May 22, 1913] 



NATURE 



which Capt. Scott and his two companions waited 

 until the icy hand of death relieved their sufferings. 

 When the search party found the tent, it was nearly 

 buried in snow, and in a few months all trace of it 

 would have disappeared. All the illustrations are 

 remarkably fine, and they serve to show the nature of 

 the region near the south pole, as well as to stimulate 

 pride in human endeavour. 



Capt. J. K. Davis, commander of the Aurora, the 

 vessel attached to Dr. Mawson's Australasian Ant- 

 arctic Expedition, reports the results of his endeavours 

 to relieve the two parties in January and February 

 of this year. He had already visited the main partv, 

 and taken part in the search for Dr. Mawson himself 

 and his two companions, Ninnis and Mertz, whose 

 tragic loss has already been reported. Prevented by 

 bad weather from taking off this party, Capt. Davis 

 was forced to leave them in order to hurry to the relief 

 of the other, under Mr. F. Wild, 1500 miles westward 

 of Commonwealth Bay. These men were found all 

 well, and were taken off just in time to escape the 

 closing ice, though the ship did not escape very severe 

 weather on the return to Hobart. Some anxiety must 

 be felt for the main party : Dr. Mawson himself, by 

 travelling alone for twenty-two days, bereft of his 

 two companions, has undergone an experience scarcely 

 less terrible than that of any of his predecessors in 

 polar exploration, but the base is well equipped. The 

 wireless telegraphic station on Macquarie Island main- 

 tains communication between the base and Australia, 

 and is signalling daily weather reports, while among 

 other scientific work, sufficient soundings for a sec- 

 tion of the ocean bottom between Hobart and the 

 Antarctic are mentioned by Capt. Davis. He himself 

 is visiting England with the especial and laudable 

 purpose of raising funds to aid the cost of the pro- 

 longed stay of the main party in the south polar 

 region. 



The President of the Local Government Board has 

 authorised the following special researches to be paid 

 for out of the annual grant voted by Parliament in 

 aid of scientific investigations concerning the causes 

 and processes of disease : — The causes of premature 

 arterial degeneration, Dr. F. W. Andrewes ; insects 

 in relation to disease (Prof. Nuttall, F.R.S., on the 

 life-cycle of the body louse and bug; Dr. Bernstein 

 and Mr. Hesse on the Empusa muscae in flies) ; infan- 

 tile diarrhoea, Mr. F. W. Twort and Dr. Edward 

 Mellanby ; the virus of poliomyelitis, Drs. Andrewes 

 and M. H. Gordon ; the character and life-historv of 

 certain filter-passing micro-organisms, Mr. F. W. 

 Twort ; respiratory exchange in man under varying 

 conditions, Prof. Leonard Hill, F.R.S. ; the bio- 

 chemistry of syphilis, Mr. J. E. R. McDonagh ; the 

 possibilities of serological diagnosis of scarlet fever, 

 Dr. L. Rajchman ; the relation between the clinical 

 symptoms and the bacteriology of the acute respira- 

 tory affections, Dr. D. M. Alexander. 



A cablegram has been received at Bishop's Stortf >rd 

 from Bangalore, announcing the death, from snake- 

 bite, at the early age of thirty-seven, of Mr. Herbert 

 Kelsall Slater, geologist to the Mysore Government. 

 NO. 2273, VOL. 91] 



Mr. Slater was educated at Bishop's Stortford College, 

 which he left in 1894. After spending the next seven 

 years at Bangalore with his father, the Rev. T. E. 

 Slater, he was sent in 1901 to the Royal School of 

 Mines, where he studied geology under Prof. Judd. 

 On the recommendation of Mr. Foote, he was ap- 

 pointed in 1902 geologist to the Mysore Government, 

 for which he did much valuable work. The results of 

 his work are given in the records of the Mysore Geo- 

 logical Department (see Nature, vol. lxxviii., p. 470). 

 He surveyed and mapped large districts, and among 

 important ores which he found to be widely distri- 

 buted are gold and manganese ores. He also dis- 

 covered and described important felsite and porphyry 

 dykes ; and the palace of the Maharaja is built from 

 stone discovered by him. He spent December to May 

 each year in prospecting, and it was while camping on 

 one of these expeditions in the district of Shimoga 

 that he met with the accident that caused his death. 

 Not long ago Mr. Slater spent about six months in a 

 tour in Canada in order to gain additional light upon 

 his sphere of work in India by the study in the field 

 of great Archaean complex. 



The work of the British School of Archaeology in 

 Egypt this winter, under the personal direction of 

 Prof. Flinders Petrie, has been attended with some 

 interesting results. At the close of the last season's 

 work a first dynasty cemetery had been partly ex- 

 cavated at Tarkhan, about forty miles south of Cairo, 

 and this year the site has been systematically worked ; 

 eight hundred graves, grouped on each side of an axial 

 road, have been carefully cleared and studied, and 

 much pottery and strings of carnelian, garnet, and 

 blue-glazed beads have been recovered. The damp of 

 the valley in which the cemetery lies has prevented 

 the removal of the bones, but these were all carefullv 

 measured, and some seventy of the skulls, preserved 

 by solidifying with paraffin wax, will be brought to 

 England for further study. The new material thus 

 obtained will be a valuable supplement to the careful 

 and exhaustive collections made by the American 

 excavator, Prof. Reisner, mainly in Upper Egypt, and 

 published, with Prof. Elliot Smith's collaboration, two 

 or three years ago. Meanwhile the excavators inter- 

 pret the new evidence as proving the existence at 

 Tarkhan of the conquering tribe of the dynastic people 

 of ancient Egypt, who had advanced northward from 

 Abydos, subduing the Nile Valley, until Mena founded 

 the new capital of United Egypt at Memphis. It is 

 interesting to note that, according to the discoverers, 

 the men of the dynastic race were an inch or two 

 shorter than the indigenous population ; and this sup- 

 ports the persistent native tradition that the con- 

 querors owed their success to superiority in armament 

 rather than in physical qualities. At Gerzeh, another 

 site a few miles further south, some interesting finds 

 were also made, dating from the twelfth and 

 eighteenth dynasties, the most remarkable being a 

 gold pectoral inlaid with coloured stones, like the cele- 

 brated Dahshur jewellery. 



Mr. E. W. Deming gives, in The American Museum 

 Journal for March, an interesting account of the 

 scheme now being undertaken to prepare, on the walls 



