j'an. 24, 1869J 



NA TURE 



295 



■ eculiar sub- specific types found there are many of them hcm 

 lorms, which have arisen since the Mammoth aj^e, having been 

 ilterecl from the old ones, which live on under old condiiions in 

 the West of Europe and the Japanese Archipelago. 



1 shouKl like to specify one particular bird in regard to which 

 this notion seems to point a special moral. This is the British 

 red grouse, the only peculiar bird of these islands. Its nearest 

 lly on the Continent, and a very near ally, is the willow grouse. 

 I have little doubt that the willow grouse of the Continent is an 

 liiered form, and that our red grouse is the parent, since the 

 evidence we have, audit is not >light, goes to show thai England 

 has pteserved better than Scandinavia the c imatic conditions of 

 the Mammoth period. The white marks and other characteristics 

 of the willow grouse are evidences of the eff-ct of colder winter- 

 tjuarters, as they are in the case ol the [/tarmtgan. 



Lastly, 1 cannot avoid emphasizing once more the conclusion 

 which 1 have pre-sed in my book that this milder climate in .Siberia 

 <luring the Mammoth age entirely does away with the necessity for 

 invoking quite transcendental seasonal migrations for the fauna 

 there which have been postulated by Prof. Dawkins and others. 

 That the Mammoth, with its immature young, should be able to 

 pass to and fro between the south of Siberia and the New Siberian 

 Islands and Kamchatka, between summer and winter, has always 

 seemed to me incredible. If they could compass the journey 

 they would either find a temperate conditions of things, which is 

 alone consistent with their finding food, when there would be no 

 occasion for them to migrate, or they would find the conditions 

 which prevail now, when no pachyderms could find food cvoi in 

 summt-r, since they are physically incapable of browsing the 

 short herbage of the tundra. Nor could the trees and the 

 southern mollusks, like the Cyreiia, migrate, even if the young 

 Mammoths could. This theory of migrations finds no support, 

 so far as I know, among those who have studied the problem on 

 the ground ; and it is put entirely cut of court when we realize 

 that, Siberia having had a temperate climate, there was no 

 necessity to migrate. 



A similar argument applies to the theory invoking the trans- 

 port of the Mammoth carcasses by means of the Siberian rivers, 

 which has always seemed to me untenable when the conditions are 

 faced. I would mention that in Baron Toll's recent journey to 

 the New Siberian Islands, situated a long way north of the 

 Siberian coast-line, and entirely out of the reach of any pos- 

 sible river portage, he not only found remains of a carcass 

 of a Mammoth preserved in the flesh, but found them in a bed 

 situated to the north of a ridge. This fact may be put beside tho'e 

 already mentioned by Wrangell and others long ago, that the 

 carcasses and skeletons and cac/u's are found chiefly on the hillocks 

 and higher ground of the tundra, out of the reach of river-floods 

 altogether, and found most frequently near the small rivulets and 

 feeders of the greater streams, which could not float them, and 

 found also near those flowing south. This theory of portage and 

 that of seasonal migrations have been nursed and maintained in 

 this country in spite of evidence of every kind, because they are 

 supposed in some way to buttress the theory of uniformity, as 

 taught by Lyell and Ramsay. An appeal to them and to similar 

 complicated physical causes becomes not merely unwarrantable, 

 but unscientific and illogical, when we realize that from one end 

 of Siberia to the other the climate was sufficiently temperate 

 when the Mammoth lived there to enable trees to grow and 

 vegetable food to be found everywhere, and the physical sur- 

 roundings of the country were probably such as may be measured 

 by those still prevailing in Britain or Japan. 



Henry H. Howorth. 



Bentcliffe, Eccles, January 10. 



The Crystallization of Lake Ice. 



On returning recently from North Wales, I was very pleased 

 to meet with a description, by Mr. James C. McConnel 

 (Nai URE, December 27, p. 203), of the elaborate experiments 

 perfortned by himself and Mr. Dudley A. Kidd on glacier and 

 lake ice at St. Moritz. An experiment I had made on the ice 

 of Llyn Creigenen, a small lake to the north-west of Tyrau 

 Mawr, seems to me to be, in some measure, confirmatory of 

 tTie results obtained in connection with the crystallization of 

 lake ice. 



By sharply striking the ice, which was only about half an inch 

 thick, with the rounded end of a stick, fractures were produced, 

 which invariably adopted the form of a six-rayed star-like figure. 

