462 



t NA TURE 



[Sept. 1 3l 1883 



front view was a long bell-pull, hanging nearly from the ceiling 

 to the floor. A mouse (I fancied, larger than the other mice) 

 deliberately climbed to thj top, turned himself round, and for 

 some minutes quietly surveyed the room ; then deliberately 

 descended ; and, in two or three minutes, not a mouse was left 

 in the room. 1 slept in the same room many weeks after this 

 occurrence, but I never again perceived the sign of a mouse. 



I imagine thit the mice inhabiting the house had perceived 

 that thn room was now partially inhabited, and that they sus- 

 pected that it would probably contain something interesting to 

 them ; that, acting under a general, or chief engineer, they 

 directed the whole strength of their tribe to work an entrance 

 into the room ; ttat their chief engineer, as soon as an entrance 

 was gained, proceeded to examine the contents of the captured 

 fortress; and that, thoroughly disippointed, he gave the signal 

 for retreat, which the whole body of mice instantly obeyed. 



September 10 A. B. G. 



"Cholera and Copper" 



With reference to the letter on the above subject in this 

 week's Nature, it is quite true that the last visitation of cholera 

 was especially severe here, yet in no single instance was a 

 worker in the copper works of the neighbourhood attacked. It 

 is the common boa=t of the copper-men tint, although they lost 

 many members of their family, living in the same house, by the 

 dread disease, yet neither in the last visitation nor the previous 

 ones was there a copper-man, i.e. a man working at a furnace, 

 attacked. 



There is no doubt that these men take large quantities of 

 c >pper sulphate into their systems, for not only do they breathe 

 the fine dust of regulus always floating about, but they handle 

 their food with unwashed hands, or, if washed, not washed 

 clean, and that their hands are covered with soluble copper salts 

 is evidenced by their action on the iron tools which they handle, 

 these quickly receiving a deposit of metallic copper. 



This seems to be pretty fair evidence that copper is a pre- 

 ventive fi ir cholera. 



I may point out that it is not copper or any of its compounds 

 which injures the vegetation, but sulphur dioxide, the principal 

 gas evolved in smelting copper ores, and which goes by the 

 name of " copper smoke." W. Terrill 



Ffynone Club, Swansea, September S 



Antiquities saved by Protective Resemblance 



A large number of pillar stones marked with crosses, early 

 Christian inscriptions and oghams, have been destroyed in Britain 

 by farmers during the present century ; a still greater number 

 must have been destroyed before these objects began to attract 

 special attention. A great number of the still remaining 

 examples have been utilised as gate-posts and rubbing-stones 

 fi.r cattle, i.e. upright stones set up in fields by Welsh farmers 

 for cattle to rub their itching skins against. This fortuitous 

 resemblance of the slightly squared inscribed stones has pro- 

 tected them from destruction. A few of the flatter examples 

 have been utilised as bridges over narrow streams. Nearly all 

 the examples which have not resembled the above-mentioned 

 objects have met with destruction. It is a sort of survival of the 

 fittest. 



In Wales there are many ruined churches and monastic 

 establishments with interiors gutted. Most of the old stone 

 altar-slabs have so closely resembled doorsteps, that they have 

 been saved. It is no uncommon thing to see an altar-slab with 

 its five little crosses utili-ed as a doorstep to a cottage near a 

 deserted church. 



The bowl of a font often bears a sufficiently strong resem- 

 blance to a pig-trough to insure its preservation, and if the font 

 is not vi ible in a ruined church the strong probability is it will 

 be found utilised as a pig-trough in some neighbouring farm- 

 yard. Fonts with shallow bowls are specially preserved. 



Stone coffins sometimes owe their preservation to their re- 

 semblance to and suitability for horse-troughs. 



In some instances old churches are now used as barns, and in 

 others as residences for farmers or farmers' men ; sometimes a 

 wooden floor has bsen erected acro-s an old church and the 

 u pper part used as a store for hay, and the altar end as a pantry. 

