LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. No notice is taken of anonymous communications.]

The British Association and our Colonies. PROF. MILNE'S letter in NATURE of November 23 (p. 77) will be read with pleasure by all scientific people in the colonies. The benefits to be derived from a colonial meeting such as he suggests are many and various, and I have no doubt will receive full consideration should the idea be given effect to.

Here in Africa, one piece of work which the British Association is the natural body to take up is that of the magnetic survey of the whole continent. The great lack of trustworthy data for immense tracts of this continent has been often commented on. When we remember how much of the continent is in British hands, and how the British Association since its inception has steadily helped and encouraged the study of earth magnetism, the fitness of bringing such a proposal before the association is apparent. At such a conference the possibility of a simultaneous magnetic survey of Australia would naturally be considered. Could these two surveys be carried out-even if very incompletely-they, with the surveys at present in progress and with the proposed ocean surveys of the Carnegie Institution, would form an invaluable contribution to our present knowledge of earth magnetism.

Africa has many other problems-educational, explorational, meteorological-the solution of which would be helped were they taken up at such a conference.

J. C. BEATTIE.

South African College, Cape Town, December 12, 1905.

Monotremes and Birds.

66

On

IN Semon's Zoologische Forschungsreisen, Lieferung xxii. (1904), Disselhorst treats of "Die maennlichen Geschlechtsorgane der monotremen und einiger Marsupialen.' P 123 are two text figures, both copied from Sir Everard Home, Phil. Trans., 1802, plate xii. One represents the male genital apparatus of Echidna hystrix, the other, Fig. 1B of the German work, the stretched male organ of the same animal. Now this Fig. в is, in Home's paper, correctly named penis of the Drake." Needless to say, this Drake's organ does not in the least agree with that of Echidna, as which it is described in the German work, and our author is sorely puzzled about some of the details, cf. p. 131. This may well be the case. Errors and blunders have been made ere now, but the seriocomic point is that this Drake figure has, in the process of reproduction, assumed mammalian characters. In the original figure the base is surrounded by well-drawn feathers, and such are mentioned in the explanation of the plate. The thing is also correctly copied by Owen in his article Aves in Todd's Cyclopædia, "further in the "Anatomy of Vertebrates," vol. ii., Fig. 119, and Owen directs attention to an important error committed by Home in his interpretation of the urethra. But in the recent figure, wrongly attributed to Echidna, the feathers have lost their character as such, and have turned into hairy structures ! Who has done this? The author or the artist, or have both combined to correct the faulty original? It is such a strikingly pretty figure that it is almost sure to be propagated, perhaps to be used as a proof of the affinity of the oviparous mammals. But a drake is a drake, for H. GADOW. University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, December 20.

all that.

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Sounding Stones at Ch'üfu, Shantung. LAST July I happened to pass through Ch'üfu, the birthand burial-place of Confucius. In " seeing the sights" of the town I found three very fine examples of " sounding stones, or stone gongs" as they are sometimes called. These particular examples do not seem to be very well known except by Chinese; none of my foreign acquaintances who have been in Ch'üfu had noticed them. Photo. No. 1 shows the tomb of the grandson of Confucius. The cover of the incense dish (on which my servant is resting his hand) is made from stone, but when struck with a stick,

or even with the knuckles, it rings as though it were bronze. In fact, my man in the photograph refused to believe that it was anything but painted bronze until I myself assured him to the contrary. Photo. No. 2 shows two pillars (marked with crosses) of the balustrade in front of the principal hall of the great Confucian temple at Ch'üfu. Struck any point with a piece of wood, they give distinct musical note.

at

a

Inside the temple is a large tablet, about 5×3× feet, of the same stone. In this case the note produced varies according to the point at which the stone is struck. The stone from which all these bodies is made

is

a greyish oolitic limestone. I was informed that it came from a quarry at Kwan Ko Shan, about seventeen miles south-east of Ch'üfu. Most of the stone from this place has no musical quality, but from time to time veins of it are found, and when found it is usually abundant. Stone gongs" of this kind are found in all parts of the country, and some are in the possession of foreigners. So far as I can find out, they all come from this one locality. They have been known for many centuries, and it is recorded that the district from which they come paid its share of a certain special Imperial tax in " sounding stones." I should be pleased if any reader could give the cause of this very remarkable property, and if it is not understood I would gladly give what help I towards elucidating it. During this journey I was pressed for time, and as my route lay directly east from Ch'üfu I was not able to visit

FIG. 1.-Grave of the grandson of Confucius.
Cemetery of the K'ung family, Ch'ufu, Shantung.

can

take four days each way. I am afraid, however, that it might prove very difficult to secure any sample of this stone for transportation to Europe. ALFRED TINGLE.

