646 



NA TURE 



[November i i, 19: 



Research Items. 



The Creek Indians. — Mr. I. R. Swanton, in 

 Bulletin 73 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, has 

 followed up his study of the Indian Tribes of the 

 Lower Mississippi valley (Bulletin 43) by an account 

 of the Indians of the Creek Confederacy, about 9000 

 of whom were enumerated in 1910. This report does 

 not deal with field work among the tribe, which is 

 1 rved for later publication, but is an attempt to 

 gather from documentary sources an account of their 

 movements from the earliest times until they are 

 caught up into the stream of later history, in which 

 concealment is practically impossible. It justifies the 

 author's claim that it is an encyclopaedia of informa- 

 tion regarding the early history of the south-eastern 

 Indians. A full bibliography and good maps will do 

 much to assist the student of the ethnology of the 

 American Indians. 



The Study of Finger-prints : Identification 

 of Cows. — In the fourth number of Dactylography, a 

 journal devoted to the study of finger-prints, Mr. 

 C. L. Enos, superintendent of the State Bureau of 

 Criminal Identification, Colorado, states as the result 

 of his experiments that, as the human being can be 

 identified by his finger-prints, it is reasonably certain 

 that the pattern or design which Nature has provided 

 at the end of every cow's nose may be made to serve 

 the same purpose. Up to the present no precise 

 classification has been worked out, and this will be 

 necessary before such prints can serve a practical 

 purpose. The noses of several calves have been 

 printed each month for one year, and if further 

 experiments show that these patterns persist during 

 the life of the animal, it will supply a practical means 

 ill identification which will be valuable to all breeders 

 and to the police. 



The Music of the Ute Indians. — Miss Frances 

 Densmore, well known by her previous studies of the 

 music of the Chippewa and Teton Sioux tribes, con- 

 tributes an account of that of the Ute tribe in Bulletin 

 75 of the publications of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology. This tribe, the origin of whose name is 

 disputed, formerly occupied the entire central and 

 western parts of Colorado and the eastern part of 

 Utah, including the eastern part of Salt Lake valley 

 and the Utah valley. The present work concerns 

 only the Northern Utes, living in reservations in 

 north-eastern Utah. They used to live in tipis 

 covered with elk hides, but now log huts are ex- 

 tensively used in winter. Thev have never been a 

 warlike tribe, but their tenacity of opinion has re- 

 peatedly brought them into contact with the Govern- 

 ment ; their characteristic is quick transition of mood 

 concerning matters of secondary importance. The 

 author gives a good account of their musical instru- 

 ments, and has collected a number of songs — those 

 of the Bear dance, Sun dance, Turkey dance, war 

 songs, those used in the treatment of the sick and 

 in connexion with games — which will interest both 

 the student of music in the lower culture and the 

 anthropologist. 



Japanese Pliocene Fossils. — Some time ago we 

 directed attention to a memoir by Prof. M. Yokoyama 

 on fossils from the Lower Musashino Beds (Red' Crag 

 age) from the Aliura Peninsula, Japan (Nature, 

 August 26, 1920, p. 836). To the same author we are 

 now indebted for another valuable memoir (Journ. 

 Coll. Sci. Tokyo, vol. 44, art. 1), this time on the 

 Mollusca and Brachiopoda of the Upper Musashino 

 1 Kazusa and Shimosa, to the east of Tokyo, 

 that he considers to be of Upper Pliocene or even 



NO. 2767, VOL. I I o] 



newer age, since the shell layer is near the top of the 

 formation. There are 335 species described and a 

 careful table of their distribution given, with notes as 

 to their occurrence elsewhere, living or fossil. From 

 this it is seen that six species are also found in our 

 English Crags, one in the Pliocene of Italy, and several 

 in North American Upper Tertiaries and Post- 

 tertiaries. No less than 103 species are said not to 

 be known living, while some 113 species are described 

 as new, and, with many others, figured excellently on 

 the seventeen appended plates. As in the case of 

 the previous monograph, the nomenclature will not 

 always pass muster with adherents to the international 

 rules for zoological nomenclature. 



Fossil Vertebrates in Central Asia. — More than 

 twenty years ago a Russian geologist, W. Obrutschev, 

 observed an extensive freshwater formation between 

 Urga and Kalgan in Mongolia. He obtained from it 

 the remains of a rhinoceros of middle or late Tertiary 

 age. In the early part of this year, Messrs. R. C. 

 Andrews and W. Granger, of the American Museum 

 of Natural History, through the generosity of several 

 friends of the Museum, were able to visit the same 

 region and explore the formation more thoroughly. 

 A preliminary report of their results is published by 

 Prof. H. F. Osborn in the September number of Asia, 

 the American magazine on the Orient. It now appears 

 that the freshwater deposits represent a long period, 

 and contain numerous fossil bones. The lowest 

 horizon, apparently of Upper Cretaceous age, yields 

 remains of dinosaurs closely related to those of the 

 same age found in North America. They include 

 iguanodonts, megalosaurians, and small running 

 dinosaurs allied to Ornithomimus. Crocodiles and 

 turtles are associated with them. The next horizon 

 is evidently of Eocene age, and contains remains of 

 hoofed mammals, some being small lophiodonts and 

 others much resembling the peculiar titanotheres 

 which are found in the Eocene of North America. 

 In a still higher horizon there are large land tortoises, 

 carnivorous mammals, and rhinoceroses, besides a 

 gigantic rhinoceros-like mammal which may be re- 

 lated to the Baluchitherium discovered by Mr. Forster 

 Cooper in Baluchistan. The collection which has 

 been made will add greatly to our knowledge both of 

 reptiles and mammals and of their geographical dis- 

 tribution. Geologists and palaeontologists will await 

 the detailed descriptions with interest. 



Ecology of " Floating Islands." — " Floating 

 Islands," on which little colonies of vegetation 

 maintain an independent, if precarious, existence, cut 

 off from all connexion with the mainland, early 

 attracted the attention of travellers, and have been 

 reported from lakes, rivers, and the open sea. One 

 of the earliest references is made by Herodotus to the 

 floating islands of the Nile, and an interesting Japanese 

 study by Harufusa Nakano (Journ. Coll. Sci. Tokyo, 

 vol. 42, art. 3) quotes early Japanese and Chinese 

 references, the earliest Chinese citation dating from 

 about a.d. 300. Nakano shows that these floating 

 islands may be found on inland waters in both the 

 Northern and Southern islands of Japan. He traces 

 their origin to various causes. Sometimes pieces are 

 isolated from an indented coast-line by various factors 

 active in erosion, as ice formation or frequent changes 

 of water level ; these pieces ultimately break adrift 

 and float away. In other cases plant communities 

 build themselves up from the shallow lake bottom and 

 appear above water away from the land, ultimately 

 losing their root anchorage and floating free ; such 



