clearly how vain have been the prejudices, and how baseless the predictions, which condemned ships of this type as incompatible with even moderately good speeds, and as ridiculous when the attainment of high speed was contemplated. It is with no small feelings of vanity, but with a genuine pride in a great scientific triumph which we ventured to predict beforehand, that we have witnessed the Livadia's success. It is a success which England may well envy, and of which the Russian Government may well be proud. Its bearing upon the future of steam navigation cannot fail to be considerable even in the mercantile marine, while it is quite impossible for the war navies of the world to escape its influence. Our longstanding objections to the Inflexible and Italia types of ship are well known to our readers, the construction of such ships under the name of first-class ironclads being most trying even to the common sense, and much more to the scientific sense, of the country. With the Livadia in existence, and with the facilities which such great breadth as hers offers to the production of armoured ships worthy of the name, the exposure of our first-class ships to the destructive effects both of shells and of torpedoes, will not be endured. We congratulate Admiral Popoff upon the established success of the great idea which he was the first to propound, and as the idea would still have remained a mere idea but for the powerful patronage of the Grand Duke Constantine, we gladly recognise again the scientific acumen and that "courage of his opinions" which distinguish His Imperial Highness. By consenting to the trial of so great a naval experiment in a yacht of his own, the Emperor of Russia has secured a sea-palace of great speed, of unexampled accommodation, and of a freedom from rolling and pitching such as no other ship in the world enjoys.

On the last-named points-those of pitching and rolling -we have to record very remarkable results. We are informed on the best authority that in the gale in the Bay of Biscay, with waves running over twenty feet high, when ordinary vessels were seen rolling and pitching heavily, and even when the gale and the sea were at their highest, the greatest roll to leeward was 5 degrees, and that to windward 4 degrees, while the greatest pitch was 4 degrees and the greatest "scend" 3 degrees. This extreme limitation of motion was most extraordinary, excluding almost all the usual incidents of sea-life. Nothing was secured on board, and nothing fell throughout the storm. There were occasionally heavy blows of the sea under the flat shallow bow, and these caused much vibration at times; but nothing was disturbed, and even the paint is nowhere cracked throughout the wood-built cabins and palaces of the ship.

In the accident which the Livadia met with on her voyage from Brest to Ferrol, by striking heavily downwards upon some floating object or objects during a heavy gale in the Bay of Biscay, with a high and confused sea running, the value of water-tight subdivision has been strikingly demonstrated. The injuries done by the blows were extended by the heavy strokes of the sea under the bluff bow, and several of the forward compartments were filled. A scientific friend who inspected the bow after the compartments were pumped out in the harbour of Ferrol, informs us that in two or three places the bulkhead divisions had evidently been badly struck and made

leaky at the bottom, and in one compartment the sea was plainly visible through the broken plating. And yet nothing was known on board of these injuries when at sea beyond the fact (ascertained by "sounding") that a forward compartment of the double bottom had been somehow filled, so effectually was the ship proper preserved from all injury within the double bottom, and so little effect had the filling of the forward spaces upon the trim and behaviour of the ship! The Livadia is constructed of steel, and is as lightly built as our own fast steel ships of the latest date; and as a similar accident to the recent one might occur again, as it may to any ship of light draught and great buoyancy, it would no doubt be prudent to add something to the strength of the outer bottom where most exposed to strains and blows; but this is a matter of detail which we leave the naval architect to discuss. The great lesson to be derived from the incident is the immeasurable value of double bottoms and of great compartmental subdivision in sea-going structures. An ordinary large steam yacht not so subdivided might have been lost under like circumstances, and certainly would have been more or less jeopordised and more or less injured internally; in the present case not a particle of injury to the interior of the ship or to her costly fittings was sustained, and hours after the accident, with a very high and confused sea still running, the Lord High Admiral of Russia and his guests dined as safely, as easily, and almost as quietly as if he had been ashore in his summer palace of Orianda.

A MEDICAL CATALOGUE

Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, U.S. Army. Vol. i., A—Berliúski. 4to, pp. 888. (Washington: Government Printing Office.)

