describe briefly the attempt to reach their observing station at Kiev (Russia); they only got so far as Riga, and had to return. According to the Morning Post (September 7) the Russian astronomers were disappointed at the fact that Major Hills and Prof. Fowler when at Riga did not communicate with Prof. Backlund, because a Russian eclipse expedition went to Riga prepared to assist them in every way. As it happened, the weather at Riga was much finer than at most of the eclipse stations. The Morning Post gives further information about the German astronomers, who were invited to Russia to observe the eclipse. It seems that the German parties were warned in time to return, and some did so. Those who hesitated were arrested and sent to Odessa. It is then stated, "The American party packed up the German instruments and sent them also to Odessa,

but nothing has been heard of them since, and the German astronomers have been vainly appealing to Prof. Backlund, who is naturally helpless and cannot interfere personally."

VERTICAL CIRCLE OBSERVATIONS AT THE U.S. NAVAL OBSERVATORY.-Vol. viii. (second series) of the Publication of the United States Naval Observatory contains the vertical circle observations made with the 5-in altazimuth instrument for the period 1898 to 1907. The observations were made by Messrs. F. B. Littell, G. A. Hill, and H. B. Evans, and were reduced by the first-named. The volume is subdivided into introduction, observations and reductions, individual results of observations and catalogue. The introduction, contains an account of the instrument, which was built by Messrs. Warner and Swasey, under the supervision of Prof. William Harkness; it was completed and housed at the end of 1897, and first used in February, 1898. The aperture of the telescope is 5-02 in., and the focal length is 50 in. Two sections and a photograph of the instrument in situ illustrate the general arrangements. Pp. 1-389 show the observations and reductions; pp. 393-445 are devoted to the individual results of the observations; and pp. 447-65 give the catalogue. In the last-mentioned the magnitudes are those of the Revised Harvard Catalogue. The declinations are derived from the means of the individual results by the application of the corrections for flexure and latitude; they are for the epoch given in the column headed "Mean Date," and for the mean equator 1900-0. The precessions and secular variations are based on Newcomb's constants.

PARALLAXES OF THE BRIGHTER GALACTIC HELIUM STARS. -No. 82 of the Contributions from the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, reprinted from the Astrophysical Journal, vol. xl., 1914, July, contains an extensive and important research by Prof. J. C. Kapteyn, entitled "On the individual parallaxes of the brighter galactic helium stars in the southern hemisphere together with considerations of the parallax of stars in general." The communication covers eighty-six pages, and is divided into twenty sections, the first being composed of an introduction and a summary. The stars chosen are the helium stars brighter than the 6th magnitude for the part of the sky lying between galactic latitudes 30°, and galactic longitudes 216°-360°. In a subsequent paper or papers, he hopes to deal with the helium stars in the other parts of the sky. For the brighter stars of other spectral classes he has not attempted to derive individual parallaxes, but has discussed the prospects of the successful treatment of such an investigation. The reader must be referred to the paper itself for the details and results of the investigation, but attention may be directed here to the very interesting charts dealing with the distribution of the helium stars as regards galactic positions illustrating

the apparent tendency of these stars to clustering. The most extensive of these clusters is between longitudes 200° and 340°, and this group forms the main subject of the present paper. Another chart gives the arrangement of the helium stars in space. Prof. Kapteyn directs particular attention to three fairly strong condensations with different parallaxes, and he says: "Of course, we may see in the arrangement of these condensations the indication of a spiral structure. I shall not lay much stress on this, unless we find the same thing repeated in other parts of the sky."

PAPERS ON INVERTEBRATES.

THE anatomy of the blind prawn of the Sea_of Galilee (Lake of Tiberias), described by Dr. Calman in 1909 as the representative of a peculiar genus, under the name of Typhlocaris galilea, is discussed by Mr. Ghosh in vol. ix., No. 6, of the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In another article in the same issue Messrs. Annandale and Kemp point out that, so far as known, the Sea of Galilee is the home of only three species of decapod crustaceans, of which the aforesaid Typhlocaris is noticeable on account of its marked structural differences from all other members of the group, as well as for its apparent modification for subterranean existence. As a matter of fact, it is known from a single open and well-lighted pool near the marge of the lake, and the authors suggest that earth-movements may have been the cause of this departure from its apparently proper habitat.

In the April number of the Records of the Indian Museum, Mr. Kemp continues his notes on the decapod crustaceans, in the Indian Museum, dealing in this instance with the family Hippolytidæ, a group notable on account of the great generic variation in bodily form and in secondary sexual characters. Several species and two genera are described as new.

