i8o 



NATURE 



[October 6, 192 1 



north of Kashmir, where there are several high passes 

 between the ahitude of 18,000 and 19,000 ft. 

 Within my own personal knowledge, the highest 

 inhabited house (at least for a few weeks in the 

 summer of each year) is near the summit of the 

 Donkia Pass in the north of Sikkim, which is 

 claimed by the Tibetans to be in Tibet, the height 

 of the pass, according to the trigonometrical survey, 

 being 18,100, and f>er aneroid 18,400 ft., at which 

 height the amount of oxygen in the air is only about 

 half that at sea-level. This is a stone hovel, and 

 is occupied by a Tibetan guard or outpost of four 

 or five men. It would be an easy matter for the 

 inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau to become acclima- 

 tised to that altitude, living, as they do, at a height 

 of between 15,000 and 16,000 ft. I wonder, however, 

 whether the rarefication of the atmosphere adversely 

 affects their longevity, as is known to be the case 

 with the monks of St. Bernard in the Swiss Alps. 

 Plymouth. W. Harcourt-Bath. 



The remark found fault with by Mr. Harcourt-Bath 

 is not mine, but the author's (Prof. Bowman, p. 52 

 of his work on "The Andes of Southern Peru "). 



The surest way of breaking a supposed world record 

 is to publish it. 



No doubt Prof. Bowman was not aware of Mr. 

 Harcourt-Bath 's experience in Tibet, otherwise he 

 would not have stated that " the loftiest habitation in 

 the world is in Peru." Both may be stone hovels, 

 oblong and grass-thatched (there is a good photograph 

 on p. 48), and both houses happened to hold five people. 

 But whilst the Tibetan custom-house officers seem to 

 be on duty for only a few weeks in the height of the 

 season, the Peruvian shepherd familv appear to use 

 their place as a permanent residence. "At frequent 

 intervals during the three months of winter snow falls 

 during the night and terrific hailstorms in the late 

 afternoon drive both shepherds and flocks to the 

 shelter of leeward slopes or steep canyon walls." 



The altitude of the Great St. Bernard Hospice is 

 only 8,100 feet, about the same, or even less, than that 

 of several large towns in Mexico where longevity is 

 common. The self-sacrificing Augustine monks, resi- 

 dent for a limited number of years, do suffer, not from 

 the rarefied air, but from the severe and vile climate 

 and unheated rooms. The Reviewer. 



The Use of the Classics. 



In discussing "Classical and Modern Education " 

 (Nature, September 8, p. 64) is there not some clear 

 separation needed between two very different purposes 

 of training in the classics? For knowledge of human 

 nature, for political sense, for the feeling of the life of 

 past times and its views, translations are practicallv 

 as effective as original texts. The gain from using the 

 original language is that of the aesthetic values and 

 training. To revile "the inadequacy of translations " 

 solelv refers to the aesthetic values, and not to the 

 practical values for life. What has been the effect 

 on Europe of translations from Hebrew and Greek in 

 the Bible? Do we talk of exposing their inadequacv 

 as a reason for ignoring them ? Why have manv 

 great scholars worked for years at translations if thev 

 thought them useless? 



The cant of the grammarian trying to sink the 

 classics under the weight of his own interests in lan- 

 guage must be ignored. Let us have every child in a 

 secondary school familiar with the great authors, from 

 Herodotus to .'\mmianus, and then let those who have 

 ability and time for language learn, as we learn 

 Hebrew, off a familiar translation. W. M. F. P. 



NO. 2710, VOL. 108] 



Indian Land Mollusca. 



In Lt.-Col. Godwin-Austin's instructive review of 

 the latest volume in the official " Fauna of India " 

 (Nature, September 22, p. lob) he rightly lays stress 

 on the importance of preliminary work in the pre- 

 paration of what are supposed to be authentic hand- 

 books. May I state that on hearing that Mr. Gude's 

 volume was in actual preparation I wrote offering the 

 loan of the material in the Indian .Museum, includ- 

 ing both the whole of Nevill's type-specimens and 

 the vast accumulation of unnamed material obtained 

 by the Zoological Survey of India in recent years. My 

 offer was ignored or refused, apparently because thu 

 volume had to be out by a given date. I make this 

 statement because I find that it is commonly believe(> 

 that the Zoological Survey of India, of which I have 

 the honour to be director, is in some way responsible 

 for the "Fauna of British India." This is not the 

 case. N. Annandalk 



Auroral Display of September 28-2G. 



During the whole night of September 28 I was 

 photographing the spectra of stars. In the early 

 morning, at 1.25 a.m. G.M.T., I was leaving the 

 dome to proceed to another dome, in which Mr. W. B» 

 Rimmer was working, when I observed a bright 

 aurora low down on the northern horizon. I called 

 Mr. Rimmer, and we observed it together. 



The streamers, of a whitish hue, were scintillating 

 and changing their intensities very rapidly.; some- 

 times one streamer became very brilliant and faded 

 awav, and sometimes another. The whole pheno- 

 menon from the time I first observed it lasted about 

 twenty-five minutes. Up to the time of writing 

 I have seen no published record of this aurora. 



William J. S. Lockver. 



Norman Lockyer Observatory, Salcombe Hill, 

 Sidmouth, South Devon, October 2. 



The Isotopy of the Radio-elements. 



The nucleus-model of the radio-elements proposed 

 by Lise Meitner {Die Natitrwissenschaften, vol. 9, 

 pp. 423-27, 192 1) permits of the division of the radio- 

 active isotopes into three, or even four, classes. 



(i) Isotopes of the first class are elements which 

 possess only the same nuclear charge and the same 

 arrangement of their outer electrons, e.g. Ra and 

 MsTh,. 



(2) Isotopes of the second class have, in addition, 

 the same nuclear mass (i.e. the same atomic weight) 

 and the same total number of nuclear "building 

 stones," e.g. lo and UY. 



(3) Isotopes of the third class still possess the same 

 number of each nuclear building stone, but they have 

 a different arrangement of these in the atomic 

 nucleus, and thus also different chances of dis- 

 integrating, e.g. RaD and .-\cB. 



(4) Isotopes of the fourth class would be elements 

 possessing the same arrangement of the nuclear 

 building stones in the atomic nucleus, and thus the 

 same probability of disintegration. Such elements 

 actually exist, but we have no available means of 

 distinguishing between them. Hence we cannot at 

 present designate them as isotopes (e.g. RaG and 

 .^cD). ^ 



The branching of the uranium family at Uu thus 

 ends with the end-product ot the radium- and 

 actinium-family. This common end-product of the 

 two radio-active families is lead with the atomic 

 weight 206. 



The more detailed discussion of this subject will 

 appear in the Zeitschrift fiir phvsikalische Chemie. 



M. L. Neuburger. 



Neubaugasse 79, Vienna, VII., September i(f. 



