July 4, 1901] 



NA TURE 



feather ; and the practices of keeping the birds on perches and 

 of tying up their tails were already known. Such manipulation 

 as is described would be extremely likely to result in the pulling 

 out of the feathers concerned altogether, for all fanciers are 

 well aware that a growing feather is only too easily extracted or 

 knocked out, often to their disappointment. 



Moreover, manipulation of the /azV-feathers, even if it be 

 really practised with the result described, would not account for 

 the likewise abnormal elongation of the saddle-feathers or rump- 

 hackles, or for the fact that the tail-feathers and tail-coverts of 

 the hens of this breed are also slightly elongated, as maybe seen 

 in the Natural History Museum specimen. 



That a breed of ornamental poultry with the hackles and tail- 

 feathers abnormally elongated could be produced by continual 

 selection of variations in the right direction no breeder would 

 doubt, and so the living specimens of long-tailed fowls one sees 

 in Europe present no special difficulty. Indeed, even the goose, 

 a bird, as Darwin remarked, of singularly inflexible organisation, 

 has produced a breed with abnormally lengthened plumage — the 

 well-known Sebastopol goose. 



The difficulty mentioned by Mr. Cunningham, that European 

 specimens of the long-tailed fowls do not approach the length of 

 feather seen in Japanese examples, is undoubtedly a real one. 

 But a simpler explanation than the very unlikely one given by 

 that gentleman would be that the true long-tailed breed is the 

 offspring of a " sport" endowed with more or less continuously- 

 growing feathers, analogous to the rootless teeth occurring in so 

 many mammals, and that the European specimens fail to pro- 

 duce such feathers either on account of a different environment, 

 which is known to have an influence on the growth of feathers, 

 or because they are not good examples of the breed. 



It may be objected that continuously-growing feathers are not 

 known to exist in wild birds : but neither do we find in these 

 the duplicated hallux, or the very heavy feathering of the feet, 

 both of which points occur in domestic fowls, and the last in 

 pigeons also. 



As to the inheritance of acquired characters, the annals of the 

 poultry fancy furnish no evidence of this, so far as I am aware 

 nor do they encourage a belief in the theory that the naked head 

 appendages of the fowl, and its long hackles, are due to stimu 

 lation caused by fighting. For the most pugnacious of all breeds, 

 the Aseel of India, has the comb and wattles almost rudimen 

 tary, and the hackles, like the rest of the plumage, unusually 

 short and scanty. The same remark applies to the allied Malay 

 or Chittagong breed, while the old English fighting game was 

 hardly modified from the jungle-fowl, and certainly has not 

 a large comb. On the other hand, the large-combed breeds 

 of the Spanish type are not particularly pugilistic, and the 

 size of their head-appendages is recognised by fanciers to be due 

 to selection. So much for the supposed eft'ects of stimulation on 

 living structures. 



It may not be irrelevant here to mention a case of manipu- 

 lation by oriental fanciers which recently came under my notice 

 in India. I had observed some red or chestnut-coloured pigeons 

 with white bars on the wing, and asked my friend Mr. W. 

 Rutledge, who has been a dealer and fancier for nearly half a 

 century, to what breed these birds belonged. He replied 

 that they were of no breed, but that the marking in question 

 was produced by plucking out the feathers constituting the bars 

 three times, when they would be produced white, as I had seen 

 them. But, he added, the birds would not breed young resembling 

 them in this point. I have thought this instance worth record- 

 ing as illustrating the lengths to which some Eastern bird-fanciers 

 will go, and as showing that experienced men are well aware 

 that acquired characters are not inherited. Frank Finn. 



cjo Zoological Society, 3, Hanover Square, London. 



Decomposition of Copper Oxide. 



In the course of some recent experiments which involved the 

 heating of copper wires in vacuo to temperatures of 1000° or 

 1050°, several facts were noticed which seem to me worthy of 

 record and of further investigation. 



