Sept. i6, 1875] 



NATURE 



443 



and results of research in all departments, could be usefully 

 brought forward at these meetings and receive illumination from 

 discussion by those in authority. Are our anatomists and phy- 

 siologists less willing to make such efforts than other scientific 

 men, or have they a greater fondness for remaining in their own 

 special haunts without emerging on any common ground ? 



Department of Anthropology. 



Miss A. W. Buckland, of Bath, read a paper On Rhabdo- 

 mancy and Belomancy, in which she endeavoured to show that 

 rhabdomancy, or divination by means of a rod, still practised in 

 England in some localities, was a survival of a very ancient 

 superstition, originating in the use of rods as symbols of power. 



Mr. John Evans described fully the proposed code of symbols 

 for archaeological maps which has been drawn up by a committee 

 oi leading archjeologists on the continent of Europe, and will 

 probably be extensively used. Suggestive crude symbols are 

 adopted for the leading varieties of ancient remains, and a series 

 of modifications of each chief form is to be used, to denote as far 

 as possible the exact nature of the remains. 



Mr. Hyde Clarke furnished a notice of the prehistoric names 

 of weapons, in continuation of a note laid before the British 

 Association in 1873, which showed that there was a community 

 of aboriginal names of weapons in the prehistoric epoch. He 

 now added that further research had confirmed these views. 



Mr. Hyde Clarke also read a paper On Prehistoric Culture in 

 India and Africa. After referring to his investigations as to the 

 evidence of the successive migration and distribution of languages 

 in Asia, Africa, North, Central, and South America, and in 

 some cases in Australia, he proceeded to give the result of later 

 special investigations as to the community of culture in India 

 and Africa. The philology of the aboriginal languages of India 

 could only be effectually studied from those of Africa, and Mr. 

 Hyde Clarke suggested that it would be a great advantage if 

 some of the missionaries of the two regions could interchange 

 stations. — Prof. Rolleston remarked upon the desirableness of a 

 complete work being prepared on the present ethnology of India, 

 under the superintendence and at the cost of the Indian Govern- 

 ment. 



Dr. Phene, in his paper On the Works, Manners, and Customs 

 of the Prehistoric Inhabitants of the Mendip Hills, adopted the 

 theory of a similarity of race in the people who formerly occupied 

 the caves on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe and of Britain ; 

 and identified the inhabitants of the Mendips with them. 



Mr. D. Mackintosh read a paper On Anthropology, Sociology, 

 and Nationality, which referred especially to distinctions of race 

 in the British Isles, and defended his previously expressed views. 

 He believed that the various colonising tribes had either con- 

 tinued in certain localities with little interblending, or that the 

 process of amalgamation had not been sufficient to prevent the 

 persistence of the more hardened characteristics. He tried to 

 show that between the north-east and south-west the difference 

 in the character of the people, irrespectively of circumstances, is 

 so great as to give a semi-nationality to each division — restless 

 activity, ambition, and commercial speculation predominating in 

 the north-east, and contentment and leisurely reflection in the 

 south-west. 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE 

 ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.— DETROIT 

 MEETING. 



LAST week we gave a general account of the meeting of 

 the American Association, from an American correspon- 

 dent. The following are brief notices of some of the principal 

 papers read. 



We have already referred to the piresidential address of Prof. 

 Le Conte, and to the address of Prof. Dawson, both of which 

 were anti-evolutionary, the latter more distinctly so than the 

 former. Prof. Dawson's views are so well known that we need 

 not refer at length to his Association address. 



Prof. Augustus R. Grote, Director of the Museum of the 

 Buffalo Academy of Sciences, undertook the task of throwing 

 light upon past geological eras by showing the present distribu- 

 tion of certain North American insects. He described the 

 glacial epoch as occurring at the close of the Tertiary by a con- 

 tinuous loss of heat. The winters gradually lengthened, the 

 summers shortened. The tops of mountains that now bear 

 foliage were then covered with snow, which, in lime consolida- 



ting, formed glacial ice that flowed into the valleys. Gradually 

 an icy sea extending from the north spread southward, even over 

 the Southern States and dovni the Valley of the Mississippi. 

