prosecution by Government and State authorities. It was known that no fat was removed by the firms in question, and the authors show that the fault lies in the method of analysis, the ordinary Babcock method failing to show all the fat in evaporated milk. A suitable method, giving correct results, is described.

THE introduction of labour-saving machinery on the farm has been one of the principal features of the modern revolution in agriculture, and has been rendered necessary by the difficulty of getting sufficient help. Few contrivances are more interesting than the milking machine. Rubber funnels are fitted on to the teats and connected by stout tubing to a milk-can; the pressure is diminished by a pump to about half an atmosphere when the milk begins to flow. A lengthy test has been made at the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, and is recorded in Bulletin No. 173. The machine worked more quickly and more cheaply than a man; it yielded a cleaner milk, which therefore kept better, and, finally, was shown to have no injurious effect on the udders or the general health of the animals. The machine, of course, requires proper attention and careful driving to get the best results, but proved decidedly economical in herds of thirty cows or more. There are already signs that the agricultural labourer of the next generation will be, in the main, an engineer.

WE have received from Mr. Stewart J. McCall; Director of Agriculture, Nyasaland, an interesting pamphlet on the growth of cotton in America. The four types dealt with are (1) Sea Island cotton, a small high-quality crop, forming less than 1 per cent. of the total American crop, but very important by reason of its quality; (2) upland cotton, short staple, the principal variety in commerce; (3) upland cotton, long staple, which has only been introduced within the last few years, and is almost exclusively confined to the rich bottom lands of the Mississippi; (4) Egyptian cotton, introduced to supply the manufacturers' demand for a lustrous cotton, well adapted for mercerisation. The pamphlet is written for the African cotton grower, and great stress is laid on the necessity for keeping out of Africa the cotton weevil, which has done incalculable harm in America, and made cotton cultivation impossible in some places. Mr. McCall suggests that all seed imported from America should pass through a Government Department for examination and treatment. The question of distributing insect and fungoid pests by artificial means has to be considered seriously. Unfortunately, our administrators are often insufficiently in touch with scientific problems to realise that a small pest which could at little expense be kept out of a country may do great damage once it is introduced.

THE mixed population of Manila, which includes almost all races of mankind in varying degrees of purity, has afforded to Mr. R. B. Bean an unrivalled opportunity of studying the different types of human ears, and formulating, for the first time, a morphological classification of the same. His results, which are published in the first number of vol. iv. of the Philippine Journal of Science, cannot fail to be of great interest to anthropologists. Names, such as Malay, Negroid, Cro-Magnon, Alpine, &c., are given to these various types of ears, which are characteristic of definite physical types of men, although it does not necessarily follow that they are also distinctive of all members of the races whose names they bear. The Alpine ear is, for example, the ear of the fat man. In the Philippines the author finds that ears not of European origin are morphologically older than those of European

type, and from these data he draws certain conclusions as to the evolution of the modern Filipinos.

DR. F. ERK, director of the Bavarian Meteorological' Service, has contributed to part i., vol. iii., of "Beiträge · zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre "an interesting paper on the relations of the upper inversion of temperature to the areas of high and low atmospheric pressure. The author, who has the experience of a critical examination of daily weather conditions during the last twenty-five years, assumes, from the labours of recent investigators, that the relatively high temperatures of the region of the upper inversion (the stratosphere") arise from the absorption of radiation, not from the surface of the earth, but from strata of some 4000 metres in height. He discusses at considerable length the effects of the descending air in the high-pressure areas of the upper regions and of the advance of the low-pressure systems towards the stratosphere, and shows how a registering balloon on entering the stratosphere must first meet with a rapid ' increase, and afterwards with a gradual decrease, of temperature. Photograms of the curves obtained during ascents at Hamburg and Munich on the same day and ' with similar instruments exhibit these phenomena very clearly, and show the desirability of the more frequent publication of results in this way instead of tabular statements only.

A NEW recording rain gauge made by Messrs. Negretti and Zambra, which the makers have named the hyetograph, is now procurable, and supplies a much-needed want. Meteorologists have looked forward to the time when a simple register should be obtainable of the duration and amount of rainfall day by day. The instrument has the advantage of great simplicity, and it is scarcely possible for it to get out of order. The only movable parts are the clock drum, the float, and the pen lever. The hyetograph practically gives equal results with the necessarily more expensive Halliwell's patent rain gauge, of which Messrs. Negretti and Zambra are also the makers. The funnel is 8 inches in diameter. The float has the capacity for measuring 4 inches of rain, which is the maximum amount likely to occur in one day in almost any locality in Great Britain. The spindle attached to the float has a number of pins or projections, and these engage successively with a lever arranged so that when the pen reaches the top of the chart, wound round the clock drum, the lever disengages with the pin or projection and falls by its own weight on to the next lower pin, which is so placed as to allow the pen to fall to zero on the chart. The whole of the working parts are protected by a stout galvanised iron cover, and the water collected is removed by a hand-started syphon. The hyetograph complete, with 100 special charts, costs 61. 155.

