rr 
Sune 15, 1871] 

Hyperborean, Abaris, “the air-walker,” to whom Pytha- 
goras, the Miss Kilmansegg of antiquity, displayed his 
precious leg. In fact here, as elsewhere, Mr. Tylor has 
acted on the principle that the half is greater than the 
whole. He selects enough for his purpose, and resolutely 
declines to overburden himself with superfluous testimony. 
Fortunately there are two sides to the theory of survival. 
If on the one hand we have survivals of the type of 
modern spiritualism, we have on the other survivals of 
ideas, which, first broached in a stage of civilisation when 
they are considered foolish or mischievous, become in a 
higher stage the dominant influences which direct human 
opinion. To take a single case:—It is now near upon 
two centuries since Balthazar Bekker, a D.D. of Amster- 
dam, corrupted, may be, by certain impious notions pro- 
pounded by the arch-infidel Descartes, published his 
“Monde Enchanté,” a crime for which he was at once 
deprived of his benefice ; since, as a learned Englishman 
remarked in reference to the case :— 
Dzmonas ex mundo quisquis proscripserit audax, 
Esse breyi nullum dicet in orbe Deum. 
If the English reader of to-day will take the trouble 
to read this work—and it is worth the trouble—he 
can scarcely fail to be struck with the remarkable 
survival of the ideas contained in it, expanded, cor- 
rected, developed as they are in these chapters by Mr. 
Tylor. Not that Mr. Tylor has borrowed anything from 
Bekker, but simply that Bekker was the first, as Mr. 
Tylor is the last, to apply science systematically to the 
phenomena of sorcery, witchcraft, and spiritualism of his 
age. Survivals of this kind are indeed proofs as decisive 
of the vitality of civilisation as survivals of the other kind 
are of the vitality of barbarism. 
In the following chapters on Language, emotional and 
imitative, Mr. Tylor makes out a strong case in favour of 
what Prof. Max Miiller, with a felicity worthy of a better 
cause, has nicknamed the “‘ pooh-pooh” and “ bow-wow” 
theories. ‘“ It may be shown,” he says, “ within the limits 
of the most strict and sober argument, that the theory of 
the origin of language, in natural and directly expressive 
sounds, does account for a considerable fraction of the 
existing cofia verborum, while it raises a presumption 
that, could we trace the history of words more fully, it 
would account for far more.” Among other matters touched 
on in this inquiry, Mr. Tylor refers to the language 
employed in addressing beasts, particularly dogs and 
horses. Some curious samples of dog-language are to be 
found in the Book of St. Alban’s, and, indeed, in almost 
every old treatise on hunting. Sir Tristram, however, the 
hero of the Arthurian cycle, who is generally considered 
the védacteur en chef of this particular dialect, appears 
to have thought plain Norman French best adapted to the 
intelligence of greyhounds, and is very sparing in his use 
of mere “brutish interjections.” Of horse-language one of 
the best examples is to be found in “ The Enterlude of John 
Bon and Mast Person,” a tract belonging to the middle of 
the sixteenth century. This is how John Bon addresses 
his team :— 
Ha, browne done! forth that horson crabbe ! 
Ree, comomyne, garlde, with haight blake hab! 
Have agayne, bald-before, hayght ree who ! 
Cherly boy, cum of, that whomwarde we may goo! 
One branch of inquiry into which Mr. Tylor partly 
NATURE 
119 
enters in these chapters and the following one on the Art 
of Numbers, appears to deserve closer attention than it 
has yet received. Considering the important part which 
gesture plays in all the lower languages, it is a fair hypo- 
thetical inference that, as language gradually became more 
and more developed, a number of words and phrases 
would creep into it, formed on the principle of translating 
gesture into phonetics. Thus, for instance, the universal 
gesture for “likeness ” or “ sameness” is to hold out both 
hands together. If, in several different languages, the words 
meaning “likeness” or “sameness” have an etymological 
connection with the word meaning “together,” a strong 
presumption would be raised that they were translated 
from the gesture ; and if any large number of correspon- 
dences of the same kind were detected, the presumption 
would be raised into a theoretical certainty. Whether 
such evidence exists of the translation of action into 
sound in general language, none could determine better 
than Mr. Tylor himself, whose essay on the gesture-lan- 
guage in one of his earlier works, forms really almost a 
complete handbook on the subject. That it does exist in 
language, as applied to numbers, is clearly shown in his 
chapter on the art of counting, where he traces the quinary, 
decimal, and vigesimal systems to their origin in thefact that 
the average man possesses five fingers on each hand, and as 
many toes on each foot. He perhaps, however, has not 
sufficiently noticed the further strong probability that the 
duodecimal system owes its origin to the circumstance 
that, inaddition to his fingers and toes, a man possesses 
two handsand two feet—a consideration not without its 
bearing on the obscurity attending the numerals eleven 
and twelve in certain languages. 


LEA’S UNIONIDA 
A Synopsis of the Family Unionide. By Isaac Lea, LL.D, 
4th edition. 4to. (Philadelphia, 1870.) 
jase work, by a veteran American conchologist, con- 
tains 184 pages, and is a memorial of his labour 
and zeal during a period of more than forty years. The 
Unionide are generally known as “ fresh-water mussels.” 
Their variability is notorious; for almost every river, lake, 
and pond yields different forms, which some writers call 
species and others call varieties. 
Non nostrum est tantas componere lites. 
But while giving Dr. Lea ample discretion to make as 
many species as he pleases, and full credit for his honest 
wish to keep down the number, it certainly strikes one as 
somewhat singular that he admits only “seven or eight 
species of the family Unzonide living in Europe,’ when 
he enumerates 720 species as North American, of which 
latter number he has himself described no fewer than 582 ! 
According to Kreglinger’s catalogue, which is the newest 
on the land and fresh-water shells of Europe, fifteen 
species of this family inhabit Germany. We have but five, 
including one debateable species.of Axodonta. The total 
number of living species recognised} by Dr. Lea is 1,069, 
besides 224 unknown to him or doubtful. To distinguish 
varieties from species is one of the great difficulties which 
perplex the naturalist ; but the rule which I have adopted 
may serve the purpose to a considerable extent, viz., “that 
all distinct groups of individuals living together and having 
a common feeding-ground, and which are not connected 