Chinanfu, Shantung, China, November 9, 1905.

Aurora of November 15 and December 12. SINCE my communication of December 9 (NATURE, December 28), I have learned that the aurora borealis of November 15 was observed here by several persons between 8.30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m., Halifax time. The appearances were similar to those noted in England (NATURE, November 23, pp. 79-80), and the rosy-red streamers seem to have attracted special attention.

I am also informed that an aurora was observed here last night (December 12) at 9.30 p.m. with whitish streamers, but lacking the display of colour observed November 15.

It is somewhat noteworthy that the interval November 15 to December 12 covers a period of twenty-seven days-the time required for one complete rotation of the sun. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. Beinn Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia,

December 13, 1905.

The Principles of Heredity.

66

I HAVE every reason to be satisfied with the kind and indulgent review (December 7, p. 121) by A. D. D." of my book "The Principles of Heredity," but there is one sentence of it on which I should like to comment, more particularly as it contains nothing of blame or praise. A. D. D." writes, "this book . . . is an embodiment of the recognition by medical men that they depend ultimately for a precise knowledge of nature on the professional biologist-who may or may not, at the same time, be a medical man."

But really I do not think that. On the contrary, I believe it is easily capable of demonstration that the information already in the hands of all medical men is incomparably superior, both in precision and volume, to anything ever possessed, or likely to be possessed, by biologists. It has not been utilised, that is all. The blame does not rest wholly with the medical man. His strictly professional curriculum is burdened by a monstrous but necessary load of facts. His one chance of coming in contact with subjects of general interest and of acquiring habits of sustained and accurate thought lies in the purely scientific part of his curriculum. Here his teachers are biologists who, instead of inculcating wide principles of heredity and evolution, add to the load on his memory by supplying irrelevant scraps of information about jelly-fish, earthworms, cockchafers, and the like-irrelevant, for, in the form they are presented, they do not link up with the studies and interests of his future career, and therefore are forgotten as soon may be. "A. D. D." complains that I do not sufficiently appreciate classical teaching. It may console him to know that my appreciation of a certain class of scientific teaching is just as-well, hearty.

as

The biologist has surpassed the medical man in the study of great problems only because his attention has been directed to the subject, and because, on the whole, his habits of thought-not information-have been more precise. Had the medical man received the training of the biologist, or the biologist possessed the information common to medical men, the progress of science would have been much more rapid, and few or none of the great biological controversies of the past would have arisen, or at least have endured the interminable time they did; for example, the disputes as to whether natural selection is the cause or the sole cause of evolution, as to whether acquired characters are transmissible, as to whether variations are due to the direct action of the environment, as to whether evolution proceeds on lines of "fluctuating variations or of discontinuous mutations,' as to the function of sex, and so forth.

66

Of necessity we-that is, all men-know the human type better than we can possibly know any other. Provided we know what to look for, extreme familiarity enables us to observe the smallest variations. No shepherd knows his flock, no biologist knows animal or plant as

the medical man knows his fellow man. The species has diverged into a large number of natural varieties, dwelling under immensely diverse conditions and differing vastly in every peculiarity of body and mind. All these varieties, apparently, are inter-fertile, and almost all of them, in bulk or in isolated cases, have crossed with almost every other variety. Hybrids are being reared every day, and many races are compound hybrids-e.g. the CaucasianNegro-Indian inhabitants of parts of South America. Above all, the species is being stringently selected and is undergoing rapid evolution under the action of disease, an agency which furnishes the most perfect series of experiments in heredity and evolution imaginable. Every race is resistant to every disease strictly in proportion to its past experience of it. Some diseases are short and sharp, others are of long duration. Some are local, others fill the whole system with micro-organisms or bathe the germcells with toxins. Many diseases are new to many races; others they have afflicted for thousands of years. If ever acquirements are transmitted, however "faintly and fitfully," it should be in the case of disease. If ever variations, no matter how small, are caused by the direct action of the environment, a race long afflicted should show the trace. If Mendelian phenomena play an important part in nature, we should note them in crossed varieties of men. If evolution proceeds on lines, not of fluctuating variations, but of stable mutations "which only selection can eliminate," then races (e.g. British) which have become highly resistant to this or that disease (e.g. consumption) should not constantly produce individuals who are as susceptible as members of a race which has undergone no such evolution (e.g. Red Indian).

