April 3, 19 13] 



NATURE 



119 



Successful in promoting among the children an intelli- 

 gent interest in the collections. 



American ethnologists generally accept the view that 

 the American native race did not originate in that 

 continent, but that it is the result of a comparatively 

 recent, post-glacial, immigration, and that the Indian, 

 closely related to the yellow-brown peoples of eastern 

 Asia and Polynesia, represents, in the main, a gradual 

 overflow from north-eastern Siberia. To supply 

 evidence in support of these conclusions, Dr. A. 

 Hrdlicka, of the U.S. National Museum, has recently 

 made an extensive tour in Siberia and Mongolia, the 

 results of which are summarised in No. 16, vol. lx., of 

 the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. His in- 

 quiries tend to establish the origin of the American 

 Indian from eastern Asia. Dr. Hrdlicka points out 

 th.' immense archaeological remains, in the shape of 

 burial mounds, or Kourgans, which still await excava- 

 tion in north-eastern Asia. When the scientific ex- 

 ploration of this region is systematically undertaken, 

 much important material for the examination of 

 American ethnological problems will certainly be pro- 

 vided. 



In Man for March Mr. J. Edge-Partington, under 

 the title of "A Note on Certain Obsolete Utensils in 

 England," gives an account of a collection of old- 

 world appliances, mostly connected with cooking and 

 brewing, which have passed out of use. Mr. Digby- 

 Wyatt, in his house, Weston-Corbett, Hants, has 

 furnished an old room with a very interesting series 

 of such utensils. Mr. Edge-Partington 's collection 

 includes all sorts of curious specimens — fire-dogs, 

 pestles and mortars, bread shovels, gophering-irons, 

 meat-jacks, pot-hooks, and "lazy backs," brewing 

 appliances, and many other things of the same 

 kind, which throw much light upon the domestic 

 life and manners of our ancestors. It is surely time 

 that the suggestion for the establishment of a museum 

 of folk culture, to contain specimens of this kind, 

 which are rapidly disappearing and soon can never 

 again be brought together, was seriously considered. 



The campaign against tuberculosis has advanced a 

 further stage. A general order of the Local Govern- 

 ment Board, extending the principle of compulsory 

 notification to all forms of human tuberculosis came 

 into force on February i. A further order of the 

 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries makes the notifica- 

 tion compulsory of tuberculosis of the udder, in- 

 durated udder, and other chronic diseases of the 

 udder, and of tuberculosis or apparent tuber- 

 culosis of anv bovine animal. This order is to come 

 in force on May i. Animals found to be suffering 

 from tuberculosis are to be slaughtered, and com- 

 pensation will be given on a scale depending on the 

 extent of the tuberculous disease. 



An appreciative memoir, accompanied by an excel- 

 lent portrait, of Dr. E. A. Wilson, the naturalist to 

 Capt. Scott's expedition, appears in the March number 

 of British Birds, Dr. W. S. Bruce being the author; 

 while the story of Wilson's life and work is sym- 

 pathetically told by Dr. Shipley in the April number 

 of The Cornhill Magazine. 



NO. 2266, VOL. gi] 



A valuable report, by Mr. J. Johnstone, on 

 some mussel beds in Lancashire and North Wales as 

 regards their liability to sewage contamination has 

 been issued by the Lancashire and Western Sea 

 Fisheries District, under the direction of Prof. Herd- 

 man, F.R.S. The beds in several districts are found 

 to be polluted. Mr. Johnstone, in his introduction, 

 makes some interesting remarks on methods of 

 examination and on "standards" from the statistical 

 point of view. 



We have to acknowledge the receipt of the fourth 

 annual report — for the year ending March 31, 1912 — 

 of the Superintendent of Dominion Parks, Canada. 

 It is there stated that the predictions made a few 

 years ago "in regard to the mountain parks have 

 been more than realised, and their development has 

 already exceeded the most sanguine expectations. 

 . . . Judging from past development and present in- 

 dications, it is a difficult matter to estimate the limit 

 of the usefulness of these mountain parks as unique 

 pleasure and health resorts, not only for the Dominion, 

 but for visitors and tourists from almost every part 

 of the world." The report is profusely illustrated 

 with photographs of striking scenery. 



Additional evidence of the affinity of the Tertiary 

 fauna of eastern Europe and western Asia to that of 

 North America is afforded by Mr. E. Kiernick's de- 

 scription of a new species of Titanotherium from the 

 neighbourhood of Prague, in Bull. Ac. Cracovie for 

 December, 1912. The Titanotheres are essentially an 

 American group of perissodactyle ungulates, but in 

 1876 a specimen from Transsylvania was referred to 

 the family under the new generic term Brachydia- 

 stematherium, while in 1892 Prof. Toula referred a 

 jaw from Rumelia to the American genus Menodus, 

 as M. rumelicus. Some doubt has been thrown on the 

 reference of the former to the Titanotheriidae, but Mr. 

 Kiernick considers that it is a member of that family, 

 albeit of the aberrant group Palaeosyopinas. The 

 Prague fossil, which consists of part of a lower jaw, 

 with the last molar, is assigned to the typical genus, 

 under the name of Titanotherium bohemicum. 



From an interesting article by Dr. Claude Gaillard, 

 of the Museum of Lyons, published in the Revue 

 il'Ethnographie et Sociologie, Paris, 1912, Nos. 11 

 and 12, it appears that the ancient Egyptians were 

 in the habit of keeping several of the wild ruminants 



die (A), white oryx (B), and Nubian ibex (C) from the tomb of 

 Mera at Sakkara. (After Gaillard.) 



of north-eastern Africa in a state of semi-domestication 

 for the purposes of the table. Among the species thus 

 kept were the dorcas gazelle, the addax, the white 

 oryx, and the Nubian ibex, representations of all of 

 which are shown in a bas-relief in the tomb of Mera 

 at Sakkara, dating from the sixth dynasty, in as«>o- 