 Existing insects of the Pliocene, no matter how gradually they 

 were affected by the change, must have eventually left their 

 haunts, and doubtless many species were exterminated. At the 

 present day there are found in the tops of the White Mountains, 

 and in the lofty ranges of Colorado, certain species of butterflies 

 and moths which are completely isolated. To find others of the 

 same kinds we must explore the Plains of Labrador and the 

 northern portions of our continent ; there and there only do we 

 find similar or analogous species. A White Mountain butterfly, 

 Oeneis Semidea, was cited as an instance in point, and other 

 butterflies and moths were mentioned, whose isolated habitats 

 served to prove the general proposition. The retirement of the 

 glacial seas at the close of the epoch was then considered. Then 

 the summers were lengthening, while the winters were short- 

 ened. Then ice-loving insects, such as the White Mountain 

 butterfly, hung on the edge of the ice sheet which supplied their 

 food, and followed its retreat — not all, but some of their forms 

 surviving. Straying upon the local glaciers of the mountain 

 ranges, they were left behind in some instances, while the main 

 body followed the retiring ice sheet to the far north. Those 

 that were left behind still find the conditions of their existence 

 in the snow-covered summits of the present day. As the valleys 

 became warmer and glaciers fewer, the chances of their escape 

 from their isolated positions gradually diminished till their re- 

 moval became impossible. 



Prof. E. S. Morse, of Salem, Mass., has for a long time made 

 a study of the bones of embryo birds. At this meeting he re- 

 called briefly the evidence he had shown last year regarding the 

 existence of the intermedium in birds by citing the embryo tern, 

 in which he had distinctly found it. This year he made a visit 

 to Grand Menan expressly to study the embryology of the lower 

 birds, and was fortunate in finding the occurrence of this bone in 

 the petrel, sea-pigeon, and eider duck. This additional evidence 

 showed beyond question the existence of four tarsal bones in 

 birds, as well as four carpal ones. In these investigations he had 

 also discovered embryo claws on two of the fingers of the wing 

 — the index and middle finger. Heretofore in the adult bird a 

 single claw only had occurred in a few species, such as the 

 Syrian blackbird, spur-winged goose, knob-winged dove, jacana, 

 mound bird, and a few others, and in these cases it occurred 

 either on the index or middle finger or on the radial side of the 

 metacarpus. All these facts lent additional proof of the reptilian 

 affinities of birds. 



Prof. S. P. Langley, of Alleghany Observatory, detailed some of 

 the conclusions at which he had arrived after years of study of the 

 solar surface. Prof. Langley first showed by comparative experi- 

 ments that an absorptive atmosphere surrounds the sun. Little 

 attention has in recent years been paid to the study of this atmo- 

 sphere. The earlier efforts to tabulate its absorptive power, pro- 

 duced with different observers, though men of eminence, strangely 

 discordant results. Their methods and deductions were given in 

 detail. Secchi's results, making the neighbourhood of the edge 

 of the sun about half the brightness of the centre, are probably 

 near the fact. Prof. Langley applied well-known photometric 

 methods to the problem. By attaching a circle of cardboard to 

 the equatorial telescope, a solar image is received on the board, 

 plainly showing spots, penumbrre, &c., if the image be one foot 

 in diameter. From holes in this cardboard, pencils of rays 

 issue, which being caught on a screen give a second series of 

 images. If these images are caught upon separate mirrors, in- 

 stead of a screen, their relative light can be made the subject of 

 comparison with that of a disc of flame from Bunsen's apparatus, 

 and thereby their relative intensity determined. Between each 

 aperture and its respective mirror a lens was interposed which 

 concentrated the pencil of rays. By suitable additions this 

 apparatus can be converted to a Rumford photometer, and 

 in this form it proved most available in Prof Langley's hands. 

 He found a value,;for the brilliancy of the umbra in sun-spots, 

 considerably higher than that hitherto computed. The blackest 

 umbra, he finds, is betweeen 5,000 and io,ooo times as bright 

 as the full moon. The light of the sun is absorbed by its atmo- 

 sphere not in the same, bu in a greater proportion than its heat. 

 A long series of experiments shows that not much more or less 

 than one-half of the radiant heat of the sun is absorbed or suffers 

 internal reflection by the atmosphere of the sun itself. Observa- 

 tions indicate that this atmosphere is (speaking comparatively) 

 extremely thin ; Prof. Langley is inclined to regard it as 

 identical with the "reversing layer " observed by Dr. Young, 



