5^4 



NA TURE 



[April 12, 1900 



well be imagined. A supply having been obtained from the 

 Parson Drove Mill, a series of attempts were made in flasks and 

 beakers to get the blue colour, but they all proved unsuccessful. 

 It was then determined to experiment on a larger scale. 

 Having secured the assistance of a colleague, Mr. C. G. Barrett, 

 we started an eight gallon vat in a small barrel, in a steam 

 laundry. The directions of Hellot were closely followed — 

 woad, weld, bran, madder, lime and hot water were duly 

 mixed, the vat carefully covered, and periodically stirred — the 

 result being, not a little to my surprise, that at the end of twelve 

 hours a skein of wool, after an hour's immersion in the filthy- 

 looking liquor, turned a good " pastel blue " on exposure to the 

 air. A number of experiments were then made on a smaller 

 scale, which we found answered equally well, and proved that 

 it is as easy to dye wool blue with our English woad to-d9.y as it 

 was 300 years ago ; any housewife could do it now, if need be, 

 as easily as then. It is simply a question of digesting the woad 

 at a temperature of from ioo° to 140° F. (40° to 60° C.) for a 

 prolonged period. We found half a pound of woad (500 

 grammes) to a gallon (4 litres) of water quite enough to yield 

 good results. The water should be poured on the woad nearly 

 boiling, the vessel closely covered at first, and kept heated to 

 the above temperature. This can very conveniently be done by 

 placing it on the brickwork of a steam boiler. In from ten to 

 twelve hours small bubbles will begin to appear on the surface 

 of the liquor ; a little recently slaked lime (6 or 7 grammes) 

 should now be stirred in, one noticeable effect of which will be 

 the generation of an ammoniacal odour. A small pattern of 

 wool left in for an hour will become pale blue on exposure to 

 the air. In the course of a few hours a gramme or so of bran 

 will set the fermentation up again, which in its turn can be con- 

 trolled by adding lime. In this way the process may be kept 

 going on for several days. 



The longer and more often the patterns are immersed the 

 darker they become— at first pale blue, they will eventually 

 become dark blue — almost black. The paler shades are apt 

 to have a green tint, and it was "to kill the green" that the 

 older books on dyeing recommend the addition of a small 

 quantity of madder. 



It must be remembered that the quantity of indigo in woad is 

 but small, so that experiments with less than half a pound are 

 not likely to be successful ; the great point, however, is keeping 

 the temperature about 100° to 120° F. for many hours. 



Our ancestors had neither steam boilers nor thermometers, 

 but they would be able to keep the contents of an earthen 

 vessel " nicely warm," as judged by the hand, by placing it 

 on the hearth, when the embers were kept alight all night, 

 for in those times kindling a fire by flint and steel was 

 always an undertaking. 



My thanks are due to Mr. C. G. Barrett for his great help 

 in conducting these experiments, and for the facilities he has 

 afforded for carrying them out, as well as to Mr. Fitzalan 

 Howard, Prof. Penzig, of Genoa, and Sir Thomas Wardle. 



King's Lynn, March 31. Charles B. Plowright. 



Illogicality concerning Ghosts. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer, exposing the various inconsistencies 

 that occur so frequently in the ghost-stories of the savage races, 

 says : — " How illogicalities so extreme are possible, we shall 

 the more easily see on recalling certain of our own illogicalities. 

 Instance . . . that familiar absurdity fallen into by believers in 

 ghosts, who, admitting that ghosts are seen clothed, admit, by 

 implication, that coats have ghosts^an implication they had not 

 perceived" (" The Principles of Sociology," 3rd edition, vol. i. 

 p. 104). It seems interesting to note that the same opinion was 

 expressed about nineteen centuries ago by the Chinese philoso- 

 pher, Wang Chung {circa, 27-97 A.D.), whose sceptic remarks 

 on the traditions of all manners, handed down to his time in the 

 Middle Kingdom, form a celebrated work named " Lun Han " 

 or *' Balance of Discussions." In its twentieth book (fol. 14-15 

 in Miura's edition, Kyoto, 1748), he says :— " Since the begin- 

 ning of the world, so vast has been the number of the deceased, 

 that it enormously exceeds that of the whole present population. 

