342 



NATURE 



\August 9, 1883 



"... *ljuli, 18S3 

 " Verehrter Herr College, — Ihre freundliche Gesinnung gegen 

 mich, ermuthigt mich, I linen folgenden Fall vorzutragen, mit 

 der Bitte moglichst viele Ihrer Herrn Collegen und, wenn Sie 

 es fui' gut halten, auch die Presse davon in Kenntniss zu setzen. 



" Ich hatte schon ofter aus England Briefe erhalten von Can- 

 didate fur irgendwelche . . . Professur rnit der Bitte ein Zeng- 

 niss ueber ihre Leistungen anzustellen. Ich habe, da mir diese 

 Art der Bewerbung, wie sie in England leider gebrauchlich ist, 

 im hochsten Grade zuwider, ineist derartige Schreiben gar nicht 

 beantwortet. Neulich erhielt ich nun aber einen Brief aus . . . 

 von einem gewissen . . . der an Schamlosigkeit Alles ueber- 

 steigt, zum Mittel der Bestechung greift. Es klingt unglaub- 

 lich, aber Herr ... ist so schamlos, mir als Preis fiir ein 

 Enipfehlungschreiben Geld anzubitten. Damit Sie sich selbst 

 davon ueberzeugen komien, sende ich Ihnen das Original mit 

 der ergebensten Bitte mir dasselbe nach gewonnener Einsicht 

 •bezw. Abschrift, wieder zuriickzusenden. Eingelegt war eine 

 Anweisung auf 1 guinea ! Letztere sende ich heute ohne Brief 

 recommandirt an . . . zurtick. Ich habe Beider hier meinen 

 Freunden gezeigt und werde auch vor Zeugen die Riicksendung 

 der Anweisung auf 1 Guinea vornehmen. 



"Ich glaube, verehrter Herr College, dieser Fall ist dazu 

 angethan, weiteren Kreisen mitgetheilt zu werden, urn zu ver- 

 hindern dass ein soldi erbarmlicher Mensch wie . . . etwas die 

 Stelle in . . . erhalte. Ihnen im voraus fur Ihre Miihe 

 dankend mit vorziiglichste Hochachtung. 



"Ihr Ergebenster, . . ." 



I imagine that all Englishmen on retding the above will, like 

 myself, be filled with shame that any one speaking our tongue 

 should have laid himself open to such a rebuke. 



At the same time it seems to me quite possible that Prof. C.'s 

 view of the matter is unduly severe and indeed unjust. I do 

 not know Mr. A. B. personally, and am quite ignorant of what 

 character he bears ; but I can conceive that he has fallen into 

 this disgrace through a clumsy attempt to carry out to its logical 

 conclusion our English system of testimonials. He can hardly 

 have thought that so distinguished and successful a man as Prof. C. 

 <;ould b^ bribed to say something handsome by a post-office order for 

 one guinea ; and he cannot be so ignorant as not to be aware of the 

 just pride which all Germans feel in the integrity and honour of 

 their professoriate ; it is quite open for us to suppose that he was 

 really offering Prof. C. a fee for a professional service. And 

 really when you come to think of it, this is a point of view for 

 which something may be said. Only last week, in talking to a 

 colleague about testimonials, I asked him how many testimonials 

 he wrote on an average a week. He replied that he thought 

 not more than a dozen or fifteen. In fact when a man, espe- 

 cially one who has spent some years in teaching, has acquired a 

 certain reputation in science, the tax upon his time and energy 

 for the skilful composition and writing of appropriate testimo- 

 nials amounts during his lifetime to a something which, con- 

 verted at the market value of his powers into pounds, shillings, 

 and pence, would appear no mean sum. 



Now — and this is the kernel of the matter — no one would 

 grudge time spent in assisting a deserving man to get into a 

 place for which he was fitted ; but our testimonial system has 

 nowadays reached such dimensions that only a few of the testi- 

 monials written have this end in view. I am writing freely, 

 because this is a very serious matter, and one which I have much 

 at heart ; I therefore do not hesitate to say, what indeed is well 

 known, that great skill has been reached by many in the art both 

 of writing and reading testimonials. Many testimonials are 

 framed after that well-known formula for acknowledging the 

 receipt of pamphlets which runs as follows: — " Dear Sir, — I 

 beg to thank you for the valuable pamphlet which you have so 

 kindly sent me, and which I will lose no time in reading." And 

 I heard the other clay a testimonial praised because it showed 

 the electors whom not to elect. 



