May 22, 1919] 



NATURE 



tening chamber, situated in some quiet spot behind 

 the mining system. When sounds were heard in any 

 particular gallery a listener was sent there with geo- 

 phones to investigate. The enemy is known to have 

 used several tvpes of mine listening instruments, but 

 no trace has been found of any instrument for the 

 determination of direction. 



Announ'CEMEnt is made of the death of Gen. 

 Stefanik, who may be better known to astronomers as 

 Dr. Milan Stefanik, formerly attached to the Meudon 

 Observatory. Dr. Stefanik was the son of a Slovak 

 pastor, and about 1905, being then quite a young man, 

 but already a doctor of science of Prague- University, 

 ioined the Meudon Observatory as pupil astronomer, 

 md, at the invitation of Dr. Janssen, proceeded to 

 ^pain with the expedition from that observatory to 

 ii)serve the total solar eclipse of August 30, 1905, and 

 made spectroscopic observations on that occasion. 

 During the succeeding year he pursued spectroscopic 

 investigation of various kinds at Meudon, sho^'ing 

 ingenuitv in improving apparatus, and made a special 

 study of the infra-red spectrum. In 1906 he went, 

 with others of the staff, to the subsidiary observatory 

 at Mont Blanc, where he continued his study of the 

 infra-red from the point of view of telluric absorp- 

 tion, making his observations from different altitudes 

 on the mountain. In 1910 Dr. Stefanik established 

 at his own expense an observatory in the island of 

 Tahiti to pursue his researches, and was therefore 

 conveniently placed to observe the solar eclipse of 

 April 28, 191 1, when the line of totality crossed the 

 Pacific. He made the short journey to the island of 

 Vavau in the Tonga group, where he had for his 

 Tieighbours the British observing parties under the 

 leadership' of Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer and Father Cortie, 

 and, though the weather was not entirely favourable, 

 it is believed that he obtained some successful results. 

 In December, 191 1, he was awarded the Wilde 

 prize by the Paris Academy. At the outbreak 

 of the war Dr. Stefanik was in Paris engaged in 

 scientific work, and he at once joined the French Army 

 as a private soldier, refusing a scientific appointment 

 offered him bv Marshal Foch. Shortly, however, he 

 accepted commissioned rank, and rapidly passed 

 through all grades to that of general. He met his 

 death at a comparatively early age in an aeroplane 

 accident in a flight from Italy to Bratislava, the 

 capital of his native land of Slovakia. 



As already announced, Col. D. Rintoul, senior 

 science master and head of the physics department 

 L of Clifton College, died at Clifton on April 21 of pneu- 

 monia. Born at Forteviot, Perthshire, in 1862, 

 Rintoul received his earlier education at St. Andrews 

 and Edinburgh; he proceeded to Corpus Christ! 

 College, Cambridge, in 188 r, and eventually became 

 a fellow of his college. In December, 1S85, he was 

 appointed senior physics master at Clifton in succes- 

 sion to the late Prof. Worthington, who had left to 

 become headmaster of the Royal Naval Engineering 

 College, Devonport. With "Rintoul in charge of 

 physics and Shenstone of chemistry, Clifton more than 

 maintained its prominent place among public schools 

 for science teaching. Rintoul's own words, "If a 

 teacher is wise he will encourage all independence of 

 \ thought," best show the principles upon which ^ he 

 acted in school, while his firmness of character, quick- 

 ness, and directness made his -teaching distinctive. 

 From 1904 to 1918 he was a housemaster. Always a 

 keen soldier, Rintoul joined the 2nd Gloucester R.E. 

 in 1888, retiring after some twenty years' service with 

 the honorary rank of lieut. -colonel ; he held the Terri- 

 torial officers' decoration, and on the formation of the 

 T.F. was nominated by the War Office as one 



NO. 2586, VOL. 103] 



of the military representatives on the T.F. County 

 Association. When the late Major H. Clissold left 

 Clifton in 1914 to raise a field company, Rintoul 

 came out of his retirement, and again took command 

 of the school corps, bringing it to a high state of 

 efficiency, and for this service was specially thanked 

 by the War Office. Rintoul's busy life made it im- 

 possible for him to do much orig^inal research, yet 

 the many novel features of his own laboratory reflected 

 his marked mental alertness and his live interest in 

 all recent developments of his subject. Shortly before 

 his death he gave valuable help to the Secondary 

 School Examination Council. His elder son, Lieut, 

 p. W. Rintoul, R.A.M.C, was killed in Flanders 

 in 1914. 



Sir W. Ridgeway contributes to the Quarterly 

 Review for April an interesting paper on the subject 

 of ancestor worship and the Chinese drama. He 

 remarks that it is not merely triumphs and victories 

 that are the themes of early dramas, any more than 

 they are in the most advanced. They are drawn 

 from appalling catastrophes and striking reversals of 

 fortune, as in the Muharram celebrations of the Shiah 

 Mohammedans, and in many examples from Greece, 

 China, and Japan. There is no need to assume that 

 China borrowed these themes from Greece or Greece 

 from China, as such honouring of the dead is world- 

 wide. Neither in China nor anywhere else did tragedy 

 arise from the worship of seasonal or vegetational 

 abstractions, but in the veneration and worship of the 

 dead. 



In Folk-lore (vol. xxix.. No. 4) Miss W. S. Black- 

 man contributes an interesting article on the rosary 

 in magic and religion, largely based on the extensive 

 collection in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford. The 

 use of the rosary, which claims high antiquity in the 

 East, is based on that of knots as mnemonic signs, 

 the highest development of which appears in the 

 Peruvian Quipus. The Mohammedan form is usually 

 assigned to Buddhism ; but tradition and passages in 

 the earlier literature point to a primitive type of 

 rosary, such as would not be used if borrowed from 

 a people who already possessed it in a highly developed 

 form. The period of its introduction into Europe is 

 usually fixed as that of the Crusades ; but we learn 

 from William of Malmesbury that Lady Godiva, wife 

 of Count Leofric, who died before 1070, had a circlet 

 of gems which she used in reciting her prayers. It 

 seems, therefore, probable that the rosary has been 

 evolved independently at more centres than one from 

 the use of knots as mnemonic records. 



The Avicultural Magazitie for May contains a tem- 

 perately worded and convincing plea for the establish- 

 ment of a bureau of economic ornithology, which, we 

 trust, will be productive of good results. The urgency 

 of the need for such an addition to the Board of Agri- 

 culture is, unfortunately, far from being realised, and 

 it is highly probable that any attempt to press this 

 matter would be met with the assurance that the time 

 for such a scheme was not opportune, nor would its 

 cost be justified. ^ We fear that Dr. Collinge, the 

 author of the article, is preaching to deaf ears, but 

 sooner or later even the Board of Agriculture may be 

 induced to listen to his plea. 



The development of the pericardiaco-peritoneal canal 

 in the dogfish (Scvllium) and Acanthias has been re- 

 examined by Mr. E. S. Goodrich (Journal of Anatomy, 

 vol. liii., part i. pp. 1-13, October, 1918). This canal 

 leads in the adult from the pericardial to the peri- 

 toneal coelom, and opens into the latter by paired 

 apertures. Balfour suggested that the caiial is a 

 remnant of the wider communication between the two 



