DecExMber 3, 1891] 



NA TURE 



10: 



"Hence Dr. Poulton's very pretty kaleidoscope simile involves 

 new suppositions, which are worse than gratuitous because they 

 involve throwing overboard the very facts on which the theory 

 was originally based. It is plain that Dr. Weismann goes very 

 much further in admitting the changeability of the ancestral 

 units than his disciples are willing to do ; and I have shown that 

 hypothesis A involves the conclusion that these are indefinitely 

 changeable, not merely "not completely unchangeable," as Prof. 

 Weismann writes. 



Another point for consideration is that we can hardly 

 doubt the monophyletic origin of Metazoa, and that, at 

 least excepting Ccelenterates and Sponges, they all originated 

 from some one primitive form. The Protozoan ancestors of 

 this form must have belonged to the same species with one 

 another, and their representative ancestral units cannot have 

 been more different than the members of a single species. 

 Htnce, without selection, the germ-plasm composed of a number 

 of these units associate! 1 together would give an average resultant, 

 so that the majority of individuals would be more similar than 

 the ancestral units of their germ-plasms, and amphigony would 

 produce uniform offspring on the whole. Divergence from 

 the average type could only occur by the duplication or further 

 repetition of single ancestral units of special character ; and 

 these variations would be the material for natural selection to 

 act upon. Thus, among words of eleven letters, such a word as 

 abracadabra, with its 5 a's, 2 //s, and 2 r's, would have a marked 

 divergence from the type as compared with groups in which no 

 letter occurred twice over.^ If, then, natural selection goes on to 

 form a species according to Weismann's theory, it can only do 

 so by eliminating certain ancestral plasms and duplicating or 

 further repeating others to take their place. Once an ancestral 

 plasm eliminated in the formation of a race it can never be re- 

 introduced, or replaced by a new one. But as soon as we repeat 

 certain members of a group of limited number we reduce the 

 possible number of permutations or combinations that can be 

 formed from that group. Anyone with a fair head for the work, 

 andaTodhunter's "Algebra," can see for himself how very rapidly 

 the number of combmations is reduced in this way. Thus 

 natural selection could only result in arrangements of ever- 

 increasing simplicity and similarity instead of complexity and 

 divergence. The ultimate product would be a limited number 

 of well-marked species, whose individual members had lost all 

 power of variation. This I offer as an alternative to the variable 

 offspring of the lioness. 



Mr. Trow is extremely anxious to show me a path out of my 

 dilemma. It presents no difficulty to those biologists who con- 

 sider the conception of a germ-plasm independent of the somato- 

 plasm as more or less mythical. For those who follow Weis- 

 mann, the way out of the difficulty will not lie through the 

 ascription to natural selection of powers which it cannot possibly 

 exert. . Marcus H.vrtog. 



Cork, November 28. 



The Mexican Atlatl or Spear-Thrower. 



The note in Nature of November 19 (p. 66) recording the 

 important discovery at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, of " a modern 

 atlatl (not altatl, as misprinted) well worn and old-looking, 

 accompanied with a gig for killing ducks," is very interesting. 

 It may not be out of place to call attention to an exhaustive 

 little memoir by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall on " The Atlatl or Spear- 

 Thrower of the Ancient Mexicans," published this summer in 

 the third number of the first volume of the " Ethnographical 

 and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum " (Cambridge, 

 Mass., 1891). In this paper, which is illustrated with eighty 

 ■figures of different kinds of atlatl, the author completely 

 establishes the existence and practical use in warfare of the 

 wooden spear-thrower or atlatl by the Mexicans at the time of 

 the Spanish conquest, although some doubt had been expressed 

 in the matter by such well-known authorities as Prof. E. B. 

 Tylor and Mr. A. Bandelier, while Mr, H. H. Bancroft even 

 stated that " he had not found any description of its form or 

 the manner of using it." Mrs. Nuttall, however, reproduces 

 numerous illustrations of the many varied forms of the atlatl 

 from different codices, accompanied by several descriptions of the 

 manner of hurling the weapon, cited from old Spanish writers. 

 Perhaps at this moment the most a propos is that from the 



' The argument above was suggested to me by a che;nical friend. 