Unless heredity in man differs from heredity in other species, it is very evident that medical men have no need to go to biologists for precise information, but that there is every need that biologists should go to medical men. A vast fund of minutely accurate data, much of which is statistical, is available. To grope in the obscurity that necessarily surrounds the past and the present of wild species or amid the confusion of the unrecorded crosses of domesticated varieties while this fund is untouched may be magnificent, but it is not science.

Southsea, December 11, 1905. G. ARCHDALL REID.

DR. REID takes exception to a passage in my review of his book; in it I state my belief that his book is the embodiment of a certain opinion, but Dr. Reid writes to say that he does not hold this view at all. It is not necessary, nor would it be profitable if it were, to discuss who is right in this matter-he or I-for obviously I am guilty of misrepresenting Dr. Reid's opinion.

But that the medical man is capable of acquiring a precise knowledge of nature independently of the information already gained and the methods employed by the biologist does not seem to me to be by any means certain. Dr. Reid thinks it is, and brings forward as evidence the fact that doctors possess better data for the solution of problems of evolution than ever have been, or can be, possessed by the biologist. Now, even supposing this to be true-which I do not for a moment-it does not seem to me to prove Dr. Reid's point. Either he thinks that the possession of data is tantamount to a precise knowledge of nature, or he does not; if he does, he proves his point by introducing into his syllogism a premiss which I believe to be untrue; if he does not-and I do not believe that he does he does not prove his point.

But be this as it may, the point that interests me is that the belief that there is no great step between the collection of data and the derivation from them of a precise knowledge of nature is a widespread and, I believe, a profoundly erroneous one; for it seems to me that the possession of data is a small advance towards such a precise knowledge, and that that which hinders the acquisition of natural knowledge is not the slowness with which facts are accumulated, but the paucity of investigators capable of dealing with them properly; and this dearth is due to the infection of the majority of biologists by a disease-a sort of sleeping sickness-which consists in a disinclination to picture to the mind's eye the things represented by the words they use.

Let us proceed to examine Dr. Reid's main thesis-that

the medical man has better material for the study of evolution than any biologist has had or can have, for the reason, says Dr. Reid, that the animal about which we know infinitely more than we do about any other is man himself. And further than this, he maintains that a knowledge of the relation of man to disease has already furnished us with solutions to such problems as that of the inheritance of use and disuse, and others which he names. Now if the reader is familiar with Prof. Ray Lankester's Romanes Lecture, he will immediately see that great caution must be exercised.

Prof. Lankester in this lecture showed that, though man was a part of nature, he had separated himself from nature, and had set up for himself a regnum hominis, where, to use Huxley's terms, the cosmic process was replaced by the horticultural. Man had-if we may use a picturesque expression which has no meaning-disobeyed nature's laws, and had become in Prof. Lankester's words "nature's rebel.

Moreover, it was in the very matter of disease, on which Dr. Reid bases so much, that man had become more different from the rest of nature than in any other respect.

Disease has no existence in nature apart from man; the parasite either kills his host or an equilibrium is established between the two and both continue to live together; whereas in man a state of affairs has been evolved which is entirely peculiar to him, namely, disease.

Now I maintain that these considerations should prevent us from being too willing, or even from being willing at all, to argue from the data that medical men possess concerning the human species, and particularly from the data concerning man's relation to disease, to the rest of nature.

I am sometimes asked, "Is the knowledge of heredity which you acquire from your experiments with mice likely to be applicable to man?" In my opinion the question which the pure biologist should seriously consider before he accepts the truth of Dr. Reid's contention is, "Is the knowledge of heredity acquired by observation on man likely to be applicable to mice? Is that knowledge likely to help him towards a closer acquaintance with the fundamental nature of living things? My answer is, that it may do to a certain degree, but not so surely as will the kind of knowledge acquired by the pure biologist-a knowledge of nature outside the regnum hominis.

