June 2, 1898] 



NATURE 



lo. 



to Baron Osten-Sacken my suggestion of the possibility of find- 

 ing some traces of these superstitions from an Indian source ; 

 but it met his negative remark in "A. N.," sub Jin, chiefly 

 grounded on the alleged lack till that time of any report firm 

 enough for the inclusion of E. ienax, among the Indian fauna. 

 In a work of N. Miiller, however, we have lately found de- 

 scribed an old silver vase made in India, which has engraved 

 thereon Kamadeva (the Love) in the act of producing Totma 

 (the Force). It represents the infant god riding on his quiver,* 

 from which a lion is issuing forth, while the quiver rests on the 

 back of a bee, and, as is well known, a chain of bees forms the 

 string to the god's bow. Another mythical picture of Totma 

 described by the same author is a lion producing out of his 

 mouth a swarm of bees and a cow ("Glauben, Wissen, und 

 Kunst der alten Hindus," Manzig, '.822, B. f., S. 553, seqq. ; 

 with Tab. I., Fig. II and 12). From these figures we are 

 perhaps right in believing that the Hindus were not totally un- 

 affected with the Bugonia-myth ; and if it be so, how anciently 

 the myth existed in India ? This is the question which I 

 should solicit assistance from any of your readers to elucidate. "■^ 



(7) The Occurrence of Eristalis tenax in India. — To supple- 

 ment the last paragraph, it will be interesting to introduce here 

 the following letter from Mr. E E. Austen, of the British 

 Museum (Natural History), which I owe to his kindness : — 



"November 16, 1897. 

 ' ' Eristalis tenax, L. has never been recorded (at any rate, 

 under its own name) from India. However, in a collection of 

 Diptera from India belonging to the Bombay Natural History 

 Society, and at present in my hands for determination, are four 

 specimens which, in my opinion, undoubtedly belong to this 

 species. I have not time just now to make minute examination, 

 but so far as I can see these specimens agree perfectly with the 

 normal European form. If there are any differences, I do not 

 think that they can possibly be of specific value. Of the four 

 specimens in question one is unlabelled ; the other three 

 are labelled respectively^' N. W. P.' (North-West Province), 

 'Himalayas,' and 'Musourie.' I may add that the Bombay 

 Natural History Society's collection also contains five specimens 

 (not labelled with precise localities) of E. pertinax, L. — a 

 species which closely resembles E. tenax, and has identical 

 habits. In England, at any rate, it is often the more abundant 

 of the two. 



(Signed) " E. E. Austen." 



In a Buddhist cyclopaedia in Chinese (Tau-ngan's " Fah-yuen- 

 chu-lin," completed 668 A.D., ed. 1827, tom. xxviii. fol. 12-13), 

 there is a quotation from an Avadana Sutra, giving account of 

 how Ananda found in a pond near Radjagriha, which receives 

 all sewerage of that city, a huge worm several tens of feet long, 

 and without limbs, amusing itself among refuses, rolling, raising, 

 and low ering The question as for the cause of so unpleasant an 

 animal, the Buddha answers by tracing it to a long past oeon, 

 when an avaricious abbot cursed good monks with very un- 

 wholesome words, which effected the malefactor's transmigration 

 to such a disgusting life. Here, the worm in ordures is 

 described too briefly, but its figures, except the exaggerated size, 

 forcibly put me in mind of a similar account of the " Long-tailed 

 Dung-Worm" by a Japanese author (see "A. N.," p. 21); 

 which leads to the view that the Indians took early notice of 

 the rat- tailed larva of some Eristalis. 



(8) Siingless Bees besides Eristalis tenax. — From the instances 

 I shall give presently it will be evident that the readers must 

 take precaution against the hasty identifications with the 

 Eristalis of all so-called " stingless bees." Thus, Prof. A. 

 Merx, of Jena, suggests the possible identity with E. tenax of 

 certain stingless bees in Abyssinia, which J. Ludolf records in 

 his " Historia /Ethiopica," 1681, lib. i, chap. 13 ("O. B.," 

 p. 67). But it is too evident from the following words that the 

 identity is not true : — " De hocaccipiunt Habessini Mel agreste. 

 . . . t^uia vero aculeo carent, la tenebra se tuentur ; sub terra 



1 In this connection it is significant that "the Italian 'carcasso' means 

 quiver, because it is encircled and kept together with iron rings or ribs, 

 which resemble the ribs of a human carcase" (Webster's Dictionary). 



