December 17, 1914} 



NATURE 



4?7 



• The animals are responding to unconscious 

 signals. Krall claims to have refuted this by 

 " ignorant " experiments, but these are relatively 

 few and seem all to have some weak spot. Thus 

 Mackenzie reports that Rolf, the Mannheim dog, 

 described a picture on a card held so that the 

 holder could not see it ; unfortunately, the picture 

 was a red and blue cross, and there is reason to 

 think that dogs are nearly colour-blind. Neverthe- 

 less, the fair number of " peep-hole " experiments 

 and the case of the blind horse, Berto, seem to 

 stamp as inadequate Pfungst's theory of visually 

 perceived movements. Yet no other one mode of 

 signal seems sufficient for all cases, while Hacker 

 did actually get answers by moving his foot. 

 Again, it is unlikely that the many individuals who 

 have obtained answers should all make precisely 

 the same unconscious movements. These diffi- 

 culties disappear if we suppose the animals not 

 to be blindly reacting to one specific stimulus, but 

 to be interpreting more or less intelligently a 

 general type of unconscious emotional or ideo- 

 motor expression- — movement, variation of respira- 

 tion, etc. — possibly always complex and varying 

 with the individual and occasion. Both horses 

 and dogs are notoriously -sensitive to shades of 

 emotional expression, and recent work by the 

 Pawlow school indicates that dogs can hear 

 sounds so faint as the beating of the heart. It 

 is true, any theory of unconscious signalling pre- 

 sents difficulties. Units, tens, etc., are tapped 

 with different feet ; the spelling of verbal answers 

 is phonetic, and spontaneous utterances are re- 

 corded, including a letter dictated by Rolf ! Can 

 the subconscious be credited with so much? The 

 solution, if it ever comes, can scarcely fail to 

 illuminate, if not the animal mind, at least that 

 of man. C. S. 



THE REV. SIR JOHN TWISDEN. 



AT his great age of nearly ninety, Sir John F. 

 Twisden, whose death was announced last 

 week, had survived most of his time, the genera- 

 tion of William Thomson and Todhunter, who 

 could give a detailed account of his life and work, 

 very valuable in its day. 



The Times of December 8 describes the curious 

 revival of the dormant baronetage, taken up by 

 Sir John late in life, but his retirement from the 

 Professorship of Mathematics at the Staff College 

 must have taken place much earlier than 1885, as 

 a consequence of the Cardwell scheme, which had 

 decreed that mathematics was no longer of any 

 use to a Staff Officer. 



How Napoleon would smile if he could hear it I 

 The sequel has proved that the economy was fatal 

 to efficiency, when we consider the costly blunders 

 of the Staff in South Africa; and here we are 

 engaged in a war the greatest in the history of 

 the world, and it is a Mathematical War. 



After one old-fashioned battle in the open, both 

 sides have dug in, and the war has become a vast 

 siege, where all arms, horse, foot, and dragoons, 

 are turned into garrison gunners, as I predicted in 



NO. 2355, VOL. 94] 



these columns nearly thirty years ago. This was 

 the war for which we were not prepared. 



Artilier}- science is our great requirement. 

 Cavalry work is turned over to the motorist, to 

 scour the country and round up the picturesque 

 old-fashioned Uhlan. In South Africa we see how 

 De Wet, the redoubtable cavalry leader, is run 

 down ignominiously by motor-cars. It had not 

 dawned on our military intelligence to compare bv 

 a slight mathematical calculation the available 

 energy, in foot-pounds or ton-miles, of a gallon of 

 petroleum against the equivalent weight of oats. 

 But here was a specimen of the sort of education 

 given by Twisden to the Staff College in his excel- 

 lent "Practical Mechanics," a book too little 

 known, but containing what Maxwell called the 

 gentlemanly knowledge of the subject, which no 

 Staff Officer should be without. The first chapter 

 of it is a liberal education in elementary gumption, 

 cleverly disguised in what appears a very simple 

 question of no apparent difficulty, always, how- 

 ever, strong enough to unhorse the unwary. 



This elementary instruction is being acquired 

 by the junior ranks at the front at a vast expense, 

 and the young officer can say, in the words of 

 Hamlet, " I once did hold it, as our seniors do, a 

 baseness to be scientific, and laboured much how 

 to forget all learning; but now it did me veoman's 

 serv'ice." G. Greenhill. 



NOTES. 

 The Hunterian Oration of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons of England will be delivered bv the president 

 — Sir Watson Cheyne — on February 15, but the 

 customan,' dinner in the evening will not be held. 



We regret to see the announcement, in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Chemical Society, that Dr. C. R. Cn'mble, 

 of University Collegne, London, who was a fellow of 

 the societ)% was killed in action on November 20. 



We learn from the Times that Prof. A. \'an 

 Geuchten, who was professor of systematic anatomv 

 and neuro-patholog}- at Louvain University, has died 

 suddenly at Cambridge, where he was receiving hos- 

 pitalit}- as a refugee. 



Prof. C. S. Sherrington, Fullerian professor of 

 physiology at the Royal Institution, will deliver a 

 course of six lectures at the institution on muscle in 

 the service of nerve, on Tuesdays in January and 

 February next. 



The President of the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries has appointed Mr. E. J. Cheney, lately one 

 of the assistant secretaries of the department, to the 

 office of chief agricultural adviser to the Board, and 

 Mr. F. L. C. Floud to be an assistant secretar}- of 

 the department. 



Prof. T. A. Jaggar, director of the Hawaiian Vol- 

 j cano Obser\-aton,-, and a group of his assistants, had 

 I a narrow escape of their lives during a recent ascent 

 1 of Mauna Loa. The volcano had become active, dis- 

 ' charging large quantities of lava. The scientific 



