512 



NATURE 



[July 17, 1913 



It has hitherto been believed that the Maori religion 

 represented a cult of the powers of nature, with 

 ancestor worship ; that they had no conception of a 

 Supreme Being, and that their deities were male- 

 volent, to whom no true invocations were offered, but 

 merely rude charms and incantations. In Man for 

 July Mr. Elsdon Best, on information received from 

 an old member of the tribe, describes the cult of one 

 of the late Mr. Andrew Lang's " High Gods of Low 

 Races," in the worship of a deity known as Io, whose 

 name was deemed so sacred that it was never uttered 

 in public. The priest is said to have performed his 

 devotions in a secluded spot in the forest, or he used 

 to enter a river in a state of nudity, and stood waist- 

 deep in the water, having first immersed the upper 

 part of his body. The account of this remarkable 

 cult is full, and apparently authoritative, however it 

 may conflict with our preconceived views of the reli- 

 gious beliefs of the Maori people. 



We are indebted to the author, Mr. L. M. Lambe, 

 for a copy of a paper from The Ottawa Naturalist. 

 vol. xxvii., p. 21, on the bones of a fore-limb of an 

 iguanodont dinosaur of the genus Trachodon from the 

 Edmonton formation of Alberta, Canada. 



In vol. ix., No. u, of The Soutli African Journal 

 of Science, reference is made to the discovery in the 

 Lower Cretaceous marls ot Bushman's River — the 

 locality where the type skull of Owen's Anthodon ser- 

 rarius was obtained — of the broken femur of a reptile 

 fully as large as the corresponding bone of Diplodocus, 

 and, when complete, measuring about 5 ft. in length. 

 Whether it belongs to Anthodon, now believed to be 

 a dinosaur, remains to be proved. 



Since the publication of Mr. Boulenger's volume 

 on the reptiles and amphibians in the " Fauna of 

 British India," two new species of land tortoises, 

 namely Testudo travancorica, of the Western Ghats, 

 and T. baluchiorum, from Baluchistan, have been 

 added to the Indian list, while T. latinuchalis and T. 

 horsfieldi have been shown to range into the British 

 Indian area. A third new species, T. parallelus, from 

 the Singhbhum district of Chota Nagpur, is described 

 bv Dr. Annandale in the second part of vol. ix. of 

 Records of the Indian Museum. In the same paper 

 Dr. Annandale also describes a new species of terrapin 

 from Chota Nagpur, under the name of Geoemyda 

 indopeninsularis, which is of interest as showing that 

 the genus Nicoria is inseparable from Geoemyda, in 

 the sense in which these terms are used in the 

 " Fauna." This obviates much confusion in nomen- 

 clature, as it renders superfluous the name Heosemys, 

 proposed by Dr. Stejneger to replace Geoemyda, as 

 employed by Mr. Boulenger. 



The co-existence of man with extinct animals in 

 South Africa forms the subject of an article by Dr. 

 R. Broom in vol. xii., part i, of the Annals of the 

 South African Museum. The most convincing 

 evidence of this is afforded by a layer of peat at 

 Haagenstad salt-pan, about thirty miles north of 

 Bloemfontein. 6elow the upper layer of pure peat, 

 8 to 10 ft. thick, is another layer, of about the same 

 NO. 228l, VOL. 91] 



thickness, composed of peaty sand, and beneath this 

 is a bed of broken bones, burnt bones, and human 

 implements. Although most of the implements were 

 unfortunately dispersed, a stone spear-head and knife 

 secured for the Bloemfontein Museum amply attest 

 their human origin. Among several species of extinct 

 and existing mammals, special interest attaches to 

 the frontlet and horn-cores of a gnu (Connochcetes 

 antiquus), which are stated to be almost exactly 

 intermediate in character between those of the white- 

 tailed gnu (C. gnu) and the brindled gnu (C. taurinus). 

 The same issue contains six papers, some by Dr. 

 Broom, others by Mr. S. H. Haughton, and others by 

 both writers, on new and other vertebrates from the 

 Permo-Triassic beds of South Africa. 



Dr. Hans Preuss has published (Schriftcn der 

 naturforsch. Ges., Danzig, Band 13) an elaborate 

 account of the vegetation of the Baltic coast of Ger- 

 many (Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, 

 West and East Prussia), his paper of 213 pages being 

 illustrated by sixty-two photographs. This important 

 paper is of great interest to ecologists in Britain, 

 since the maritime vegetation of the North German 

 coast presents considerable general resemblances to 

 that of our shores, apart from its greater richness 

 in species and the presence of such groups as the 

 "Pontic" forms, which have doubtless migrated from 

 the warmer regions of Central Europe along the river 

 valleys to parts of the Baltic littoral. 



Prof. V. Arcichoyskij has forwarded reprints of 

 five recent papers appearing in various German and 

 Russian journals. Two of these give descriptions of 

 methods for experimental work with seeds freed from 

 micro-organisms ; in one of these the author describes 

 and figures a modification of Hansen's sterile cham- 

 ber, adapted for investigations with sterilised seeds 

 and for pure cultures of higher plants. A third paper 

 deals with the culture of higher plants in a simple 

 air-chamber improvised from an ordinary flower-pot ; 

 excellent results were obtained in the cultivation of 

 bean plants in moist air, the nodules being unusually 

 large and numerous, as well as with other species, 

 and the author advocates this method in preference 

 to the use of water or sand cultures, in which access 

 of air to the roots is hindered by the excess of water 

 used. 



Mr. J. F. Dastur, of the Agricultural Research 

 Institute, Pusa, has published (Memoirs Dept. Agri- 

 culture in India, vol. v.. No. 4) an account of a 

 new disease of the castor-oil plant caused by Phyto- 

 phthora parasitica, n. sp. In his introduction the author 

 gives a brief account of the cultivation of the castor- 

 oil plant in India, and the varied uses to which the 

 oil is put besides that due to its medicinal properties. 

 Though so widely distributed, this plant has hitherto 

 been regarded as immune from serious fungus pests, 

 except the castor rust, but at Pusa the crop has been 

 attacked by two serious pests, the new Phytophthora 

 now described and a species of Cercospora, to be 

 dealt with later. The former destroys seedlings by 

 causing "damping off," and also attacks leaves of 

 older plants, and is the most injurious of the fungal 