THE " Report of a Magnetic Survey of South Africa," upon which Prof. J. C. Beattie, of Cape Town, and coadjutors have been engaged, with the aid of Royal Society and colonial grants, for a series of years, has now been published by the Royal Society at the price of 20s. net. It forms a quarto volume with numerous maps and plates, uniform with Rücker and Thorpe's Survey of the British Islands. Copies may be obtained from the Cambridge University Press Warehouse.

WE learn from the Amateur Photographer that Messrs. Aldis Bros., of Birmingham, have perfected a periscope lens which enables the observer to see completely round the horizon without movement of either himself or the lens. It consists of a ring of glass with an outer curved

instrument used consists of an oxy-hydrogen, oxy-coal-gas, or oxy-acetylene mixed blowpipe, through which an additional stream of oxygen can be supplied at will by the operator. The object is to heat to incandescence the part on which the jet of oxygen is afterwards to play, and to keep it at that high temperature all the time the oxygen jet is operating. This method has been found to overcome entirely the older difficulties with regard to unsteady manipulation of the oxygen jet, as well as the trouble due to the presence of iron oxide. Plates and slabs of steel up to 12 inches in thickness can be cut by this method. The cut is very clean, and, in one example illustrated, where a slab of steel 8 inches thick was cut into pieces inch in width, the width of the cut was only about inch, showing the intensely local nature of the operation. Another illustration shows an armour plate being cut circular by means of a special appliance carrying a blowpipe, the thickness of the plate in this example being 9 inches. The cut surfaces are left comparatively smooth, and the cut is square down from the face of the plate, although it is possible also to make bevel cuts. All grades of steel can be operated on.

MR. H. K. LEWIS, of Gower Street, London, has sent us a copy of a catalogue of the new books and new editions added to his medical and scientific circulating library during the second quarter of this year. The list will be sent post free to any address on application.

A SECOND edition of Prof. Marcel Moye's translation of Prof. Lowell's "Mars and its Canals" has been published at the office of the Mercure de France, Paris. The original volume has already been reviewed in these columns, and we are glad of this opportunity of congratulating Prof. Moye on the demand for a second edition of his translation of Prof. Lowell's interesting book. The price of the translation is five francs.

SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY'S volume of "Essays, Biographical and Chemical," which was reviewed in NATURE of July 29, has been translated into German by Prof. W. Ostwald, and published by the Leipzig Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, under the title, Vergangenes und Künftiges aus der Chemie." The German volume includes, in addition to the essays of the original work, an autobiographical sketch by Sir William Ramsay, occupying thirty-five pages.

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OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. OBSERVATIONS OF MARS.-Circular 110 from the Kiel Centralstelle announces that, at 2 p.m. on August 12, M. R. Jonckheere observed a brilliant spot detach itself from the polar snows of Mars and cover the Novissima Thyle, in longitude 320°.

In No. 4340 of the Astronomische Nachrichten M. Jarry Desloges records some observations of Mars made at the Massegros Observatory (Lozère) during June and July.

On June 20 and 23 a dark cutting was seen in the south polar snows, in longitude about 190°, and appeared to terminate in a rounded spot, which was of a darker shade. The crevasse observed by Prof. Lowell in longitude 350° was easily seen on July with a 37 cm. refractor installed on the Revard plateau, and appeared to traverse the whole length of the visible part of the snow-cap. On the same day, at 4h. 15m. a.m., a broad, bright spot was seen on the dark edge of the snow in about longitude 30°.

RE-DISCOVERY OF PERRINE'S COMET.-A telegram from the Kiel Centralstelle announces that comet Perrine was discovered by Herr Kopff at 10h. 54m. (M.T. Königstuhl) on August 12. The position of the comet at that hour was R.A. =oh. 17.1m., dec. =35° 32' N., and the magnitude was 15.0.

Of the three ephemerides given by Herr Ristenpart, the

first (T=October 27.5) gives the nearest position to the above for August 12, the ephemeris place being

R.A.=oh. 40.2m., dec. 36° 45·9′ (1910-0).

