.io6 



NATURE 



[March 25, 1909 



It is well known that the common crow is omnivorous, 

 and occasionally preys on young birds ; two instances are 

 recorded in the report of the Rhode Island Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, where serious losses were caused to 

 poultry-keepers by crows. During the three and a half 

 months from April i to July lO no fewer than lOo chicken 

 are said to have been taken from one farm. The larger 

 ones, some of which were a pound in weight, were killed 

 and eaten where they were caught ; the smaller ones were 

 carried away. On another farm i8o ducklings out of 205 

 were killed. The only effective way of stopping the damage 

 was to shoot a crow and hang up the dead body. 



Messrs. Fagan and Allan recently issued as Bulletin 

 No. 16 of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College 

 of Agriculture a useful list of analyses of brewers' and 

 distillers' grains, materials which are largely used as feed- 

 ing-stuffs in farm practice. The analyses usually quoted 

 in te.Kt-books are old, and were probably made before the 

 practice of using light, husky barleys for brewing became 

 common. The average results were as follows : — 



Nitrogen free 



Nos. I, 2,3, and 4 show the composition of the dry matter, 

 Nos. 5 and 7 represent the average of a number of samples 

 as received from the brewery or distillery, and Nos. 6 and 8 

 show what these samples would contain if sold as dried 

 grains with 8-5 per cent, of water. 



In the March number of Man Dr. Seligmann gives an 

 interesting account of a curious series of canoe ornamental 

 carvings from south-eastern British New Guinea. They 

 are known at Murua under the name of munkuris, and re- 

 present in one series the reef heron, the wings of which are 

 joined to support a specimen of a variety of fish said to 

 be found in mangrove swamps. In others the cockatoo, 

 with its crests well defined, or the tern is the subject of 

 the carving. The reef heron and the cockatoo are well- 

 known totems in this district ; but this is not the case with 

 the tern. The supposed efficacy of these carvings cannot, 

 then, be ascribed to totemism. It looks rather as if this 

 were one of the many cases of mimetic magic. The 

 carving of the fish may denote a desire that the canoe may 

 glide with safety through the water; it is to swim over 

 the surf with the grace, ease, and rapidity of the reef heron 

 or the tern. Needless to say, these things are highly 

 valued, and the specimens collected in the Daniels expedi- 

 tion, which are now in the British Museum, are of excep- 

 tional interest. 



It has been asserted by M. L. Sain^an in his " L'Argot 

 Ancien " (Paris, 1907) that we have no knowledge of any 

 artificial language in Europe befgre the fifteenth century. 

 This view is contested by Prof. Kuno Meyer in the January 

 number of the Journal of the Gypsy-lore Society. He 

 points out that most of the processes in the manufacture 

 of artificial language are described minutely and with 

 examples in the commentary, dated in the eleventh 

 century, on the Irish composition called " Amra Choluimb 

 NO. 2056, VOL. 80] 



Chille, " a eulogy on St. Columba composed in the ninth 

 century. Much later than this we have another artificial 

 Irish language called Ogham, of which he gives an 

 interesting example in facsimile from the original in the 

 library of Trinity College, Dublin. Of the two living 

 secret languages current in Ireland, one, Shelta, discovered 

 by Mr. G. G. Leland, has been proved by Mr. J. Sampson 

 to be a deliberate and systematic modification of Irish 

 Gaelic at an early period of its growth. Of the second, 

 known as B^arlagar na Saor, the information is still 

 scanty. It seems to be mainly confined to Cork and Water- 

 ford, where a few sentences are known by most masons, 

 though they cannot always explain the words. It is to 

 a large extent a borrowed tongue, from genuine archaic 

 Irish, Irish words used in a figurative sense, from foreign 

 languages, such as Hebrew, and it has added many words 

 modified by back spelling. Prof. Meyer promises a further 

 discussion of this question, interesting both to the philo- 

 Iggist and the student of social history. 



The Bulletin of the Sleeping Sickness Bureau (No. 4, 

 February) contains abstracts of recent papers on trypano- 

 somiasis and its treatment, notably one by Ehrlich on 

 chemotherapy. 



Several important contributions to medical science 

 appear in the Philippine Journal of Science for November, 

 1908 (iii.. No. 5). Messrs. Marshall and Teague dis- 

 cuss the precipitin and complement fixation reactions, 

 especially in their forensic application in the recognition 

 and differentiation of blood stains, and Mr. Garrison 

 describes a new intestinal trematode parasite of man 

 [Fascioletta ilocana), for which a new genus is created. 



Dr. F. Eredia has sent us a copy of his laborious dis- 

 cussion of the temperature at Rome for the fifty years 

 1855-1904, being an extract from vol. xxviii. of the Annals 

 of the Central Meteorological Ofifice of Italy. The tables 

 exhibit for each of those years (i) ten-day means ; these 

 show that the warmest epoch is the third decade of July, 

 the mean being 77'''4 F., the coldest being 43°-?, in the 

 second decade of January. (2) Mean values of maxima 

 and minima for each decade ; the epochs agree with those 

 above mentioned, being respectively 87°.6 and 38°-3. 

 (3) Mean monthly and yearly values ; the warmest month 

 is July, average 75°-6, the coldest, January, average 44°i. 

 The mean annual temperature is 5q°-7. (4) Absolute 

 extremes for months and years, with dates of occurrence ; 

 maximum, io4°-2, July, 1905, minimum, 20°.8, February, 

 1885, giving an extreme range of 83°-4 F. The author 

 has grouped the values in various ways to find any relation 

 between them and the frequency of sun-spots, but with a 

 negative result. The discussion contains many interesting 

 details to which special reference cannot be made here. 



The Geographical Journal for March contains a very 

 useful paper by Mr. G. B. Williams on the mean annual 

 rainfall of Wales and Monmouthshire. The map which 

 accompanies the paper shows the geographical distribution 

 in that locality in greater detail than in any map hitherto 

 published, and gives the areas having an annual rainfall 

 below 30 inches, and those for each additional 10 inches 

 up to 100 iiiches, the localities with 100 inches to 150 

 inches and above that amount. It has been prepared 

 chiefly from the data given annually in " British Rainfall " 

 for a period of thirty-five years, viz. 1S72-1906 in North 

 Wales, and 1868-1902 in South Wales and Monmouthshire. 

 A large number of short records had to be " standardised " 

 by comparing them with those of long and trustworthy 

 means. The isohyets, or lines of equal rainfall, bear 