THE

HE saying of Hippocrates, that art is long and time is short, is so true, not merely of medical art, but of work in general, that most working men find their lives gliding so quickly away that they do not attempt great works, and very probably would not succeed if they did so. But every now and then we come across men whose energy is so marvellous, and whose power of getting through work is so enormous, that we are struck with amazement at it. Such a man is Dr. Billings, to whose extraordinary energy and perseverance we owe the present work. This purports to be only a catalogue of the Library of the Office of the Surgeon-General of the United States Army, and Dr. Billings takes care to call attention to the fact that it is not a complete medical bibliography, and that any one who relies upon it as such will commit a serious error. "It is," he says, "a catalogue of what is to be found in a single collection; a collection so large, and of such a character, that there are few subjects in medicine with regard to which something may not be found in it, but which is by no means complete." It is not, however, a mere catalogue in the ordinary sense of the word, inasmuch as its contents are not confined to the names and titles of books and their authors. It is also a catalogue of subjects, so that any one wishing to read up a particular subject will find under the appropriate heading a list of the chief works bearing upon it. Nor is this all. There are other catalogues in which a similar arrangement has not only been

"The List of Abbreviations of Titles of Periodicals prefixed to this volume shows the journals and transactions which have been indexed to the present time. The right-hand column exhibits the volumes or numbers possessed by the Library, and, negatively, the deficiencies, which it is my earnest desire to fill. The List of Abbreviations is separately paged in order that it may be bound by itself, if desired, for use with succeeding volumes. "Some of the abbreviations of names of places, especially in the United States, might have been still further shortened if the Catalogue had been intended for use only in this country. But an analysis, by subjects, of so large a collection of medical periodicals is, necessarily, useful in St. Petersburg, for example, as well as in Washington, its measure of utility in any locality being the extent of the collection of medical periodical literature therein. Intelligibility to foreigners, therefore, has been regarded as a quality essential to the abbreviations in question.

"In indicating pagination, the rule is that where the article does not exceed two pages in extent the first page only is given. If it exceed two pages, both the first and last pages are noted.

"The work of preparing this Catalogue began in 1873, and has been carried on persistently, and as rapidly as the amount of clerical aid available and the nature of the work would permit.

"The present volume includes 9c90 author-titles, representing 8031 volumes and 6398 pamphlets. It also includes 9000 subject-titles of separate books and pamphlets, and 34,604 titles of articles in periodicals."

The rapid progress of every branch of science, medical and otherwise, and the proportionate, or perhaps we ought almost to say disproportionate, increase of medical and scientific periodical literature, render it exceedingly difficult for the student to keep himself au courant with the newest discoveries. The Royal Society's Catalogue of scientific papers conferred an inestimable boon upon scientific men, but it left much to be desired, inasmuch as it gave only the names of authors, and contained no index of subjects. Sometimes, too, its strict confinement to periodical literature is felt as an imperfection, for in cases where discoveries have been published in the form of pamphlets of a few pages, one searches through the Catalogue in the vain expectation of finding them. However, we have hitherto had nothing at all resembling it in medical literature, but now we possess the first volume of a work which greatly excels it both in scope and size. Such defects as the volume possesses are due to the imperfections of the library of which it is a catalogue, and it is to be hoped that all those (and their name must be legion) who profit by the use of this remarkable production, will do their best to enable Dr. Billings to make good the deficiencies.

It is clear that, however complete any catalogue may be at the time of its publication, the constant appearance of new books and pamphlets day by day and month by month must render it more and more defective. In order to supplement this catalogue, and prevent this gradually increasing deficiency from being felt as an evil, Dr. Billings and Dr. Fletcher are now publishing the Index Medicus, a monthly classified record of the current medical literature of the world. This is published by F. Leypoldt in New York, and by Trübner and Co. in London. The great labour and expense involved in getting out this monthly index require for it a large circulation. At present, we believe, it is published at a

loss, and an increased number of subscribers is urgently requested in order to permit its continuance. We therefore trust that every one who finds his time and labour saved by this Index-Catalogue will show his gratitude to Dr. Billings and those who have assisted him, not only by helping to supply the wants of the library at Washington, but by subscribing regularly to the Index Medicus.

