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THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 1881

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL

I.

N March 13, 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, and very opportunely at this centenary of that memorable addition to the planetary system, Prof. Holden has presented us with a popular biography of the great astronomer and an outline of his works, which he has been careful to make intelligible to the general reader.1

Of the great modern philosophers, writes Prof. Holden, that one of whom least is known, is William Herschel, and we may appropriate the words which escaped him as one of the starless spaces in the constellation Scorpio passed through the field of his telescope, when his sister Caroline Herschel, his constant attendant during his night-watches, tells us he exclaimed, "Hier ist wahrhaftig ein Loch im Himmel." A life of Herschel which shall be satisfactory in every particular, Prof. Holden remarks, can only be written after a full examination of the materials which may have been preserved by the family; but as two generations have passed since his death, he thinks no apology will be needed for a conscientious attempt to make the best use of material already in hand, scanty as it may be.

Herschel did prepare, about the year 1818, a biographical note or memorandum, which was then placed amongst his papers, and which has not been made public, and his sister, writing in June, 1842, mentions having commenced a work which she almost despaired of finishing, "The History of the Herschels," in which presumably her brother's life and work would have formed the main feature, but we do not hear that in her then infirm state of health any considerable progress was made with it.

The only authentic sources of biographical information before the world are in the "Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel," published in 1876, and in a much less known sketch of his life furnished by Herschel himself in a communication to Lichtenberg, dated November 15, 1783, and printed in the Göttingen Magazine of Science and Literature, iii. 4; this sketch was forwarded at the request of Lichtenberg, when acknowledging the receipt of memoirs on double stars, &c., which Herschel had sent him.

William Herschel was born in Hanover on November 15, 1738, and was the second son of Isaac and Anna Herschel. The musical taste which he exhibited early in life appears to have been inherited from his father, who formed one of the band of the Hanoverian Guards in 1731. The eldest son Jacob was a clever musician, and first violin in the Court orchestra in 1759; he afterwards joined his brother William in this country, and on returning to Hanover carried on a correspondence with him on musical subjects till his death in 1792. The youngest brother Dietrich also shared in the musical abilities of the family, and at fifteen years of age was so far advanced as to be admitted into the Court orchestra. Towards the end of 1755, when the Hanoverian Guards were ordered

"Sir William Herschel, his Life and Works." By Edward S. Holden, U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1881.)

VOL. XXIII.-No. 593

to England, Herschel accompanied them as one of the band, and remained in this country about a year, when he returned to Hanover. During part of the disastrous campaign of 1757 he was on active service with the regiment, but after the defeat at Hastenbeck in July, it became evident that he had not the physical strength for the service, and his parents resolved to remove him. In connection with this circumstance Prof. Holden recalls a statement made by Sir George Airy, that the "removal" was a desertion, as he was told by the Duke of Sussex that on Herschel's first visit to the king after the discovery of the Georgium Sidus, "his pardon was handed to him by the king himself, written out in due form."

Herschel returned to England, though at what time does not appear. In fact from 1757 to 1760 we know nothing of his life. It is related in the Memoirs of Caroline Herschel that several pages referring to this period had been torn out in both her original Recollections and in the unfinished Memoir commenced in 1840. In 1760, however, he is again heard of, at Pontefract, as a young German in the band of the Durham militia, who spoke English almost as well as a native, and who was an excellent performer on the violin. It is conjectured that till his appointment as organist at Halifax in 1765, pupils and public concerts must have filled up his time; during a portion of this interval of five years he resided at Leeds, and in April, 1764, we are told he returned to Hanover on a very brief visit. In 1766 he obtained an engagement at Bath, and soon after was appointed organist at the Octagon Chapel. In this year, says Prof. Holden, he began a life of unceasing activity. His engaging manners made him friends, while "his talents brought him admirers and pupils, and pupils brought him money"; at this time he was giving thirty-five or more musical lessons in a week. In August, 1772, he proceeded to Hanover to take back to England his sister Caroline, afterwards his untiring assistant and companion in his surveys of the heavens. At this time his residence was in New King Street, Bath, and here in 1774 he had made himself a Gregorian telescope, probably on the model of Short's. In the preceding year, it is related of him, that he used to retire to bed with Smith's Harmonics and Optics, Ferguson's Astronomy, &c., and his first thoughts on rising were how to obtain instruments for viewing the objects of which he had been reading. We are told no optician had settled in Bath at that time.