New and other African scorpions, spiders, etc., form the subject of an article by Mr. J. Hewitt in vol. iii., part 1, of Records of the Albany Museum. It is noteworthy that a two-lunged spider, Cydrela friedlanderi, of the family Zodariidae, resembles the members of a totally different group in closing the entrance to its burrow by means of a trap-door. In the two-lunged trap-door species the females are bright-coloured like their allies, which do not protect themselves in the same manner; in other trap-door spiders, on the contrary, the females lack bright colours.

Two infusorians of the family Cothurnidæ found in moss during Dr. Charcot's Antarctic expedition led Mr. E. Penard to undertake a re-investigation of moss-dwelling rhizopods and infusorians, the first result of which is an elaborate article on the Cothurnidæ communicated by that naturalist to the Mém. Soc. Phys. et Hist. Nat. Genève (vol. xxxviii., fasc. 1). These organisms form an important feature of the invertebrate life of the polar regions, where moss and lichens constitute the chief vegetation; they are, however, by no means restricted to high latitudes, and the author has devoted much attention to the question whether in warmer zones they may not pass part of their time in open water. His answer is that while some are exclusively moss-dwellers, others appear to spend weeks, if not months, periodically in water.

Among the contents of the first livraison of vol. xlv. of Trav. Soc. Imp. Nat., St. Pétersbourg., is an article on the anatomy and physiology of the synaptid holothurians, to which a brief abstract in French is appended.

We have been favoured with copies of three papers contributed by Mr. E. W. Adair to the Bull. Soc.

Entom. d'Egypte for 1912 and 1913, published 1914.

In the first (1912) of two relating to the life-histories of the insects of the family Mantidæ it is pointed out that the supposed additional metamorphic stage recorded by Pagenstecher in the case of Mantis religiosa was due to the newly emancipated imago being enveloped in the amnion of the ovum. In the third paper the author records "jumping seeds" of Tamarix nilotica, the movements of which were produced by imprisoned larvæ of a small weevil, Nanophyes maculatus. Hitherto similar movements have been known only in the case of the Mexican so-called "jumping beans," of which the moving power are the larvæ of certain tortricid moths, especially Carposapsa saltitans.

In an article contributed to vol. iv. (new series), part i., of the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastleupon-Tyne, Mr. R. S. Bagnall states that whereas a few years ago only a single representative of the centipedes of the group Symphyla was known from the British Isles, he had been enabled to raise the number to no fewer than twelve species and one subspecies, five of the former, of which three are described as new, belonging to the genus Scutigerella, and the remaining seven, of which six are new, together with the subspecies (also new) to Scolopendra. In a supplemental article published near the end of the same issue he describes a seventh new species of Scolopendra, from Cheshire, and raises the aforesaid subspecies to specific rank, thus recording at total of fourteen British species, of which, however, one Scutigerella has hitherto been detected only in hothouses.

In No. 1 of vol. v. of the Entomological Series of the Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. C. C. Ghosh continues his life-histories of Indian insects, dealing in this instance with eleven species of butterflies, inclusive of the common British cabbage-white. The account of the rice-leaf caterpillar, and its butterfly, so injurious to rice-crops all over the Old World and Australia, is from MS. left by Mr. Maxwell-Lefroy, when Government entomologist. The nine coloured plates are admirably executed.

Fuller acquaintance with the insect-fauna of the eastern and north-eastern districts of the Transvaal and southern Rhodesia has enabled Dr. L. Péringuey to add considerably to the list of South African representatives of the hymenopterous family Mutillida. His first article on the subject was contributed to vol. i. of the Annals of the S. African Museum (1898): his latest forms part 15 of vol. x. of the same serial (1914).

Beetles of various families, inclusive of the Tenebrionidæ, Cetoniidæ, and Buprestidæ, collected during the Duke of Mecklenburg's travels, form the subject of articles by various specialists in Lief. 3 of the first volume of the Zoological section of Ergebnisse der Zweiten - Deutschen Zentral - Afrika - Expedition, 1910-1911. Many new species are named, and it may be well to note that the name of the Ubangi Valley has been adopted as a generic designation, “Ubangia.” An extensive collection of brittle-stars, or ophiurids, from the Caribbean Sea in the U.S. National Museum has enabled Prof. René Koeler not only to describe a number of new species, but, what is more important, to rectify the definition of previously known species and groups. His monograph, illustrated by eighteen beautifully executed plates in black and white, forms Bulletin No. 84 (173 4to pp.) of the U.S. National Museum. R. L.

