June io, 1920] 



NATURE 



451 



the better of his judgment. "And still he lives, 

 but pacing — pacing — pacing — you may see him, 

 scanning not the crowds, but something beyond 

 the crowds, breaking down at times into petulant 

 rages, but recovering anon his ponderous dignity, 

 looking — waiting — watching — held ever by that 

 Hope, that unknown Hope, that came." Through- 

 out the book we get glimpses of a river that does 

 not reach the sea, and a poetic parallelism is 

 sustained between river and bear—both ending in 

 imprisonment. "The river, born in high Sierra's 

 flank, that lived and rolled and grew, through 

 mountain pines, o'erleaping man-made barriers, 

 then to reach with growing power the plains and 

 bring its mighty flood at last to the Bay of Bays, 

 a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the Golden 

 Gate, seeking forever Freedom's Blue, seeking 

 and raging — raging and seeking — back and forth, 

 forever — in vain." So with the bear. The book 

 is delightfully printed and got up, and many of 

 the thumb-nail drawings are very graphic. We 

 are told on what pages they occur and on what 

 pages the chapters begin and end, but there is 

 no pagination ! 



Religion and Culture: A Critical Survey of 

 Methods of Approach to Religious Phenomena. 

 By Dr. Frederick Schleiter. Pp. x + 206. (New 

 York : Columbia University Press ; London : 

 Humphrey xMilford, 1919.) Price 85. 6d. net. 

 It is well to be reminded by such an acute critic 

 as Dr. Schleiter that anthropology, one of the 

 youngest of the sciences, is still in search of the 

 one scientific method of analysing and co-ordinat- 

 ing the enormous mass of material which ha.s 

 been, and is still being, collected. The object of 

 this book is to review the methods in use at 

 present and to point out certain difficulties which 

 each involves. Though in his preface the author 

 tells us that he has in some degree modified his 

 iconoclastic attitude towards the comparative 

 method, his criticism still remains sufficiently 

 drastic. Thus he remarks that " in his immensely 

 voluminous works " vSir James Frazer has em- 

 bodied " several mutually irreconcilable types of 

 research." Again, the method of intensive study 

 of a limited group of cultural facts — the Aus- 

 tralian culture, for instance — "bristles with fal- 

 lacies and insupportable pre-suppositions." In 

 dealing with Mana, Dr. Marett "appears to have 

 expressed bewildering varieties of opinion on this 

 subject." Sir E. Tylor postulates "a single co- 

 herent and systematic view of the world, or what 

 he repeatedly refers to as a ' philosophy of 

 nature. ' " But " all ethnological evidence tends 

 to show that no such universal systematisation of 

 experiences has ever taken place." In short, 

 "ethnographical literature, as a whole, presents 

 to us little more than groups of classifications 

 carried out from mutually irreconcilable points of 

 view — the advocates of the separate principles 

 being gathered into schools which profoundly dis- 

 trust each other's results." 



Dr. Schleiter, though an acute critic, is not a 

 lucid writer, and his work is critical rather than 

 NO. 2641, VOL. 105] 



constructive. He supplies a bibliography, but, 

 strange to say, no index. We can do no more at 

 present than indicate the scope of this important 

 review of methodology applied to ethnography. 

 Manuel Pratique de Meteorologie. By J. Rouch. 

 Pp. viii+ 145-l-xiv plates. (Paris: Masson et 

 Cie, 1919.) Price 6.50 francs net. 

 This book, the outcome of war experience espe- 

 cially with aviators, is designed to give those 

 who receive weather forecasts • some knowledge 

 of the principles on which they are based. The 

 greatest measure of success is likely if the recipi- 

 ents have this knowledge, and are also in personal 

 contact with the forecaster. 



The construction of weather charts, the inter- 

 pretation of their broader features, and the travel 

 of large weather systems are dealt with in the 

 first eight chapters. The greatest danger, how- 

 ever, often attends the parage of smaller travel- 

 ling systems. Accordingly; chap. ix. discusses in 

 great detail secondary phenomena, line squalls, 

 thunderstorms, etc. Fog has a separate chapter, 

 and an account is given of the main results of 

 recent upper-air research. A useful feature is a 

 list of the chief barometric situations of the year 

 1917 to serve as examples supplementary to those 

 given in the book. The published daily charts 

 of the Bureau Central Meteorologique may be 

 obtained for this purpose. 



Detail is not lacking, and physical explanations 

 are given of many phenomena. The book should 

 appeal to meteorologists, as well as to "those 

 who, without being meteorologists, wish to know 

 what the weather will do." M. A. G. 



Wireless Transmission of Photographs. By 

 Marcus J. Martin. Second edition, revised and 

 enlarged. Pp. xv-f-143. (London: The Wire- 

 less Press, Ltd., 1919.) Price 55. 

 A CERTAIN amount of experimenting has l>een done 

 from time to time on the transmission of sketches, 

 photographs, etc., electrically along ordinary 

 telegraph circuits, but in the case of long lines 

 success has been limited by the difficulty of 

 obtaining sufficiently sharp current impulses owing 

 to the capacity effects in the line. This difficulty 

 disappears with wireless transmission, and it is 

 chiefly for this reason that the author anticipates 

 greater success, as well as greater convenience, 

 in the apparently more delicate methods which it 

 is his purpose to describe. In his own system 

 a bichromate print made on a metal film is rotated 

 on a drum at the same time fed axially, and a 

 stylus is caused by the presence of the picture to 

 make intermittent' contact and to send a series 

 of impulses from an ordinary* wireless transmitting 

 .set. A synchronised drum at the receiving end 

 carries a photographic film, and a beam is directed 

 on to it, which is made intermittent by the move- 

 ment of a small shutter controlled by the receiv- 

 ing apparatus. Considerable ingenuity has been 

 exerted to overcome the many practical difficulties 

 encountered. The additions to this the second 

 edition relate chiefly to optical and photographical 

 matters. 