We cannot conclude this brief notice without congratulating the United States Government on having in its service such men as Dr. Billings and his able assistants, Doctors Fletcher, Yarrow, and Chadwick, nor without expressing the thankfulness which every medical man owes to them for the great boon they have conferred on medicine in printing and issuing the present IndexCatalogue.

THE

'HE substance of this work has already appeared in the German periodical Nord und Süd, and the author here tells us that he has reproduced it in an enlarged form and in an English dress in order to do full justice to Max Müller's great merits in clearing the way "for future investigators." He considers that eminent services have been rendered to the cause of linguistic studies by the writings of the illustrious Oxford professor, and four out of the five chapters comprising this treatise are mainly occupied in putting this somewhat obvious fact in the clearest light. But he holds, in common probably with Max Müller himself, that the problem of the ultimate origin of articulate speech has not been solved in the brilliant and deservedly popular "Lectures on the Science of Language." Many difficulties are there removed, much light is thrown upon a great number of obscure points, several abstruse questions are treated with an amazing wealth of illustration, bringing them home to the meanest capacity, and sundry popular views, notably those stigmatised as the "Pooh-pooh" and "Bow-wow" theories, are either exploded, or reduced to their proper value. But the mystery of origin, the inexplicable ultimate residuum of roots, forming the constituent elements of all speech, remains almost unassailed, though distinct service has undoubtedly been done by narrowing down the question to this one issue. A still greater service is done when the gifted writer emphatically declares that these roots "are not, as is commonly maintained, merely scientific abstractions, but they were used originally as real words." This gave the death-blow to the Platonic "types," ideas, metaphysical entities and concepts which had still continued to obscure the subject, and block the way like so much mediæval rubbish. Herr Noiré aptly compares them to the ova, whence all animal and vegetable life. "By their development and uninterrupted growth all the known languages of the world have reached their marvellous structure, and become the body of reason and the instrument of mind" (p. 55).

In the last chapter, which will doubtless be read with the greatest curiosity, the author takes up the subject where Max Müller had left it, and develops the theory on

the origin of language, which he had already broached in his "Ursprung der Sprache," specially devoted to that question. The essential peculiarity of the view here advocated is contained in the following passage :-"Language is the CHILD OF WILL, of an active, not of a passive state; the roots of words contain the proper activity of men, and receive their significance from the effects of this activity in so far as it is phenomenal, i.e. visible. Human thought arises from a double root, the subjective activity, or the will, and the objective phenomenon which is accessible to the senses."

Language is further represented as "a product of association and of the community of feeling which is developed, intensified, and finally carried to perfection by community of life" (p. 81). Great stress is laid on the fact that human thought has a double root, the subject or individual activity, and its effect in the action, whence it follows that "the life of language stands in an indissoluble relation to the development of human action" (p. 83). The earliest meanings of verbal roots are all said to be "referred to human action," such notions as to dig, strike, scrape, scratch, tear, lying at the root of endless derived and secondary concepts.

Human thought is conceived as "an active process, a self-conscious, self-confident activity, not as a crude materialism imagines, the accidental play of unconscious atoms" (p. 88). This active process is traced to common action, and language itself becomes "the voice of the community" (p. 88). The essence of language consists in the naming of things, while the power of forming a notion of a thing, that is, of a group of phenomena grasped and conceived as one, constitutes the essential difference between man and the brute creation. At the same time man can conceive of things only "because he has the gift of speech, because he can give them a name " (p. 90). The power of giving names flowed from the power of using signs. "He used signs and thereby attained to the power of using names also; or, in other words, of betokening again by a sound what he had noted before." The transition from one process to the other, attributed to the active will, is stated to be "the most important part of the theory" (p. 92).

Then the power of giving signs to things grows out of the habit of modifying them for his own use. "Men dug caves, plaited twigs, stripped the beasts of their skin, the trees of their bark.. Hence was developed the marvellous hitherto unexplained gift of abstraction, and this in the most natural way. Man learnt to conceive a thing as he learnt to create things. His own creations were the first things for him" (p. 92). So that language conceives objects only "in so far as human action has touched, modified, reconstructed them; in a word, in so far as they have received form." Even such things as exist independently of the human will, or lie beyond the sphere of human action, are nevertheless brought within the sphere of human speech. "They become objects of human thought in the same way as the rest, that is to say, they are named as they would be, if the human hand had formed them" (p. 98).