Prof. Holden mentions that in Journal No. 1, preserved at the Royal Society, is a copy of Herschel's first observation of the nebula of Orion, made with his 5-feet Gregorian reflector on March 4, 1774. In 1775, with a Newtonian telescope of 4 inches aperture, and power of 222, also made by himself, he made his first review of the heavens, consisting in the examination of every star of first to fourth magnitudes and the planets; no records of these observations are now known to be in existence. In the same year the first 7-feet reflector was finished, and in 1777 one of 10 feet and one of 20 feet had been projected, and a grass-plot behind a house near Walcot turnpike, to which Herschel had removed at midsummer, 1774, was prepared for its reception: this house offered more room for workshops, and the roof was available for observations. Of his early attempts at the construction of telescopes he wrote to Lichtenstein: "When, in the

U

course of time, I took up astronomy, I determined to accept nothing on faith, but to see with my own eyes everything which others had seen before me. Having already some knowledge of the science of optics, I resolved to manufacture my own telescopes, and after many continuous, determined trials, I finally succeeded in completing a so-called Newtonian instrument, seven feet in length. From this I advanced to one of ten feet, and at last to one of twenty, for I had fully made up my mind to carry on the improvement of my telescopes as far as it could possibly be done." A very good twentyfeet reflector was finished in 1783, but the celebrated forty-feet instrument was not commenced until 1785. Herschel tells us in his description of the latter telescope that in all he made "not less than 200 7-feet, 150 10-feet, and about 80 20-feet mirrors, not to mention those of the Gregorian form, or of the construction of Dr. Smith's reflecting microscope," of which he also made a great number.

In or about 1779 Herschel removed to 19, New King Street, which was his last change of residence at Bath, and it was at this house that the planet Uranus was discovered. His first astronomical paper, on the variable star Mira Ceti, was written from thence, and appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1780: he had previously contributed a paper (his first publication) to the Ladies' Diary in 1779, in answer to a prize question proposed by Landen, viz. "the length, tension, and weight of a musical string being given, it is required to find how many vibrations it will make in a given time, when a small given weight is fastened to its middle, and vibrates with it." In the same volume of the Phil. Trans. he published observations relating to the mountains in the moon; at this time and subsequently he measured the heights of about 100, on three different methods. Most of these measures were never printed, and as Prof. Holden remarks at this date they would probably be of no material service to science.

His next paper presented to the Royal Society on January 11, 1781, is entitled "Astronomical Observations on the rotation of the Planets round their Axes, made with a view to determine whether the Earth's Diurnal Motion is perfectly equable," a paper which Prof. Holden views as affording the first obvious proof of the truth of the statement made by Herschel thirty years later, when he said, “A knowledge of the construction of the heavens has always been the ultimate object of my observations." It marks too an advance in practical astronomy: not only are the results given, but careful estimates of the errors to which they may be liable is made, with a discussion of the source of such errors.

On March 13 following Herschel made his great discovery of the planet Uranus, that Georgium-Sidus, as it was his wish it should be called, which made his name at once familiar throughout Europe. The discovery was announced in a paper communicated to the Royal Society on April 26 by Dr. Watson of Bath, an intimate friend of Herschel's, and strange as it may now appear to us, it is entitled "Account of a Comet." His own words referring to the circumstances of the discovery are as follows:-" On Tuesday, the 13th of March, between ten and eleven in the evening, while I was examining the small stars in the neighbourhood of H Geminorum, I perceived