THE NUMBER OF THE STARS.-In the August number of the Observatory (No. 412, p. 323) Mr. Gavin Burns directs attention to the discrepancy between the Groningen and the Harvard estimates of the total number of stars, and suggests that Prof. Kapteyn's estimate is probably excessive. Tabulating the figures given by each of the two observatories, he shows that from the tenth magnitude downwards the Groningen numbers are greatly in excess of those given by Prof. Pickering; for example, the respective totals, including all stars down to the 10.5 magnitude, are 697,551 and 604,000, but if the 13.5 magnitude be included they are 14,582,551 and 6,761,000. Then there is a note in the Harvard publication which suggests that if stars to the fifteenth magnitude were included the total would be raised to about 18 million, whereas Prof. Kapteyn's estimate for magnitude 14.5 is 38 million, and for magnitude 15.5 98 million. A published investigation of the Greenwich astrographic plates shows agreement with Harvard for the fainter magnitudes, and strengthens the suggestion that the Groningen estimates are too high.

THE FAINT COMPANIONS OF PROCYON AND SIRIUS.During last winter Prof. Barnard employed the Yerkes 40-inch refractor on many occasions in an endeavour to detect and measure Schaeberle's faint companion to Procyon, but only on a few occasions was he successful. The results, which are published in No. 4345 of the Astronomische Nachrichten (p. 13, August 7), show that during the last five or six years the angular motion of the companion has been about 5-2° per annum, but the distance has changed but little. The weighted means, for 1909.162, were 22.51 and 5.26" respectively. Prof. Barnard states that the least atmospheric diffusion of the light of the large star hides the close companion, and then explains a device which he uses to obviate the adverse effect of the stray light. This is to place a hexagonal diaphragm over the 40-inch object-glass so that the angles of the hexagon lie on the periphery of the glass. This collects the stray light into six thin bright rays, and the small star can be more easily seen in the dark space between a pair of the

rays.

A similar device was employed in observing the faint companion to Sirius, and the measures made during the period 1903-9 are given in the same journal. These show that the angle is decreasing, from 115.38°, for 1903-808, to 92.53°, for 1909-135, whilst the distance is increasing, the values for the corresponding epochs being 6-32" and 8.75" respectively.

PROF. LOWELL'S NEW 40-INCH REFLECTOR.-A brief description of the new 40-inch reflector which Messrs. Alvan Clark and Sons are just completing for Prof. Lowell appears in No. 412 of the Observatory. The focal length is 18 feet 4 inches, and the mirror, cast at St. Gobain, is 7 inches thick and weighs more than 900 lb. The cell is an iron ring with zinc blocks so arranged that the combined expansion is the same as that of the glass, thus obviating distortion. For planetary photography the reflector can be used as a Cassegrain of 154 feet, or 75 feet, focal length, whilst for stars and nebulæ it will be used as a Newtonian with the plate at the principal focus. order to protect the instrument from the wind, and partially from large temperature changes, it will be mounted in a pit sunk 6 feet into the ground, over which is erected a hemispherical dome of wood and canvas. The requisite diurnal motion is to be imparted to the instrument by two electric motors, one for driving, the other for slow motion.

In

WATER VAPOUR IN SUN-SPOTS.-In the July number of the Astrophysical Journal (vol. xxx., No. 1, p. 44) Mr. W. M. Mitchell discusses the various researches which have led to the suggestion that water vapour exists in sunspots. He points out that the spectroscopic evidence is not unanimous, either for or against, and is certainly not conclusive.

The affected spot lines may be due to other substances not yet identified, and giving lines of nearly similar wavelength. Then the apparent intensification may be a sub

jective effect, to which the varying intensities of the watervapour lines in the normal Fraunhofer spectrum is a contributory cause. Mr. Mitchell suggests that very fine measures of the displacement of spot lines, caused by the sun's rotation, might settle the question as to the solar origin of the apparent intensification, and concludes that, as yet, the evidence adduced by various observers in favour of the presence of water vapour is by no means satisfactory.

THE PALISA AND WOLF CELESTIAL CHARTS.-Dr. Palisa

announces that the second series of Celestial Charts, prepared by Dr. Wolf and himself, is now ready, the price, if ordered from him, being 30s.; the bookseller's price is 35s. After the end of November this series will cost the purchaser 40s., wherever purchased. Dr. Palisa's address is "The Observatory, Vienna, Austria."

