48 



DISCOVERY 



darma, by the monk Palgidarje, in the ninth centvny. 

 The present play, being performed by soldiers, was a 

 lay one ; it was a sort of musical comedy, and was 

 accompanied by singing and dancing and clown-like 

 antics. The plot centred round the love affairs of a 

 Tibetan king, named Kalawonga, who got into diffi- 

 culties over his two wives. The principal comedians 

 represented semi-savage Tibetans from the extreme 

 west of Tibet and swashbuckling braves from Kam ; 

 these being the characters assigned to the people of 

 Western and Eastern Tibet respectively by the more 

 refined and civilised inhabitants of the central Brah- 

 maputra basin. The piece is one of the best known of 

 Tibetan plays, and the acting was loudly applauded 

 by the audience, who, apart from ourselves, consisted 

 of most of the population of Chamdo, as well as many 

 Tibetans from the neighbourhood. 



" Towards the end the house was brought down by 

 the appearance of five actors representing the ' Tribute 

 Nations' (i.e. tributary to the Manchu Emperor), 

 dressed respectively as a Chinese, a Tibetan, a Mahom- 

 edan, a Mongol, and a Bhutanese. The actor dressed 

 as a Chinese elicited further roars of applause by 

 saluting the Kalon Lama in the old-fashioned Peking 

 way by bending dow-n and touching his boot. The 

 grand finale, as darkness was falling, consisted in 

 presentations of parcels of tea, sacks of barley-meal 

 and packets of rupees to the actors. The rupees were 

 thrown down by the members of our partv from the 

 windows of the Kalon's house, and the players, fes- 

 tooned with complimentary katas, then cams and 

 expressed their thanks. The scene finally closed with 

 a bonfire of green juniper bushes and clouds of tsamba 

 cast into the air ; ever3'thing being done, said the 

 Kalon, strictly according to Lhasa lugso (Lhasa 

 fashion). Everyone seemed very happy, and not a few- 

 were considerabl}' inebriated by the end of the day. 

 .■\ popular beanfeast is indeed much the same thing all 

 the world over, whether it be August Bank Holiday 

 on Hampstead Heath or Chislehurst Common, or the 

 seventh moon festival at Chamdo." 



WIRELESS W.WES .\ND THE .\TL.A.NTIC 



" While communication across the .\tlantic has been 

 maintained regularly now for more than twenty vears, 

 it must not be imagined that there are no difficulties 

 and that all the problems have been solved. In spite 

 of a high degree of perfection in the instruments for 

 producing electrical waves and m those used to detect 

 them, the wave meets with many adventures on its 

 way, and there is some uncertainty as to how it really 

 gets there. One of the problems which, while it had 

 been surmounted practically, evaded theoretical ex- 

 planation, is the particular path pursued by the wave 

 between the stations. When Marconi first made the 



attempt to put England and the American continent 

 into communication, there were no scientific facts 

 which pointed to success, but there were some which 

 indicated the impossibility of surmounting the great 

 aqueous hump of the .\tlantic, 125 miles high, which 

 lies between. .\n electric wave is in effect a very long 

 light wave travelling with the same velocity — 186,000 

 miles a second — and possessing many other similar 

 characteristics. Now light waves show a rooted 

 objection to turning a corner. Save for a slight bend- 

 ing round the edges of objects, they pursue a straight 

 path from origin to destination. If an electrical wave 

 were endowed with equal rectitude, and were launched 

 on its way to Canada from Poldhu, it would arri\-e 

 there something like a thousand miles abo\^e the land. 

 Signals hovering in the heavens above and having no 

 tangible connection with the earth below would be 

 rather useless ; from that height they could not even 

 be collected bv a kite. Fortunately, however, the 

 waves come to earth themselves, and there is some 

 evidence to show that they travel all the way through 

 the air. Perhaps a more striking illustration of what 

 the curvature of the earth involves is to be found in 

 the fact that, when receiving signals at Buenos Ayres 

 from Clifden, a distance of 6,700 English miles, Marconi 

 was detecting waves which had been deflected from their 

 original direction by 97° ! " — Edward Cressy in his 

 Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth Century. 

 2nd Edition. (Routledge .t Sons, Ltd., 12s. 6d.) 



THE FUTURE OF MAN 



" Perh.\ps in future ages the progressive evolution of 

 man will continue, somewhere and somehow. If 

 higher species of man evolve in the future, it is not 

 unlikelv that this will occur, as in the past, in connec- 

 tion with great secular changes, over which man has 

 no control, such as the rising and sinking of continents, 

 the formation of deserts or mountains or oceans, or 

 changes in climate comparable to the glacial and inter- 

 glacial epochs, during which human evolution made 

 such wonderful progress. 



" In the present conditions and tendencies of the 

 human race, in the contest between progressive and 

 retrogressive forces, we see much cause for anxious 

 concern, but thinking on the distant past and the 

 boundless future creates a feeling of detachment and 

 of philosophic calm like that of the dwellers on 

 Olympus. We cannot see clearly the next scene, we 

 can scarcely imagine the ne.xt act, and the end of the 

 great Drama of Evolution, if there is to be an end, is 

 a matter of faith alone." — Professor Edwin Grant 

 Conklin in The Trend of Evolution, one of the essays 

 published in The Evolution of Man. (Yale University 

 Press, and Humphrey Milford, Oxford LTniversity 

 Press, 15s.) 