one that appeared visibly larger than the rest: being struck with its uncommon magnitude, I compared it to H Geminorum and the small star in the quartile between Auriga and Gemini, and finding it so much larger than either of them, suspected it to be a comet. I was then engaged in a series of observations on the parallax of the fixed stars, . . . and those observations requiring very high powers, I had ready at hand several magnifiers of 227, 460, 932, 1536, 2010, &c., all of which I have successfully used upon that occasion. The power I had on when I first saw the comet was 227. From experience I knew that the diameters of the fixed stars are not proportionally magnified with higher powers as the planets are; therefore I now put on the powers of 460 and 932, and found the diameter of the comet increased in proportion to the power, as it ought to be, on a supposition of its not being a fixed star, while the diameters of the stars to which I compared it were not increased in the same ratio. Moreover, the comet being magnified much beyond what its light would admit of, appeared hazy and illdefined with these great powers, while the stars preserved that lustre and distinctness which from many thousand observations I knew they would retain." The observations given in this paper extend to April 19, and Herschel adds he was "happy to surrender it to the care of the Astronomer-Royal" (Dr. Maskelyne) and others as soon as he found they had begun their observations upon it: so little idea had he six weeks after he first glimpsed the object of the great discovery he had made.

It is certain that at the date of this discovery the name of Herschel was unknown to the principal astronomers on the Continent, and it is almost ludicrous to read of the various guesses that were made respecting it. Prof. Holden transcribes the amusing passage from Bode's account of the discovery of Uranus: "In the Gazette Littéraire of June, 1781, this worthy man is called MERSTHEL; in Julius' Journal Encyclopédique, HERTSCHEL; in a letter from Mr. Maskelyne to M. Messier, HERTHEL; in another letter of Maskelyne's to Herr Mayer at Manheim, HERRSCHELL [doubtless mis-readings]; M. Darquier calls him HERMSTEL. What may his name be? He must have been born a German." In the first notice of the discovery in the Connaissance des Temps he is called HOROCHELLE.

The telescope which Herschel was using on the evening of March 13, 1781, was that with which his second review of the heavens was made, a reflector1 of 85.2 inches focus, 62 inches aperture, and power, 227. This survey, he writes in 1783, "extended to all the stars of Harris's maps and the telescopic ones near them, as far as the eighth magnitude. The catalogue of double-stars and the discovery of the Georgium Sidus were the results of that review."

Arago says if Herschel had directed his telescope towards the constellation Gemini eleven days earlier (March 2 instead of March 13) the proper motion of the planet would have escaped him, for the planet was on the 2nd near one of its stationary points, and adds, “On voit par cette remarque à quoi peuvent tener les plus grandes découvertes astronomiques." This implies a total misconception of the case: as Prof. Holden remarks :—“The

When Sir John Herschel contemplated presenting one of his father's 7-feet telescopes to the Royal Astronomical Society, Caroline Herschel wrote: "Its only being painted deal was because it should look like the one with which the Georgium Sidus was discovered."

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As is well known, Herschel feeling deeply his indebted ness to the liberality of George the Third, desired to testify his gratitude by giving his planet a name which would mark the epoch of its discovery, and in his letter on the subject addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, then president of the Royal Society, writes, "I cannot but wish to take this opportunity of expressing my sense of gratitude by giving the name Georgium Sidus,

Georgium Sidus

-jam nunc assuesce vocari,

to a star, which (with respect to us) first began to shine under his auspicious reign."

Prof. Holden dwells upon the changes which may be considered to have been effected in the state of astronomy not only in England but in the whole world, simply by the discovery of Uranus. "Herschel's researches would have gone into the Philosophical Transactions as the work of an amateur astronomer, Mr. Herschel, of Bath. They would have been praised and they would have been doubted. It would have taken a whole generation to have appreciated them. They would have been severely tried, entirely on their merits, and finally they would have stood where they stand to-day-unrivalled. But, through what increased labours these successes would have been gained! . . . Certainly, if Herschel's mind had been other than it was, the discovery of Uranus, which brought him honours from every scientific society in the world, and which gave him authority, might have had a hurtful effect. But as he was, there was nothing which could have aided his career more than this startling discovery. It was needed for him. It completed the solar system far more by affording a free play to a profoundly philosophical mind, than by occupying the vacant spaces beyond Saturn. His opportunities would have been profoundly modified, though his personal worth would have been the same." We think there are few astronomers who will not be able to follow Prof. Holden in the views he has thus forcibly expressed.

