Nov. 7, 1878] 



NATURE 



d by many of their fe]low colonists, who, having cursorily 

 v^^ii.ined them, fell to touching them with their antenna? on the 

 abdomen, reminding me much of a mesmerist making passes 

 over a \-ictim, ITie effect was almost electrical. I was sur- 

 prised to see the incapables at once begin to rally. After 

 stretching their legs and moving their antennce they moved 

 along slowly for one or two steps and then went along as if 

 nothing had happened. Others came and drank of the spirit 

 not quite evaporated, but did not seem to suffer any bad effects, 

 I buried a member of the community as it was in the act of 

 carrying off a larva. Although many came and looked on 

 none took compassion or attempted to relieve their friend. A 

 small heap of larsse, however, which I pressed down into the 

 soft earth with my pencil, thereby injuring some of them badly, 

 was disinterred, and every individual carried, into a place of 

 safety. 



A stranger placed in the nest was verj- soon set upon, and before 

 long its head was travelling on a direction opposite to that of 

 its abdomen. The headsman's reward was a long draught of 

 blood from the severed abdomen. 



On my turning over the stone at first, the larvos were exposed, 

 but were soon begun to be carried off. Some of the workers 

 were certainly busybodies, fussing about, pretending to do a 

 great deal, while in fact they were shirking their fair share of 

 the hoosehcld duties. They would rush at the larvae, seize one 

 and be off with it in a great hurry, but they had not gone far 

 (not even always in the direction of the entrance) before they 

 changed their minds, threw down their load to return for 

 another helpless infant, which was treated in the same way, 

 being carried generally in a direction contrary to the previous, 

 and dropped down anywhere, sometimes beyond the limits of the 

 nest altogether. 



My observations with regard to ants dropping intentionally or 

 jumping from small heights do not quite agree with Sir John 

 Lubbock's, but they are not yet full enough to give in detail, I 

 bope to have fuller opportunities for the investigation of the 

 habits of this most interesting class in the Malayan Archipelago, 

 whither I am now bound. 



Meantime I hope these few notes may have some interest for 

 the readers of Nature. Henry O. Forbes 



' S.S. Celebes, off Naples, October 18 



Colour-blindness 



Has it been suggested that the traditional blindness of 

 Homer may have been — in the absence among the ancients of a 

 specific name for coIoiu--blindness — merely the colour-blindness 

 for which Dr. Pole makes out so good a case ? To readers 

 ignorant of Daltonism, blindness must have appeared the only 

 explanation of a glaringly misapplied colour-epithet. It is at 

 least clear that the author of the Homeric poems was not always 

 blind in the modem sense of the word. 



Brighton, November i Clementina Black 



The conclusion of Dr. Pole's valuable paper will doubtless 

 stir up many to investigate the question whether or not dichro- 

 matism was the rule at an early stage of himian vision. 



Will you allow me to adduce, towards the solution of this 

 question, the evidence of a literature, which though not nearly 

 so ancient as the Greek, goes back further than that of many 

 European nations. I mean the Irish. I find in some of the 

 earliest works in that language an ambiguity in the application 

 of adjectives of colour very similar to that noticed in the 

 Homeric writings by Mr, Gladstone. Glas, for instance, is used, 

 indifferently, apparently, for green, grey, and blue, Uaithm is 

 used to indicate the colour of grass, and also that of the human 

 eye. Dearg is employed to denote the colour of wine, and also 

 that of clay. Ruadk (red) is similarly ambiguous. 



182, Adelaide Road, N.W. Edmund McClure 



Schleswig, by these means has led to its organisation" else- 

 where. This mode of communication is, however, not new, as 

 carrier-pigeons were employed early in this century as a means 

 of communication with the Bell Rock Lighthouse, as mentioned, 

 in my late fathers "Account" of that work. The pigeons 

 passed between the lighthouse and the shore — a distance of 

 eleven miles in eleven minutes. The employment of these birds, 

 however, was, I suppose, found to be more ctirious than con- 

 venient, for they have long since ceased to be employed. The 

 pigeons were presented to the establishment by the late Sir 

 Samuel Brown, R.N, Thomas Stevenson 



Edinburgh 



Globular Lightning 



As the curious phenomenon known by the above name seems 

 to be attracting some attention just now, I venttu-e to send you 

 the following details, which, though of rather ancient date, are 

 still, owing to their startling character, very fresh in my 

 memory. 



I think it was in the year 1866, in the b^inning of the 

 month of August, that I was walking in the garden when the 

 atmosphere became exceedingly oppressive (there had previously 

 been a very long drought), and thinking by the appearance 

 of the sky, whidi looked liuid and threatening, that a storm 

 was coming on, I made for the house. As I was going up 

 our front steps some rain-drops fell, which were the largest I 

 ever saw. I had just reached the dining-room and was stand- 

 ing near the mndow, which looks north, when I saw a large 

 ball of fire, which appeared to me, looking at it as I did 

 from a distance, to be the size of a globe such as is used in 

 schools, descend towards the earth. In descending it struck 

 the church, which is immediately opposite our house, and 

 brought with it a ntmiber of slates and part of a stone cross, 

 making a terrific noise. There was a flash of lightning soon 

 after, followed by a moderately loud clap of thtinder, but nothing 

 more. As there were not at that time any houses near to ours I 

 did not hear the occurrence mentioned by any one. The noise, 

 though extremely loud, was not at all like thtmder. The illu- 

 mination of the rooms by the ball of fire was seen by two other 

 persons in the house. Charlotte Hare 



St. John's Road, Putney, S.W. 



Speaking-Trumpets 



The antiquity of the speaking-trumpet may be proved open 

 far higher authority than that of the imaginative Athanasius 

 Kircher. It is literally as old as the Pyramids. While exi 

 mining Lepsius's great work upon ancient Egypt for my 

 " History of Music" I noted two examples among the plates 

 of the fourth dynasty of Egypt (see Lepsius's " Denkmaler," 

 Dyn. 4, Abt 2, Blatter 27 and 30). The Egyptian speaking- 

 trumpets seem to have been some five feet or more in length, 

 and too wide in diameter to have been blown by the mouth. 

 They are conical, and lack the contraction near the mouth-end 

 which is so observable in their war-trumpets. 



Wm. Chappell 



Carrier-Pigeons 



In Nature (vol. xviii. p. 682) it is stated that carrier 



jageons are being "turned to useful account " in a new direction in 



Germany, for Consul Ward writes to the Foreign Office "that the 



\ successful results attained by the establishment of communication 



between the two Eider lightships and the Port of Tonning, in 



Toughened Glass 



My own experience supports the necessity for caution in using 

 Bastie's toughened glass. Shortly after its introduction I had 

 some gradtiated measures, and although they were sufficiently 

 tough to bear the shock consequent on falling five or six feet 

 to the ground, yet after a time some short scratches appeared 

 on their surface, and these rapidly spreading till they nearly 

 covered the whole of the glass, when but a slight touch was 

 sufficient to make the measure fly into fragments. One placed 

 on a shelf subject to rather rapid change of temperature, without 

 any handling or apparent cause, broke up suddenly into tiny 

 pieces, beha\-ing, indeed, as if it wore a Rupert's bomb. 



Northampton, October 29 G. C. Druce 



POTTERY AT THE PARIS EXHIBITION 



THE extensive collections of pottery at the Paris 

 Exhibition brought together from so many countries, 

 is of high interest from a technical, as well as from an 



