17C 
NATURE 
| Dec. 21, 1882 
but the manner in which a number of elements group 
themselves together and form a complexus.” Thus it 
follows that “a rich and extensive memory is not [merely] 
a collection of impressions, but [also] an accumulation of 
dynamical associations, very stable and very responsive 
to proper stimuli.” 
The essay then proceeds to consider more especially 
the case of conscious as distinguished from organic 
memory :—‘‘ The brain is like a laboratory full of move- 
ment, where thousands of occupations are going on at 
once. Unconscious cerebration, not being subject to 
restrictions of time, operating, so to speak, only in space, 
may act in several directions at the same moment. Con- 
sciousness is the narrow gate through which a very small 
part of all this work is able to reach us. . . . What has 
been said of physiological memory applies in a general 
way to conscious memory ; only a single factor has been 
added.”’ But “dynamical associations have a much 
more important part to play in conscious memory than in 
unconscious memory.” 
These we think are the more important of M. Ribot’s 
preliminary considerations. We have no space to con- 
sider others which follow, or to enter into the details of 
-those diseases of memory which constitute the main 
subject of his work. These diseases are classified under 
the divisions of General Amnesia, Partial Amnesia, and 
Exaltations of Memory. Each of these divisions is 
abundantly illustrated by examples, which, while being 
adduced in corroboration of philosophical views on the 
mechanism of memory, furnish in themselves reading of 
a curiously entertaining kind. We may conclude by 
rendering, in the words of the author’s own summary, the 
general conclusions which he deems his study of the 
diseases of memory to have established :— 
“7, In cases of general dissolution of the memory, loss 
of recollections follow an invariable path; recent events, 
ideas in general, feelings, and acts. 
“©9. In the best-known case of partial dissolution (for- 
getfulness of signs), loss of recollection follows an invari- 
able path ; proper names, common nouns, adjectives and 
verbs, interjections, gestures. 
“3. In each of these classes the destructive process is 
identical. It is a regression from the new to the old, 
from the complex to the simple, from the voluntary 
to the automatic, from the least organised to the best 
organised. 
“4. The exactitude of the daw of regression is veri- 
fied in those rare cases where progressive dissolution 
of the memory is followed by recovery; recollections 
return in an inverse order to that in which they dis- 
appear. 
“5. This law of regression provides us with an 
explanation for extraordinary revivification of certain 
recollections when the mind turns backwards to condi- 
tions of existence that had apparently disappeared for 
ever. 
“6. We have founded this law upon this physiological 
principle : Degeneration first affects what has been most 
recently formed ; and upon this psychological principle : 
the complex disappears before the simple, because it has 
not been so often repeated in experience. 
Finally our pathological study has led us to this general 
conclusion: Memory consists of a process of registration 
of variable stages between two extreme limits, the new 
state, the organic registration.” 
GEORGE J. ROMANES 
EASTERN ASIA 
Im Fernen Osten, Reisen des Grafen Bela Szechenyi in 
den Jahren 1877-1880. Von Gustav Kreitner, Mitglied 
der Expedition. Two Vols. (Vienna, 1881.) 
Pa ocinee rambling for more than three years over a 
great part of Japan and China, the forerunners of 
Count Szechenyi’s party reached the Irawadi delta in 
March, 1880, in such a plight that they were actually 
refused admission to Jordan's Hotel in Rangoon. The 
expedition was undertaken, not to seek the cradle of the 
Magyar race in Central Asia, as was given out at the 
time, but simply to seek distraction from a heavy 
domestic affliction experienced by the Count in 1876. 
It was organised with the disregard of economic conside- 
rations so characteristic of the open-handed Hungarian 
nobility, and consisted originally of four members—the 
Count, Balint de Szent Kotolna, philologist, Ludwig von 
Loczy, geologist and Gustav Kreitner, geographer. Un- 
fortunately Balint got no further than Shanghai, where 
his health completely broke down. Hence the linguistic 
results were zz/, notwithstanding the sensational story 
circulated in some American papers regarding a Magyar- 
speaking nomad tribe said to have been discovered in 
the Gobi desert. These marauders were stated to have 
captured and condemned the whole party to death. But 
on overhearing them casually exchange a few words in 
Hungarian, the nomad chief, overcome with emotion, fel! 
on his knees, and addressed Count Bela “in the purest 
Magyar,” acknowledging him and his associates as their 
long-lost brethren, descendants of the warlike hordes, 
who migrated westwards ages ago, but whose memory 
was still kept alive in the yurts of their Asiatic kinsmen. 
This story throws a curious light on the analogous state- 
ments long current in popular writings touching the Irish, 
Welsh, and Basque-speaking Delawares, Algonquins, 
Guaranis, and other American aborigines. The only 
difference is that in these critical times such veracious 
accounts have no longer much chance of surviving their 
authors. 
The expedition has found a competent historian in its 
geographer, Gustav Kreitner, whose chief fault is perhaps 
an excessive Teutonic conscientiousness, which omits 
nothing, and leaves little to the imagination of the reader. 
Hence these bulky volumes, mostly going over tolerably 
beaten ground, are apt to grow all the more tedious that 
the journey was on the whole singularly free from stirring 
adventures. The camp was broken into and looted 
during the night by some prowling Tanguts in Mongolian 
Kansu; a terrific sandstorm nearly overwhelmed the 
caravan on the skirt of the Gobi; Herr Kreitner on one 
occasion got entangled in the intricacies of the loess 
region in North China ; an attempt to penetrate into the 
precincts of a Buddhist monastery at Batang was met by 
a shower of stones from the doughty but inhospitable 
Hamas; lastly the train conveying the explorers from 
Prome to Rangoon narrowly escaped the flames of a 
burning jungle in Pegu. But there was little else to 
record of an exciting character, beyond the ordinary 
incidents, mishaps, and hardships of eastern travel. 
On the other hand many opportunities were afforded 
for original observations on the lands and peoples visited 
by the expedition, which has certainly materially increased 