 The beautiful regularity of these figuies, in regard to the num- 



ber, position, and perfect straightness of their rays, at once 

 reminded me of the well-known percussion- and pressure- 

 figures produced in mica plates by Reusch and Bauer. Mr. 

 Grenville Cole, who was with me at the time, repeated the 

 experiment, and obtained precisely similar results. V\'e found 

 that over a certain area a large number of these figures could 

 be produced, in each of which there were corresponding parallel 

 rays— that is to say, every percussion- figure was similarly dis- 

 posed with regard to a fixed line. Outside this area, the figures 

 produced, although preserving the characters of those first made, 

 exhibited a change in the direction of the rays. In this \yay 

 we could determine the boundaries of a number of adjacent areas, 

 sepua;ed from one another by definite lines of demarcation. 

 '1 h se areas averaged about two feet across. 



We were unable to conceive of any conditions of stress which 

 would, in a homogeneous solid pla e, give ri<e to such pheno- 

 mena—fractures of such beautiful regularity, and so constant in 

 character. Consequently, we thought of crystallization ; but 

 this Would necessitate the recognition of ice-crystals of very 

 large dimensions — a conclusion obviously at variance with the 

 existing notions concerning the crystalline characters of ice. 

 We thought, however, that the matter might be worthy of in- 

 vestigation, and, on returning to town, were pleased to find 

 that large crystals of lake ice had been found at St. Moritz by 

 Messrs. McConnel and Kidd, which, however, did not attain 

 the size of those we noticed on Llyn Creigenen. But the 

 fact that on the St. Moritz Lake the ice attained a thickness of 

 over one foot shows that the temperature must have been lower, 

 and the conditions more rigorous, than in North Wales at the 

 time of our visit. 



If it is possible at all to obtain large crystals of ice, I should 

 say the conditions for such on Llyn Creigenen were of the most 

 favourable character. For three days previously, the tempera- 

 ture varied very little from zero C, and, from the slight wind that 

 prevailed at the time, the lake was well sheltered by the hills 

 which rise abruptly around ; indeed, the lake \\ as unusually free 

 from disturbing influences of any kind. 



If these sheets of ice were gigantic crystals, it is in the 

 highest degree probable that the surface of the ice coincided 

 with the basal plane, as was the case with the columnar crystals 

 observed by Pro*. Heim in the lake ice of the Swiss lowlands. 

 For want of a polariscope we were prevented from investigating 

 the matter further in the field ; but in some small well sheltered 

 pools on Tyrau Mawr we found it easy to produce the same 

 phenomena of p rcussion-figures, w hilst the ice in the marshy 

 places amongst the grass gave fractures of a most irregular kind. 

 We found, in several places, skeleton-crystals like ornamented 

 equilateral triangles, measuring some inches across. 



Thomas H. Holland. 



Normal School of Science, South Kensington. 



Use of the Reinora in Fishing. 



With reference to Mr. A. C. Haddon's interesting account 

 of the use of the Remora or sucker- fish by the natives of Torres 

 Straits in fishing for turtles (Nature, January 17, p. 285), I may 

 call attention to the paper on this subject read by our cor- 

 responding member, .VIr. Frederick Holmwood, C.B., late 

 H.B.M. Consul at Zanzibar, before the Zoological Society ot 

 London 01 June 17, 1881 (see P.Z.S , 1881, p. 411), which 

 Mr. Haddon does not seem to be acquainted with. Mr. 

 Holmwood has fully described the mode of the use of the 

 Kemora by the native fishermen of Zanzibar in catching turtles 

 and fishes. It is curious to find a somewhat similar method of 

 employing the Kemora practised by the islanders of Torres 

 Straits. P. I- Sclater. 



3 Hanover S(iuare, London, W., January 19. 



A Remarkable Rime. 



UNDE8,this heading a letter appears from Lutterworth (p. 270), 

 but no mention is made of the colour of the water obtained 

 on melting some of the rime collected from the trees. In the 

 neighbourhood, far removed from any large town, the rime 

 crystals, on melting, gave water tasting very sooty, and looking 

 as though the liquid had been used to wash Indian ink brushes 

 in, it being quite l)lack with sooty particles. M. H. Maw. 



Rarrow-ou-Humber, Hull, January 22. 