THE PIMA AND TLINGIT INDIANS.1

THE introduction to the twenty-sixth annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1904-5), 1908, by the chief of the Bureau, Prof. W. H. Holmes, indicates that the staff are zealously carrying on the work of the department. The report itself contains two excellent

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the rule among the young women. On reaching puberty there were several taboos, and there was danger" in the girl that must be breathed out by songs ere she, the members of her family, and the community as a whole were exempt from the hazard of the lightning stroke and other perils. The youths marry early and often." In the majority of cases the choice is made by the girl, who seeks to avoid an alliance with a lazy man. Polygyny was practised to some extent, but the division of labour was such that no great economic advantage resulted. There were marriage was prohibited. no groups within the tribe between which Divorce was easily effected. They often had large families, and twins were received with general rejoicing. Male children were preferred, because they would grow up to fight the Apaches." So strong was the feeling of the Pimas against the abnormal that they tried in recent years to kill a grown man who had six toes. Under the head of " Baptism we find the following information :-at child-naming the child held aloft to receive the first rays of the rising sun. Beads were formerly held up to receive the first rays of sunlight, and were then placed about the child's neck.

was

Descent is traced in the male line, and there are five groups that may be called gentes, though they exert no influence upon marriage laws, nor do they manifest any evidences of organisation so far as ascertained. The

FIG. 1.-Pima woman making pottery: supporting vessel on loose sand.

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memoirs, one on The Pima Indians," by Frank Russell, and the other on Social Condition, Beliefs, and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians," by John R. Swanton.

"The year

As Mr. Russell's memoir is a monograph of the Pima, he naturally pays a good deal of attention to the arts and crafts and food supply of the people, his account being fully illustrated. The Pima keep an annual mnemonic record of events by means of notched sticks. notches are exactly alike. . . . Dots or shallow circular pits and short notches are the most common symbols on the sticks. These have no distinctive meaning, and are used for recording a great variety of events, "but they never make a mistake. One man who lost his stick continued his history with pencil and paper, and this "introduced a tendency to use pictorial symbols rather than merely mnemonic characters, such as are most easily incised on the surface of a stick."

With all their surplus energies expended in warfare, the young Pima men formerly lived exemplary lives as compared with the youths of the last generation. Before the Pimas came in contact with "civilisation " chastity was

1 Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Pp. xxxi+512; 58 plates. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908.)

FIG. 2.-A Piman ho'ding a Calendar Stick.

Pimas are governed by a head chief and by a chief for each village. These men are assisted by village councils, which do not, Mr. Russell believes, appoint any representatives to the tribal councils. The head chief is elected by the village chiefs. The tribe acted as a unit against the dreaded Apaches. The slaves taken by the Pimas were chiefly from the ranks of the Apaches or their allies; they were well treated. The Pimas held possession of the best agricultural land in their section of the south-west, and were compelled to fight for the privilege. There was no law among them observed with greater strictness than that which required purification and expiation for the deed that was at the same time the most lauded-the killing of an enemy. Numbers of myths and songs are cited. The Pimas are far less given than their pueblo neighbours to the outward show of religion. The sun was appealed to. At the present time two deities are recognised, Earth Magician and Elder Brother. They live in the east, dividing the control of the universe between them. The stars are living beings. Some declared that at death the soul passed into the body of an owl, others that after death it went to the land of the dead in the east. Again, souls are supposed to hang about and perform unpleasant pranks with the living.

There are fourteen geographical groups or tribes of the Tlingit or Koluschan, each of which had at least one winter village and a section of coast where they camped

in summer and behind which they hunted in winter. As a whole, they are divided into two exogamous phraties with matrilineal descent, one called Raven, the other usually Wolf, and in the north Eagle as well. One small group outside both phraties could marry into either. Each was subdivided into clans or consanguineal bands, which originally appear to have occupied a particular camp. The larger geographical groups contained members of both phraties, and usually numerous clans. Finally, the clans are subdivided into house groups. Each clan claimed a few distinctive carvings and names; occasionally they might be borrowed. The house names and clan names were generally distinct, and confined to their respective phratry, but a man sometimes claimed the right to the house name owned by his paternal grandfather's clan, so that names sometimes go out of the clan. Those of a man's own phratry are called "friends," those of the opposite phratry opposites" or my outside shell." list is given of the relationship terms. The importance of the phratry system is indicated by the rules of etiquette and the hospitality shown towards members of the same phratry, and the performance by the opposite phratry of certain functions at birth and death.

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A mourning feast is given to members of the opposite phratry, food being put into the fire for the spirit of the deceased. All property given away or destroyed at a feast was dedicated to some dead person, who then actually received its spiritual counterpart. A Tlingit employed his opposites to do everything-put up his house and pole, pierce the lips and ears of his children, and initiate them into the secret societies. The secret society dances were imported from the south, but their observance by no means reached the importance attained among the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian. Whistles were essential concomitants of these dances. The putting up of a house or pole, and the accompanying secret society performance, feasts, and distributions of property were all undertaken for the sake of dead members of a man's clan. Rivalries between opposing parties of dancers at a potlatch often resulted in serious conflict, but the host's people often prevented them by rushing between them bearing their emblem or making the call of the phratry animal. A. C. H.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS ON AGRICULTURE FROM INDIA AND CEYLON.

