126 



HARDWTCKE'S SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



original) are all good. It is needless for us to speak 

 <of the style of the authorship — Prof. Geikie is too 

 'well known as a writer of choice and attractive 

 English for any words of ours to add praise in this 

 respect. But we'can conscientiously affirm that the 

 author never wrote more attractively— not even in 

 'Iris delicious chapters of the Life of Prof. Edward 

 Forbes — than he has done in his memoir of Mur- 

 chison. Perhaps no other geologist was so well 

 capable of delineating the life and career of the great 

 English geologist as Geikie. For years he had been 

 intimately associated with him in field and library 

 work; and although the student widely differed from 

 the master on all the great principles of physical 

 ■geology and geography, this only prompted him to 

 estimate more highly Sir Roderick's consistent, if a 

 trifle too geologically conservative, notions. Not 

 even in the lon^ life of Lyell is there more of geo- 

 logical and scientific history bound up than in that 

 of Murchison, although Lyell proved himself the 

 more earnest student in his willingness to forego 

 long-held and long-published opinions, in his old 

 age, in favour of what he believed to be the truth. 

 Murchison's biography is incidentally the history 

 of Geology and modern Geography. The Geological 

 and Geographical Societies grew under him, with 

 him, and partly by him. The British Association 

 numbered him among its earliest founders and con- 

 tinuous supporters. These " giants of those days" 

 (had a battle to fight of which we moderns know 

 little. Theological and social animosity are no 

 longer the necessary "consequences of being a " geo^ 

 logist ; " indeed, a slight flavour of heterodoxy has 

 come to be regarded as " spicy," rather than other- 

 wise. Not a few, therefore, now affect heterodoxy 

 who cannot do anything else ! But these brave 

 pioneers of science had no time or patience for any 

 such puerile indulgences. They expressed what they 

 believed, because they had thought out the subjects, 

 and held them to be the truth. Every phase of Sir 

 Roderick's almost romantic life is well described 

 by the biographer, from the time when he carried 

 an ensign's flag to being baronetted for "scientific 

 services," and onwards to his firm and unswerving 

 attachment to the great African traveller Living- 

 stone. We are sorry, however, to see revived the 

 controversy between the earnest and, as we believe, 

 mutually mistaken friends and geologists, Murchi- 

 son and Sedgwick, although, strikingly enough, 

 modern geologists are now rapidly accepting Sedg- 

 wick's geological classification. Perhaps Professor 

 Geikie thought that the duty of a biographer was 

 also to be a partisan, for none can be better ac- 

 quainted with the controversy than himself. Apart 

 from this, we are thankful to have such an able 

 exposition of the life of so distinguished a geologist, 

 and we compliment author and publisher on the 

 manner [with which this work^is laid before the 

 public. 



THE USES OF TAILS IN ANIMALS. 



MIL LAWSON TAIT recently delivered a 

 -L'-L lecture on this important subject, before the 

 Birmingham Natural History Society. We give a 

 summary of the Lecturer's remarks : — It is not 

 difficult to imagine how the prehensile tails of mon- 

 keys, opossums, and other animals, or the fly- 

 switches of the horse or cow, have been useful in 

 the struggles of these animals to master their 

 surroundings ; but there are some forms of the 

 appendage which puzzle us to see how they can ever 

 have been availabe as assistants in survival, and still 

 more how they are still perpetuated in their ap- 

 parently purposeless forms. Amongst them the 

 bushy tail seen in the fox, dog, cat, &c, has long 

 attracted my attention, and no intelligible meaning 

 of it suggested itself to me till I came into posses- 

 sion of a cat which is perfectly deaf, and on whom I 

 can, therefore, perform many experiments which 

 would be impossible in an animal possessed of 

 hearing. Like all cats, he is very fond of a warm 

 place, and when he is asleep nothing but a touch or 

 a very strong vibration communicated through what 

 he is lying upon will wake him. If he goes to sleep 

 before a big fire, he sleeps lying on his side, at full 

 length, with head, tail, and limbs all stretched out. 

 But if I place screens between him and the heat, he 

 gradually coils himself up, apparently without 

 waking, covering his limbs with his tail and head, 

 so that as little surface is exposed as possible for 

 loss of heat. If, in addition to screening off the 

 heat, 1 direct a gentle current of cold air on him by 

 means of a bellows, he soon buries his nose in the 

 fur of his tail, or between his tail and thigh, so that 

 almost his whole face is protected. On re-admitting 

 the heat, the whole movements are reversed, and he 

 resumes his extended position. The use of the tail 

 is clearly, therefore, completely analogous to that 

 of the respirator worn by people with delicate 

 chests, the object being to abstract from the expired 

 air, by means of fur in the one case and wire-gauze 

 in the other, the heat which is being taken out with 

 it; so that the cold inspired air shall be raised in 

 temperature before it reaches the lungs, and thereby 

 conduce to a conservation of the bodily heat. Some 

 interesting considerations bear on this. Animals 

 provided with bushy tails seem to be so as a matter 

 of correlation of growth, their bodies being always 

 provided with thickly-set and more or less soft fur. 

 I cannot find an animal with a bushy tail which 

 canuot, and does not, lie curled up when asleep. I 

 went round the Zoological Gardens at Dublin on a 

 very cold morning in February, and found the civet 

 cat, and some other bushy-tailed animals, coiled up 

 with their noses buried in the fur of their tails. In 

 the squirrel this use of the tail is very marked 

 and in birds the same object is accomplished by 

 their burying their heads in the down, of the 



