JuLy 20, 1899] 
NATURE 
2795 
a blank. A monk of Canterbury, who crossed the Great 
St. Bernard late in the twelfth century, piously prayed 
that none of his brethren might come into that place of 
torment, and till long after that, though Leonardo da 
Vinci set a better example, and pilgrimages even began 
Fic. 1.—John Tinner’s Dragon. 
to be made to the top of the Roche Melon, the Alps found 
few to praise them. Fancy invested them with super- 
stitious terrors, of which the legend of Pilatus is an apt 
example, but here and there we come on the track of a 
sceptical traveller. In the first rank of these 
forerunners of the modern man of science is 
Conrad Gesner, who laughed at those stories, 
and was a true lover of the mountains. His 
successor, Josias Simler, even describes, about 
the year 1574, the precautions to be taken i in 
crossing snowfields and glaciers, but the 
seventeenth century had begun before any 
careful note was taken of the latter. Then 
the fact of their motion was observed, and 
was communicated some years later, in 1669, 
to our own Royal Society ; but the first specu- 
lations as to its cause appear to have been 
published by J. J: Scheuchzer, a professor, 
like the two first-named, at Ziirich. Though 
evidently ill-adapted for mountain walking, 
he stuck bravely to it for some years at the 
beginning of the eighteenth century, and at 
last published two bulky volumes with num- 
erous illustrations. These, in many respects, 
are interesting as a picture of Switzerland 
long before the coming of the tourist. But 
his book testifies to other changes, for it is 
full of dragon stories, and gives us portraits 
everything which appears in print. But before long in 
De Luc and Bourrit, and lastly in the really great De 
Saussure, scientific mountain travel begins, and the new 
era may be said to dawn. Now science finds in the Alps 
| a workshop as well as a playground, and special memoirs 
| such as that on Mont Blanc, noticed in these columns on 
June 15 (p. 152), are becoming common. Yet it is only 
just over a century since the last volume of “ Voyages 
dans les Alpes” appeared. 
Many curious. illustrations, as we have intimated, are 
reproduced by Mr. Gribble, some indicating the strides 
which have been made in the representation of scenery, 
especially Alpine, during the last two centuries. The one 
given below was published about the year 1760, yet it bears 
little resemblance to nature, while some earlier than it 
are still more completely conventional. Incidentally the 
quotations in this volume throw light on the fauna of the 
Alps, showing, for instance, that bouquetin were common 
in districts from which they have long vanished. Indeed, 
odds and ends of curious lore abound in these pages ; so 
that we have to thank Mr. Gribble, not only for an 
amusing book, but also for a valuable addition to Alpine 
literature. ule BONNEY. 
BOWER-BIRDS 
SEE the year 1840, when Gould communicated to 
the Zoological Society an account of their extra- 
ordinary “runs,” as they are locally called, the Bower- 
Birds of Australia and Papua have always attracted a 
large share of interest on the part not only of ornithol- 
ogists but of students of the habits of animals. For in 
the construction of the “bowers” or “runs,” from which 
they take their name, these birds stand absolutely alone, 
although the “playgrounds” of the Argus pheasant are 
| comparable to the sinooth patches cleared in the jungle 
by one species of Bower-Bird. On such an interesting 
subject it is of the utmost importance to have as much 
definite information as possible at first hand, and we are 
therefore glad to welcome the paper on the Australian 
| representatives of the group, from the pen of an original 
(such as that now printed) of many a loathly 
worm which now finds no representative 
on land, whatever it may do in the sea. 
Scheuchzer, in fact, though a good mathematician and a 
keen observer of minerals, plants, and even glaciers, had 
no critical faculty. He represents a type of student not 
yet extinct—the man whose first care is for “the litera- 
ture of the subject,” and who attaches an equal value to 
NO. 1551, VOL. 60] 
2,—Griiner's view of the Lower Grundelwald Glacier. 
observer—Mr. A. J. Campbell, of Melbourne—which 
appears in the last issue of the Proceedings of the Royal 
Physical Society of Edinburgh, special value attaching 
to this communication from the excellent photographs of 
| “runs” and nests with which it is illustrated. 