OFFICIAL FISHERY PUBLICATIONS.1

IN its annual report for the year 1912, the fisheries branch of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries made a marked change in the manner of reporting the results of their administration, and we are glad to note that this change is still more apparent in the report for last year. For the first time we are now presented with an account of the progress of the English sea fisheries, which is characterised by close insight into the conditions of the industry, and by a very attentive study of those tendencies that are making for the modification, in many ways, of the fisheries of England and Wales.

Part i. of the report is a document of great interest even to the ordinary reader interested in public affairs. It deals clearly and concisely with the industry in general, emphasising various matters of special importance arising during 1913. The remarkable herring fishery of the last two years; the great development, during this time, of the fishery for herring by means of the trawl net; the utilisation of by-products; the development of the internal combustion engine as a means of propulsion of fishing vessels; the application of wireless telegraphy in the deep-sea fisheries; the economics of the French sardine industry; the rapid development of scientific research by the Board: these and other matters, together with a good review of the year's fisheries and the administrative work of the Board, make up this interesting volume. Part ii. is a document for the specialist. It consists of statistical tables and synoptic charts, and those concerned with fisheries inquiries will welcome the increasing amount of detail exhibited in this representation of the year's fisheries. Still greater detail in relation to the less important fisheries is desirable, but it is apparent that, for this purpose, a much greater development of local administration by the Board may be necessary.

These reports are a contribution, though in a greatly modified and much more valuable form, of the former fisheries reports of the department. The third paper before us begins a new series of publications containing the results of scientific researches carried out by the officers of the Board. It is a statistical account of the English haddock fishery in the North Sea. The species is one which is most abundant in the northern parts of the North Sea, less abundant to the west of Great Britain, and practically absent, or capricious in its distribution and abundance, in the Irish Sea and the English Channel. Commercial statistics are utilised by Mr. Russell to give a picture of the distribution of the fish, and of its seasonal abundance, and the variations of abundance from year to year. These statistical summaries are most valuable; they indicate irresistibly those periodic fluctuations which are plainly to be correlated with periodic physical changes in the sea, or even with periodic cosmic changes. Measurements of length, of samples of fish taken at the great ports, are also summarised by Mr. Russell, and are so treated as to supplement the commercial statistics. In this way more than two and a half millions of fish have been dealt with. Biological observations have also been made, but a discussion of these is reserved for a future report.

Numerous determinations of average weight of the fishes landed are also summarised, with the object of throwing light on the variations in nutrition according to age and season. The author shows that the well-known length-weight formula now used in fishery

Beard of Agriculture and Fisheries. Annual Report on the Sea Fisheries for the Year 1913. Parti., Report; Part ii., Tables and Charts. [Cd. 7448–9] (1914.)

Fishery Investigations. Series ii., vol. i., part i., Report on Market Measurements in Relation to the English Haddock Fishery during the Years 1909-11. By E. S. Russell. (1914)

investigations does not apply to his series. According to this formula, the weight of a fish at different ages is a function of the cube of the length. A mathematical investigation of Mr. Russell's average weights by Pearson's "method of moments" shows, however, that the weight of a fish at different ages is to be represented only by a series of the form,

a+bl+cl2 + dl3 +

I being the length of the fishes. It is possible that these terms have each a physical meaning; the fish grows irregularly as its age advances, so that its weight is a function of length, surface, volume, and density, all of which dimensions vary in relation to each other in different phases of the individual lifehistory. J. J.

WATER SUPPLY.'

NE of the difficulties besetting the agriculturist ONE in the vast area known as the Great Plains and

constituting the central region of the United States is the irregular rainfall. The land is fertile enough, but a recurring series of dry years militates greatly against its effective development. Attempts have been made to remedy the evil by means of artificial irrigation, but so far these efforts have been sporadic and local, and, consequently, they have not produced the completely beneficial results which might be obtained if all the ground water were systematically conserved and utilised.

The United States Government hydrological service, as the result of their investigations, are publishing from time to time a series of water supply papers specially devoted to a consideration of this problem as affecting various localities, and four reports before us (Nos. 345 A, B, C, and D), issued this year, deal with districts in Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico. They are useful little pamphlets, affording much detailed information on the geological formation and available water resources of the respective areas. Not the least useful feature, perhaps, is a discussion on the depth and cost of wells, and on the power required for pumping. There is a much-needed caution to prospective irrigators to consider carefully the whole of the outlay likely to be involved in any system of artificial irrigation before embarking upon it, lest it should prove to be financially unremunerative and unsound.