 Therefore, should every one become a ghost after death, man is 

 bound now to meet a ghost at each step on the road, and should 

 he see ghosts in his dying moments, he ought to find not one 

 or two singly, but several millions of them collectively filling 

 the space. When a man dies by a weapon, his blood, the es- 

 sence of his life, turns to what is termed ignus-faiinu, which has 

 no resemblance to him, but gathering itself into an amorphous 



NO. 1589, VOL. 61] 



mass, looks like the light of fire. It is the ghost of blood, 

 and presents an aspect quite different from a live man's 

 blood, and, as the essence of life has been separated from the 

 man's body, it cannot resume his shape in life. If all ghosts be 

 seen in the form of dead corpses, you have reason to suspect the 

 dead to become the ghost. . . . And, equally, a disordered fellow 

 might be true in seeing a ghost of his live friend visiting him. 

 But how could he see a dead man in his shape of lifetime ? = . . . 

 As warni ashes, even after the fire has gone out, can be made to 

 produce it again, we may with some reason suggest the possibility 

 of a dead man appearing in the same form as alive. When we 

 know well, however, that a fire once extinguished can never burn 

 anew, it is evident that a dead man can never become a ghost. 

 And now, what is the ghost ? All say it is the soul of a deceased. 

 Then, even if it could be seen by man, it ought to appear stark 

 naked and fully disrobed : for the clothes have no soul to cover the 

 dead man's soul ; while the latter has no 7naterial body to put on 

 a material raiment. Soul is an outcome of blood and breath, 

 which, though dependent on body during man's life, are the 

 things distinct from it ; hence it might be still well to suppose 

 soul able to survive body as a ghost. But the clothes consist of 

 nothing but threads, cotton, hemp and silk, which have all no 

 intercurrence of blood and breath imparted by the wearer's body ; 

 nor do they possess any blood and breath of their own ; so that 

 even when they keep their form entirely, they are as soulless as 

 a human corpse ; and how then could they resume their former 

 shape after their total decomposition? Thus, saying that a 

 ghost appears clad necessitates the admission of its possession, 

 of body ; which view itself militates against the definition of the 

 ghost, because, according to this statement, the said ghost is a 

 composite of the ghosts of body and clothes, which is essentially 

 different from the soul of a deceased individual." 



It is curious to observe that Wang Chung himself is quite 

 illogical in esteeming it just to suppose a ghost able to appear only 

 divested : for, according to his own proposition, the soul exists 

 only in blood and breath ; while the body, though very closely 

 connected with them during life, is, after death, as severed from 

 them as the ever lifeless and soulless clothes ; so that, should it 

 be necessary for a ghost to appear divested, it would be equally 

 so to appear disembodied at the same time. 



April 2. KuMAGUSU Minakata. 



Fertilisation of Flowers in New Zealand. 



On p. 16 of your issue of November 2, 1899, reference is 

 made to an article in the London Quarterly Review, by " A 

 Field Naturalist," in which the writer expresses the opinion 

 that " under natural and equal conditions, self- fertilisation of 

 flowers is both the legitimate fertilisation and the most pro- 

 ductive." I have not seen the article, but would hke to place 

 on record the following facts, which may be of interest to 

 botanists in this connection. 



I have cultivated most of the common flowers of the European 

 and North Temperate region during the last thirty years, and 

 have kept a pretty close record of their behaviour under the 

 somewhat altered conditions in which they are placed in New 

 Zealand. In this part of the colony the cUmatic conditions are 

 not very dissimilar to those of the milder and moister parts of 

 Britain, but the insects are, of course, totally different. 



Previous to 1885, when humble-bees were first introduced 

 into New Zealand, certain flowers, which were freely cultivated 

 here, never produced seeds under natural conditions. But 

 since the bees have become numerous and have spread over the 

 colony, the conditions have quite changed. Primroses, cow- 

 slips, and the various hardy hybrid primulas all seed freely. 

 So do pansies, crocuses (except the common yellow Dutch, 

 which does not seem to be fertilised by the bees), Canterbury 

 bells, antirrhinums, and many others which formerly never 

 seeded. Now we find the plants in the spring-time surrounded 

 by crowds of self-sown seedlings. 



The bees were introduced, as is well known, by the Canter- 

 bury Acclimatisation Society, for the purpose of fertilising the 

 flowers of the common red clover — Trifoliutti pi-atense. It 

 was supposed at the time, that the insect which was introduced 

 was Boinbus terrestris, which, by the way, is unable to fertilise 

 the flowers of red clover on account of the shortness of the 

 trunk. As a matter of fact, some of the nests brought out to 

 the colony were those of B. terrestris, but among them were 

 also two varieties of B. hortorum, and it is this latter long- 

 trunked species which is now so abundant, and fertilises so many 

 I of the introduced flowers. 



