October 5, 1893] 



NA TURE 



543 



the subject is decidedly one of those social acquirements of 

 highly transmissible nature, its present features being more the 

 result of the national intercourse than that of the race-affinity. 



KUMAGUSU MiNAKATA. 



15 Blithfield Street, Kensington, August 31. 



Mr. Love's Treatise on Elasticity. 



Having now returned to England, I have had an oppor- 

 tunity of examining my paper on wires (Proc. Lond. Math. 

 Soc. vol. xxiii.), and I find that the discrepancy between my 

 results and those given by Mr. Love, on p. 169 of his book, is 

 due to a slip in my own work. On comparing my equations 

 (11 and 15), it will be seen that in the latter equation the term 

 - p(ffp - ar cos e) - ^dw'idd has been omitted. The value of 

 w' is, correctly given by equation 31, and when the omitted term 

 is inserted in equation 32, the resulting value of g will be found 

 to lead to values of the couples identical with itiose given by 

 Mr. Love. 



.\s I am strongly of opinion that the best way of constructing 

 a satisfactory theory of shells and wires is to use the method ot 

 expansion, coupled with the hypolhesis that all stresses which 

 vanish at the surface may be treated (10 a certain degree of 

 approximation) as zero throughout the substance of the shell or 

 wire, I am exceedingly glad 10 find that the apparent discrep- 

 ancy is due to a small slip in my work, and not to any defect in the 

 principles upon which the investigation is based. The question 

 as to the values of the couples may now be considered to be 

 completely settled. A. B. BASSET. 



September 28. 



New^ Caledonian Pottery. 



I AJi extremely anxious to be informed on a little matter, 

 and you are my only resource. In the J ournal of Ihe Anthropo- 

 logical Institute, August, 1S93, ''o'- "xiii. page 90, Mr. J. J. 

 Atkinson describes the making of New Caledonian pottery. 

 The ingenious device of the pebble as a pivot is interesting. 

 But Mr. Atkinson always says he. Do the men make pottery 

 in New Caledonia, or is this a case of what the country school 

 teacher termed the men embracing the women ? 



Washington, September 17. Oris T. Maso.v. 



SCIENCE IN THE MAGAZINES. 

 A MONG the articles of scientific interest in the maga- 

 -^*- zines received by us, is one in the Contemporary 

 Re7>iczu, in which Prof. VVeismann replies to Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer 3 attack upon his views as to the distinction in 

 the Metazoa between somatic and reproductive cells, and 

 on the immortality of the latter, and of unicellular organ- 

 isms. With regard to the experiments that have been 

 made with a view to proving the occurrence of telegony. 

 Prof. Weismann says : — 



Herr Lang, of Stuttgart, has for twenty years experimented 

 with dogs, without, however, ascertaining " a single fact that 

 could be made use of for the advancement of the infection theory." 

 Of course, in such a case negative results prove notiiing ; and the 

 attempt must be made to determine the truth by new experi- 

 ments. But as hitherto there have been no positive results 

 from the observations that have been made ; and as the most 

 competent judges, namely, breeders who have a scientific know- 

 ledge, such as Settegast and Nathusius, and the late head of 

 the Prussian Agricultural Siation at Halle, Prof. Kiihn, spite of 

 their extensive experience in breeding and crossing, have never 

 known a case of telegony, and therefore have great doubt as to 

 its reality ; it seems to me that according to scientific principles, 

 only t lie confonnation of the tradition by methodical investiga- 

 tion, in tins case by experiment, could raise telegony to the yank 

 of a fact. 



In "A Note on Panmixia," Dr. Romanes attempts to 

 remove any doubt that may exist in Mr. Spencer's mind 

 as to whether Panmi.xia is a vera causa of degeneration, by 

 showing that there are not excessive -plus variations of 

 an organ. Mr. Spencer had said, " If there are not 

 excessive plus variations, the hypothesis of Panmixia is 

 valid" — eri^o, accepting Dr. Romanes' proofs, the doctrine 

 is triumphant. 



