;r4 



NATURE 



[Stl'TEMEER 23, 1909 



the wood known as "lignum nephriticuin, " which was 

 regarded some three centuries ago as a valuable remedy 

 for disorders of the bladder and kidneys ; it was also 

 known that an infusion of the wood was fluorescent. This 

 property, together with a reference to the Mexican 

 ■vernacular name "coatl," provided the clue to its identifi- 

 cation as the product of the leguminous tree Eysenhardtia 

 amorphoides. A chemical examination to ascertain the 

 principles which give the wood its physical and possible 

 therapeutical qualities is postponed until more material is 

 available. Another determination by the same authority 

 refers to the fodder grass which is making a reputation 

 in .Australia and Natal as Phalaris commutata, but which 

 should be known as Phalaris bulbosa. 



We have received a copy of " The Problem of Practical 

 Eugenics," a lecture delivered by Prof. Karl Pearson at 

 the Gallon Laboratory for National Eugenics. Prof. 

 Pearson directs attention to- the falling birth-rate, particu- 

 larly in a manufacturing city like Bradford, and the con- 

 clusion is arrived at that this is due mainly to factory 

 legislation, which has destroyed the economic value of the 

 child. A Bradford doctor assured him that in the days 

 before the Factory Acts more care was taken of the 

 children on this account. Prof. Pearson says " the mis- 

 take of most legislation is that it is carried by appeal to 

 the sentiment and feelings of relatively small classes — the 

 cultured and highly sensitive upper and middle classes. 

 The biological and economic bases of life are disregarded, 

 and the result is only manifest twenty or thirty years later. 

 The whole trend of legislation and social action has been 

 to disregard parentage and to emphasise environment." 

 Various suggestions are offered to remedy this effect while 

 still maintaining factory legislation. The lecture is one 

 which should be carefully studied by the educated public 

 and our legislators who have the well-being of the race at 

 heart. 



.■^N important report, by Prof. \V. J. Simpson, on the 

 general state of sanitation and of public health in the 

 West African colonies, has been issued by the Colonial 

 Office. Prof. Simpson was sent to the Gold Coast with 

 special reference to an outbreak of plague which occurred 

 in Accra and the surrounding district in January, 1908. 

 The outbreak lasted for six months ; there were 344 cases 

 with 300 deaths. Preventive inoculation was resorted to 

 with conspicuous success, and was performed on 35,000 

 persons without a single accident or ill-effect. The general 

 insanitary conditions existing in the colony are described 

 by Prof. Simpson as being fraught with danger to the 

 community. No real, effectual, and steady campaign 

 against malarial fever in West .\frica has yet been begun. 

 There are no mosquito brigades maintained throughout the 

 year, and it is no one's special duty to look after and to 

 be responsible for the public health. No real progress is 

 possible except by the formation of an organised health 

 department completely distinct from the existing medical 

 service of the colonies, and charged with the duty of 

 advising the Government concerning improvements, and of 

 seeing that they are effectively carried out. Owing to the 

 absence of such a department towns are suffered to grow 

 up from villages without any forethought, the result being 

 often an insanitary condition that nothing but costly 

 demolition will remedy. The report sketches an outline of 

 the organisation and composition of the proposed sanitary 

 service, and discusses its relations with the existing West 

 -African medical staff and with the Government. 



The Bulletin of the Sleeping Sickness Bureau (No. 9) 

 contains resumis of a number of papers on trypanosomes 

 and sleeping sickness. Dr. Moffat reports on a sleeping- 

 NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



sickness-like disease in Bechuanaland. He concludes that 

 the disease closely resembles sleeping sickness, but if it 

 is this disease it is probably imported, and not indigenous. 



The craniometrical evidence from India, which is at 

 present scanty and in various respects unsatisfactory, has 

 been usefully supplemented by the publication of the 

 measurements of a series of skulls deposited in the Indian 

 Museum, Calcutta, which have been carried out by Mr. 

 B. A. Gupte under the supervision of Dr. Annandale. 

 The collection contains 614 specimens, but many are broken 

 and others do not indicate the caste or tribe of the sub- 

 jects. Besides this, practically all come from the lowest 

 strata of the population, from jails and hospitals, the 

 more respectable members of the community being invari- 

 ably cremated. The record is also vitiated by the impossi- 

 bility of segregating the skulls of emigrants from other 

 parts of India who happened to die in eastern India. 

 These records, therefore, afford no safe basis for generalisa- 

 tion, but they may be useful to supplement measurements 

 of the living subject, which are necessarily less trustworthy 

 than those of skulls, because it is easier to arrange the 

 position of the latter, and because the soft tissues of the 

 head and face exhibit much individual variation and 

 capacity for contraction and expansion. Mr. Gupte has 

 good reason for appealing to persons throughout India 

 who are in a position to collect skulls, the provenance and 

 records of which can be accurately determined, to supple- 

 ment the present collection, which is of little value for 

 the classification of the multitudinous races and castes to 

 be found within the Indian Empire. 



The first annual report (1908) of the Liverpool Com- 

 mittee for Excavation and Research in Wales and the 

 Marches, which has its headquarters in the Liverpool Uni- 

 versity Institute of Archaeology, and is closely associated 

 there with the School of Celtic Studies, contains valuable 

 preliminary surface surveys and detailed reports of tenta- 

 tive excavations at the Roman camps of Chester and 

 Caerleon. The discovery of a Pateolithic implement at 

 the former site is of special interest. .'\ list of the relative 

 number of coins found at Caerleon indicates an occupation 

 of the camp in, or soon after, the principate of Vespasian. 

 Mr. Evelyn-White adduces literary evidence pointing to 

 ■occupation under Claudius. Two excellent plans of the 

 camp have, apparently, a true north bearing, though 

 the fact is not stated, for the orientation indicated 

 is about 51° N.W.-S.E., which on paper is near enough 

 to the theoretical azimuth for the district of sunrise at the 

 winter solstice. In the preliminary surveys of cromlechs 

 there is not a single reference to their orientation, and 

 the subject has yet to be formally recognised by a com- 

 mittee which, as the list shows, represents all the archaeo- 

 logical societies of Wales and the Marches. 



Dr. Georg vo.n- Smolenski, of Cracow, contributes to 

 Petermann's MittcUungen (v., p. 101) an interesting study 

 of the causes of the asymmetrical form of the north-and- 

 south river valleys in Galicia, which are characteristically 

 steeper on the eastern side than on the western. A careful 

 examination of the different theories which have been 

 proposed from time to time leads Dr. von Smolenski to 

 conclude that no single hypothesis can account for all the 

 observed facts, and he divides the valleys into two groups, 

 those in which the asymmetrical form is being developed 

 and extended at the present time, and those in which it 

 remains as the result of a former condition no longer in 

 existence. In the first group the asymmetry is due to the 

 normal action of " Hilber's law," the base-level of each 

 tributary of the master stream (the Dniester) being lower 

 than that of the tributary next it to the westward. The 



