2l6 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Sept., 1904. 



or extinct alphabets in parallel columns, and all will be 

 perceived to have sprung from a single ancestor — 

 Phoenician or transformed Egyptian. The developrnent 

 ha.s taken place in the manner of all organic evolution. 

 Spontaneous slight variations, due to accident, con- 

 venience, necessity, or caprice, have made all of the 

 daughter-alphabets to differ sensibly from the mother- 

 alphabet. In some letters a diagonal stroke has been 

 substituted for the perpendicular ; in others, a curve 

 gradually approaches the straight line, which ultimately 

 prevails. The position of an angle is changed ; a 

 flourish is added to a letter at the bottom ; a cross 

 stroke has a preponderance to one side ; a triangular 

 or circular top degenerates into a thick line ; other 

 characters rise above or descend below the line, or 

 shoot out at an angle ; and so on. How far such 

 fanciful variations may carry an alphabet we perceive 

 in Black Letter or Old English, which, or a congener 

 of it, has been stereotvped into the modern German 

 alphabet. Even printing does not arrest development, 

 but gives increased scope to it. The variants of the 

 artist who designs calendars and initial letters are of 

 the same nature as those which made the Etruscan 

 and Greek alphabets to differ from the Phcrnician. 



Litera-ty and Aesthetic. 



The range of variation is, perhaps, widest in poetry, 

 where the free spirit moves in an ideal world and half 

 creates its own objects. First, the rhythm varies. The 

 ancient Greek poets, Chaucer and the earlier English 

 poets, and all who trusted to their ear, "counted in 

 each line the accents and not the syllables." 

 With the loss of inspiration and the stiffening 

 of the resthetic sense, the fashion set in of 

 mechanically counting the .syllables, and we have 

 such poetry as Pope's. Chatterton and Coleridge 

 revived the old practice, converted it into a method, 

 and varied the double by a triple rhythm. Scott multi- 

 plied the variations, ringing the changes on " the posi- 

 tion of the accent in each foot, the number of the 

 accents, and the number of the syllables in each foot." 

 Next, the line, couplet, or stanza varies. In the first 

 history of English literature that has been fruitfully 

 impregnated by the evolutionist idea. Professor Mac- 

 millan Brown has luminously traced the variations of 

 metrical forms through the second half of the 

 eighteenth century. Two stand out conspicuous — the 

 heroic couplet and blank verse. In Milton blank verse 

 reaches the high-water mark by its cunning inversions, 

 its complex harmonies, and its sublimity. Then it is 

 displaced for half a century by the heroic couplet. 

 When it comes back its character has completely 

 changed. Descriptive in Thomson, stilted and ethical 

 in Akenside and Warton, simple and straightforward 

 in Cowper, picturesque and suggestive in Rogers and 

 Campbell, narrative in Southey and Landor, austere in 

 Wordsworth, and plastic in the Brownings, it is once 

 more richly musical in Tennyson. The rhymed couplet 

 runs a similar gamut of variations. Lastly, the struc- 

 ture of the poem varies. There are five standard types 

 of the sonnet ; there are six chief variations of it in 

 Italy, where it has been most cultivated ; the French, 

 too, have delighted in experimenting on it, and there is 

 a succession of English varieties ; while the sextet, or 

 group of six concluding lines, has been rhymed in 

 eighteen different manners. 



It might be better to say nothing than to say too 

 little on the highest province of man's activity, but a 

 single instance may be adduced from the zesthetic 

 sphere. Hardly anything seems more likely to be 



stereotyped than the music of an oratorio. Yet great 

 diversities have marked both the score and the per- 

 formance of the Messiah. The score has been edited 

 by a succession of musicians. Mozart supplied new 

 harmonies and new accompaniments. Hiller in- 

 corporated a version of his own with Mozart's score. 

 Bridge tried to restore it as Handel left it. Prout fills 

 up vacant harmonies, eliminates some additions, re- 

 stores Handel's orchestration, and deletes Mozart's 

 false counterpoint. To changes of score have been 

 added variations of performance : the harpsichord has 

 been disused ; the organ is larger ; the composition of 

 the orchestra has varied at different periods ; as have 

 also the proportions of the band and the chorus. There 

 have been many ^lessia/is. 



.Such are a few examples, culled from a multitude, of 

 variations among sociological species. Evidently, the 

 genius of variety, which has made the outer world so 

 Ijright to eye and ear, has clothed in shapes as multi- 

 form the far more complex world of man's social 

 strivings and achievements. May we not conclude that 

 civil as well as natural history presents unasked all 

 those new openings and new paths which, selected and 

 pursued, lead to higher stages of ci\ ilisation ? 



Some Tibetan Animals. 



By R. Lydekker. 



Naturalists are speculating whether the opening-up 

 of Tibet, which is practically sure to follow the present 

 expedition to Lhasa, will result in the discovery of any 

 new animals of special interest. So far as the smaller 

 mammals, such as mice, rats, squirrels, shrews, &c., are 

 concerned, it cannot be doubted that systematic collecting 

 will be sure to yield a certain number of new forms. 

 With regard to the larger mammals, the case is, how- 

 ever, different, and it would be unwise to expect that any 

 strikingly new type is likely to turn up, although important 

 information will doubtless be obtained in due course with 

 regard to the mode of life and the nature of the habitat 

 of several of the mammals already known to us. The 

 reasons for taking this somewhat discouraging view as 

 to the prospects of discovering new animals of large size 

 in Tibet are as follows : — 



In the first place, although few Europeans have hitherto 

 actually reached Lhasa, the country has been traversed to 

 the northwards of that city from east to west — notably, 

 by ^Messrs. Bower and Thorold in 1892 — by travellers 

 who have done all in their power to collect specimens of 

 the fauna; while many sportsmen, naturalists, and collec- 

 tors have penetrated far into the interior from either the 

 eastern or the western border. ^Moreover, the typical 

 Tibetan fauna inhabiting the high plateaus above 14,000 

 feet is closely allied to, if not absolutely identical with that 

 of Eastern Ladak, which lies within the limits of Kashmir 

 territory, and has therefore for many years past been 

 readily accessible to Europeans. On the other hand, the 

 mammals of the somewhat lower and apparently more or 

 less wooded districts forming the cistern portion of 

 Tibet range into the north-western provinces of China, 

 such as Shansi and Kansu, where they have of late years 

 been collected by ;\Ir. F. W. Styan, an English tea- 

 planter. Not that our information with regard to the 

 mammals of Eastern Tibet depends by any means solely 

 on the collections made in Kansu and Shansi. On the 

 contrary, the great French missionary explorer, Abbe 



