Nov. 20, 1884] 



NA TURE 



55 



when it was decided to again open the Library, during the 

 winter season, on Sundays. MARK H. Judge, 



Honorary Secretary of the Sunday Society 

 S, Park Place Villas, PadcKngton, \V., November 17 



A Pugnacious Frog 



A SHORT time back, about 6 o'clock in the evening, just as it 

 was getting dark, hearing a squeaking noise below my veranda, 

 I got up to look, and saw a most amusing sight, viz. a fight 

 between a frog and a bat. The latter was evidently getting the 

 worst of it, but at last succeeded in getting away for a time from 

 its opponent ; the frog again attacked it, but this time lie was 

 glad to cry "quits," as the bat turned on him and beat him off, 

 afterwards managing to hide somewhere so that we could not 

 find it ; the frog, however, was sorely bitten about the nose, and 

 was in a sad plight. I do not know how the bat could have been 

 on the ground, but it had probably fallen from its nest during 

 the day, and was waiting for the evening, when the frog espied 

 and attacked it with the bef re-mentioned result. 



Edwin II. Evans 



Margapala, Soemedang, Java, October 13 



A DISEASE-GERM MYTH 



V\/E are indebted to a correspondent for the following 

 * * curious note from Fiji : — 



You may have seen Wilfred Powell's " Wanderings in 

 a Wild Country ; or, Three Years among the Cannibals 

 of New Britain." If you have not seen it, pray send for 

 it, for, though falling far short of what it ought to be, it is 

 not without interest. At p. 167 he tells a story of native 

 magic which reminds me of something I have read 

 before. 



A native doctor being called in to a patient " looking 

 wretchedly ill," performs a little " devil-devil " business, 

 and then blows some burnt lime from the hollow of his 

 hand against the patient's stomach ; " then he began to 

 scratch the man's navel with one finger," gradually ap- 

 proaching his mouth to the fellow's stomach, and drawing 

 in his breath. Presently he places his mouth close to 

 the man's navel, draws back suddenly, retches violently, 



and throws up a worm. This the worthy doctor does 



twice. 



Powell says, " I looked at the worms, they were unlike 

 anything I had seen before, and appeared as if they 

 certainly might have come from a man's body." 



Now see Bates on the Amazons, cap. ix. : — " This (the 

 illness) the Paga pretends to extract, he blows on the seat 

 of pain the smoke from a large cigar, . . and then sucks 

 the place, drawing from his mouth, when hs has finished, 

 what he pretends to be a worm. . . . Senhor John con- 

 trived to get possession of the supposed worm after the 

 trick was performed in our presence, and it turned out to 

 be a long while air root of some plant " ! ! 



Wilfred Powell should have got that worm or another 

 specimen, even if he had been compelled, in the interests 

 of science, to explore the patient's stomach with ,1 

 pickaxe. 



When Macdonald, of the old surveying-ship Herald, 

 was in these waters, he was daily searching for a specimen 

 of the pearly Nautilus (X. pompilins), which is pretty 

 common here. One day upon the reef at Nasamusovu 

 he met a Fijian coming out of his canoe in which he had 

 been fishing. He showed him the picture of a Nautilus, 

 which the man recognised at once, and, in reply to a 

 question put through an interpreter, said he had just 

 eaten one. Macdonald got into a great rage at the loss 

 of such a treasure, but suddenly checking his excitement 

 and glancing rapidly over the native, he said to the inter- 

 preter, " Quick, ask him how long it is since he ate it." 



But there was something in the eye and the tone of the 

 doctor's voice that so startled the gentle child of Nature 

 that, before the interpreter could open his mouth, he had 



taken to his heels and put half a mile of reef between 

 himself and the man of science. 



What awful thought passed through Macdonald's mind 

 has not been left on record. 



THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF EVOLUTION 

 THE theory of evolution held by adepts in Buddhism 

 A is the outcome of the researches of an immense suc- 

 cession of investigators, believed to be qualified for their 

 task by the possession of spiritual faculties and percep- 

 tions of a higher order than those belonging to ordinary 

 humanity. In the course of ages the block of knowledge 

 thus accumulated concerning the origin of the world and 

 of man and the ultimate destinies of our race, checked 

 and examined at every point, verified in all directions, 

 and constantly under examination throughout, has come 

 to be looked on as the absolute truth concerning the 

 evolution, past and to come, of man and the planets he is 

 destined to inhabit. The initiated members or "adepts" 

 of the Buddhist cult claim to have attained, through 

 intense self-absorption, a knowledge of physical laws of 

 Nature not yet understood by Western science, investing 

 them with extraordinary powers known as spiritualistic, 

 such as clairvoyance and the disintegration and recon- 

 struction of matter by a simple effort of will. They claim 

 in fact to be in possession of potential faculties which will 

 only be generally developed in future stages of evolution. 

 This religion, which is wholly unaggressive and seeks no 

 converts, attracts many on account of its claims to be in 

 accord with all established scientific fact, and by its incor- 

 poration of so patent a truth as the doctrine of evolution 

 as an integral part of its system. 



A brief examination of these claims, and a glance at 

 the past and future of man's evolution as thus elaborated, 

 can hardly fail to be of interest, if it fails to carry 

 conviction. 



It is impossible, and unnecessary, to attempt to follow 

 briefly the mystic subtleties of belief that have fascinated 

 the Oriental mind, and been to it for ages what the pur- 

 suit of practical science has been to Western nations. 

 Shortly stated, the Buddhist divides the human entity 

 into seven principles, the higher of which have not yet 

 reached their full development. The first three are of the 

 earth, and done with at death. These are (1) the body ; (2) 

 vitality, or the life principle, an indestructible force which 

 attaches itself to other objects after the decomposition of 

 the body ; (3) the astral body, " an ethereal duplicate of 

 the physical body," which can under certain circum- 

 stances become disembodied and visible as a ghost ; (4) 

 the animal soul, or seat of all animal desires ; (5 ) the human 

 soul. The other two can be passed over, as they are still 

 in embryo, and belong to a wholly superior and future 

 condition of existence. The fifth and, later on, the sixth 

 principles make up a man's continuous individuality 

 through successive incarnations. 



The solar system consists of seven planetary chains. 

 The one with which man is concerned consists of seven 

 planets, through each of which he has to pass seven times 

 in order to accomplish his evolution. These are the 

 Earth, Mars, which is in a state of entire obscuration or 

 rest as regards the human life-wave, Mercury, just be- 

 ginning to prepare for its next human period, and four 

 other planets which are composed of an order of matter 

 too ethereal for telescopes to take cognisance of. The 

 system of worlds is compared to a system of towers 

 standing on a plain, each of many stories, man's progress 

 being a spiral round and round the series, passing through 

 each tower as it again comes round to it, at a higher 

 spiritual level than before. The impulse to the new 

 evolution of higher forms is given by rushes, not a 

 continual flow, of spiritual monads coming round the 

 cycle in a state fit for the inhabitation of new forms, 

 and those which for milleniums have gone on merel 



