced of M. Pierre- 
Emile Martin in his ninety-first year. He was the 
first man to solve successfully the problem of making 
steel in an open-hearth furnace by melting pig-iron 
with iron oxide and scrap steel, his first patent being 
taken out in July, 1865. The actual discovery that 
steel could be made in this way was not new, for 
Réaumur had in 1722 carried out the same experi- 
ment, but only on a laboratory scale. Various 
metallurgists afterwards endeavoured to follow this 
method, but none of them were able to create a 
sufficiently high temperature in the melting hearth. 
M. Martin was the first to apply the principle of 
regenerative heating to his furnace, and in the early 
’sixties he began experimenting with a Siemens furnace 
of one ton capacity at Sireuil in France. After 
numerous failures and disappointments, he at length 
succeeded in producing open-hearth steel of regular 
quality and composition, and his process was taken 
up by two of the leading French steel works. The 
success of the process attracted the attention of his 
competitors, and the validity of his patents was attacked 
on the strength of Réaumur’s prior publication, 
although the latter had led to no practical result. 
Not having the financial means to defend the lawsuits 
brought against him, he was compelled, after two or 
three years, to give up the struggle and retire into 
private life, and for many years his existence was 
forgotten, although on the Continent the process was 
always associated with his name. A few years ago 
it became known that he was alive, and in June, 1910, 
NO. 2381, VOL. 95| 
NATURE 

[JUNE 17, 1915 
at a banquet held in Paris, the steel-makers of Europe 
united to do him honour, and he was created by the 
French Government an Officer of the Legion of 
Honour. Ten days before his death the Bessemer 
medal awarded him by the council of the Iron and 
Steel Institute was handed to a representative of the 
French Embassy, who attended on his behalf at the 
spring meeting of the institute. 
At the shrine of the saint Shah Daula at Gujrat 
in the Punjab the precincts of the building are 
occupied by a crowd of imbeciles who, from the 
elongated shape of their heads, are known as “ Shah 
Daula’s Rats.” Much interest has been shown in 
these curious creatures, and the question has been 
discussed whether this malformation is hereditary 
or artificial. In the June issue of Man Mr. M. Long- 
worth Dames has collected references to the litera- 
ture of the subject. From inquiries on the spot he 
finds them to be harmless, good-natured creatures 
possessing only primitive instincts and absolutely 
undeveloped minds. He concludes that the peculiar 
shape of their heads is the result of pressure applied 
by the mother that she may be able to devote her 
child to the saint to whom she owes the relief of 
her barrenness. He quotes an interesting account 
of such head-shaping from Mr. Bray’s “* Life History 
of a Brahui,”’ and he believes, with good reason, 
that the practice is more common in Northern India 
than is commonly believed. 
Or all the races of existing mankind, none is so 
interesting to the physical anthropologist as the 
Eskimo. No race possesses so many peculiar struc- 
tural characters. In the last Museum Bulletin (No. 9, 
March 6, 1915) issued by the Canadian Department of 
Mines, Mr. F. H. S. Knowles directs attention to the 
peculiar form of the glenoid fossa and articular emin- 
ence in the skulls of Eskimo. The fossa is shallow, 
while the articular eminence is flattened and extended 
in a forward direction. The condition, in Mr. 
KXnowles’s opinion, is not unlike that seen in the skulls. 
of Neanderthal man, and also, to a lesser degree, in 
the skulls of anthropoid apes. In most modern races 
of man, particularly in those living under the higher 
forms of civilisation, the glenoid fossa is deep and 
the articular eminence high and steep. Mr. Knowles 
seeks for an explanation of these contrasted forms of 
glenoid cavity in the nature of diet and in the move- 
ments of the lower jaw in mastication. As is well 
known, the diet of the Eskimo is particularly tough 
—the raw skin of whale, porpoise, and seal being 
looked upon as delicacies. Mr. Knowles regards the 
flattening of the articular eminence in the Eskimo, 
and also in Neanderthal man, as an adaptation to: 
permit a free side-to-side movement of the jaw, such 
a movement being necessary for the proper mastication 
of tough substances. 
WE have received from Mr. Johs. Schmidt a paper, 
printed in the Comptes rendus des Travaux du Labora- 
toire de Carlsberg, 1915, on the amount of lupulin in 
plants of the hop (Humulus lupulus, L.) raised by 
crossing. Detailed accounts of the crossing experi-- 
ments are given, and the results are set out clearly in 
tabular form; 21 English, Danish, Austrian, and! 


