;o2 



NATURE 



[May 22, 1913 



of the museum, a series of panels illustrating the life 

 of the American Indians. Each panel will tell the 

 story of the life of a particular stock — their mode of 

 living, customs, decoration of their lodges, life in the 

 tipi, transportation, in short, all the minor details 

 which will give colour and reality. The general con- 

 trol of the work rests with Mr. Deming, who has 

 lived for some fifty years with various Indian tribes. 

 He will utilise the material collected by Mr. Louis 

 Akin, a skilled painter, who was received as a member 

 by the Hopi tribe, and unfortunately died at Flagstaff, 

 Arizona, in January last. His untimely death, at the 

 age of forty-five, is a serious loss to American art and 

 anthropology. 



The National Geographic Magazine for March pub- 

 lishes an article by the late American Minister to 

 Guatemala, Mr. W. F. Sands, on the prehistoric ruins 

 of that country. This is the preface to an account by 

 Mr. S. G. Morley, assistant director of the Quiriqua 

 Expedition of 1912, of the excavations at this place, 

 situated fifty-seven miles from the Caribbean Sea. 

 It was one of the early centres of the Maya civilisa- 

 tion, which flourished in south Mexico, Guatemala, 

 and north Honduras during the first fifteen centuries 

 of the Christian era. The place was unknown since 

 Hernando Cortez passed within a few miles of it in 

 1525. A series of temples has now been disinterred 

 containing many interesting carvings and hieroglyphs, 

 the interpretation of which is still, in a great measure, 

 unknown. So far the excavations are merely tenta- 

 tive. But the School of American Archaeology pro- 

 poses to pursue the work, which cannot fail to throw 

 much new light on the problems of Maya culture. 



The Palaeolithic skull from Piltdown, Fletching, 

 Sussex, just described in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 

 by Dr. A. Smith Woodward as the type of a new 

 genus and species (Eoanthropus dawsoni), has been 

 placed on exhibition in a special case in the central 

 hall of the Natural History Museum. 



According to the report for 1912, work at the 

 Sarawak Museum has been somewhat interrupted by 

 the absence on leave of the curator ; it is hoped, how- 

 ever, that this will be more than compensated by the 

 information acquired during his visit to Europe. A 

 strenuous effort is being made to place on exhibition 

 a mounted series of the local birds. 



In the May issue of The Selborne Magazine it is 

 announced that the Selborne Society now possesses no 

 fewer than ninety-five editions of Gilbert White's 

 " Natural History of Selborne," and even this is be- 

 lieved not to exhaust the list. On another page Mr. 

 Rashley Holt-White writes to express his belief that 

 the print recently declared to be a portrait of the 

 Selborne naturalist is not correctly identified. 



The recently published report of the advisory com- 

 mittee for the Tropical Diseases Research Fund for 

 1912 shows, as usual, great activity in research in 

 the schools, universities, and laboratories at home and 

 in the Colonies, supported by pecuniary contributions 

 which can scarcely be considered creditable to a great 

 Empire. The total revenue of the fund for 

 1912 was 3425/. ; the expenditure was 3833!. 6s. 8d. 

 NO. 2273, VOL. 91] 



The excess of expenditure over income was met by 

 drawing on the accumulated balance of the fund, and 

 it was necessary to warn the schools of tropical medi- 

 cine that it would not be possible to repeat in 1913 

 grants on the same scale. Appended to the report 

 of the committee are those of the professor of proto- 

 zoology in the University of London, the Quick Labo- 

 ratory, Cambridge, the London and Liverpool Schools 

 of Tropical Medicine, and of seven Colonial labora- 

 tories. As usual, these reports describe many impor- 

 tant investigations, especially in the transmission of 

 parasites and the causation of disease, which it is to 

 be hoped will find their way also into the ordinary 

 channels of scientific publication, where they will be 

 less likely to be overlooked. 



In The New Phytologist for February (vol. xii., No. 2), 

 Mr. H. Takeda gives an interesting general account 

 of the vegetation of Japan, which has also been issued 

 as a reprint (Wesley and Son, London, price is., post 

 free). The author describes the geographical features 

 and climate of Japan, laying special stress on the 

 influence of the warm and cold currents which wash 

 the shores of the long chain of islands composing the 

 Japanese Empire, and exert a marked influence 

 upon the vegatation, as well as on the great variety of 

 climatic conditions which obtain owing to the fact 

 that the islands extend over thirty degrees of latitude 

 — the southernmost islands being subtropical, while 

 the most northerly have a climate like that of Nova 

 Scotia or Iceland, the harbours being blocked by drift- 

 ing ice from November to April. He then describes 

 the various plant formations occurring in the northern, 

 middle, and southern regions, into which, for con- 

 venience, the country is divided from the phyto- 

 geographical point of view, with numerous examples 

 illustrating the range from arctic through subarctic, 

 cold temperate, warm temperate, and subtropical to 

 tropical types of vegetation. The vertical zonation 

 of the vegetation on the higher mountains is illus- 

 trated by a description of the plant communities seen 

 on ascending Mount Fuji. The paper also contains 

 a discussion of the origin and affinities of the Japanese 

 flora, and short accounts of the cultivated crops and 

 of the introduced and garden plants. 



A paper recently presented to the Royal Geograph- 

 ical Society by Lieut. H. A. Edwards gave a very 

 clear idea of the important character of the survey 

 work of the commission on the northern boundary 

 between Bolivia and Brazil, in 191 1 and 1912. The 

 work is to be continued, but already a considerable 

 area, previously unmapped and practically unknown, 

 has been covered between the sources of the Bahia and 

 Rapirran rivers. In 191 1 a primary station was estab- 

 lished on the latter river, which was then followed 

 and mapped up to its source, after which the British 

 commissioners, without their Brazilian colleagues, 

 crossed the watershed to the valleys of the Abuna and 

 Xipamanu. In 1912 the boundary line following the 

 River Acre was mapped from Cobija to Tacna, 

 and a party crossed to the Bahia, and thence 

 to the confluence of the Ina and Xipamanu, 

 from which point the Riparran was again 

 visited, and a junction effected with the starting 



