June 2, 1910] 



\NATURE 



407 



out on its back. I called the attention of my neighbours 

 to it, and I thought it was dead ; but in a few minutes it 

 began to move about, so I took care of it, and have it now 

 as well as the piece of coal. There is the cavity in the 

 coal where it laid. I can vouch for its genuineness. Is 

 it of any value as a curio to naturalists or geologists? I 

 have had several amateurs to see it " It matters little 

 to tell the reporters of such occurrences that the thing is 

 absolutely impossible, and that our believing it would 

 involve the conclusion that the whole science of geology 

 (not to speak of biology also) is a mass of non- 

 sense. Why that is so it would be difficult to make 

 them understand, for at present, with the exception of 

 the comparatively few professional and amateur geologists, 

 the general public, even some of the most educated, are 

 as ignorant of the most elementary facts of geology as they 

 are of the Chinese language. All popular beliefs, however, 

 rest upon some basis of fact, though the facts may be 

 imperfectly observed and erroneously interpreted. The true 

 interpretation of these alleged occurrences appears to be 

 simply this — a frog or toad is hopping about while a stone 

 is being broken, and the non-scientific observer immediately 

 rushes to the conclusion that he has seen the creature 

 dropping out of the stone itself. One thing is certainly 

 remarkable, that although numbers of field geologists and 

 collectors of specimens of rocks, fossils, and minerals are 

 hammering away all over the world, not one of these 

 investigators has ever come upon a specimen of a live 

 frog or toad imbedded in stone or in coal. Why are these 

 alleged occurrences testified to only by those having no 

 knowledge of geolog>', and, indeed, for the most part by un- 

 educated workmen ? It would indeed be an epoch-making 

 event in the history of science if, for instance, a member 

 of the Geological Survey should lay before us a genuine 

 case of a live frog enclosed in stone ! 



To the May number of the Psychological Revie-j) Miss 

 June E. Downey contributes a paper on the determination 

 of sex from handwriting. She concludes from her investi- 

 gations " that it is possible to determine sex from hand- 

 writing in perhaps eighty cases out of a hundred." She 

 finds that " the presence or absence of the so-called sex- 

 signs is . . . influenced largely (i) by the amount of writing 

 done ; (2) by age and consequently, to a certain extent, by 

 practice ; (3) by professional requirements such as shown 

 by the conventional writing of grade teachers and the rapid 

 hand of bookkeepers." The writing of two hundred persons 

 was examined in this investigation, being submitted to 

 " two professional graphologists and to fifteen persons 

 ignorant of the art of graphology. ..." A considerable 

 number of the two hundred persons whose writing appears 

 in the series are known to have been educated wholly in 

 co-educational schools in America. 



Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, F.R.S., sends us an interesting 

 article (reprinted from the Naturalist) entitled " Man as 

 an Instrument of Research," which formed his recent 

 presidential address to the Hertfordshire Natural History 

 Society. We quote the following paragraphs : — " . . . first, 

 to learn rightly to understand the evidence of the senses ; 

 and next, to learn to convey what has been gathered from 

 them in unmistakable terms, are the indispensable qualities 

 in the equipment of man as an instrument of research. . . . 

 Unless ... we qualify not only as observing, but also as 

 recording instruments, the new knowledge we may have 

 acquired remains merely personal. ... I suppose that one 

 of the chief difficulties experienced by everyone using 

 language for the description of phenomena is that the 

 observed facts form, as it were, an entangled mass, with 

 innumerable threads, interlacing, converging, diverging 

 NO. 21 18, VOL. 83 



aiound their common centre in all directions; whereas their 

 expression in language necessitates that the corresponding 

 ideas shall be spun off in linear sequence on a single 

 plane." 



In a paper recently read before the Royal Philosophical 

 Society of Glasgow, Prof. G. Elliot Smith discusses the 

 evolution of the practice of mummification in Egypt. It 

 originated from the experience gained of the desiccation 

 of the corpse in hot dry sand. The activity of the grave- 

 plunderer even in pre-dynastic times necessitated adoption 

 of precautions to secure the safety of the remains, and the 

 discover}- of the use of copper led to the invention of the 

 coffin, the sarcophagus, and the rock-cut tomb. The 

 abundance of salt and soda, and the use of resin by women 

 for cosmetics, suggested the custom of embalming. The 

 difficulty of accepting this explanation has hitherto lain in 

 the late date assigned to most existing mummies, none of 

 those in the Cairo Museum being older than the last king 

 of the seventeenth dynasty icirca B.C. 1580) ; but much 

 older mummies have recently been traced. One of the 

 time of Snefru was found by Prof. Flinders Petrie near 

 the Medum Pyramid in 1891, and was examined by Prof.^ 

 Keith (Nature, 1908, p. 342). The date of this specimen, 

 has now been fixed by Dr. G. A. Reisner about 2700 b.c- 

 (Nature, March 31, p. 136). It is thus more than eleven 

 centuries olde"- than the other examples, and justifies the 

 belief in the early adoption of the practice of mummifica- 

 tion in Egypt. 



The Zoologist for May is largely devoted to the habits of 

 animals, Mr. B. F. Cummings contributing the first portion 

 of an article on the formation of useless habits in British 

 newts, as observed in specimens in captivity, and Mr. E. 

 Selous continuing his obser\ations on the nuptial habits of 

 the blackcock. 



Dr. W. E. Hoyle has sent us a copy of a list of the 

 generic names of the dibranchiate cephalopods, with their 

 typical species, published in vol. xxxii. of the Abhandlungen 

 der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, form- 

 ing the '* Festschrift zum Siebenzigsten Geburtstag von 

 Wilhelm Kobelt." 



To vol. xxxii., Nos. 2 and 3, of Notes from the Leyden 

 Museum, Dr. E. D. Van Oort contributes a long list of 

 birds from western Java and Krakatau, among which a 

 Gerygone is described as new. Later on Dr. E. Hartert 

 expresses the opinion that Passerina, in place of Plecto- 

 phenax, should be used as the generic title of the snow- 

 buntings, while Dr. Van Oort maintains precisely the 

 opposite. This scarcely looks like the attainment of that 

 uniformity in nomenclature of which so much is from time 

 to time heard. 



According to the Field of Maj- 21, a correspondent of 

 the Baltische Waidtnannsblad states that before the 

 Russians came to the province of Ussuri the tiger was 

 Hterally king of the forest in that district. The natives, 

 Chinese and others, as well as the immigrant Coreaus, 

 looked upon the animal as a god. If any of them met a 

 tiger there was no question of resistance or fighting ; the 

 man threw himself on his knees and allowed himself to be 

 killed if the animal attacked him. W'hen domestic animals 

 were seized, the owner looked quietly on. Generally it was 

 the Chinese who risked their lives when they went to the 

 forest to collect shed deer antlers or roots of the gusing 

 plant for medicinal purposes. They fell easy victims to the 

 tigers, which at that time frequented the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of Vladivostok, where the primeval forest re- 

 mained dense and almost impenetrable. Graduallv the 

 Russians settled in these tracts, and the first thing thev 



