DISCOVERY 



111 



Sir, 



To the Editor of Discovery 



This highly interesting article, which has inspired 

 a cohimn in The Times, touches on a subject of such 

 evident importance to the human race that one hopes 

 it will not be allowed to drop without discussion. 



Having read Colonel Haig's contribution with some care, 

 it hardly seems possible that the " Cosmic " factors, 

 adduced bv him at the end, can have been satisfying to his 

 own mind. Perhaps he has intended to be provocative. 

 Maj' it be permitted to comment briefly on the causes 

 adduced to account for the (implied) drying up of the 

 world's water ? 



(i) Water is locked up by glaciation, but we are 

 supposed to be living in a period of deglaciation which has 

 lasted some thousands of years. 



(2) Vegetation has no doubt locked up a certain large 

 amount of " capital " water, but its aqueous incomings 

 and outgoings must strike a fairly accurate balance and its 

 influence be more beneficent than otherwise, in that it 

 assists the circulation of water. 



Regarding other chemical action, it is difficult to see 

 how much water can enter into fresh combinations except 

 as a result of the assumed cooling of the earth. 



(3) Water is a very stable compound by no means 

 readily broken up into its constituent gases, and even so 

 practically only by human contrivance. 



{4) It is hard to believe that the cooling of the earth 

 can have made itself apparent in the course of some 

 6,000 years. It has been suggested that the earth is not 

 cooling, but is even getting hotter owing to the influence 

 of its radio-active constituents. 



Colonel Haig brings out one significant fact very 

 clearly, namely that the deserts of the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere have all been centres of civilisation and that their 

 degradation from fertility to desert conditions has been 

 extraordinarily rapid. Do we know any influence but 

 man's on the earth that produces such results in so 

 comparatively short a time ? Another important fact 

 brought out is that deserts, once established, tend to 

 spread. Yours, etc., 



Frank W. Herbert. 

 iS Upper Phillimore Place, 



Kensington, W.8. 

 January 3, 1923. 



Sir, 



TESTS OF MUSICAL ABILITY 

 To the Editor of Discovery 



in naming colours, because they had no clear mental 

 gallery of colours for purposes of identification. 



Another factor in musical ability that occurs to me is 

 the degree of complexity of sound of which a person 

 can form an image. Some musicians are said to be 

 able to hear mentally the playing of a whole orchestra. 

 Many persons, probably, cannot hear distinctly a three- 

 note chord. Very often, in these cases, what remains 

 in their minds after the chord has died away is not really 

 sound at all, but something vaguer : a sort of " emotional 

 atmosphere." The precise nature of this " atmosphere" 

 might be worth investigation, and also, perhaps, the 

 kindred question of whether music in a minor key 

 invariably tends to suggest sadder emotions than music 

 in the major. 



Possibly most of these points are really included under 

 one head or another of Professor Seashore's method, 

 but from Mr. Thouless's necessarily summarised account 

 it is difficult to be sure. 



Yours, etc., 

 27 Grove Terrace, C. B. Davy. 



Clay Pit Lane, 

 Leeds. 

 Ecbriiary 2S, 1923. 



We regret that an error occurred (on page 72, col. 2, 

 last sentence) in the publication of Mr. R. H. Thouless's 

 article on the subject, which appeared in our March 

 number. The reader will get the right meaning by 

 substituting the word " pitch " for " time " in both cases 

 where the latter word has been inserted in this sentence. 



May I suggest one factor in musical ability which 

 hardly seems to me to be treated as sufficiently funda- 

 mental in Mr. Thouless's extremely interesting article, in 

 your March number, on " New Methods of Judging 

 Musical Ability " ? I refer to the power to retain in the 

 mind auditory images, accurate in pitch, of a note heard. 

 The power to sing in tune clearly depends rather on this 

 than on ability to distinguish fine intervals. I believe 

 there are persons whose ear is sensitive to fine variations 

 of pitch, but who find it hard to compare two notes 

 because no really sharp auditory image of either can be 

 called up ; just as I have met persons who could match 

 dehcate shades of colour perfectly so long as both colours 

 were before them on the table, but who were uncertain 



Miscellanea 



RECENT DISCOVERIES OF ANCIENT HUMAN 

 REM.\INS 



Tvv'o interesting discoveries of ancient human remains 

 were announced towards the end of the month of Feb- 

 ruary. The Daily Mail of February 26th published a 

 sensationally written report of the discovery of a well- 

 preserved dolmen, 01 chamber of large upright stones 

 with a flat stone cap, at St. Ouen, Jersey, in the course 

 of excavations by workmen at the back of a house. With 

 the dolmen was associated a kitchen midden, or refuse 

 heap, full of limpet shells, a stone for grinding corn, and 

 an ancient human skull. The skull was very much 

 flattened, so much so that it was said to have no forehead 

 at all, and on this account it was suggested that it belonged 

 to a type very much older than that of Pithecanthropus 

 erectus, the ape-man of Java, while the kitchen midden 

 was thought to belong to the Mesolithic or Pre-Neolithic 

 Age, presumably on account of its resemblance to the 

 kitchen middens of the Baltic area which belong to this 

 period. The discovery is interesting, but neither of these 

 sensational suppositions is well founded. The flattened 

 appearance of the skull, in all probability, is merely due 

 to post-mortem flattening by pressure after burial, a 

 thing which often happens in the case of prehistoric 

 skulls, while the shell heaps are not necessarily very early 

 in an island in which the limpet has always formed an 

 important article of diet. The association with a dolmen 

 suggests a Late Neolithic date. 



A more interesting discovery is announced from Pata- 