At the hands of Sir Joseph Banks, Herschel received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1781, for his "discovery of a new and singular star," and was formally admitted a Fellow of the Society on May 30, 1782. It was during this visit to London that Herschel was received by the king, and as he wrote to his sister the same day, met with a very gracious reception. Prof. Holden reproduces from the Memoirs of Caroline Herschel his letter of July 3, in which he describes his visit to the Court with a 7-feet reflector, and the evening having been very fine, how the instrument had given

Here, at the end of his second chapter, we close our present notice of Prof. Holden's welcome volume, reserving for another week his third chapter on "Life at Datchet, Clay Hall, and Slough," and the concluding one on the general scientific labours of Herschel. It should be stated that while taking Prof. Holden's work as our text, particulars have been included in this notice which are not specially referred to in it, in view of the interest attaching to them at the present time, when, as stated above, a hundred years have elapsed since Herschel's discovery of Uranus doubled the known extent of the planetary system. J. R. HIND

EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS British Animals Extinct within Historic Times; with some Account of British Wild White Cattle. By J. E. Harting, F.L.S. (London: Trübner, 1880.)

THE

HE wild animals formerly inhabiting Britain, which disappeared before the advance of the hunter and farmer in historic times, have hitherto only been treated in a disconnected fashion, in essays scattered through various periodicals, or in portions of books relating to other subjects. Mr. Harting has collected together in the present volume his own essays in the Field and in the Popular Science Review, and has brought to bear upon his subject a knowledge of records, and an acquaintance with sport, which render his work extremely valuable. His references are accurate, and he has availed himself of nearly every source of information. Consequently we have before us a work dealing with the bear, wolf, beaver, reindeer, and "wild cattle," worthy to be classed between Bell's "British Quadrupeds" on the one hand, and White's "History of Selborne" on the other, relating not merely to the animals, but to the forests in which they lived and to the mode in which they were hunted.

The common brown bear made its appearance on the Continent in the Pleistocene age, and crossed over to Britain while the areas of the North Sea and of the English Channel were fertile valleys abounding in animal life. Its remains occur both in the river-deposits and in the caves, and have been met with in the turbaries and alluvia of England and of Scotland, which belong to the prehistoric period. It was hunted by the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain, and used for food by the inhabitants of Colchester and Richmond in Roman times. From the "Penitentiale" of Archbishop Egbert (A.D. 750), in which the flesh of any animal torn by dog, wolf, fox, or bear, or any other wild animal is forbidden to be used for human food, it is clear that it was alive in this country at that time. In the days of Edward the Confessor Norwich furnished annually one bear to the king and six dogs for the baiting of it. This however does not prove the existence of wild bears in Britain at that date, because bear-baiting was almost a national sport among the English until bears became too costly and the public taste too refined for such brutal exhibitions. Fitz-Stephen tells us, in the reign of Henry II., that the young Londoners amused themselves in the forenoon of every holiday in the winter

season with boar-fights, or bull- and bear-baiting. A grand exhibition of bear-baiting took place at Hatfield House when Queen Mary visited her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, during her confinement there, "with which their Highnesses were right well content.' Soon after the ascension of the latter to the throne she entertained the Spanish ambassadors with bulls and bears, and some years afterwards she received the Danish ambassador at Greenwich, and entertained him with bear-baiting, "tempered with other merry disports." On one occasion at Kenilworth no less than thirteen bears were baited before the queen with large ban-dogs. From these notices it is evident that Queen Elizabeth was very fond of this sport. Some of the great nobles and ecclesiastics also kept bears and bear-wards. Latterly there were travelling bear-wards dependent upon their patrons. The bear was probably extinct in Britain about the time of the Norman Conquest, and is not known to have existed in Ireland within the historic period.

