September i8, 1890] 



NATURE 



491 



pliant witnesses in support of any theory as to what the 

 primordial religion of mankind must have been? If it 

 were desired to prove that, prior to the advent of 

 Europeans, they were atheists, without any religious ideas 

 or ceremonial usages, we have several excellent witnesses 

 to prove it. We could prove equally well that they 

 believed in a devil only, that they were Dualists, believing 

 in a good and an evil spirit, that they had deified the 

 powers of Nature, that they had arrived at a belief in one 

 God, that they were polytheists, that they believed in 

 ghosts, in the return of the spirits of their friends, in the 

 immortality of the soul, and in the efficacy of prayers and 

 charms. Nay, if it were desired to produce perfectly 

 unprejudiced evidence in favour of the descent of man 

 from some higher animal. Lord Monboddo might have 

 appealed to the Tasmanians. For, according to Mr. 

 Horton, they believed " that they were formed with tails 

 and without knee-joints, by a benevolent being, and that 

 another descended from heaven, and compassionating 

 the sufferers, cut off their tails, and with grease softened 

 their knees." 



Dr. E. B. Tylor, F.R.S., the Reader in Anthropology at 

 Oxford, has written a short preface, in which he expresses 

 his general approval of the work. 



F. Max Muller. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part oj Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. ] 



British Association Procedure. 



There is one poiat on which I am unable to agree with Prof. 

 Tilden's letter in your issue of September 4 (0. 456), viz. that 

 eoncerning the work and constitution of the Sectional Commit- 

 tees. I can only speak in terms of Section A, but I believe that 

 whatever cynical doubt may be expressed as to the utility of the 

 proceedings of the section there is none as to the utility of its 

 proceedings in Committee. Here matters of moment are brought 

 forward, suggestions made, new researches encouraged or the 

 reverse ; and here, as Mr. Shenstone impHes, younger members 

 become acquainted with those whom they have long revered at 

 a distance. A sectional committee is not, and should not be, a 

 small executive body, but a large, representative, and suggestive 

 body comprising all the real workers in the particular subject 

 present at the year's gathering, and by no means excluding those 

 younger men who, though now retiring and inconspicuous, will 

 have at some future time to take a prominent place. 



Prof. Tilden speaks, however, of the demand for election 

 upon the sectional committees. 



If there is anything of this sort, and I believe that to some 

 extent there is, it is an abuse to be checked with vigour. 



I should like to propose a general agreement that any direct 

 demand or solicitation to be placed on any committee should be 

 accepted as at once disqualifying for that year. But all the 

 more would it be incumbent on accustomed members to see that 

 no real original worker was accidentally excluded from the 

 healthy and stimulating conference with his seniors which these 

 meetings may afford. Oliver J. Lodge. 



The Mode of Observing the Phenomena of 

 Earthquakes. 



Fonvarded by Dr. yohn Marshall. 



Having seen in Nature, of the 28th ult. (p. 414), your 



remarks, on the uncertainty of the evidence to be obtained from 



a narration of the subjective impression of movements of the 



earth and surrounding objects, in obtaining information with re- 



NO. 1090, VOL. 42] 



gard to earthquakes, and that you also remark that, "possibly, 

 some evidence on this subject might even now be obtained," 

 I venture to say that I was in a first storey room of Wickham 

 Place, near Witham, Essex, during the earthquake that occurred 

 somewhat severely in part of Essex a few years back ; and that 

 I was sitting against a partition wall, facing a window to the east, 

 during the whole time of its duration. A hill about \\ miles 

 away formed the horizon, the outline of which passed across this 

 window about halfway up, from my point of view. I saw this 

 outline apparently rise up to the top of the window, and sink 

 down again, a displacement which, if it had been due to the 

 movement of the hill itself, must have meant a great deal ; but 

 although this was really due, no doubt, to the motion of the house 

 itself, yet the appearance was so deceptive that it produced 

 entirely the idea, at the time, on my senses, that it was the hill 

 that moved. 



At Guy's Hospital last year, about 14 months ago, while I 

 was in bed, at somewhere about eight o'clock, I fancy, I felt 

 nothing, but saw the other parts of the building, through the 

 windows, sway slowly, and the sight of it gave me a more or 

 less dizzy feeling. There was a friend sitting on the bed at the 

 time, but he felt nothing. Until I drew his attention to the fact 

 that the bed curtains were swaying, he saw nothing of it. 



These impressions make me think that such are of no value 

 in a house except to determine very slight shocks. 



I made notes at the time of these points, but they are not to 

 hand just now. I scarcely think such evidence can be of any 

 use to you, but on the chance that it may be, I send it. 



Harold G. Dixon. 



Nelson House, Shanklin, Isle of Wight, September 3. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIA TION, 

 SECTION F. 



ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 



Opening Address by Prof. Alfred Marshall, M.A., 

 F.S.S., President of the Section. 



Some Aspects of Competition. 



I UNDERSTAND that the function of an opening address to a sec- 

 tion of this Association is to give an account of the advances made 

 in some part of the field of study with which that section is spec- 

 ially concerned. The part of our field to which I would drect 

 your attention to-day is the action of competition. We cannot, 

 in the short space of time allotted to us, make an adequate study 

 of the progress that has been made even in this part of our field ; 

 but we may be able to go some way towards ascertaining the 

 character of the changes that are going on in our own time in 

 the mode of action of competition, and in the attitude of econo- 

 mists towards it. 



I do not now speak of changes in the moral sentiments of 

 economists with regard to competition — though these, also, are 

 significant in their way — but of changes in their mental attitude 

 towards it, and in the way in which they analyse and reason 

 about its methods of action. Of these changes, the most con- 

 spicuous and important is the abandonment of general proposi- 

 tions and dogmas in favour of processes of analysis and reasoning 

 carefully worked out, and held ready for application to the 

 special circumstances of particular problems relating to different 

 countries and different ages, to different races and different 

 classes of industry. 



This movement may, perhaps, best be regarded as a passing 

 onward from that early stage in the development of scientific 

 method, in which the operations of Nature are represented as 

 conventionally simplified for the purpose of enabling them to be 

 described in short and easy sentences, to that higher stage in which 

 they are studied more carefully, and represented more nearly 

 as they are, even at the expense of some loss of simplicity and 

 definiteness, and even apparent lucidity. To put the same thing 

 in more familiar words, the English economists of fifty years ago 

 were gratified, rather than otherwise, when some faithful hench- 

 man, or henchwoman, undertook to set forth their doctrines in 

 the form of a catechism or creed ; and the economists of to-day 

 abhor creeds and catechisms. Such things are now left for the 

 Socialists. 



It has, indeed, been an unfortunate thing for the reputation 

 of the older economists, that many of the conditions of Englanc' 



