30 



NATURE 



[May io, 1894 



between psychic processes and inlra-or^anic and (I suppose) 

 more especially, central nervous processes. Wiih respect to the 

 term " psycho-physiolngical," used by Dr. Hill in his syllabus, 

 it may at least be said that it avoids the ambiguity of " psycho- 

 physics," as corned and defined by Fechner, while it is the 

 direct descendant of the term "mental physiology," which is 

 well fixed in Briti.-h scientific literature. ' 



I have only to repeat that Dr. Titchener's attempt to dis- 

 tioguiih between the domains of physiological psychology and 

 psychophysics seems to me far from adequate. It has about 

 it, to my irreverent eyes, something of Wundt's own oracular 

 obscurity. 



In calling atttention to reaction-time experiments, I did not 

 refer to simfle reaction-times. I thought the various lines of 

 experiment in which the processes of hesitation and selection, and 

 so forth, are elucidated by measuring the intervals between 

 sensory stimulus and muscular reaction might be brought under 

 the head of reaction-time experiments. But not being in the 

 privileged circle of working " psycho-physicists,' I daresay I 

 erred here too. 



This little discussion will not be in vain if it wake up Dr. 

 Titchener, or some other working psycho-physicist, to the 

 obscurities that hang over their new field of research for the 

 outside student. It ^seems to me that we want careful definitions 

 of the respective scopes of the several departments of research 

 which are either psychological or which be.ir directly on 

 psychology, more especially experimental psychology as a whole, 

 psychophysics, and physiological psychology. Neither Wundt's 

 nor Dr. "Titchener's definitions satisfy some of us who, on this 

 benighted island, provokingly placed between two luminous 

 continents, are doing our best to catch some of the rays which 

 they are shooting forth in such abundance. 



The Writer of the Noie. 



Some Oriental Beliefs about Bees and Wasps. 

 Since Baron Osten Sacken's letter appeared in Naturi; 

 (vol. xlix. p. 198), I have been taking an occasional survey in 

 my small library of Oriental literature, to inform him of 

 passages referring to the liugonia-supersiition. So far as I 

 could find, the people of the far East seem not to have possessed 

 any belief about oxenborii bees; however, a propoi of this 

 matter, 1 have come across several legends relating to some 

 Hymenoplera, which I may c™"P ** follows : — 



(1) Fossores Slory. — Of all the insect stories of the far East, 

 this may claim very high antiquity ; it was first celelirated, more 

 than two thousand years ago, by a verse in the Confucianist 

 "Book of Poems," and is, to this date, preserved by a well- 

 known metonymy " Ming-ling " (that is, the caterpillar), 

 meaning the EosterChild. This story, according to Vang 

 Hiung, a Chinese philosopher (53 n.c.-lS A.D.}, was that "the 

 Fossores, having no females, capture infant caterpillars from 

 mulberry-trees, and address them a spell ' Mimic me, mimic me," 

 whereby they are turned into the young Fossores." Indeed, the 

 Japjnese name of the Fossores is Jiga (that is, " Mimic-me "). 

 .\gainst this Tc^u Ilung-King, a Tauist sage (452-536 A.D.), 

 has argued that these insects have had offsprings of their own, 

 but used to deposit the eggs on bodies of other insects to 

 provide them with food in luiure. 



(2) Ont U^^ed It'ai/'. — In I.i Shi-Chin's work, cited above, we 

 read: — "This production of Ling-n.in, resembling a wasp, 

 small and black, has one leg united with the root of a tree ; it 

 can move but cannot escape." Also a One-legged Ant is 

 mentioned. 1 would suggest that these insects were infested by 

 the forms of Cordyccps, as is instanced in the stories of La 

 Guepe Vcgciale. 



(3) Fungut-lvrii /faj/.— TwanChing Shih's "Miscellanies," 

 book XVII., contains the following note: — "A poisonous and 

 noctilucous I'ungus of Ling-ran is, alter rain, metamorphosed 

 into a large black wasp with serrate mandibles more than three- 

 tenths of an inch long. At night it tries to enter the cars and 

 ootlrils of a man, and hurt.s him in his heart." 



(4) Production of Amhtr Jiom litis. — In the same work, 

 book xi., i> the following quotation from the " Record of 

 Southern Savages" : — "The liecs-with- Broken Waists exist in 

 the sinds of Ning-chau, and come out when banks fall 

 <lown ; the natives loaUe amber by applying fire to them. ' 

 Obviwutly this erroneous inference was drawn Iroiu the presence 

 io amber of some hymcnopicrous remains. 