The wolf abounded in Britain in the Pleistocene and prehistoric periods, and varied in numbers in the historic age in proportion to the waste lands. It was a subject of many legal enactments, and grants of land were held for its capture. To the numerous references which Mr. Harting gives we may add an extract from the Litany of Dunkeld current in Scotland in the eleventh or twelfth century: "A cateranis et latronibus, a lupis et omni mala bestia, Domine, libera nos."

The animal had a price set upon its head by statute in 1621; the price paid for one wolf in Sutherlandshire was six pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence. In Ireland, in 1683, "for every bitch wolfe the price was six pounds, for every dog wolfe five pounds, for every cubb which preyeth for himself forty shillings, and for every suckling cubb ten shillings." It is obvious from these large prices that the wolf was becoming rare in Scotland and Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. The last of the British wolves was killed in Scotland in 1743 by MacQueen, a man remarkable for his stature and courage, who died in the year 1797. The memory of the exploit is still preserved by tradition. In Ireland the animal lingered until 1770. Mr. Harting deserves great credit for having collected together the evidence by which these dates can be fixed. The wolf became extinct in England in the reign of Henry VII.

The wild boar still lingered in Lancashire in 1617, and the last notice of the animal in the south of England is of the hunting of the wild boar at Windsor by James I. and his court. Mr. Harting considers that an entry in an account book of the steward of the manor of Chartley "1683.-February. Pd. the cooper for a paile for ye wild swine, o . 2 . o.," proves that it was not extinct in England at that date. It seems however to us very unlikely that

wild boars would have such attention paid to their wants, and more probable that they were domestic swine turned out into the woodlands to get the greater part of their own living.

The reindeer, so abundant in the late Pleistocene age, and so generally found along with Palæolithic implements, and so strangely associated with the remains of hippopotamus in the hyæna-dens of this country (a fact which proves the two animals to have been contemporaneous), was rare in the prehistoric period, and disappeared alto

gether from its last foothold in Caithness about the latter half of the thirteenth century. We may remark that the recent attempts to introduce the animal into Switzerland have failed, apparently from the great heat of summer.

The beaver was living in the River Teivi, according to Girald du Barry, in 1159; and, according to Boethius, was taken in Lochness for the sake of its fur towards the end of the fifteenth century. We would call the attention of our readers to the remarkably interesting account of its reintroduction by the Marquis into the Island of Bute, where they are now increasing rapidly and building their dams. There is evidently no difficulty in naturalising them in this country.

We close this review regretting that it is impossible to do justice to the careful account of the different breeds of the "wild white cattle," which we believe to be the descendants of the domestic cattle introduced by the English, and which have always lived in uninclosed lands. W. BOYD DAWKINS

OUR BOOK SHELF Notes of Observations of Injurious Insects. Report, 1880. By Eleanor A. Ormerod. 8vo. pp. 1-48. (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein and Allen. Edinburgh J. Menzies, 1881.)

MISS ORMEROD and her assistants are to be congratulated on this very excellent Report, which is far more bulky than its predecessors, and correspondingly useful and interesting, and well illustrated. At the outset a very significant fact is mentioned. The season of 1880 was remarkably suitable for vegetation, and the tion of vitality enabled the plants to more successfully attacks of insects consequently less severe; a high condicope with their insect enemies. The most injurious species for the year was the well-known larva of Tipula (daddy-long-legs), which not only attacked its more usual food, the roots of grasses, but proved itself extremely injurious to peas, so that in one field of twenty acres the prospective value in March was reduced to a realised value of only about one half in June; other crops were also attacked. Stimulating remedies, such as guano, salt, ammoniacal liquor, &c., had a good effect, but the grubs appeared to be remarkably indifferent to ordinary poisonous solutions. An experiment at the Kew Observatory as to the amount of cold they can endure showed that some survived 42° of frost. Another very injurious species was Tephritis onopordinis (the celery-fly); a dressing of gas-lime, unslaked lime, and soot had a good effect. The singularly misnamed Psila rosa (the carrot fly) was also obnoxious; sowing the seeds in a mixture of leaf-mould, ashes, &c., proved of excellent service in this case.

