64 



Northern News. 



A contemporary recently records a perhaps not very uncommon bird, 

 a ' little stink ' ! 



' Virus is absolutely harmless to human beings and animals, but 



is speedily fatal to rats and mice,' — (From an advertisement). 



In ' ]\Ian,' for January, Dr. W. L. H. Duckworth has an illustrated 

 ' Report on a Human Cranium from a stone cist in the Isle of Man.' The 

 skull is now in the University Museum. 



A writer in a certain paper ' knew an old horse who used to eat eggs 

 which a hen laid in his manger,' and he asks ' How did he train the hen to 

 come and lay there ? ' There's a question for our country-side cousins ! 



We learn on fairly good authority that ' Nature is gradually causing 

 the starling, now fairly started in its career as a marsh bird in hard weather, 

 instead of a digger among hedge-roots, like the stouter-billed thrushes, 

 to become more and more like a snipe ! ' 



In a contemporary, a writer has an article on ' Traces of Pre-historic 

 Man in Yorkshire.' It is mainly occupied by quotations from well-known 

 sources, dealing with the formation of caves and with Palaeolithic Man. 

 There are a few sentences bearing upon the title of the paper. In his first 

 paragraph we find the questions : ' What am I ? ' ' Where am I ? ' ' What 

 can I know ? ' We might answer these for the author, but perhaps we 

 had better not 1 



It is not always a simple matter to define precisely what an insect is. 

 The following paragraph headed ' How Insects Grow,' taken from 'Our 

 Home,' seems to definitely settle the point : — The power of reproduction 

 in insects is one of the most wonderful parts of their economy. On behead- 

 ing a slug, a new head, with all its complex appurtenances, will grow 

 again ; so with the foot of the salamander and claws of lobsters. The 

 end of a worm split produces two perfect heads, and if cut into three 

 pieces the middle reproduces a perfect head and tail. Reproduction is 

 also evidenced in the growth of trees from slips and cuttings, of polypse 

 and worms from small fragments, and of the renewal of . the claws of crabs 

 and lobsters with all their nerves and parts in perfection. So also in the 

 skin, hair, and nails of men.' 



The Scunthorpe pigmies are again on the warpath ! In an article on 

 Pigmies in Britain,' appearing in a ' Weekly Whirlpool,' we learn that 

 the fact that the so-called pigmy flint implements ' are complete imple- 

 ments is established beyond a doubt ; but that they point to the existence 

 of a pigmy race . . . is not proven. Granting, however, that a pigmy 

 race fashioned these implements, there arises the fascinating question as 

 to whether these English, Belgian, French and Indian colonies were 

 branches of one race, or, owing to a migration, identical. . . With the extra- 

 ordinary vision conjured up by a possible migration of pigmies from 

 India's coral strand to the chalk cliffs of Albion in the dark days of the 

 Stone Age, we must leave the subject.' But why not have more ' extra- 

 ordinary visions ? ' On a rock on Cape Horn, a few inches above the water 

 line, there are a few small scratches which have not yet been satisfactorily 

 accounted for. May not these have been made by the early stone age 

 warriors as they passed Cape Horn in their fleet, possibly recording that 

 they were getting short of provisions ? On the gold coast, recently, a 

 mysterious box was found, which some Philistine said was a cigar-box. 

 May not this have been the coffin of a pigmy chief who died at sea ? It cer- 

 tainly had a label ' best pigmies ' upon it. And in digging for rabbits at 

 Scunthorpe the other day, some small frail bones were found. May not these 

 have been pigmies ? Far more likely than that they were rabbits ! All 

 these circumstances, each perhaps insignificant in itself, when weighed 

 together, surely prove conclusively that a race of pigmies once lived in 

 England. It can be truly said that ' Science is a wonderful invention ! ' 



8 FEB. 1908 