Biologists are still very anthropomorphic, and medical men still more so. To the pure biologist man is not a more interesting animal than any other; and, in fact, it might be urged with some justice that as nature's rebel " he is less so. I am well aware that this view will find no favour with Dr. Reid. On the other hand, Dr. Reid's estimate of the value of the breeding-pen, as an instrument for acquiring a knowledge of heredity, is likely to find as little favour with the experimental breeder. Yet who can say that the one has more of truth in his opinion than the

other?

Naturally each one thinks that the point of view from which, and the material with which, he works at a problem is the best, but I am willing to concede to Dr. Reid the point that, considered as material for dealing with heredity, men are nearly as good as mice, if he will allow that mice are nearly as good as men. A. D. D.

A Suggested Change in Nomenclature. IN the Geological Magazine for October, 1904, I gave the name Barypoda to a new order of Ungulates, including under it Arsinoitherium and its allies. It has just been pointed out to me by Mr. W. K. Gregory, of the American Museum of Natural History, that this name was previously used by Haeckel (Generelle Morphologie," ii., p. clvii.) for certain groups of extinct marsupials. It is therefore advisable to suggest another name for the new division of the Ungulates, and I propose that Embrithopoda be employed.

In the case of a generic name, it is comparatively easy to determine with reasonable certainty whether it has been previously used or not, but with the names of higher subdivisions this is very difficult, especially when, as in the present case, the term has never passed into current use. CHAS. W. ANDREWS.

British Museum (Natural History), London, S. W.,
December 29, 1905.

NOTES ON STONEHENGE.1
X.-SACRED FIRES.

THE magnificent collection of facts bearing on this subject which has been brought together by Mr. Frazer in "The Golden Bough" renders it unnecessary for me to deal with the details of this part of my subject at any great length.

We have these records of fires :

(1) In February, May, August and November of the original May year.

(2) In June and December on the longest and shortest days of the astronomical year (the solstices), concerning which there could not be, and has not been, any such change of date as has occurred in relation to the May year festivals.

(3) A fire at Easter, in all probability added not long before or at the introduction of Christianity. I find no traces of a fire festival at the corresponding equinox in September.

We learn from Cormac that the fires were generally double and that cattle were driven between them.

2

Concerning this question of fire, both Mr. Frazer and the Rev. S. Baring-Gould suggest that we are justified in considering the Christian treatment of the sacred fire as a survival of pagan times. Mr. BaringGould writes as follows:-" When Christianity became dominant, it was necessary to dissociate the ideas of the people from the central fire as mixed up with the old gods; at the same time the central fire was an absolute need. Accordingly the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the perpetual fire."

He further points out that there still remain in some of Our churches (in Cornwall, York, and Dorset) the contrivances-now called cressetstones used. They are blocks of stone with cups hollowed out. Some are placed in lamp-niches furnished with flues. On these he remarks (p. 122)::

re

FIG. 24.-Cresset-stone, Lewannick. From BaringGould's "Strange Survivals."

"Now although these lamps and cressets had their ligious signification, yet this religious signification was an afterthought. The origin of them lay in the necessity of there being in every place a central light, from which light could at any time be borrowed; and the reason why this central light was put in the church was to dissociate it from the heathen ideas attached formerly to it. As it was, the good people of the Middle Ages were not quite satisfied with the central church fire, and they had recourse in times of emergency to others--and as the Church deemed themunholy fires. When a plague and murrain appeared among cattle, then they lighted need-fires from two pieces of dry wood, and drove the cattle between the flames, believing that this new flame was wholesome to the purging away of the disease. For kindling the need-fires the employment of flint and steel was forbidden. The fire was only efficacious when extracted in prehistoric fashion, out of wood. The lighting of these need-fires was forbidden by the Church in the eighth century. What shows that this need-fire was distinctly heathen is that in the Church new fire was obtained at Easter annually by striking flint and steel together. It was supposed that the old fire in a

1 Continued from p. 155.

"Strange Survivals," p. 120 et seq.

twelvemonth had got exhausted, or perhaps that all light expired with Christ, and that new fire must be obtained. Accordingly the priest solemnly struck new fire out of flint and steel. But fire from flint and steel was a novelty; and the people, Pagan at heart, had no confidence in it, and in time of adversity went back to the need-fire kindled in the time-honoured way from wood by friction, before this new-fangled way of drawing it out of stone and iron was invented." The same authority informs us that before Christianity was introduced into Ireland by St. Patrick there was

a

account suffered to go out."