Sitones lineatus was very injurious to peas. We think Miss Ormerod acts injudiciously in calling this insect the "pea-weevil." Its larva is certainly very much given to attacking peas and many other plants, by eating the young shoots, but the true pea-weevil is Bruchus pisi, which destroys the peas themselves by feeding inside them. digging out the earth round the bushes when the larva For the gooseberry saw-fly nothing proved so effectual as and pupa are underground, the removed portion being taken away and burnt; a suggestion that if pieces of woollen cloth be placed on the bushes the parent fly will deposit her eggs thereon seems far-fetched. Miss Ormerod has great faith in the efficacy of paraffine. In hitherto specially mentioned as desirable for observation, future it is proposed to extend the Report to insects not such as the larch-aphis and pine saw-fly. We are glad to note that the authoress has a Manual of Economic Entomology in the press.

Mémoires de la Société des Sciences Ihysiques et Naturelles de Bordeaux. 2e série, tome iv., Ime cahier. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1880.) THIS number contains Conférences de Géométrie supérieure by M. Saltel, in which is given an exposition of the method of analytical correspondence with two applications, the object of the one being to find the number of common solutions in equations between unknowns, and of the other to find the degree of a geometrical locus defined by certain algebraic conditions. The methods employed are based on that of M. Chasles's "Principe de Correspondance." The next paper, by M. Imchenetsky, “Détermination en fonction des coordonnées de la force qui fait mouvoir un point matériel sur une section conique," is an interesting one, and is founded upon a remark of M. Bertrand's ("Sur la possibilité de déduire d'une seule des lois de Kepler, le principe de l'attraction, Comptes rendus, April 2, 1877), "il serait intéressant de résoudre la question suivante. En sachant que les planètes décrivent des sections coniques, et sans rien supposer de plus, trouver l'expression des composantes de la force qui les sollicite en fonction des coordonnées de son point d'application.” The author arrives at his result by taking his equation in the form

px2 + qy2+2rxy = (ax+by+c)2.

Prof. Teixeira of Coimbra has a short note "Sur les principes du calcul infinitésimal," which calls for no special comment. Dr. G. Sous follows with what appears to us a good article entitled "Phakomètre et Optomètre." For the uninitiated "Les phakomètres sont des instruments destinés à mésurer la distance focale d'une lentelle quelconque." The principle of construction of Silbermann's and of Snellen's is, when an object is placed at twice the focal distance from a converging lens, the real image of the same size as the object is situated also at double the focal distance from the lens. The objection to Silbermann's appears to be its length, which renders it awkward to carry, and to Snellen's that it is not applicable to diverging lenses.

Dr. Sous gives a form which is not liable to either of these defects, and the construction of which is based upon a physical theory, not hitherto, he states, applied to these instruments; but we must refer those interested in optics to the paper itself (fourteen pages in length). The rest of the book is devoted to "Morphologie de la membrane de Schrapnell," Dr. Coyne; "Études d'Optique Physiologique; Influence du Diamètre de la Pupille et des Cercles de Diffusion sur l'acuité visuelle," Dr. Badal; "Les Températures de la Mer dans l'estuaire Girondin et à Arcachon en décembre, 1879, et janvier, 1880," M. Hautreux; "Des Os et de leur Emploi dans la Fabrication du noir Animal, du Suif, du Sulfate d'ammonique, des Boutons," &c., M. Huyard.

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. No notice is taken of anonymous communications. The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great that it is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even of com munications containing interesting and novel facts.]