Surely the time lias come to consider whether this plague of 

 testimonials (for it is hardly le-s) cannot in some measure be 

 stayed. At all events, cannot in higher places at least some 

 steps betaken to mend matters? When such a post as a pro- 

 fessorship is vacant, it is the duty of the electors to make 

 themselves acquainted with the manner of man wanted and to 

 find him ; our present plan lays upon all persons connected with 

 the subject of the chair the burden of trying to enlighten the 

 electors as to the claims of this or that candidate. A passage in 

 Prof. C.'s letter shows how degrading the Germans think our 

 method ; and it is not agreeable to Englishmen to read such 



passages. Yet every one who has had to struggle for a post 

 with testimonials must feel that such criticisms are just, and that 

 the process is one distasteful to a right-minded man. And it is 

 also unnecessary. I, for one, would rejoice to see the German 

 system of a "call" introduced into our professorial elections ; 

 but if we cannot obtain this, let us at least do away with testi 

 monials. In the recent elections at the University of Cambridge, 

 the following significant phra-e occurred in the announcements of 

 the vacancies: " testimonials, ;/ any, to be addressed, &c." ; 

 and as a matter of fact, in the cases of the four chairs recently 

 filled up on the new system, the man chosen in each case had 

 sent in no testimonials. Why cannot this be done in all elec- 

 tions to professorial chairs ? Where, as may sometimes be the 

 case, the candidates are previously not all thoroughly known, the 

 electors, by reference, formal or otherwise, can easily make 

 themselves acquainted with their relative merits ; and indeed, as 

 I just now said, it is their duty to make such inquiries, and not 

 simply to collate, interpret, and form their decisions on the 

 curious documents which we call testimonials. 



Hence, though I venture to send this communication to 

 Nature for the purpose of making an example of Mr. A. B.'s 

 post-office order for one guinea, I cannot help thinking that he, 

 though sinning, is also sinned against, and that our system of 

 testimonials is to be blamed as well as he. M. FOSTER 



Birds and Cholera 



You ask in one of your " Notes " (p. 329), what can be the 

 cause of birds leaving a locality before the approach of cholera ? 

 The following anecdote may be of interest, but I of course 

 cannot vouch for its having any real connection with the subject. 

 It must have been in the summer of 1848 that I was invited [o 

 meet a party at my uncle's house in the Close at Salisbury, on 

 the occasion of the visit of the Antiquarian Society. On arriving 

 I found the cholera raging, and the party put off. There were 

 in the house only the gardener and his wife, whom, having been 

 previously servants to my father, I had known from my child- 

 hood. The gardener told me that, just before the outbreak of 

 the disease, the man whose duty it was to oil the vane upon the 

 spire had made his annual ascent (of 404 feet), and had per- 

 ceived a foul scent, which, it seems, had not been noticed below. 

 The inhabitants connected this with the appearance of the 

 epidemic shortly afterwards. Birds might no doubt be affected 

 by such a circumstance. O. Fisher 



This has been remarked before. It is recorded of the great 

 outbreak of cholera at Salisbury in 1849 — can any of your corre- 

 spondents say where? — that an officer recently from India, hap- 

 pening to make the ascent of the Cathedral, exclaimed suddenly, 

 " I smell cholera ! " Immediately afterwards the outbreak fol- 

 lowed, when it was observed that the birds (swallows are espe- 

 cially in my remembrance) had fled the neighbourhood. If these 

 two incidents are to be trusted, it can scarcely be doubtful that 

 there is a connection between them. HENRY Cecil 



Bregner, Bournemouth, August 6 



You will find a very interesting but rather sceptical paper on 

 the supposed connection of birds leaving towns with invasions 

 of cholera (Nature, vol. xxviii. p. 329), by Pfarrer Hackel of 

 Windsheim, in the monthly journal, Der zoologische Garten 

 (Bavaria), September, 1873 (vol. xiv. p. 32S), published by the 

 Zool. Gesellschaft of Frankfort-on-Main. D. Wn. 



Freiburg, Badenia, August 4 



Animal Intelligence 



Several remarkable instances of intelligence in animals have 

 been given in recent numbers of Nature. Possibly the follow- 

 ing instance of reasoning power in an elephant may not be 

 without interest : — Some years ago I was ascending the lower part 

 of the Darjeeling Mill Road, in the Himalaya Mountains, from 

 Terai. At a certain part of the road, where we met a string of 

 bullock carts, the outer few feet was encumbered by a long flat- 

 topped heap of small rounded boulders, piled there to be broken 

 up for road metal ; from the outer edge there was a steep, almost 

 precipitous, slope. On the inner side of the road was a 

 small drain, and then a few feet of comparatively level ground 

 between the drain and the slope above. The carts just mentioned 

 were of the usual kind, the body (constructed of bamboo) about 