Water Supply Paper, No. 340 A (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1914), of the United States Geological Survey, contains a list of the streamgauging stations situated in the North Atlantic coast drainage basins, and a summary of the reports and publications relating to water resources within this area (1885-1913). It forms a convenient bibliographical index, and should prove most useful for reference purposes to anyone desirous of consulting the literature on the subject.

Three annual reports on the discharge of rivers in the United States are comprised in Water Supply Papers, Nos. 309, 322, and 324 (Washington: Government Printing Office). The first deals with the Colorado River Basin for the year 1911; the other two are for the year 1912, and cover the St. Lawrence River Basin and the basins of the South Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico respectively. The numerous observations made have been carefully compiled and tabulated, and, in conjunction with those 1 Paper 345 a: Preliminary Report on Ground Water for Irrigation in in the vicinity of Wichita, Kansas. Paper 345 : Ground Water for Irrigation in the vicinity of Enid, Oklahoma. Paper 345 c: Underground Water of Luna County, New Mexico. Paper 345 d: Ground Water for Irrigation in the valley of North Fork of Canadian River, near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Washington, 1914. Government Printing Office.

previously published. form a very useful scientific record of stream flow and discharge in the areas specified. Each pamphlet has an introductory note on the methods employed in gauging, and, in the 1912 reports, there are some interesting photographs and diagrams.

THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

SECTION H.

ANTHROPOLOGY.

OPENING ADDRESS BY SIR EVERARD IM THURN, C.B., K.C.M.G., PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

A Study of Primitive Character.

CIVILISATION and "savagery "-for unfortunately it misleading suggestion for that word "savagery" seems now too late to substitute any term of less are the labels which we civilised folk apply respectively to two forms of human culture apparently so unlike that it is hard to conceive that they had a common origin-our own culture and that other, the most primitive form of human culture, from which, at some unknown and distant period, our own diverged. But, assuming one common origin for the whole human race, we anthropologists can but assume that at an early stage in the history of that race some new idea was implanted in a part of these folk, that is, in the ancestors of civilised folk, which caused these thenceforth to advance continuously, doubtless by many again subsequently diverging and often intercrossing roads, some doubtless more rapidly than others, but all mainly towards that which is called civilisation, while those others, those whom we call “savages, were left behind at that first parting of the ways, to stumble blindly, advancing indeed after a fashion of their own, but comparatively slowly and in a quite different direction.

It is easy enough for civilised folk, when after across the age-long separation they again come "savages," to discern the existence of wide differences between the two, in physical and mental characteristics, and in arts and crafts; it is not so easy, it may even be that it is impossible, to detect the exact nature of these differences, especially in the matter of mental characters.

As a rule the occupant of this presidential chair is one who, whether he has seen much of "savages at close quarters or not, has had much ampler opportunity than has fallen to my lot of comparative study of that great mass of anthropological observations which, gathered from almost every part of the world, has now been recorded at headquarters. I, on the other hand, happen to have spent the better part of my active life in two different parts of the world, remote from books and men of science, but in both of which folk of civilised and of savage culture have been more or less intermixed, but as yet very imperfectly combined, and in both of which I have been brought into rather unusually close and sympathetic contact with folk who, whatever veneer of civilisation may have been put upon them, are in the thoughts which lie at the back of their minds and in character still almost as when their ancestors were at the stage of savage culture.

While trying to adjust the mutual relations of wild folk and of folk of civilised stock, I have seen from close at hand the clash which is inevitable when the two meet a clash which is naturally all the greater when the meeting is sudden. Moreover, having started with a strong taste for natural history, and

building, in which they excelled all other South Sea islanders, in the making of clubs and other weapons, and in otherwise using the timber, which grew more abundantly, and of better quality, in their islands than elsewhere. Meanwhile the Polynesians, in their earlier homes and long before they reached Fiji, had developed, in very high degree, corresponding but different and much more elaborate arts (and ideas) of their own. But, as we know from Captain Cook, the Polynesians, despite their own higher culture, from their Tongan homes, greatly admired and appreciated the special craftsmanship of the Fijians, and it was indeed this admiration which attracted the former from Tonga to Fiji; and when the Polynesians had gained footing in the Fijis they quite in accordance with human nature-were inclined, for a time at least, to foster the foreign Fijian arts-if not Fijian ideasrather than replace these by their own arts; and before the struggle, both physical and cultural, between the two sets of "savages" had gone far it was interrupted, and more or less definitely arrested, by the arrival and gradual settlement of the still more powerful, because civilised, white folk from the Western world.

