6i4 



NATURE 



[October 26, 1893 



in order to smuggle it for the museum in which he is interested. 

 Sometimes museum officials go on missions to collect, or to 

 excavate in accordance with the laws, while what they obtain is 

 smuggled out in defiance of law. This is going on yearly, and 

 will go on till some better system is established. Meanwhile 

 all information concerning such discoveries has to be suppressed ; 

 and the most important acquisitions of museums are a matter 

 which cannot be published, or even talked about in detail, while 

 official papers have to be treated as secret archives. 



In England the Government is a hindrance rather than a help 

 to a better state of things. France and Germany ask other 

 powers in a straightforward way for presents of antiquities by 

 diplomatic channels ; and they often get what they want, as 

 we did in the days of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and Sir Henry 

 Layard. But recently English diplomacy has, on the contrary, 

 repeatedly thrown away what rights Englishmen might claim 

 concerning antiquities, in order to gain petty advantages which 

 diplomatists were capable of understanding. 



The work which has been done in Egypt by the Exploration 

 Fund and myself, at least shows that such an unsatisfactory state 

 of things is not unavoidable. The Egyptian laws are ad- 

 ministered with more sense than such laws in other lands, and 

 with a little diplomatic protection the position would be all that 

 could be reasonably wished. For many years large excavations 

 have been made openly, and with complete freedom, by English- 

 men ; nothing has been lost, either of objects or information, 

 owing to surreptitious methods ; all that has not been most 

 essential for the country itself has been openly brought to assist 

 study in England, and the fullest statements can be openly and 

 honourably made on the subject. Meanwhile objects smuggled 

 by officials have to be kept quiet, and lose whatever scientific 

 value their record might have possessed. 



Until our Government sees its interests in backing up work 

 for its museums by honest methods, and straightforward dealing, 

 we shall continue to lose the greater part of the scientific value 

 of museum acquisitions, and to have a seamy side to our ad- 

 ministration which is more discreditable than those personal 

 questions that have lately been raised. 



W. M. Flinders Petrie. 



University College, London, October lo. 



The Glaciation of Brazil. 



Dr. Wallace's pointed reference to myself in this week's 

 Nature induces me to send you these few lines. 



It has been said by more than one critic of my book on 

 the "Glacial Nightmare" that in some cases I was merely 

 slaying the slain, and notably in regard to Agassiz's views about 

 the glaciation of Brazil. It has been overlooked that Agassiz's 

 experience and authority on glacial matters were unrivalled, and 

 that he had written on this very question : "An old hunter 

 does not take the track of a fox for that of a wolf. I am an old 

 hunter of glacial tracks, and I know the footprint whenever I 

 find it." 



Again, Dr. Wallace, whose knowledge of the tropics is so pro- 

 found, had written : " Professor Agassiz was thought to be 

 glacier-mad, but if we separate his theories from his facts, and 

 if we carefully consider the additional facts and arguments 

 adduced by Prof Hartt, we shall be bound to conclude that how- 

 ever startling, the theory of the glaciation of Brazil is supported 

 by a mass of evidence which no unprejudiced man of science 

 will ignore merely because it runs counter to all his pre- 

 conceived opinions." Again he says : " It can hardly be main- 

 tained that the discoverer of glacial phenomena in our own 

 country,and who has since lived in such a preeminently glaciated 

 district as the Northern United States, is not a competent 

 observer ; and if the whole series of phenomena here alluded lo 

 have been produced without the aid of ice we must lose all con- 

 fidence in the method of reasoning from similar effects to similar 

 causes, which is the very foundation of modern geology." 



Lastly, Mr. James Geikie, in his second and revised edition 

 of '• The Great Ice Age," quotes Agassiz's conclusions without 

 a word of protest or warning (op. cit. 484-5). 



With these strongly expressed views before me, it was impos- 

 sible to ignore the issue, and it can hardly be said I was slaying 

 the slain in criticising those who believed in tropical glaciation. 



I did not then know that in his subsequent work on Dar- 

 winism Dr. Wallace had, with that candour which makes his 

 works so valuable to some of us, qualified and partially with- 

 drawn his previous conclusions on ihe subject, a fact which he 



NO. 1252. VOL. 48] 



again emphasises in his letter to you. With this letter cadet 

 qtiasHo, I know no one now who is willing to support Agassiz's 

 theory, and we may take it to be dead. Requiescat in pace. 