 I have seen the recess of the piscina furnished with a wooden 

 door and the interior used as a cool receptacle for butter and 

 lard. A fortuitous resemblance has protected it. 



I could write out a large number of examples of the above 

 and other curious instances of "protective resemblance" in 

 antiquities. Indeed the above facts . are so well known to 

 antiqaries that, unless very inconvenient, no "rubbing-stone" or 

 stone gate post is left unexamined in a strange district. Door- 

 steps, flat stones across streams, and stone hog-troughs are always 

 carelully scrutinised by experienced archaeologists. 



WORTHINGTON G. SMITH 



Meteor 



A meteor of surpassing brilliancy made its appearance here 

 at about 4 46 p.m. on July 12. Its form might be described as 

 somewhat rocket-like. It was observed streaming slowly from 

 the west in an easterly direction, at an apparent altitude of about 

 45 degrees. Some idea of the brilliancy of this phenomenon 

 may be formed when it is mentioned that it was seen in broad 

 daylight, the sun setting on that day at 4.35 p.m. I notice 

 the meteor was observed over a wide extent of country on the 

 Canterbury Plains ; it was noticed from Christchurch, and aLo 

 at Rangiora, to the north. Thomas H. Potts 



Ohimtahi, New Zealand, July 14 



The Meteor of August 19 



The meteor described in your is-ue of August 23 (p. 389) was 

 well seen here (lat. 1° west, long. 54 15' north) and formed a 

 splendid object. It bore a little east of south, and its apparent 

 path was nearly horizontal from west to east, towards and at 

 about the same declination as the full moon. It would be 

 interesting if its height above the earth were approximately 

 ascertained and stated from the various observations mad.. 



The Grange, Nawton, Yorkshire C. D. 



HERMANN MULLER 



np HE news of the death of Hermann Miiller of Lippstadt 

 ■*- will come with a sense of personal loss to many of 

 our readers, who have looked with interest for his frequent 

 contributions to the columns of Nature on the branch 

 of natural history which he has made specially his own— 

 the mutual relations to one another of insects and flowers 

 in promoting cross-fertilisation. Much as we owe on this 

 subject to some of our own naturalists, especially Darwin 

 and Lubbock, the chief authority in it is, and probably 

 always will be, Hermann Miiller. Any future inquirer 

 will necessarily turn, for the main part of his information, 

 to his two great works, " Die Befruchtung der Blumen 

 durch Insekten," published in 1873, and "Alpenblumen, 

 ihre Befruchtung durch Insekten," published in 1SS1. 

 The mass of information contained in these volumes is 

 simply marvellous. In the first place the author has 

 worked out with the greatest care the structure of those 

 classes of insects which play the greatest part in the fer- 

 tilisation of flowers with regard to their capacity for collect- 

 ing nectar or pollen, and for carrying pollen from flower to 

 flower. Avery large proportion, including all the commoner 

 ones, of the species which make up the phanerogamic 

 flora of Central Europe are then taken up seriatim, the 

 structure of the male and female organs described, illus- 

 trated often with very careful drawings, and always with 

 reference to any special contrivances connected with the 

 mode in which insects obtain the honey ; and then a list 

 is given of all the insects which he has observed visiting 

 the flower. No one who has worked in the same field 

 will fail to recognise the unfailing trustworthiness and 

 accuracy of his observations. The " Befruchtung der 

 Blumen " has only during the present year been presented 

 to English readers in Mr. D'Arcy Thompson's translation, 

 with an appreciative preface by the late Mr. C. Darwin, 

 a notice of which will shortly appear in our columns. But 

 these two works by no means exhaust Prof. Miiller's 

 labours in his favourite subject, as his numerous contri- 

 butions to our columns show. He was also a frequent 

 contributor to the German periodical Kosmos, discussing, 

 with great wealth of knowledge and acute reasoning, the 



