144 



NATURE 



{Dec. 23, 1875 



It might be suggested as an improvement to future 

 travellers, that in the arrangement of the plates more 

 attention should be paid to varieties, and that the several 

 forms should be placed side by side according to their 

 affinities. There is no point of so great interest to the 

 scientific student of early culture as the allied varieties of 

 form. As a rule with exceptions, it may be said that arts 

 which are indigenous present greater varieties than those 

 which are exotic, and hence the importance of studying 

 minute differences, more especially in cases where, by 

 means of gradual variation, transitions to other types or 

 other uses may be traced. A few finished drawings are no 

 doubt valuable in order to give a correct idea of the leading 

 types ', but for the varieties, outline drawings on a smaller 

 scale in the style of the illustrations of " Demmin's History 

 of Arms," are all that is needed, and enable these trnnsi- 

 tions to be given at a trifling cost. With these additions, 

 and with due attention to such other matters relating to 

 savage art as are suggested in the " Anthropological 

 Notes and Queries," published by the British Asso- 



ciation, we would earnestly commend the example of Dr. 

 Schweinfurth to all travellers, for, as he truly says in his 

 preface, '" Hurry is needed : the destructive tendency of 

 our industrial productions obtruding themselves upon all 

 the nations of the earth menaces, sooner or later, to sweep 

 away, even in Africa, the last remnants of indigenous 

 arts." Of the utility of such a work as this no anthro- 

 pologist or antiquary can doubt. There is, however, one 

 remark of the author's to which we would draw special 

 attention, and which he in this work' reiterates with com- 

 mendable emphasis : — " A people, as long as they are on 

 the lowest step of their development, are far better 

 characterised by their industrial products than they are 

 either by their habits, which may be purely local, or by 

 their own representations, which, rendered in their rude 

 and unformed language, are often incorrectly interpreted 

 by ourselves. If we possessed more of these tokens we 

 should be in a position to comprehend better than we do 

 the primitive condition of many a nation that has now 

 reached a high degree of culture." 



RECENT FRENCH EXPERIMENTAL 

 PHYSIOLOGY 



Physiologie Experhnentale. Travaux du Laboratoire de 

 M. Marey. (Paris : G. Masson, 1876.) 



UNDER the auspices of the Minister of Public Instruc- 

 tion of France are published from time to time 

 volumes of the " Bibliotheque des Hautes Etudes." The 



work before us is'one of these, and its value will be fully 

 appreciated by any physiologist or physicist who has once 

 glanced at its well illustrated pages. It contains several 

 papers by M. Marey, mostly on points connected with the 

 employment of the "graphic" method of depicting the 

 magnitude and duration of dynamical phenomena both 

 physical and physiological, and two by Dr. Frangois- 



FlG. 



Franck on the anatomy and physiology of the vascular 

 nerves of the head. 



The most important of the memoirs by M. Marey is, in 

 our estimation, that on " the movements of liquid waves, 

 undertaken with a view of assisting in the theory of the 



pulse." Of this we will give a short account on the 

 present occasion. 



M. Marey's extraordinary^mechanical skill has enabled 

 him to devise and construct an apparatus by means of 

 which he has been enabled to represent synchronously, 