(5) Difltra miilaken /or /fymeiid/itera. — Sie Tsal-Kang, 



NO. I 280. VOL. 50] 



in his "Miscellanies of Five Thenomena " (Japanese 

 edition, 1661, book ix., p. 43), narrates thus : — "InChang-sh» 

 I saw honeybees all without stings, so that, when trilled with 

 upon the palms, they were quite harmless : having no difference 

 from flies, that was strange ! " No doubt he has seen some 

 Eristalis, as is indicated by Baron Osten Sacken. 



(6) Horsehair IVasf. — Tazan Kan, a Jap.incse literatus 

 (1748-1827), writes on this suhject in his "Rambling Notes" 

 (Tokio, 1890, p. 22): — "About 1S17 a half-rotten trunk of 

 Celtis sinensis gave birth to wasps, whose tails they could not 

 withdraw from the tree, thus causing many to die. Having the 

 tails cut with scissors the survivors gladly dep.irted. One winter 

 a man bought a heap of fuel comprising a half-rotten oak 

 abounding with the similar wasps, several of which were strung 

 on a horsehair in the same manner as a rosary, there being 

 altogether several dozens of such hairs. The author's informant 

 took home a hair passing through three or four wasps, and 

 folded it in paper ; afterwards the hair became divided, .ind the 

 insects bit through the paper : the informant's suggestion was — 

 ' probably these wasps had been transformed from horsehairs 

 tangled round the rotten wood.'' Several times I have seen 

 in Japan this so-called " Babi-bo" (the llarse-hair Wasp), still 

 an object of popular amazement : it is nothing but an ichneu- 

 mon-lly, Brii:on peuetrator^ whose ovipositor of unusual length 

 has been the principal cause of such a superstition. 



KUMAGUSU MiNAKATA. 



15, Blithfield Street, Kensington, W., April 30. 



P.S. — In my letter on the "Constellations of the Far East" 

 (Nature, vol. xlviii. p. 542), I gave (rom Twan Ching-Shih's 

 "Miscellanies " portions of the list of the objects of Indian 

 fancy as to the resemblances of the constellations. Last March, 

 my reverend friend, Atchdrya Dharmanaga, then in Paris, 

 kindly sent me an extract from Roshin Sennin's L-;cture 

 on the ConstelLitions, recorded in Mahasannipata Sutra. 

 After comparison, I find that both quite agree exeept for a 

 few variations, so that that Chinese author of "Miscellanies" 

 seems to mc to have extracted his list from the above-mentioned 

 Indian authority. K. M. 



The Mass of the Earth. 



I HAVE no intention of reopening a discussion on the 

 advisability and necessity of carefully separating in our minds 

 those two notions, the weight of a body and its niiiss, which to 

 me (and to a great many others) are now so completely distinct. 

 The subject has alre.adybeen treated of in these I'ages. Hence, 

 in reply to the letter signed " K." I shall be very brief. The 

 mass of a body is simply the quantity of matter which it con- 

 tains ; its weii;/'! is the force with which the earth pulls the 

 body towards the centre of the earth ; this force varies slightly at 

 different points on the earth's surface, varies very much both 

 when the body is removed outwards from the earth or inwards 

 towards its centre, and would be nothing at all at the centre; 

 the ivi-i,^'/it would be practically nothing if the body were 

 removed a few millions of miles away from the earth. Hm 

 through all these changes, and through all mere changes of//' 

 the ma.'s o( the body is perfectly unaltered. U'ei^/it is a men 

 contingent property of mas.>, logically and physically distinct 

 from it ; a more contingent properly than sliupe : for, whde a 

 body must have some shape, it need have no weight. The 

 terms -.vei^'lit 0/ the earth, -.veight of Jupiter, weight of the sun, 

 &c., are absolutely ridiculous. The mass of the earth is acted 

 upon by no force whatsoever except the attraction of the sun 

 and the disturbing attractions of the moon and the planets. 

 The earth attracts itself with no force ; it has no weight. So 

 much for positive statement. 



The notion that the earth has weight— the inability or neglect 

 to distinguish the necessary property of constant /«.;<> from the 

 contingent projierty of r.'.;;'/i'— has given rise to many 

 absurdities. " If everything on the earth has weight, the whole 

 earth has weight, " is a fallacy of composition worthy of a 

 media;val dialectician. That the earth is a very heavy body 

 (with, of course, an inveterate tendency to fall "down"), has 

 supplied us with the assumption that it is supported on the back 

 of an elephant, these two exceedingly heazy bodies being 

 together supported on the back of a tortoise, and so on. To 

 compare the weii^ht of Jupiter with that of the sun, "imagine a 

 gigantic lialance with equal arms and equal pans ; let the sun be 

 placed in one pan ; then, /;; order to preserve the I'alance, more 

 than 1000 Jupiters must be placed in the other pan." 