Such is the line of argument pursued in the attempt to build up a new theory of articulate speech, which is here conceived by an evident disciple of Schopenhauer and the Monistic school, as an emanation of the self-conscious

human will, flowing from the power of forming abstract ideas, and dealing primarily and exclusively with such things only as are either the direct creation, or brought under the direct control and modifying influence of man. But this seems to be a complete perversion of the natural sequence of events in the evolution of man and all his faculties. Of these the very highest, next at all events to the moral sense, consequently the latest to be developed, was the conscious will. In the lowest savage tribes it is still often so feeble as scarcely to be distinguished from mere sensation and animal impulse. Yet the speech even of the rudest tribes is almost invariably found to be of a very intricate mechanism, subject to definite laws of structure and harmony, possessed at times of a copious vocabulary, embracing a variety of objects entirely beyond the influence or control of man himself, objects whose names cannot by the most violent straining be traced to those of things created or modified by human action. It is very easy to quote a few instances in support of such a theory as this, especially from such highly imaginative languages as those of the Aryan family, in which analogy and metaphor have had such free play during a long period of comparative culture. But hundreds of such examples would bring us no nearer than we were before to the starting point, to the faculty of naming things and actions, to the reason of certain sounds being selected in preference to others wherewith to name them.

The question still remains unanswered, whence came the "limited store of sounds with which man accompanied his action," and which are said to have in some mysterious way "associated themselves with the objects produced or modified by the action." The difficulty does not lie in the derivation of cælum or hole from a primitive root sku or ku, but in tracing the origin of this root itself, and, in general, of all roots, whether they have to do with human action or not. For it is not for a moment to be supposed that all the roots even of the Aryan family can be identified with the names of things subject to human influence. Such are, for instance, as expressive of mere existence, hence passive rather than active, idh, indh, to burn, whence aïow, aieńp, astus, heat, &c., words all applicable primarily rather to the powers of nature than of man; ud, und, to flow, whence idos, udum, undo, Goth. wato, water, &c., a purely natural object named directly from a purely natural conception; svan, to resound, whence sonus, sound; svanitam, sonitus, all words expressive of natural noise, and if Eichhoff is right in connecting the Gothic sangws and English song with this root, then these human actions can be conceived only as secondary derivatives from the primary idea of natural sound. This is the logical order of sequence, but it is as subversive of the author's theory as are many other Aryan roots which need not here be quoted. Enough has been said to show that this theory, while leaving the real question of origin untouched, will apply in any case to a part only of the original stock of roots in the Aryan family. Nor, as stated, will it help us in the least towards an explanation even of these.

On the whole it is to be feared that our author leaves the matter much where Max Müller left it at the end of his "Science of Language”; for the theory here advocated assuredly does not answer the questions: How do mere cries become phonetic types? How can sensations be changed into concepts? These questions can be answered

only by divesting the mind of all metaphysical vagaries, and approaching the discussion in a spirit of strict loyalty to the established principles of evolution. The universe is not "a mental phenomenon," as Schopenhauer would call it, nor is speech the deliberate product of conscious will. It is an organism which, like all other organisms, had its origin in a germ, and its slow growth and silent development in suitable surroundings, independently of all conscious action. Yet in dealing with a subject of this sort one still feels how much easier it is to refute error

than to establish truth. "Utinam tam facile vera invenire possim quam falsa convincere."

OUR BOOK SHELF

A. H. KEANE

Easy Lessons in Science. Edited by Prof. F. W. Barrett. 1. Easy Lessons in Heat. By C. A. Martineau. II. Easy Lessons in Light. By Mrs. W. Awdry. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880.)

