56 



NA TURE 



[November i6, 1899 



by either species, and no doubt fledglings perish in numbers by 

 these ever-watchful enemies. F. Finn. 



Indian Museum, Calcutta, October 19. 



Mr. Finn's letter is interesting as giving support to the 

 opinion that it is when at rest that butterflies are chiefly at- 

 tacked by birds. The injuries to be noticed on the wings of 

 the insects very frequently are symmetrical on the right and 

 left sides, and can only have been inflicted when the wings were 

 folded in repose. I can only recall one occasion on which I 

 have witnessed a bird attack a butterfly in flight, and then the 

 attempt was unsuccessful. Oswald H. Latter. 



Charterhouse, Godalming, November 7. 



THE EFFECT OF WEATHER ON 

 E VER Y-DA V LIFE> 



SOME time since, a distinguished member of the 

 Cotton Exchange asked my assistance to solve a 

 problem connected with the variation of prices in 

 " futures." He remarked that these prices varied almost 

 from hour to hour without any apparent cause, such as a 

 knowledge of the state of the crop or of the condition of 

 the American market, which would explain these fluctu- 

 ations. He was tempted to look for a subjective cause, 

 and thought it might be found in the state of the weather 

 exercising a powerful but unrecognised influence on the 

 dispositions of purchasers and speculators, inducing them 

 to buy or sell as they were alternately swayed by hope- 

 fulness or despondency. I was therefore invited to 

 compare the movement of the cotton market with the 

 variations in the weather, with the view of detecting the 

 hidden relation, and was further stimulated to exertion 

 by the assurance that if the origin of the fluctuation could 

 be discovered "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice" 

 would be at my command. Unhappily I failed to trace 

 in the fickle weather the hidden springs that underlie 

 the motives of speculators ; and that fortune is still to be 

 made by some one, possessed it may be of greater 

 ingenuity or greater application, and to such an one I 

 present the idea without hope of reward or acknowledg- 

 ment. 



Mr. Dexter's book reminded me of this experience, for 

 he, too, has apparently embarked on an inquiry as 

 difficult, but with a motive more noble, and let us hope 

 with a reward more certain. Mr. Dexter wishes to trace 

 the influence of weather on human conduct in general, 

 and to see how far man's emotional state is afifected by 

 meteorological conditions. His reward is the attainment 

 of a degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and the inquiry which 

 he has instituted has apparently been undertaken with a 

 view to meet the requirements of the authorities of 

 Columbia University. One may sincerely hope that Mr. 

 Dexter will have his ambition gratified, for to say that he 

 has not spared himself in the labour of the inquiry is to 

 say little. What is much more to the purpose he has 

 not spared others. Teachers and superintendents of 

 schools, wardens of prisons, superintendents of asylums 

 for the insane, officials of the Weather Bureau and many 

 others have been laid under contribution, by having sub- 

 mitted to them a "questionnaire" to completely satisfy 

 whose interrogations involved not a little labour. Apart 

 from the inconvenience which such a process might cause 

 individuals, we doubt whether the plan adopted is the 

 most trustworthy that could be found. Personal influence 

 rather than climatic conditions is likely to introduce a 

 systematic error into the final result. It is open to 

 question whether the authorities consulted have satis- 

 factorily eliminated the effect of weather from their own 



1 "Conduct and the Weather : an inductive study of the mental effects of 

 definite meteorological conditions." By Edwin Grant Dexter, A.M. (New 

 York and London : The Macmillan Co. Psychological Review Memoir.) 



iSO. 1568, VOL. 61] 



systems and mental states. The power of punishment 

 rests with the authorities who have been consulted, and 

 it may happen that those under their care are the 

 victims of an irritability, engendered in the supervisors 

 from causes with which the weather has absolutely no 

 concern. To judge therefore mainly by the infliction of 

 punishments seems of rather doubtful wisdom. This 

 obvious objection has, of course, not escaped the author, 

 and in one place he certainly recognises that the emotional 

 state of the teacher is a not unimportant factor in the 

 result. Indeed, he says, it may be the teacher we are 

 studying more largely even than the pupil. The frank- 

 ness with which this admission is made is more to be 

 approved than is the reasoning by which it is set aside. 



And now we are tempted to record a fact of which 

 Mr. Dexter is entitled to make the fullest use. The 

 temperature is 78°, the sky is cloudy, the wind is east, 

 the velocity about three miles an hour, and under these 

 conditions we find it much easier to present the facts at 

 which Mr. Dexter has arrived than to criticise his results 

 or carp at his methods. We notice that the author has 

 studied, grouped, and commented on no less than four- 

 teen classes of empirical data, embracing more than a 

 quarter of a million separate facts. These fortunately 

 can be grouped under fewer heads than the elaborate 

 method pursued by the author admitted, and we hope 

 we shall do him no injustice by the curtailment. First 

 we have the registration and the behaviour of children 

 in public schools (which we should probably call Board 

 Schools in England) in New York City and at Denver, 

 Colorado, two very widely different climates it will be 

 remarked. Then we have a large amount of inform- 

 ation drawn from police reports, which include assault 

 and battery, discipline in penitentiaries, arrests for 

 insanity and reported suicides. To these are added a 

 few more or less fancy matters, in which the numbers 

 involved are necessarily small, such as the clerical errors 

 discovered in the records of certain of the national banks 

 in New York City, maximum strength tests in gymnasia, 

 and lastly "a study in discrimination carried on in the 

 Psychological Laboratory of Columbia University." The 

 discussion, it will be seen, is very wide, and one fact that 

 will strike the reader prominently when he considers the 

 variety of occupations into which the author has thought 

 it judicious to push his investigations is the length to 

 which this kind of inquiry can be carried when once we 

 are bound hand and foot by the demon of statistics. 

 Possibly the weather has no more to do with a clerk's 

 mistakes than has the quantity or the quality of his 

 supper the night before, but given a nicely ruled sheet of 

 paper, and a system of rectangular coordinates, it is 

 impossible to forgo the delight of plotting results to a 

 scale. This is a harmless amusement ; but when we 

 begin to draw conclusions and to build theories, we may 

 go as hopelessly astray as did the famous witness who 

 connected the high tides with the building of a steeple. 

 The author endeavours to meet any criticism of this 

 nature in a passage which we may quote at length, to 

 serve both as an example of his style of writing and his 

 method of argument. 



"The meteorological conditions are the essential 

 causes of certain general physiological or mental states, 

 some of which seem to be fertile fields for the action of 

 immediate causes which are, from the standpoint of this 

 problem, accidental. To be concrete, on a certain morn- 

 ing Johnny could not have what he wanted for break- 

 fast, and went to school with the sulks, with a consequent 

 disastrous effect upon his deportment. Most certainly 

 the disappointment at home had a causal relation to his 

 demerit, and no excuse from the weather is sought. But 

 if we take the record of 200 Johnnies for 600 different 

 days, and find that on certain days more of them are out 

 of sorts than on other days, we look for a constant con- 



