Jan. 2, 1879] 



NATURE 



19; 



year, for a few cycles of sun-spots, the mineral conditions would 

 be constantly varying ; so that any test by the balance to com- 

 pare the fruit of one year with that of another, would involve 

 too many unappraisable elements to have a real value. 



Prof, Jevons observes that his investigation is "embarrassed 

 by the fact that no inquirer has been able to discover a clear 

 periodic variation in the price of corn." But the quality of 

 com must be a more immediate effect of solar action than the 

 price. Now, although perhaps not much is to be arrived at from 

 the method suggestSi by Mr. Kemp, there is another direction 

 in which someSiing might be found, and in which the necessary 

 data already exist. I allude to the records of those Com 

 Exchanges which contain full details of the measure-weight 

 of every parcel of grain which has been sold in them for several 

 sun-spot periods. I reduced the sales in the Haddington Corn 

 Exchange for the year from July 3, 1868, to June 25, 1869, and 

 f omid the average bushel-weights as under : — 



Wheat ... 2 7, 764 quarters 63 " i S lbs. per busheL 



Barley ... 33,022 , 56-85 „ „ 



Oats 16,223 , 43-49 „ „ 



The sales in the Edinburgh Com Exchange from November 4, 

 1868, to October 27, 1869, gave the following weights : — 



WTieat ... 27,322 quarters 62*84 lbs. per busheL 



Barley ... 35,752 56-18 „ „ 



Oats 53.843 ,1 42*28 „ „ 



Reductions on this larger scale probably eliminate most of the 

 elements of imcertainty. The measure-weight of the cereal 

 grains depends on various factors, one of which is the com- 

 parative distension of the epicarp by the inclosed albumen. 

 It is this element which may vary with variations of solar 

 radiation. And if a cycle of measure-weight should be foimd 

 corresponding with the sun-spot period, a clue might be gained 

 to some unsuspected commercial relationship. 



North Kinmundy, Aberdeen A. Stephen Wilson 



Time and Longitude 



I HAVE been much amused at the questions on the above 

 <Nature, voL x\'iii. p. 40), by Mr. Latimer Clark, and the 

 answer (p. 66) by my old friend Capt. J. P. Maclear ; the 

 numbers of Nature for May having only just reached my 

 ■*'out-of-the-world" residence. I suspect Mr. L. C. has had in 

 his mind what I have often had, and with which I have fre- 

 quently puzzled some "unco guid" Sabbatarians! If it is 

 such a deadly sin to work on Sunday, one or the other of 

 A and B coming, one from the east, the other from the west, 

 of 180° meridian, must, if he continues his daily avocations, be 

 in a bad way ! Some of our people in Fiji are in this unen- 

 viable position, as the line of 180° passes through Loma-Loma ! 



I went from Fiji to Tonga in H.M.S. Nymph, and arrived at 

 our destination on Suttday, according to our reckoning from 

 Fiji, but Monday, according to the proper computation west 

 from Greenwich. We, however, found the natives all keeping 

 Sunday. On my asking the missionaries about it they told me 

 that the missions to that group and the " navigators," having 

 all come from the eastward, had determined to observe their 

 seventh day, as usual, so as not to subject the natives to any 

 futxu-e puzzle, and agreed to put the dividing line further off, 

 between them and Hawaii, somewhere in the broad ocean, 

 where there were no metaphysical natives or "intelligent 

 Zulus " to cross-question them ! E. L. Lay.\rd 



British Consulate, Noumea, New Caledonia , 



Hereditary Transmission ;- "^"^ 



I H-WE pemsed with interest Mr. Edmund Watt's account of 

 the six-fingered family in Dominica, as it recalls to my memory 

 a family showing precisely the same peculiarities in Ceylon, at 

 Point Pedro, the m^st northerly point of the island, where, 

 twenty-six years ago, I was magistrate. 



