228 



NA TURE 



[July 5, 1900 



space now to consider the subject fully ; but it may be 

 broadly stated that methods of expressing pleasure have 

 all arisen from habits and actions employed in self- 

 gratification — the satisfaction of the bodily requirements 

 — either in self-nutriment or in procreation. But they 

 may not be the actions employed by members of the 

 species under its present-day conditions. And in the 

 young they would certainly not be so ; they would be the 

 crystallised epitome, if such a term be allowed, of the 

 habits and actions which proved successful with ancestors 

 when they lived in a very different environment. Striking 

 coloration of the face with ridges and scar-like markings 

 would not now give pleasure to the sexes of the human 

 species in their civilised condition ; but the face of the 

 male mandril is evidence of their having done so and still 

 doing so among monkeys, and the practice of face paint- 

 ing, perhaps also of tattooing among savages, is evidence 

 of the monkey habits having been inherited by the human 

 species, and still finding favour among its members. 



In the matter of pain, the idea that the expressions 

 which indicate it go back to ancestors living under very 

 different conditions is excellently brought out. Expres- 

 sions would be the special muscular actions performed 

 under the stimulus of a feeling of injury — such actions as 

 were necessary to alleviate the pain, those necessary to 



Fig. 3.— a child crying. 



prevent further pain, or to escape from the danger indi- 

 cated by the pain, and those which were employed in 

 revenge on the inflicter of pain, on the principle that 

 destruction of the cause of injury would be the surest 

 method of prevention. 



Therefore, one of the first things that pain prompts an 

 animal to do is to exhibit and prepare its weapons of 

 offence. In the case of the human baby such weapons 

 of offence would be those which would have been 

 employed by the pre-human ancestors. The picture of 

 the crying child. Fig. 3, illustrates this. The peculiar 

 squareness of the open mouth, caused by retraction of 

 the lips at all four corners, is on purpose to exhibit the 

 fighting weapons, the canine teeth ; although, as a matter 

 of fact, the canine teeth have not yet been developed. 

 But the instinct to open the mouth so as to show canine 

 teeth has been inherited from pre-human ancestors who 

 habitually made use of these teeth in order to fight. 



There is another feature in this picture, the tight closing 

 of the eyes. This is to protect the eyes from injury 

 during fighting. I photographed a cat which I pretended 

 to strike. There was the same closing of the eyes ; and, 

 for a similar reason, a throwing back of the ears out of 

 harm's way ; and besides there was the paw ready to 

 strike the assailant. I photographed another cat being 

 teased. There was just the same opening of the mouth 

 as in this picture of the baby, and the canine teeth, which 

 were then disclosed, showed exactly what the cat's inten- 



NO. 1601, VOL. 62] 



tions were, that they were just the same as that expressed 

 by the throwing open the portholes, and the running out 

 the guns which we so often used to read of in accounts 

 of men-of-war. 



The lessons which the human baby can teach as regards 

 the past history of its race are very numerous. I have 

 only been able to glance at some of the more important ; 

 but they are sufficient to show that the subject is one of 

 wide range and considerable interest. 



S. S. Buck MAN. 



NOTES. 



Last Thursday a combined meeting of the Royal Society and 

 Royal Astronomical Society took place at Burlington House, 

 when the observers who went away for the recent eclipse com- 

 municated the results of their observations. As the reports have 

 not yet been published, we are unable to give an account of 

 them. We have received from Prof. Langley a preliminary 

 account, which we hope to print next week, of the expedition 

 which went under his direction to Wadesboro, U.S.A., to observe 

 the eclipse. The photographs he has obtained surpass any that 

 have ever been taken at an eclipse, and speak volumes for the 

 employment of instruments of great focal-length. 



The new physics laboratory of Owens College, Manchester, 

 was opened on Friday last by Lord Rayleigh. Particulars as to 

 the ceremony and the equipment of the laboratory will appear 

 in our issue for next week. 



The Conference on Malaria, which was to have been held 

 under the auspices of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

 at the end of the present month, has been postponed in order 

 to avoid clashing with the celebration of the Centenary of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons of England and other gatherings. 



We regret to notice the death, at Manchester, on Monday last, 

 of Dr. Daniel John Leech, a well-known physician, and 

 professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Owens 

 College. As chairman of the Pharmacopoeia Committee of the 

 Medical Council he had charge of the publishing of the last 

 edition of the British Pharmacopoeia, and his name had been 

 recently mentioned as the probable president of the British 

 Medical Association. Dr. Leech was in his sixty-first year. 



The death is announced of Prof. Corrado Tommasi-Crudeli, 

 secretary of the class of mathematical, physical and natural 

 sciences in the Reale Accademia dei Lincei. Tommasi com- 

 menced his career in 1859 as demonstrator of pathological 

 anatomy at Florence, after studying with Claude Bernard, of 

 Paris, and Duchenne In 1862 he went to study pathology 

 under Virchow, at Berlin ; the next year he delivered a course of 

 lectures on pathological histology at Florence, and in 1865 he 

 was appointed professor ordinarius of anatomy at Palermo. 

 During an outbreak of cholera in the following year, Tommasi 

 rendered valuable services by his study of the disease and its 

 mode of propagation, and published a well-known memoir 

 on the subject. In 1870, Tommasi was called to Rome, 

 where he was first appointed head of a newly-formed department 

 of pathological histology. Later, he carried out extensive 

 researches on the propagation of malaria. While his researches, 

 conducted in conjunction with Klebs, have been superseded by 

 recent discoveries, the general conclusions to which he was led 

 have not only ..been substantially confirmed, but have received 

 their true explanation in the new doctrine of the propagation of 

 malaria by mosquitoes. 



During the past week the summer meeting of the Institution 

 of Mechanical Engineers has been held in London, and proved 

 a successful gathering, interesting not only because of the various 

 papers read (the titles of which, excluding an additional one, 