Aberration of Instinct

CASES of individual variations of instinct are of importance in relation to Mr. Darwin's theory of the development of instincts by natural selection. Under the belief that aberration of instinct may be regarded as a case, more or less extreme, of variation, I think that the following instance is worth publishing in NATURE. It has been communicated to me by a correspondent on whose trustworthiness I have reason to rely :

"A white fantail pigeon lived with his family in a pigeonhouse in our stable yard. He and his wife had been brought

originally from Sussex, and had lived, respected and admirel, to see their children of the third generation, when he suddenly became the victim of the infatuation I am about to describe.. "No eccentricity whatever was remarked in his conduct until one day I chanced to pick up somewhere in the garden a ingerbeer bottle of the ordinary brown stone description. I feng it into the yard, where it fell immediately below the pigeon house. That instant down flew paterfamilias, and to my no aall astonishment commenced a series of genuflexions, evidently doing homage to the bottle. He strutted round and round it, bewing and scraping and cooing and performing the most ludicrous antics I ever beheld on the part of an enamoured pigeon. . . . Nor did he cease these performances until we removed the bottle; hat proved that this singular aberration of instinct had become a ixed the yard-no matter whether it lay horizontally or was placed updelusion was this, whenever the bottle was thrown or placed in right-the same ridiculous scene was enacted; at that moment the pigeon came flying down with quite as great alacrity as when his peas were thrown out for his dinner, to continue his antics as long as the bottle remained there. Sometimes this would go on for hours, the other members of his family treating his movements with the most contemptuous indifference, and taking no notice whatever of the bottle. At last it became the regular amusement with which we entertained our visitors, to see this erratic pigeon making love to the interesting object of his affections, and it was an entertainment which never failed, throughout that summer at least. Before next summer came round he was no more.' GEORGE J. ROMANES

Prehistoric Europe

A FEW last words with Prof. Dawkins, and I have done :-1. Having discovered that a certain absurd opinion which he attributed to me is nowhere to be met with in the volume he was supposed to be criticising, Mr. Dawkins now imagines that he has found grounds for his assertion in my "Great Ice Age," written and published some years ago. Here again he is quite mistaken. The passage cited by him, even if it be considered apart from its context, will not bear the interpretation he puts attention he would have seen that I was referring to the wellupon it. Had he read the page he quotes from with intelligent known fact that the ossiferous and Paleolithic gravels of East Anglia are represented in the North by the equivalent ossiferous Cyrena-beds near Hull, which dovetail with and are overlapped by glacial deposits. In other words, they rest upon a lower, and are covered by an upper boulder-clay. But I have nowhere said, nor would any candid reader infer from what I have written, that this upper boulder-clay (that of Hessle) ever extended south so as to cover the Paleolithic gravels throughout East Anglia. I am surprised that a professor of geology does not apparently understand the meaning of the term "overlap." Were I to state that in certain districts in Scotland the Carboniferous strata are overlapped by a conformable series of Red Sandstones, should I be understood to imply that these Red Sandstones formerly covered the entire area now occupied by the Carboniferous rocks of Great Britain?

2. Mr. Dawkins has accused me of having suppressed evidence which told against my views, and he now repeats this offensive accusation, citing in justification my description of the Victoria Cave, from which, he says, I have omitted all reference to the discovery of reindeer in the lower cave-earth. Now it is not true that I have ignored this alleged discovery, for I remark that "it seems doubtful whether the remains of that animal, said to have been obtained from the lower earth, really belonged to that deposit." My reasons for this doubt (which I share with other geologists) I did not consider it necessary to give, but they are simply these:

(1) The explorations in the cave were carried on at first, under Mr. Dawkins's superintendence, by means of shaft-digging, a very unsatisfactory system of "cave-hunting," and one which, even with the most conscientious care, is liable to give false results.

(2) During the subsequent prolonged and scientifically-conducted explorations no recognisable reindeer remains were ever obtained in the lower stratum. These facts alone are sufficient to justify my scepticism. I quite agree with Mr. Dawkins, however, that the mere cccurrence or non-occurrence in this particular cave of reindeer associated with hippopotamus is not of paramount importance. Even the most inattentive reader of "Prehistoric Europe " can hardly miss the statement, again and again repeated, that the southern and northern forms are often