'^ About four years ayo, when I followed to the British Museum my 

 master in Mantranism, Mr. HSryii Toki, that Yogiitch.^ rya informed the 

 late Sir (then Mr.) Augustus Franks of the remarkable coincidences that 

 exist between the characters of the Brahmamist " Kamadeva" (the Hindu 

 Eros)_and of the Maniranist's " Aizen Myowo " (the bright king who soaks 

 mankind with love). One conspicuous figure of the latter is his crown of a 

 lion's head (see Bulsuzu Dzui," n. e., 1886, tome ii. fol. 20, a), whence it is 

 very probable that s >me vestiges of theLeontogenes occur in the " Aizen- 

 kyo," a Buddhist sfltia devoted to this Vadjra, but inaccessible to me in 

 this country. 



enim favos condunt, angustissimo introitu, quem visa homine 

 quinque vel sex implent capitula sua solo oequalia ponentes, tam 

 solerter, ut acutissimos oculos fallant." Two manners of the 

 "stingless bees" in the Western Hemisphere are respectively 

 described by Fernandez d'Oviedo (1478-1557) and H. Schmirdel 

 C'^- 1534-54) : both agree in building their nests inside of trees, 

 where they make white excellent honey (Ramusio, " Navigationi 

 e Viaggi," Venetia, 1606, fol. 51, A; Purchas, "Pilgrimes," 

 Part III., 1. vii., chap. 4). One who reads Astley's "Col- 

 lection" (1745, vol. ii. p. 355), might naturally be struck with 

 the thought that there E. tenax is meant by a "Drone-Bee" 

 that " frequents the villages [in the western coast of South Guinea] 

 . . . but yields no honey ' ; on examination, however, of the 

 original of this passage, we confirm other insect is meant thereby, 

 as the statement has this qualification :-- -" [They] hurt nobody 

 unless provoked, and then their sting causes great and dangerous 

 inflammations" (J. Barbot's "Description of Guinea," in 

 Churchill's "Collection," 1732, vol. i. p. 116). 



KUMAGUSU MiNAKATA. 



7 Effie Road, Walham Green, S.W. 



P.S.— It maybe not amiss to note here that the Spanish 

 Benedictine, Benito Feyjoo, in his " Theatro Critico Universal " 

 (Madrid, 1734, tom. iv. p. 198), devotes a chapter to the 

 Bugonia, where he refers to Sperling's failure to find any bees 

 from dead oxen while serious pestilence was prevailing among 

 cattle in Wurtemberg (see " O. B.," p. 61). He continues: 

 'I Doctor Don Joseph Ortiz Barroso, the learned physician in the 

 city of Utrera, experienced the same failure on two several 

 occasions of similar epidemic that visited the territory of Sevilla. 

 The latter observations conflict with the solution which F. 

 Sachs seeked to apply to the case of Sperling's failure, by attri- 

 buting it to the too cold climate of Wurtemberg for the bees ; for 

 the same failures were experienced in Andalusia, which is a 

 quite warm country ; while such coldest countries in the north 

 as Russia, Podolia, &c., have great abundance of the bees, 

 causing very cheap sale of honey and wax in those parts." 



K. M. 



Rainfall and Earthquake Periods. 



With reference to the remarkable letter of " A. B. M. ," which 

 appeared in your number of this week (May 19), p. 31, as to the 

 recurrence of cold and wet periods at about thirty- five years' 

 interval (measuring from the centre of one such period to that of 

 the next), I beg leave to call attention to the fact that thirty-five 

 years represents a marked period of recurrence of maximum 

 frequency of earthquakes, as I showed in a paper which was 

 submitted to the Royal Irish Academy in 1887, but not pub- 

 lished. That a relation should exist between earthquakes, 

 volcanic disturbances, and the atmospheric conditions which 

 determine wet and dry periods, seems to me more reasonable to 

 accept d priori, than to assume that these phenomena are quite 

 independent of each other. 



From Mallet's Catalogue of Earthquakes I have compiled a list 

 between the dates 365 and 1842, showing the intimate relations 

 between the shocks and immediate and violent atmospheric 

 perturbations on those occasions (about 500 in all) ; this list 

 could be very much extended for more recent times from Perry's 

 and Falb's lists, and would be a valuable contribution on the 

 subject. 



But discussing simply the figures presented by your cor- 

 respondent from this point of view, very interesting results 

 can be shown. I begin by assuming (a) an intimate though 

 undefined relation between most great earthquakes and intense 

 volcanic action ; {b) intense volcanic action in one or other of 

 the great volcanic centres or lines of action during certain 

 periods, giving rise to the emission of vast (quantities of gases 

 which rise into the upper atmosphere, and disturb or influence 

 the upper currents ; and (f) that the upper currents of the atmo- 

 sphere are more and more looked on as dominating meteor- 

 ological phenomena. Hence a dependency in the meteorological 

 conditions which determine maxima of drought or wet, on 

 maxima of volcanic action, but not concordance as to date or 

 period. These lag upon the former. This may be roughly 

 shown from the figures given by "A. B. M." He gives the 

 following dates as maxima of wet periods. 



The commencement of the curve corresponds to about the 

 year 1827*5, which of itself will be found to represent a year of 

 maximum intensity of earthquakes (it is interesting to note the 

 record for June 3 of that year in Mallet's Catalogue ' ' Martinique." 



NO. 1492, VOL. 58] 