The wires in question were heated in a porcelain tube 12 

 inches long, the lowest quarter of which was at a uniform tem- 

 perature, the maximum, while above this the temperature 

 gradually fell off till it reached that of the room. 



It was noticed that whenever the vacuum had not been as good as 

 usual the consequent oxidation of the copper in the hot end 



no! 1653, VOL. 64] » 



of the tube did not extend over the whole length of heated wire, 

 but that J inch or so of wire was perfectly bright, with con- 

 siderable oxidation both above and below the bright region. 



The temperature of that part of the wire at which brightness 

 occurred was about 950' C. At first sight it appears from this 

 that copper oxide, probably the black variety, decomposes 

 somewhere in the neighbourhood of 950°, but recombines again 

 at a higher temperature. 



Another possibility is that the change is connected with the 

 formation of the red oxide, though the appearance of the bright 

 portions of the wires does not favour this idea. 



Volatilisation of the metal itself appears to go on at the 

 bright parts, but it is difficult to account for the observed phen- 

 omena on an hypothesis of volatilisation alone. 



University College, London. Philip Harrison. 



The Subjective Lowering of Pitch. 



As a question arising out of Mr. Harding's letter (p. 103), it 

 would be interesting to know what is the effect produced by 

 sounding a note loud enough to produce the subjective distortion, 

 while at the same time the note to which it appears to be flat- 

 tened is sounded more quietly. I suppose discord would be 

 inevitable, but possibly a musical ear would be able to judge 

 whether subjective distortion was prevented in the loud, or pro- 

 duced in the softer, note. 



Mr. Allen's argument (p. 182) may, I think, be disposed 

 of in the following manner. He states that the singer should be 

 conscious of flatness. Now if he is singing with an instrument, 

 the note he sings is the only one he can possibly sing without 

 being conscious of discord. If he sings so much higher that his 

 distorted note is depressed till it sounds (in the absence of the 

 instrument) as though it were the correct note, he produces dis- 

 cord with the instrument. His only course is to sing the note 

 of the instrument, reinforce it, and so unconsciously cause the 

 subjective depression of both. I am writing in ignorance of 

 whether the effect is observed in unaccompanied singing and 

 solos on the violin. E. C. Sherwood. 



St. Peter's College, Westminster. 



A Curious Phenomenon. 



A CURlOtJS phenomenon occurred to some volunteers while 

 on outpost duty on the Delagoa Bay Railway in the Transvaal. 



A search-light was fixed up in the station, which was used 

 nightly in scanning the wide stretches of veldt. We were on 

 solitary outpost duty about three miles from the station, and on 

 the still silent nights which are frequently experienced in the 

 clear atmosphere of the high veldt we distinctly heard a low 

 " purring '" sound as the ray of light of the station passed over 

 us. As the light approached us one could hear the sound 

 gradually increasing, being loudest as it switched over us and 

 passing away into the nothingness of the silent night. We 

 were too far off the station to hear any vibrations from the 

 mechanism of the search-light, and we all came to the conclu- 

 sion (being a collection of unscientific men) that the high 

 velocity of the light waves created a sound audible to our 

 ears. On other nights when there was only a slight breeze no 

 noise could be detected. 



Can any one of Nature's readers tell me if this is a known 

 physiological effect ? Stanley B. Hutt. 



Broxbourne, June 20. 



THE ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



'T'HE instructions to the commander of the National 

 J- Antarctic 'E.'x.^tA\Uor\ —verliosa el s^raadis episfola — 

 have now been published, together with a similar docu- 

 ment, of much greater brevity, addressed to the director 

 of the civilian scientific staff. Most of the former, much 

 even of the latter, would not interest our readers, so we 

 print only a few extracts relating more immediately to 

 the matters recently under discussion. We take first 

 (though not in order) the following clause : — 



The Discovery is not one of His Majesty's ships, but is regis- 

 tered under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, and is governed 