THE recent issues of Circulars and Agricultural Journal of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, contain interesting papers on cotton, Hevea brasiliensis, and other native crops. Mr. Lock issues a concise guide to the plots on the Experiment Station, Peradeniya, which will prove useful to visitors, and will, we hope, be the forerunner of a work setting out the general results obtained in the Ceylon experiments and the conclusions to be drawn from them. Mr. Petch deals with certain abnormalities in Hevea brasiliensis. Nursery plants with twisted stems are frequently sent in for examination and report. The stem generally makes a complete turn at the base, either in a regular curve or a combination of curves and abruptly angular bends; in other cases there are two complete turns, and in a single instance three have been observed. It was found possible to reproduce some of these abnormalities by varying the position of the seed in the soil. The insect pests-which mainly attack the root, since the rest of the plant is to a large extent self-protected by the viscid caoutchouc-producing latex-are dealt with by Mr. E. Ernest Green. Mr. Bamber deals in one pamphlet with tapioca, describing its method of cultivation in Malacca, and in another with the cultivation of stronggrowing plants to overrun and "choke "weeds in rubber plantations. The plants suggested are Passiflora foetida and Mikania scandens; crotolaria is also used. When growth has attained its maximum, and before the plants die down, the whole mass of material, usually 12 inches to 18 inches deep, can be rolled up like a huge carpet, leaving the surface soil quite free from weeds. Mr. Jowitt describes several of the oil-yielding grasses, and Mr. Stewart McCall puts in a plea for the more extensive cultivation of cotton. Altogether the papers are fully up to the high standard we have learnt to associate with Peradeniya.

It has already been remarked in these columns that theAgricultural Journal of India ranks for general excellence among the best agricultural publications in the world, and the recent numbers in no way alter the impression. The list of articles includes several dealing with improved methods of cultivating cotton and paddy, besides a wellillustrated paper on improved implements of home-make adapted to the special conditions of the native cultivator. Mr. Maxwell-Lefroy deals with Eri or castor silk, and Mr. Marsh discusses certain indirect benefits of irrigation not generally recognised. Among these are the possibility of substituting new sowings in case of accidents to advanced crops, the certainty of fodder for the cattle, which are among the worst sufferers in time of drought, and the general improvement of the people and country which inevitably results when the conditions of life become stable. The journal is issued quarterly from Pusa, and' the articles are well written from a general point of view; it may be confidently recommended to all interested in Indian affairs.

Probably no publication could give a better idea of the enormous size of India, and the great diversity of conditions, than the two volumes of agricultural statistics brought out by the Government of India. The first volume deals with British India, and contains 429 folio pages of closely printed figures; the second contains the records of native States, and is smaller. Comparing the year 1906-7 with 1897-8, the earliest given in the volume, we find the following areas, in acres :

This steady, all-round increase in the area under the various crops furnishes abundant proof of the increasing prosperity of India, and must be a source of great gratification to the British administrators and advisers through whose labour it has been made possible. The one exception in the general prosperity is indigo. During the ten years the area has shrunk from more than one and a third million to less than half a million acres. The indigo planters are a highly enlightened body, and look to science to help them save the industry; their fortunes are very much involved in the contest now going on between the agricultural chemist and the synthetical organic chemist.

POSITION FINDING WITHOUT AN HORIZON. THE Journal Ila of July 17-an aeronautical journal

published at Frankfort-contains an article which in some respects is supplementary to that on the subject of position finding without an horizon which appeared in NATURE of July 22, or, as this article was the later in time, perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was supplementary to the one in Ila. The latter, which is written by Dr. Alfred Brill, relates to the reduction of observed altitudes for the purpose of finding position by means which can be quickly and readily effected in a balloon. After showing the inconvenience of the usual trigonometrical methods used on board ship, and how tiresome the use of tables must be which correlate time, latitude, declination, and altitude, he proceeds to describe his method, which is one eminently suitable and convenient, that is, where a graphic method is sufficiently accurate.

Dr. Brill employs a circular map of, say, Central Europeon transparent celluloid, the projection being one of least distortion. Before and behind this are two more sheets of celluloid, with the Sumner equal altitude circles drawn on the same projection. These sheets each have a central longitudinal azimuth line, while the map is provided with a circle of degrees round its periphery. The two Sumner sheets can be moved longitudinally on rollers like blinds, and these two and the included map may be turned in