NO. II 53. VOL. 45] 



ancient chronicles of Tezozomoc, who, in describing the drill of 

 the soldiers, relates "how their chiefs ordered them out in 

 canoes to practise throwing spears at flying ducks before engag- 

 ing the enemy in warfare.'" Mrs. Nuttall was enabled to trace, 

 by means of a careful study of a MS. edition of " Sahagun's 

 Historia," preserved in the National Library at Florence, the 

 complete evolution of the atlatl from the simple form used by the 

 native hunter to launch the harpoon with two or three barbs at the 

 fish or water-fowl of the lagoons. This had a cord attached to 

 retrieve the game. " Minus the cord, the spear-thrower became 

 part of the necessary equipment of every soldier of a certain 

 grade," and was used with fatal effect, as Bernal Diaz most 

 distinctly states, in opposing the advance of the Spanish 

 adventurers. Elaborately decorated forms first became the 

 emblem of chieftainship, and ultimately symbolic of the Aztec 

 deities, and were borne aloft by the chief-priestly warrior and 

 representative of the gods in ceremonial processions. The 

 maximum of development was attained in the symbolic "blue 

 atlatl " or "blue serpents," inlaid with gold and richly decorated 

 with feather- work, described as " bishops' crosiers " by Cortes, 

 who sent specimens presented to him by Montezuma II. to the 

 Court of Spain. Some examples are still preserved in the 

 Ethnographical Museums of Berlin and Vienna, and in the 

 British Museum. 



It was in the course of these researches that Mrs. Nuttall 

 made the important identification of the atlatl " as the hitherto 

 unrecognized weapon " grasped by the warriors sculptured on 

 the " so-called sacrificial stone of Mexico," and also by the 

 warriors depicted in Stephens's illustrations of the bas-reliefs 

 adorning the ruins at Chichen-ltza in Yucatan. The different 

 myths relating the invention or origin of the atlatl are col- 

 lected and explained, and the following very practical philo- 

 logical derivation of the name allatl is offered by her as a 

 suggestion supported by a series of careful analyses : — 



"The Aztec word atlatl, or allatli, is intimately connected 

 with the verb tlaca = to aim, to throw, or cast. From this verb 

 a whole series of words is formed, as tlatlacalizlli — the act of 

 throwing, &c. ; tlatlaxtli = the object thrown ; tlatlcani = 

 thrower. The name atlacatl— a synthesis of dll, water, ilacatl, 

 men — was applied to the fishermen, the original users of the 

 atlatl ; and it is suggested that the word atlatl may primarily 

 have been a synthesis formed with the verbal noun ilatla(;ani — 

 thrower, and All, water, which would give the word atlatlafani, 

 meaning water-thrower, not an unfit name for the harpoon- 

 thrower of the watermen " (p. 12). 



This interpretation is certainly not weakened by the recent 

 discovery that the primitive form of atlatl is still in use in the 

 lake regions of Mexico. In other respects Mrs. Nuttall's 

 paper well repays perusal by all interested in Mexican anti- 

 quities. 



A word with reference to Prof. Otis Mason's remark " that 

 the problem now is to connect Alaska with Mexico." Given 

 hungry aboriginal man in the foreground, and fat wild ducks in 

 what artists term "the middle distance," it does not seem 

 wholly irrational to surujise that the atlatl, or spear-thrower, 

 was independently evolved in suitable environments. Does not 

 the average nineteenth-century boy still betray a strong innate 

 tendency to throw or sling stones at every bird he sees ? Perhaps 

 this is but accumulated inherited instinct, not yet eradicated by 

 civilization. It is at all events certain that the atlatl v/a.s widely 

 used by the aboriginal inhabitants of the American continents, 

 as Prof. Max Uhle's researches testify abundantly. 



Brighton, November 21. Agnes Crane. 



The Chromosphere Line Ang&trbm 6676'9. 



With regard to Prof Young's observations as to the non- 

 coincidence of the bright chromosphere line (Nature, Novem- 

 ber 12, p. 28) with the corresponding dark line 6676*9 of 

 Angstrom's scale, it may be interesting to note that Profs. 

 Liveing and Dewar have observed a barium line at 6677, which 

 is therefore slightly less refrangible than the dark solar line. 

 In his catalogue Prof Young also gives a barium line at 6018 o, 

 which is identified with Kirchhoff 933*8. In the course of the 

 observations of sun-spot spectra taken at Stonyhurst with a 

 twelve- prism spectroscope, no dark solar line has been noted 

 in this position except in two uncertain instances over spots. It 

 would be an important fact should two barium lines be found in 

 the chromosphere without corresponding dark lines. 