In turning to the earlier (Melanesian) occupants of Fiji, and especially to the less advanced of these, to find the traces of which we are in search of the more primitive habit of thought, it must not be forgotten that even at the stage at which we begin to know about them they had made considerable advance, in their ideas as well as in their arts and crafts. They still used their most primitive form of club, but also made others of much more elaborated form; so, though the ideas which lay at the basis of their habit of thought were of very primitive kind, they had acquired others of more complex character.

Before going further may I say and I sincerely hope that suggestion will not be misunderstood that in the difficult task of forming a clear conception of the fundamental stock of thought which must have guided the conduct of the more primitive folk we must constantly bear in mind the parallelism (I do not mean necessary identity of origin) between the thoughts of the earliest human folk and the corresponding instincts (as these are called) noticeable in the case of some of the higher animals? I am particularly anxious not to be misunderstood; the suggestion is not that even the most primitive human folk were mentally merely on a par even with the higher animals, but that many, perhaps most, of the ways of thought that guided the primitive man in his bearing towards the world outside himself may be more easily understood if it is once realised, and afterwards remembered, that the two mental habits, however different in origin and in degree of development, were remarkably analogous in kind.

A similar analogy, in respect not of thoughts but of arts, may well illustrate this correspondence between the elementary ideas of men and animals. The higher apes occasionally arm themselves by tearing a young tree up by the roots and using the "club" thus provided as a weapon of offence and defence against their enemies. Some of the primitive South Sea islanders did-nay, do-exactly the same, or at any rate did so until very lately. The clubthe so-called malumu-which the Fijian, then and up to the much later time when he ceased to use a club at all, greatly preferred to use for all serious fighting purposes was provided in exactly the same way, i.e., by dragging a young tree from the ground, and smoothing off the more rugged roots to form what the American might call the business end of the club. But though the Fijian, throughout the period during which he retained his own ways, used and even pre

ferred this earliest form of club, he meanwhile employed his leisure (which was abundant), his fancy, and his ingenuity, in ornamenting this weapon, and also in gradually adapting it to more and more special purposes, some of the later of which were not even warlike but were ceremonial purposes, until in course of time each isolated island or group of islands evolved clubs special to it in form, purpose, and ornament, and the very numerous and puzzlingly varied series of elaborate and beautiful clubs and club-shaped implements resulted. It seems to be in power of improvement and elaboration that lies the difference between men-folk and animal-folk.

Something similar may be assumed to have brought about the evolution of the ideas of these islanders. Starting with a stock of thoughts similar in kind to the instincts of the more advanced animals, the human-folk-by virtue of some mysterious potentiality

gradually adapted these to meet the special circumstances of their own surroundings, and in so doing ornamenting these primitive thoughts further in accordance with fancy.

In the Fiji islands this process of cultural development was probably slow during the long period while the Melanesians, with perhaps the occasional stimulus afforded by the drifting in of a little human flotsam and jetsam from other still more primitive folk, were in sole occupation; yet it must have been during this period and by these folk that the distinctly Fijian form of culture was evolved. But the process must have been greatly accelerated, and at the same time more or less changed in direction, by the incoming of the distinct and higher Polynesian culture, at a time certainly before, but perhaps not very long before, the encroachment of Europeans.

In order to realise as vividly as possible what were the earlier, most elementary, thoughts on which the whole detail of his subsequent "savage" mentality was gradually imposed, it is essential for the time being to discard practically all the ideas which, since the road to civilisation parted from that on which savagery was left to linger, have built up the mentality of civilised folk; it is essential to try to see as the most primitive Fijian saw and to conceive what these islanders thought as to themselves and as to the world in which they found themselves.

It seems safe to assume that the primitive man, absolutely self-centred, had hardly begun to puzzle out any explanation even of his own nature, still less of the real nature of all the other things of which he must have been vaguely conscious in the world outside himself. To put it bluntly, he took things very much as they came, and had scarcely begun to ask questions.

He was he could not but be, as the lower animals are-in some vague way conscious of himself, and from that one entirely self-centred position he could not but perceive from time to time that other beings, more or less like himself, were about him, and came more or less in contact with him.

The place in which he was conscious of being appeared to him limitless. He did not realise that he could move about only in the islet which was his home, or perhaps even only in a part of a somewhat larger, but according to our ideas still small, island; if other islets were in sight from that on which he lived, these also would be part of his world, especially if-though such incidents must have been rare -he had crossed to, or been visited by strangers from, those islands-islands which lay between his own home and that which he spoke of as wai-langilala (water-sky-emptiness) and we speak of as the horizon. To him the world was not limited by any line, even the furthest which his sight disclosed to