Mr. Robert H. Scott writes on " Weather Forecasts " 



NO. 1249, VOL. 48] 



in the New Review. He describes the difficulties that 

 beset the weather prophet on all sides, and the various pro- 

 posals that have been made for gathering in information 

 which would increase their trustworthiness. Some of 

 the proposals, e.g. the mooring of signal-ships in mid- 

 Atlantic, are purely visionary, and intelligence directly re- 

 ceived from stations in the United States or Canada is 

 practically useless, for the condition of the atmosphere is 

 constantly changing, and the rates at which storms cross 

 the Atlantic vary considerably. The fact that the storms 

 that visit us pass to the northward of the Azores 

 would render those islands of little use to the Meteoro- 

 logical Office, even if a cable were laid to them ; and all 

 anticipations as to the advantages to be derived from 

 mountain observatories remain unfulfilled, according to 

 Mr. Scott. However, an examination of the results of 

 forecasts prepared at S p.m. from 1879 to 1S91 is fairly 

 satisfactorily. Taking the eleven districts of Great 

 Britain and Ireland, for which forecasts are made, it 

 appears that, during the period mentioned, an average of 

 45'? percent, of the forecasts were entire successes, and 

 34'8 partial, thus giving a total of 8o'3. Of the failures, 

 an average of 66 per cent, were total and 13 percent, 

 partial. England (South) showed the highest rate of 

 fulfilment, viz. 85 per cent., counting entire and partial 

 successes together. " The least successful districts are, 

 in order of their figures, the West of Scotland, the South 

 of Ireland, and then the North of Ireland, and the North- 

 west of England. The least successful forecasts are 

 therefore our exposed west and north-west coasts." 



Other articles of a scientific character in the New 

 Review are : "Are we Prepared to Resist a Cholera 

 Epidemic ? " by Mr. Adolphe Smith, and " The Increase 

 of Cancer," by Mr. H. P. Dunn. 



Under the title "Atoms and Sunbeams " Sir Robert 

 Ball gives, in the Fortnightly Review, a description of 

 Helmholtz's shrinkage theory of the maintenance of the 

 sun's heat, with particular reference to the "precise modus 

 operandi by which, as the active potential energy 

 vanishes, its equivalent in available heat appears." 

 " Electric Fishes " is the subject of an article by Dr. 

 McKendrick, and in it we find the investigations carried 

 out by Fritsch, Bois-Reymond and Sachs, Burdon- 

 Sanderson, and Gotch explained in an interesting 

 manner. Before describing the minute structure of 

 individual electrical organs the author makes the follow- 

 ing remarks : — 



About fifty species of fishes have been found to possess elec- 

 trical organs, but their electrical properties have been studied in 

 detail only in five or six. The best known are various species 

 of Torpedo (belonging to the skate family), found in the Medi- 

 terranean and Adriatic Seas ; the Gyinnotus, an eel found in 

 tne lagoons in the region of the Orinocco, in South America ; 

 the Malapterurus, the raash, or thunderer-fish, of the Arabs, a 

 native of the Nile, the Niger, the Senegal, and other African 

 rivers ; and various species of skates (A'aia) found in our own 

 seas. It is curious that the Nile is rich in electrical fishes, 

 several species of pike like creatures (Mormyrtis and Hyper- 

 opisus) possessing electrical organs the structure of which has 

 been quite recently investigated by Fritsch. The electrical 

 fishes do not belong to any one class or group, and some are 

 found in fresh water, while others inhabit the ocean. 



Two distinct types of electrical organs exist. One is closely 

 related in structure to muscle, as found in the torpedo, gymnotus, 

 and skate, while the other presents more of the characters of 

 the structure of a secreting gland, as illustrated by the electric 

 organ of the thunderer-fish. Both types are built up of a vast 

 number of minute, indeed ihicroscopical, elements, and each 

 element is supplied with a nerve fibre. These nerve fibres 

 come from large nerves that originate in the nerve centres — 

 brain, or spinal cord — and in these centres we find special large 

 nerve-cells with which the nerve fibres of the electric organ are 

 connected, and from which they spring. We may, therefore, 

 consider the whole electric apparatus as consisting of three 

 parts : (l) electric centres in the brain or spinal cord ; (2) 

 electric nerves passing to the electric organ ; and (3) the electric 



