AUGUST I, 1912] 
NATURE 
563 
roborate Dr. Haldane’s view that dusts containing no 
free silica are not markedly harmful, “but that dust 
containing uncombined silica or other hard material 
was exceedingly dangerous.” 
Tuts season’s excavations at Carchemish, which 
have been carried out by Messrs. C. L. Woolley and 
T. E. Laurence under Mr. Hogarth’s direction, have 
resulted in some important additions to our knowledge 
of Hittite art and culture. Riverside quays have been 
discovered below the Citadel mound, decorated with 
reliefs in the style of the Cappadocian monuments, and 
a further series of interesting reliefs have been found 
along the southern wall of the great courtyard in 
front of the Lower Palace. On one of these the 
camel makes its first appearance in Hittite art, and 
another shows a strange deity having the body of a 
scorpion, eagle’s wings, and bull’s feet, who is asso- 
ciated with the Hittite Thunder god. The most in- 
teresting of the smaller finds was a part of a large 
clay cylinder inscribed with Hittite hieroglyphs, and 
it suggests the possibility of finding further native 
records, other than monumental inscriptions, on the site. 
Materials for a valuable pottery-sequence have also 
been obtained both at Carchemish itself and from a 
cemetery at Amarna, about eight miles to the south 
of Jerablus. 
ExampLes of the transition between the use of stone 
or bone implements and those of metal are always 
interesting. In The Cairo Scientific Journal for June 
Mr. O. Bates describes two cases of this kind. In 
one the narrow chisel-shaped celts so often found 
in Neolithic kitchen-middens and camp sites are com- 
pared with a tool made of the horn of the Gazella 
rufifrons, which is rubbed down to a flat edge and 
used at the present day in the Sudan for slivering 
bark from trees for the purpose of making cordage. 
The second is an implement used in the same region 
for cutting coarse thatching grass. It consists of a 
haft of mimosa wood into which is socketed a celti- 
form blade of iron, which is fixed at an angle of about 
20 degrees to that of the hafting, so that when the 
tool is grasped by a worker who bends from the 
hips, the iron is parallel with the ground. This tool 
preserves a characteristic form, which must have 
preceded the introduction of the curved reaping-hook, 
and illustrates a method of hafting probably used 
with some of the flat, broad-edged stone celts of 
Neolithic times. 
THE curators of the Smithsonian Museum announce 
that four expeditions are now in the field collecting 
exhibits for the Panama-Californian Exhibition, to be 
held at San Diego, California, in 1915. Dr. Hrdlicka 
has started for the Upper Yenesei region of Siberia, 
whence he will visit Kiachta, in Chinese Turke- 
stan, Mongolia, and then follow the road to Urga, 
and thus proceed along the old caravan route to 
China proper. On his return he will resume his 
studies of the distribution of the physical types of 
man in Peru. Dr. R. D. Moore and Mr. J. B. Har- 
rington will undertake the survey of the Eskimo of 
St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The fourth tour is in 
charge of Dr. P. Newton, who will investigate the 
NO. 2231, VOL. 89| 
Negritos of the Philippine Islands. The Smithsonian 
exhibits at the approaching exhibition thus promise 
| to be of unusual interest and scientific value. 
Dr. Davip Heron’s ‘Second Study of Extreme 
Alcoholism in Adults” (Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs 
xvii.; London: Dulau and Co., Ltd., 1912, pp. 95) 
is based on data collected by Dr. R. Welsh Bran- 
thwaite, the inspector under the Inebriates Act, and 
published in his report for 1909. He gives an account 
of 166 male and 865 female inebriates, who were 
admitted to reformatories between January 1, 1907, 
and December 31, 1909. As the number of men is 
insufficient for satisfactory statistical treatment, Dr. 
Heron has in the present memoir confined his atten- 
tion to women. Cne of the most striking facts 
brought out is the close association between alcoholism 
as judged by committal to a reformatory and mental 
defect—two-thirds of the 865 women are mentally de- 
fective—and thus the problem arises, to what is this 
association due? The two possible causes which first 
suggest themselves are either that feeble-mindedness 
leads to drink or that drink leads to feeble-minded- 
ness, and Dr. Heron points out that the evidence is 
in favour of the former of these two alternatives. A 
third possibility is that mental defect as much as 
inebriacy leads to confinement in a reformatory. lf 
this were the case association without any necessary 
causal connection between mental defect and inebriacy 
would be found among the inmates of the reforma- 
tories. As repeated conflicts with the police are neces- 
sary to make one eligible for admission, and as such 
conflicts are not improbably due partly to mental 
defect, the third possibility suggested should receive 
serious attention. In conclusion, it must be pointed 
out that the three alternatives are not mutually exclu- 
sive. 
In an article on hybrids between Indian humped 
cattle and European cattle in the July number of The 
American Naturalist, Dr. R. K. Nabours shows 
that while the colour-pattern of Herefords and Dur- 
ham shorthorns is dominant in the hybrids of the 
“F1”’ generation, traces of the zebu hump and dewlap 
persist in the mixed progeny. It is further evident 
that in the ‘“F2” generation pure humped and pure 
shorthorn strains are segregated, and that when the 
parents are pure-bred the segregation follows the law 
of alternative inheritance. Humped cattle are im- 
mune to the Texas tick—the carrier of Texas fever— 
and there are indications that the same immunity 
holds good for at least the earlier generations of the 
hybrids. 
In The Zoologist for July the Rev. H. Friend sug- 
gests that certain noxious white worms of the enchy- 
treeid group, as well as some of the tubificids, which 
do so much harm to garden crops—celery, for instance 
| are annuals, and also that as the various species 
are short-lived, one continues the work commenced 
by another. In autumn, for instance, when vegetable 
decay sets in, the annelids on the spot commence break- 
| ing up the waste, but after egg-laying they cease to 
| work, when the task is probably taken up by a 