THESE excellent little lesson books deserve a wide circulation. Well and clearly written, they are at the same time strictly of the "scientific" rather than of the socalled "popular" style of exposition; there being none of the objectionable sensational element with which certain French works in light science have too greatly familiarised us. The cuts with which the volumes before us are illustrated are numerous, appropriate, and many of them original. In each case the reader is instructed in the simple apparatus needed to repeat the experiments described; so that a teacher who desires to give to young pupils a few elementary lessons in the sciences of heat and light will find here the very textbooks most suited to his requirements. Miss C. A. Martineau's "Lessons in Heat" follows the usual order of text-books in that science. The first lesson deals with expansions, the second with notions of temperature, the third tells "how heat spreads," and so forth, and in the concluding chapters some of the fundamental facts of the relation between heat and mechanical work are made known. One experiment which we do not remember meeting with before in the shape in which it is given deserves to be cited. It is a variation on Davy's old experiment with flame and gauze. Put a bit of camphor on the wire gauze, and hold a light under it. The vapour of the camphor passes freely through the gauze, catches fire, and burns with a blue flame till the whole of the camphor has been turned into vapour and burned. But the flame does not pass through the gauze to set fire to the solid camphor."

66

Mrs. Awdry's "Lessons on Light" are no less felicitous in their treatment of the subject. The usual popular textbook on Optics abounds in descriptions of different optical instruments, telescopes, microscopes, kaleidoscopes, and the like, without much trouble being expended upon first principles. But in these lessons first principles claim the prominent place: the first point explained is the law of inverse squares, and the second the geometrical laws of refraction and reflection-and the explanations are admirably yet quite simply done. A most interesting feature is that the latter half of these easy lessons is devoted to physical optics. One chapter on the wave-theory, and two entitled "Measurings" prepare the way for a capital lesson on Diffraction. A lesson on the Spectrum and one on the Rainbow close the series.

We do not say that there is no room for criticism in judging these little volumes. A professed teacher of Natural Philosophy might grumble at the omission of certain things that claim prominence in all the older textbooks and in many of the syllabuses of contemporary examinations. Yet we would challenge such critics to produce a more useful, or suggestive, or accurate set of

lessons, or one more entirely free from the two besetting faults of sensational popularisation and educational cram. It is to be hoped that Prof. Barrett will continue his labours in adding to the series he has so ably edited. Outline of a Course of Natural Philosophy, with Specimen Examination Papers. By Gerald Molloy, D.D. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1880.) THIS work of 114 pages contains a syllabus-outline of the course of lectures in Natural Philosophy by Dr. Molloy, at the Catholic University of Ireland, and is reprinted chiefly to meet the wants of teachers in intermediate schools. To the syllabus, which is remarkably full and complete, is appended an extensive series of examination papers on all branches of physics except light, electricity, and magnetism, which are promised to follow. These questions, though chiefly elementary, have been carefully prepared, and are a valuable part of the work. In an appendix Dr. Molloy reprints a paper giving an account of his particular form of bichromate battery, which appears to be peculiarly suited to the needs of schools and colleges, where a powerful battery of convenient form is required to be in readiness for occasional use.

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 communications containing interesting and novel facts.]

Sir Wyville Thomson and Natural Selection

I AM sorry to find that Sir Wyville Thomson does not understand the principle of natural selection, as explained by Mr. Wallace and myself. If he had done so, he could not have written the following sentence in the Introduction to the Voyage of the Challenger:-" The character of the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by natural selection." This is a standard of criticism not uncommonly reached by theologians and metaphysicians, when they write on scientific subjects, but is something new as coming from a naturalist. Prof. Huxley demurs to it in the last number of NATURE; but he does not touch on the expression of extreme variation, nor on that of evolution being guided only by natural selection. Can Sir Wyville Thomson name any one who has said that the evolution of species depends only on natural selection? As far as concerns myself, I believe that no one has brought forward so many observations on the effects of the use and disuse of parts, as I have done in my "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication"; and these observations were made for this special object. have likewise there adduced a considerable body of facts, showing the direct action of external conditions on organisms; though no doubt since my books were published much has been learnt on this head. If Sir Wyville Thomson were to visit the yard of a breeder, and saw all his cattle or sheep almost absolutely true, that is, closely similar, he would exclaim: "Sir, I see here no extreme variation; nor can I find any support to the belief that you have followed the principle of selection in the breeding of your animals." From what I formerly saw of breeders, I have no doubt that the man thus rebuked would have smiled and said not a word. If he had afterwards told the story to other

I

breeders, I greatly fear that they would have used emphatic but irreverent language about naturalists.

Down, Beckenham, Kent, November 5

CHARLES DARWIN