June 1 6, 1887] 



NATURE 



155 



ihe authorities of Trinity objected that instruction of 

 this kind was already given by one of their lecturers. 



Into the merits of a dispute on a question of organiza- 

 tion of this kind it is difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, 

 to enter. The main fact is that, even if Balliol and Trinity 

 arc right in claiming as against the University something 

 lilce a monopoly of general lecture instruction in physics, 

 tliey have enforced that claim by placing, for an indefinite 

 l)criod, the Oxford school of physics at a serious dis- 

 advantage. Not a penny of the grant asked for was to 

 be expended on apparatus for elementary lectures. It 

 \\ as all required for a lodge, for expenses connected with 

 :Mi-. Wilde's installation, and for an electrical laboratory 

 such as other Universities have and the University of 

 Oxford has not. The President of Trinity no doubt 

 thought that he was striving to prevent the University 

 incurring an unnecessary expense. Could not some of 

 his scientific advisers have informed him that the 

 questions as to whether an electrical laboratory should 

 be built, and as to whether Prof. Clifton should spend 

 the time which its erection would place at his 

 disposal in delivering a particular course of lectures, are 

 separate and distinct ? Are there no Boards or Faculties 

 in Oxford in which the arrangement of lectures can be 

 discussed without the friends of progress obstructing pro- 

 gress in Convocation? Opposition to the extension of 

 the Clarendon Laboratory (the necessity for which they 

 did not deny), lest as a secondary result of that extension 

 a course of lectures should be given, which would involve 

 no cost to the University, but which they feared might 

 infringe their own real or supposed rights, is not an atti- 

 tude for which the combined Colleges can expect much 

 sympathy. 



The second point which was raised by the President of 

 Trinity was dealt with in an equally unsatisfactory 

 manner. In i885. Trinity College built and opened the 

 Millard Laboratory for instruction in theoretical and 

 practical mechanics and engineering. The Laboratory 

 contains a steam-engine and three dynamos. It is about 

 to be further extended, and it is claimed that it contains 

 all the apparatus required for technical work in elec- 

 tricity. The President recited these facts in his pamphlet, 

 and then added : " But with the question of advanced 

 work I must leave others, who have more knowledge, to 

 deal." 



We venture to think that before describing the Millard 

 Laboratory in detail in a pamphlet opposed to the 

 Clarendon Laboratory grant, it would have been well for 

 the President to have obtained from experts such informa- 

 tion as would have enabled him to make up his mind as 

 to what the two laboratories had or had not in common. 



If it is really intended to concentrate the teaching 

 of electricity in I3alliol and Trinity, and, while placing it 

 in the hands of College lecturers, to prevent the Univer- 

 sity Professor of Physics from acquiring the facilities for 

 teaching it properly himself, we can only say that a 

 most mistaken policy has been adopted. Physics, on 

 account of the cost of the apparatus required, is a 

 subject in which centralization is desirable, and, consider- 

 ing the place which electricity now occupies among the 

 physical sciences, it would be absurd to exclude it from 

 the University Laboratory, and from the curriculum of the 

 only teacher of physics, whom the University herself 

 appoints. To do them justice, the combined Colleges 

 did not dirccdy make any such proposal ; but, if they did 

 not mean to make it, why was the Millard Laboratory 

 imported into the controversy? As far as we can judge 

 from the description given of it by the President of 

 Trinity, it is a technical laboratory which may develop 

 into soniething analogous to that of Prof Stuart at Cam- 

 bridge. If so, it does not — and those connected with it 

 ought to have known that it doe? not — occupy the gap 

 which the new building was to fill. " Theoretical and 

 practical mechanics and engineering," coupled with elec- 



trical technology, afford plenty of scope for the energies 

 even of such active Colleges as Balliol and Trinity. It is a 

 pity that, with all this zeal, they have yet to learn that 

 pure science is an ally and not a rival, that a dynamo is 

 useful in a physical laboratory in which no technology is 

 taught, and that the way for a young institution like the 

 Millard Laboratory to earn respect is to do good work, 

 and not to signalize its appearance on the field of labour 

 by preventing others from doing it. 



NORTH AMERICAN PICTOGRAPHS> 



THIS remarkable volume contains no fewer than 

 83 lithographed plates, and 209 separate wood- 

 cuts, and is an admirable compendium of the curious 

 pictographs of the North American Indians. Large as 

 it is, it professes to be only the forerunner of a still 

 larger work that shall treat of pictographs generally. 

 The author. Colonel Garrick Mallery, has already pub- 

 lished an almost equally interesting memoir on " Gesture 

 Language," in the first Annual Report of the Bureau 

 of Ethnology. 



One of the most striking features of the present work 

 is the account it gives of the newly-discovered custom of 

 the Sioux, or, more correctly speaking, of the Dakota 

 Indians (for Sioux is some barbarism, repudiated by the 

 natives), to keep national calendars. The custom is 

 sufficiently ancient to have become generally established 

 among this great branch of the Indians, but it is not old 

 enough to have spread to the west of the Mississippi. 

 One of the most important of the calendars begins with 

 the year 1800 ; its historiographer was a man, still living 

 in 1 876, yclept " Lone-Dog." His calendar is painted on a 

 buffalo hide, which appears to have been exhibited and ex- 

 plained to Indian audiences from time to time, and greatly 

 admired by them, for four copies at least have been made 

 from it (with variations of arrangement), and every intel- 

 ligent adult Dakota knows its contents, and can read 

 them in part. One of these copies is imitated in a 

 beautiful plate, which is the most effective of all the many 

 illustrations of this volume. The process of making the 

 calendar is inferred to have been as follows : — During the 

 dreary periods of their six winter months, certain elders 

 of the tribe amused themselves with talking over the 

 events of the past year, and Lone-Dog discussed with them 

 which of those events should be selected by general 

 suffrage as the representative of that period. Suppose it 

 was an outbreak of the small-pox : then Lone- Dog drew 

 the outline of Fig. i on one part of his buffalo robe, 

 and dabbed it with red spots. Then that year became ever 

 after known as the small-pox year, and the Dakotas 

 would say so-and-so happened in the small-pox year, just 

 as we should say in the year 1801. Or, again, the event 

 might be that for the first time horses were seen by 

 them that had been shod with iron : then the symbol 

 of the year became a horse-shoe, Fig. 2. Lone-Dog's 

 calendar is particularly graphic. Its earlier entries are 

 probably derived from preceding chroniclers or from 

 tradition; anyhow it covers the entire period from 1800 

 to 1 87 1. The first entry is made in the middle of the 

 robe, and the others are arranged year after year succes- 

 sively in an oblong spiral, the whole series being in- 

 cluded in three turns and a half. Th-y are drawn in 

 black and red, the latter usually representing blood, of 

 which plenty seems to be spilt in murder or in hunting. 

 Thus Fig. 3 is a case of murder ; Fig, 4 is a year in 

 which a vast number of elk were killed, identified in 

 the rude drawing by their cloven feet. Fig. 5 celebrates 

 the erection of a trader's station ; and Fig. 6 tells us that 

 striped Spanish blankets were first introduced in that 



'■ "Pictographs of the North American Indians." A Preliminary Paper 

 by Garrick Mallery. Ettracl from the Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau 

 of Ethnology. (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1886.) 



