Supplement to "Nature," March 9, 1935 383

Short Notices Archa=:ology and Ethnology decline in the struggle with Rome and the Germanic peoples, until in the modern world Ireland alone The Annual of the British School at Athens. No. 32 : remains as their sole independent and national Session 1931-1932. Pp. viii+3l0+42 plates. representative in a political sense. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1934.) 63s. M. Hubert has reconstructed a picture of Celtic net. society and culture out of the reports of classical THE "Annual of the British School of Archooology at historians and geographers and the material afforded Athens" has established a reputation for a high by the heroic traditions and other literary remains of standard of accuracy and scholarship in the presenta• the Celts themselves. It suffers from the necessary tion of the work of its members and students from limitation that it applies primarily to the Celts of year to year. The present volume, which covers the Gaul and Britain only, and is not chronologically session 1931-32, in this respect in no way falls short homogeneous ; but the author argues with some of the achievement of its predecessors. These qualities considerable effect for its general applicability. indeed are the more noticeable from the fact that at present no operations of the first magnitude by the Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies, and School fall to be chronicled. It must not, there• other Pieces. By Sir James George Frazer. Pp. fore, be assumed that the contents of the present xi+ 151. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., volume show any failing in interest. This is far from 1935.) 8s. 6d. net. being the case. Mr. N. G. L. Hammond, for example, SIR JAMES FRAZER has here reprinted a number of in his "Prehistoric Epirus and the Invasion of the 'pieces', of which the title-piece of the volume is the Dorians", presents the archooological and historical most substantial. It appeared originally in the argument in a manner as skilful as its subject is Darwin memorial volume, published in 1909. It intriguing. Miss Winifred Lamb's account of her brings together a number of instances to show that excavations at Antissa have carried on a piece of both the concept of a special act of creation and work essential in duration to her previous excava• something in the nature of the evolutionary theory tions, and Mr. S. Benton's report on a tour of the are found in primitive cosmogonies. Among the Ionian Islands, combining a certain amount of rapid subsequent essays are the Zaharoff Lecture on field-work with material from museum collections Condorcet delivered in Oxford in 1933, biographical and other sources, would be found more than sug• sketches of Sir Baldwin Spencer and the Rev. John gestive, if only money and opportunity were available Roscoe, some reminiscences of the author's early life for further research. Among the remaining papers, in Glasgow in a speech of thanks when the freedom Mr. R. P. Austin reports on his excavations at of his native city was conferred upon him, and some Haliartos on the site of a sanctuary dating from 550 memories of his parents. Each of these pieces, it is B.c., Mr. J. D. Beazley describes groups of mid-sixth scarcely necessary to say, bears the hall-mark of the century Black Figure ware and Mr. R. J. N. Jenkins author's charm and finished style. some archaic Argive terra-cotta figurines. The illus• trations, as usual, are liberal and excellently repro• duced. Biology The Greatness and Decline of the Celts. By the late The Myxomycetes: a Descriptive List of the knoum Henri Hubert. Edited and brought up to date by Species with special reference to those occurring in Prof. Marcel Mauss, Raymond Lantier and Jean North America. By Thomas H. Macbride and Marx. Translated from the French by M. R. G. W. Martin. Pp. x+339+2l plates. (New Dobie. (The History of Civilization Series.) Pp. York: The Macmillan Co., 1934.) 25s. net. xvi+314. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., THE slime moulds are found in decaying organic 1934.) 16s. net. matter in every country of the world, and they are IN this volume, which forms the second instalment probably inhabitants of all soils. So far as is known, of the late M. Henri Hubert's study of the Celts, the they have no economic importance and in conse• author is no longer entirely dependent on the indirect quence of this they are neglected. Their formation evidence of archooology. He has had at his disposal of hard fructifications, in which the spores lie, gives the statements of classical historians and geographers, structure upon which a classification may be based, and in the later periods a mass of material of a but their systematy is of peculiar difficulty on miscellaneous character and varying degree of account of an obvious responsiveness to environment authority drawn from traditions, annals and other while their fructifications are forming. How many forms of literary record. Taking the middle of the thousands of species of these animals or plants, first millennium B.C. as his starting point, he traces whichever they be, exist in the world we do not the expansion of the Celts from their home in Central know, but the work before us represents six years Europe into Italy, Spain, Gaul, the British Isles and labour on the part of Dr. Macbride and his research eastwa.rd to their point of farthest penetration in the assistants. About 400 species are described in this 1Egean and Asia Minor. M. Hubert then follows their monograph, but it occurs to us how much more

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