A family quarrel came before me, and I found, to my great 

 astonishment, that plaintiff and defendant, and all the witnesses, 

 had sL\ fingers oa each hand and six toes on each foot ! The 

 additional finger or toe was, in each instance, a " little finger " 

 (or toe) inserted in the side of the hand or foot, quite loosely, 

 adhering to the skin, and not part of the skeleton. It might 

 easily have been excised with a pair of ordinary scissors. The 

 parties were all closely related— brothers and sisters, uncles and 

 aunts, nephews, nieces, and cousins— they must have had a 

 common progenitor. It would be easy, and most interesting, 

 to ascertain if any of the fa nily now exist, anl, if so, if the 



supplementary finger has been transmitted ta the present gene- 

 ration. A note to the "Resident Magistrate," Point Pedro, 

 would, I hope, produce a reply. If any of the family of my 

 old clerk, Mr. Dehoedt, sm-vive, they would recollect the fact. 

 I think the party came from Panditerripu. E. L. Layard 

 British Consulate, Noumea 



« Survival of the Fittest " 



In Nature, vol. xix. p. 155, Mr. S. F. Clarke's observations 

 on the cannibal habits so rapidly developed by the larvae of the 

 New England salamanders are cited in illustration of the sur- 

 vival of the fittest. The fact that similar tendencies are invari- 

 ably betrayed very early in life by theyoung of the common Mexi- 

 can Axolotl {Siredon mexicanum), numbers of which are annually 

 hatched out in the Brighton Aquarium, may perhaps be of 

 interest. Many of the smaller and weaker ones are bodily de- 

 voxured by their stronger brethren of the same brood, an inclina- 

 tion which is so marked that systematic over-feeding is resorted 

 to in order to arrest the diminution in the number of specimens. 



Brighton, December 27, 1878 A. Crane 



Shakespeare's Colour-Names 

 In the very interesting articles and correspondence which you 

 have published on the subject of colour-blindness, it is rather 

 surprising that no one has referred to a passage which, if taken 

 alone, would appear to show that Shakespeare did not know the 

 difference between green and blue. In "Romeo and Juliet" 

 (Act iii.. Scene 5), the Nurse says to Juliet, speaking of Paris : — 

 " Oh, he's a lovely gentleman ; 

 Rcmeo's a dish-clout to him ; an eagle, madam. 

 Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye 

 As Paris hath." 



\\Tiat is here called a green eye is e\-idently what we call a 

 blue one. But lago (" Othello," Act iii., Scene 3) calls jealousy 

 a "green-eyed monster," using the expression "green-eyed" as 

 a modern might use it, and meaning something very unlike 

 " blue-eyed." These instances appear only to show that in the 

 language of Shakespeare's time the names of colours were 

 used somewhat vaguely. Joseph John Murphy 



Old Forge, Dunmurry, co. Antrim, December 23 



DISCUSSION OF THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS 



THAT THE SO-CALLED ELEMENTS ARE 



COMPOUND BODIES^ 

 I. 

 T T is known to many Fellows of the Society that I have 

 •■• for the last four years been engaged upon the prepara- 

 tion of a map of the solar spectrum on a large scale, the 

 work including a comparison of the Fraunhofer lines with 

 those visible in the spectrum of the vapour of each of the 

 metallic elements in the electric arc. 



To give an idea of the thoroughness of the work, at all 

 events in intention, I may state that the complete spectrum 

 of the sun, on the scale of the working map, will be half a 

 furlong long ; that to map the metallic lines and purify 

 the spectra in the manner which has already been de- 

 scribed to the Society, more than 100,000 observations 

 have been made and about two thousand photographs 

 takeru 



In some of these photographs we have vapours com- 

 pared with the sun ; in others vapours compared with 

 each other ; and others again have been taken to show 

 which lines are long and which are short in the spectra. 



I may state in way of reminder that the process of purifi- 

 cation consisted in this : When, for instance, an impurity of 

 manganese was searched for in iron, if the longest line of 

 Mn was absent, the short lines must also be absent on 

 the h>'pothesis that the elements are elementary ; if the 

 longest line were present, then the impurity was traced 

 down to the shortest line present. 



The Hypothesis that the Elements are Simple Bodies does 

 not include all the Phenomena 

 The final reduction of the photographs of all the 

 metallic elements in the region 39-40 — a reduction I 



' Paper read at the Royal Sicietj-, December 12, by J. Nonnan 

 Lockye', F.R.S. 



