December 5, 1912] 



NATURE 



391 



The following are among the lecture arrangements 

 at the Royal Institution, before Easter : — Sir James 

 Dewar, a course of six experimentally illustrated lec- 

 tures, adapted to a juvenile auditory, on Christmas 

 lecture epilogues : December 28, alchemy ; December 

 },\, atoms; January 2, light; January 4, clouds; 

 January 7, meteorites; January 9, frozen worlds; 

 Prof. W. Bateson, six lectures on the heredity of sex 

 and some cognate problems. Prof. H. H. Turner, 

 three lectures on the movements of the stars : the 

 nebular hypothesis ; the stars and their movements ; 

 our greater system. Mr. Seton Gordon, two lectures 

 on birds of the hill country. Prof. B. Hopkinson, two 

 lectures on recent research on the gas engine. JMr. 

 W. B. Hardy, two lectures on surface energy. Sir 

 J. J. Thomson, six lectures on the properties and con- 

 stitution of the atom. The Friday evening meetings 

 will commence on January 17, when Sir J. J. Thom- 

 son will deliver a discourse on further applications of 

 the method of positive rays. Succeeding discourses 

 will probably be given by Prof. J. O. Arnold, Mr. 

 G. M. Trevelyan, Sir John Murray, Prof. A. Gray, 

 Mr. S. U. Pickering, Mr. C. T. R. Wilson, the Hon. 

 R. J. Strutt, Dr. A. E. H. Tutton, and other gentle- 

 men. 



The influence of Libyan migrations on the people 

 of the Nilotic delta and the southern shores of the 

 ^gean is now generally admitted. A useful collec- 

 tion of facts illustrating the historical aspects of the 

 question from Egyptian and other sources is made in 

 an article by Mr. Oric Bates under the title of " His- 

 tory of the Eastern Libyans," contributed to The 

 Cairo Scientific Journal for August last. He em- 

 phasises the constant protest by these people against 

 foreign dominion, and their failure to amalgamate 

 with their European invaders. With the Cartha- 

 ginians they certainly mixed to some extent; but 

 there was no conspicuous intermixture until Arab 

 times, when there arose the great Berber-Arab dynas- 

 ties of the Atlas, and eventually the Negro-Berber- 

 Arab Songhay empire in the south-west. Fierce, 

 predatory, and impatient of foreign dominion, yet in- 

 capable of ruling themselves, they were a race without 

 a mission until they became sufiiciently united with 

 the Arabs under Islam to give strength and weight 

 to the Mohammadan dynasties of Africa and Spain. 



The archaeological department of the Geological 

 Survey of Canada has begun a systematic study of 

 the archseology of the whole of the Dominion. 

 Messrs. Harlan I. Smith and W. J. Wintem- 

 berg conducted reconnaissances in the Ottawa 

 Valley, Nation Valley, and neighbouring regions. 

 Cave dwellings were found in the Laurentian 

 Mountains near the north side of the Ottawa River 

 containing pottery of an Iroquoian type, and also vil- 

 lage sites probably of Algonkin origin; they are all 

 small, and are generally near the streams on camping- 

 places suitable for canoe-parties. They also explored 

 some large Iroquoian village sites near the head- 

 waters of the Nation, which are usually on the top 

 of low hills near a spring or small stream, and thus 

 differ from those previously mentioned. Charred corn 

 < maize) and beans are found; thus the people were 

 NO. 2249, VOL. 90] 



agricultural. Stone arrow-points are exceedingly rare, 

 and those made of antler are uncommon. The 

 grooved axe has not been found ; even celts are rare, 

 but fragments of pottery and bone awls are common. 

 A number of burials, usually unaccompanied by 

 artifacts, have been found ; the skeletons show that 

 the people suffered from bone diseases, and that there 

 was a considerable infant mortality. They were 

 apparently all of one physical type. Messrs. G. E. 

 Laidlaw and W. B. Hicker have also done useful 

 archaeological work, as have two volunteers. Dr. 

 T. W. Beeman and Mr. C. C. Inderwick. On a 

 previous occasion we directed attention to the advan- 

 tage that would be gaiined by Canadian archaeology by 

 the appointment of Mr. Smith as government archaeo- 

 logist, and now we congratulate him on having 

 secured so many zealous co-workers. 



Among many articles of special interest in the 

 Christmas issue of Chamhers's Journal is one by Mr. 

 Waldemar Kaempffert on " Eugenics and What it 

 Means." Some striking instances are given of the 

 way in which the mental and physical characters of a 

 human being are reproduced again and again in his 

 descendants. Particulars of 1200 descendants of Max 

 Jukes, a criminal fisherman born in 1720, are com- 

 pared with statistics of the 1394 descendants of Jona- 

 than Edvvards, the distinguished American. The 

 facts obtained by Prof. Karl Pearson and other workers 

 show the vital importance of dealing promptly with 

 the question of the mentally defective. It is urged 

 that the manner in which family traits, good and bad, 

 are inherited should be studied, and that "we must 

 prevent the perpetuation and increase of a stock which 

 we know is a nienace to the nation." 



Lemurs and their relatives form the subject of a 

 popular article by Miss S. S. Miiller in The Museum 

 Nni's of Brooklyn. The author appears to be un- 

 aware that pottos (Perodicticus) occur in Uganda, as 

 well as in West Africa. 



In the November number of The Annals and Maga- 

 zine of Natural History Dr. Ridewood states tliat 

 certain specimens in the Natural History Museum 

 collected in the Antarctic during the voyage of the 

 Erebus and Terror in 1841 or 1842 are apparently 

 referable to the genus Cephalodiscus (an organism on 

 the border line between vertebrates and invertebrates), 

 which was named in 1876 on the evidence of examples 

 brought home by the Challenger. They seem refer- 

 able to C. nigrescens, described by Sir Ray Lankester 

 in 1905. 



No fewer than five different authors, Messrs. 

 Grififini, Heller, Hilzheimer, Lotichius, and Schwarz 

 have recently published independent communications on 

 the members of the quagga and zebra group, and it 

 is not a little remarkable how their conclusions differ. 

 Mr. Schw-arz (Arch. Xatnrges., vol. Ixxviii., Heft 7, 

 p 34) considers that Equus quagga should include the 

 burchelli group, and also that certain races of the 

 former, such as E. greyi, which have been described 

 from the Cape, are invalid, while it is also considered 

 that E. grevyi is not generically separable from the 

 other. The latter is, however, referred to a new 



