3^4 



NATURE 



[June 29, 1916 



The scheme of the work is purely ethno- 

 graphical. Anthropometry, in India at least, has 

 fallen into some discredit since the death of Sir 

 H. Risley, partly because it is now realised that 

 the materials on which he based his conclusions 

 were incomplete, partly because the groups 

 which he discriminated have been shown to be 

 less completely isolated than he supposed. 



Much space might have been saved "by compres- 

 sion. If, for instance, a set of standard accounts 

 of birth, marriage, and death observances were 

 once for all prepared, it would save constant 

 repetition, and it would be necessary only to refer 

 to variations from the normal practice. But the 

 author has followed here the example of other 

 writers in the series. When these monographs 

 come to be revised, the scheme of arrangement 

 might with advantage be reconsidered. 



Fig. 2. — Jain Ascetics with cloth before mouth and sweeping brush. Repro- 

 duced from "The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India." 



In these criticisms we must not be supposed to 

 underrate the value of this important contribution 

 to the ethnography of India. Every article shows 

 the assiduous care with which the facts have been 

 investigated; the articles are well arranged, and 

 in * the case of the less known tribes, like the 

 Gonds, Bhils, and Korkus, much novel informa- 

 tioti is supplied, while other less distinctively local 

 groups, like Marathas, Jats, Gujars, and Rajputs, 

 are adequately dealt with, the articles displaying 

 full acquaintance with the work done in other 

 Provinces, which is invariably quoted with full 

 acknowledgment. In almost every page there are 

 accounts of quaint usages and beliefs of the 

 highest interest. . The work is provided with an 

 excellent set of photographs, and its format 

 NO. 2435, VOL. 97] 



is what might have been expected from the 

 reputation of the publishers. 



The untimely death of Mr, Russell is a serious 

 loss to anthropology, and it is sad to think that 

 it occurred on the eve of the publication of a book 

 which was the work of his life, and will do much 

 to preserve the memory of his learning and 

 devotion to science. 



BIRDS' SONGS AND THE DIATONIC SCALE. 

 A LETTER from Dr. R. H. Bellairs, of Chel- 

 ■^^ tenham, appeared in the Times of June 14, 

 describing the performance "by a wild bird, 

 probably a thrush, of the arpeggio of the common 

 chord in tune, absolutely in tune." This was fol- 

 lowed by other letters, of which the Times printed 

 three and gave a summary of the rest. Their 

 contents amount to this : blackbirds do occa- 

 sionally sing a few notes in our diatonic scale ; 

 thrushes less often. Only one other bird was 

 mentioned, "the whitethroat or willow-wren," 

 which leaves the identity of the species doubtful; 

 and neither whitethroat nor willow-wren has 

 ever even dimly suggested to me the use of our 

 musical scale. But as the voices of blackbird 

 and thrush do now and then make this sugges- 

 tion, I will venture, at the Editor's request, to 

 say a few words on the subject. 



Few ornithologists are musicians, and few 

 musicians are ornithologists, so that a knowledge 

 of the elementary facts of the two sciences (if I 

 may for the moment consider music as a science) 

 is not a common acquisition. But if we are to 

 judge of the songs of birds by reference to the 

 diatonic scale, we must be quite clear about the 

 following two facts : First, our present musical 

 scale is an artificial selection, the result of a long 

 evolutionary process, from innumerable possible 

 intervals within the octave, and does not seem to 

 be based on any natural human instinct, prompting 

 to one particular selection rather than another. 

 (See the article "Scale" in Grove's "Dictionary 

 of Music," or Dr. Pole's "Philosophy of Music," 

 chaps. V. and vii.) 



Secondly, the vocal mstrument of a. bird is not 

 constructed so as to produce with any readiness 

 the tones of any scale consisting of fixed intervals. 

 The pitch of the bird's notes is regulated by 

 muscles attached to the windpipe, which is as 

 elastic as the body of a worm ; and a moment's 

 thought will show that this is not an ai>- 

 paratus suited for producing a fixed succession of 

 sound-intervals. Our reed instruments are more 

 like the bird's organ than any others, but they 

 are of hard material, with air-holes and a 

 mechanism based on mathematical principles. 



Combining these two facts, we may safely con- 

 clude that it needs a muscular effort, and probably 

 a strong one, for a bird to produce anything like a 

 tune on our scale; but at the same time it is not 

 impossible where the notes are produced slowly 

 and deliberately, as in the blackbird's song, and to 

 some extent in that of the thrush. It would seem 

 that these birds are occasionally prompted to such 