Meanwhile, however, let us do justice to those whose obser- 

 vations and logic have dispelled one phase at least of the glacial 

 nightmare. Dr. Wallace attributes this to his friend and cor- 

 respondent, but the work had already been done, and amply 

 done, by others, as I tried to show in my recent book. In it I 

 have quoted largely from the admirable remarks of Prof. Orton, 

 Dr. Ricketts, M. Crevaux, and last, but not least, Prof Hartt 

 himself, who as far back as 1871 had given up Agassiz's views 

 in regard to the Amazonian glacier (see American yournalof 

 Science, 3rd ser. vol. i. pp. 294-5). 



When we have got rid, however, of Agassiz and his 

 Amazonian glacier, we have not got rid of all our difficulties. 

 While we cannot accept the notion of tropical ice-sheets, we 

 have still to explain the existence of erratic phenomena in the 

 tropics, such as those described by Schomberg'in Guiana, by De 

 la Beche in Jamaica, by Blandford in Southern Persia, by 

 Chardin in Media, by Belt in Nicaragua, and by Hartung in the 

 Azores. There seems some difficulty in explaining these pheno- 

 mena without invoking the former existence of local glaciers in 

 parts of the tropics where they no longer exist, and also the 

 occurrence of large diluvial movements there. I shouid be 

 greatly indebted to Dr. Wallace, and so would others, for his 

 views on this subject. There remains another and a more critical 

 difficulty which I must reserve for another letter. In conclu- 

 sion he will permit me to thank him for his very valuable and 

 courteous letter. 



Henry H. Howorth. 



30 Collingham Place, Cromwell Road, S.W. 



The Glaciation of Brazil. — Scintillation of Stars. 



A VERY cursory examination of the gneiss rocks about Rio de 

 Janeiro — particularly the Corcovado — will show how the rock 

 breaks up. In some places it comes off in great flakes like the 

 coats of an onion, and the edges of these flakes are quite friable, 

 and can be reduced to fine grains between the fingers. In many 

 places it is found quite crumbled up by the weather, and down 

 the coast towards Santos fine grains of these rocks can be found 

 in the soundings at some distance from the land. 



It is somewhat singular that observation has led me to a 

 contrary opinion to M. Dufour in the scintillations of stars 

 (Nature, October 19). My attention was first drawn 1:0 the 

 phenomenon by an old and experienced sailor, a native of the 

 Western Islands, and a most clever weather prophet. 1 have 

 constantly observed at sea that steadily-burning stars indicated 

 calm, fair weather, and the more they twinkled the worse the 

 weather was likely to be. The forecast given by this variation 

 in scintillating was almost invariably correct in the high lati- 

 tudes, though it failed sometimes in the tropics. 



David Wilson Bari^cer. 



The IVorcester, Greenhithe. 



The Summer of 1893. 



In his letter in Nature of August 31, Mr. W. B. Crump 

 explains how the weather of the year has influenced the times 

 of the flowering of the Halifax flora ; and it may be of some 

 interest to offer a note on the blossoming of a few common 

 plants, trees, and bushes around Worcester. 



The cardamine blossomed on April i6, herb Robert on the 

 l6th, the oak on May 5, the elderberry on the loth, the 

 purple orchis on the 13th, and bear's garlic on the 13th also. 



In this part of England field blossoms form an important 

 factor in cottage economy. The harvest of this flora begins in 

 spring with the primrose, the viole', and the wild daffodil, the 

 latter here called the Lent lily. This season the Lent lily 

 blossomed in March, as did the primrose and violet. Of late 

 years these flowers have acquired a commercial imporiance, and 

 engage, especially the former, a multitude of pickers and 

 packers, lending life and colour to lonely railway stations. 

 During the season dealers station in suitable country habitats 

 agents who collect the flowers gathered by the pickers, and in 

 large hampers despatch them to destinations all over the king- 

 dom. This year the daffodil yielded less abundantly than usual. 



Next to these blossoms follows the cowslip crop. This, for 

 the sake of the pips, which, at is. a peck, are in demand at 

 the British wine makers, is collectedlargely by cotters' children. 