Mr. Frazer,1

quoting Cerbied,

shows that in the ancient religion of Armenia the new fire was kindled at the February festival of the May year, in honour of the fire god Mihr. "A bonfire was made in a public place and lamps kindled at it were kept burning throughout the year in each of the fire-god's This temples."

FIG. 25.-The Carro, Florence. From Baring- festival now takes Gould's "Strange Survivals." place at Candlemas, February 2. We must assume, then, that the pagan fires were produced by the friction of dry wood, and possibly in connection with an ever-burning fire. In either case the priests officiating at the various circles must have had a place handy where the wood was kept dry or the fire kept burning, and on this ground alone we may again inquire whether such structures as Maeshowe at the Stenness circle, the Fougou at that of the Merry Maidens, and indeed chambered barrows and cairns generally, were not used for these purposes amongst others; whether indeed they were not primarily built for the living and not for the dead, and whether this will explain the finding of traces of fires and of hollowed stones in them, as well as some points in their structure. Mr. MacRitchie 2 has brought together several of these points, among them fireplaces and flues for carrying away smoke.

At both solstices it would appear that a special firerite was practised. This consisted of tying straw on a wheel and rolling it when lighted down a hill. There is much evidence for the wheel at the summer but less at the winter solstice; still, we learn from the old Runic fasti that a wheel was used to denote the festival of Christmas. With regard to the summer solstice I quote the following from Hazlitt (under John, St.):

"Durandus, speaking of the rites of the Feast of St. John Baptist, informs us of this curious circumstance, that in some places they roll a wheel about to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the Zodiac. is beginning to descend. 'Rotam

1 "Golden Bough," iii. 248. 2 "The Testimony of Tradition."

quoque hoc die in quibusdam locis volvunt, ad sig nificandum quod Sol altissimum tunc locum in Colo occupet, et descendere incipiat in Zodiaco.' Harl. MSS. 2345 (on vellum), Art. 100, is an Account of the rites of St. John Baptist's Eve, in which the wheel is also mentioned. In the amplified account of these ceremonies given by Naogeorgus, we read that this wheel was taken up to the top of a mountain and rolled down thence; and that, as it had previously twisted about it and set on been covered with straw fire, it appeared at a distance as if the sun had been falling from the sky. And he further observes, that the people imagine that all their ill-luck rolls away from them together with this wheel. At Norwich, says a writer in Current Notes for March, 1854, the rites of St. John the Baptist were anciently observed, 'when it was the custom to turn or roll a wheel about, in signification of the sun's annual course, or the sun, then occupying the highest place in the Zodiac, was about descending.

At Magdalen College, Oxford, the May and June years are clearly differentiated. There is a vocal service at sunrise on May morning, followed by boys blowing horns. At the summer solstice there is a sermon preached during the day in the quadrangle.

One of the most picturesque survivals of this ancient custom takes place at Florence each year at Easter. This is fully described by Baring-Gould. The moment the sacred fire is produced at the high altar a dove (in plaster) carries it along a rope about 200 yards long to a car in the square outside the west door of the cathedral and sets fire to a fuse, thus causing the explosion of fireworks.

The car with its explosives is the survival of the ancient bonfire.

-

It would appear that the lighting of these fires on a large scale lingered longest in Ireland and Brittany. A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine (February, 1795) thus describes the Irish Beltane fires in 1782, "the most singular sight in Ireland ":"Exactly at midnight, the fires began to appear, and taking the advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a farther satisfaction in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people danced round the fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity."

It will have been observed with reference to these fire festivals that although there were undoubtedly four, in May, August, November, and February, those in May and November were more important than the others. This no doubt arose from the fact that at different times the May and November celebrations were New Year festivals. With regard to the New Year in November in Celtic and later times, Rhys writes as follows ("Hibbert Lectures," p. 514):

"The Celts were in the habit formerly of counting winters, and of giving precedence in their reckoning to night and winter over day and summer (p. 360); I should argue that the last day of the year in the Irish story of Diarmait's death meant the eve of November or Áll-halloween, the night before the Irish Samhain, and known in Welsh as Nos Galan-gaeaf, or the But there is no Night of the Winter Calends. occasion to rest on this alone, as we have the evidence of Cormac's Glossary that the month before the beginning of winter was the last month; so that the first day of the first month of winter was also the first day of the year.

That the November bonfire was recognised as