Sept. 29, 1870] 
was, certainly, designed as a scientific one, and indeed as a sub- 
stitute for the course on mathematics suspended temporarily by 
force of circumstances. My own motive for drawing attention to 
the point will not, I think, be misunderstood, whenso lately I had 
occasion in your columns to say a word for psychology as a natural 
scieuce. 
University College, Sept. 23 G. Croom Roperrson 
e Mirage 
IN connection with Mr. Kingsley’s letter in your number of to- 
day on Mirage, I may mention that when in a steamer going up 
the Throndhjem Fiord, in Norway, last July, Isaw some remark- 
able Mirage effects. In one case there appeared to be a large 
city, whica altered as the ship advanced into a Jong line of 
very white cliffS of basaltic formation and then disappeared, and 
nothing was seen but very some low rocks ; in other cases there 
appeared to be rocks suspended in the air at some distance from 
the surface of the water. It was a fine afternoon, and the sea 
very calm. W. P.M. 
Liverpool, Sept. 22 
Meteor 
AT 8.30 p.m. on Sunday the rith, a fine meteor was seen 
in the zenith traversing from East to West. It had a comet- 
like tail, and a star-like head; visible altogether for about ten 
seconds. In passing there was a ‘‘ hish”’ sound, as of a rocket. 
At 8 p.m. on Thursday the 15th, the Aurora or Northern 
Lights were very bright—mostly red, divided by rays of whiter 
light. Many persons, who were upon the pier, thought there 
was ‘a fire somewhere !” 
Lowestoft, Sept, 16 SEPTIMUS PIESSE 
Origin of Species and of Languages 
THE extreme brevity of my former letter on this subject 
seems to have hindered Mr. Ransom, and perhaps other readers, 
from appreciating the analogical argument I used. Will you, 
in consideration of the importance of the inquiry, allow me now 
to illustrate that argument at greater length ? 
There are two sets of facts that stand out in marked contrast. 
No irrational animal has ever formed a language. Man alone, in 
all his varieties, has. 
I agree with Mr. Ransom that no language has originated 
from an zitent/ion to form a new language; I see no reason to 
. doubt that languages have arisen from the gradual variation, 
selection, and combination of a few primary sounds; and I 
think that existing languages are constantly undergoing change 
through the operation of physical, physiological, and other 
natural causes, irrespectively of reason. But the fact remains to 
be accounted for, that no animal unendowed with reason has 
ever selected and combined sounds into a language. 
The cause does not lie in a want of significant sounds to begin 
with. No one who has ever owned a dog is ignorant how many 
emotional sounds—sounds, too, that vary greatly in individuals 
and vyarieties—/e makes use of ; but he has never even begun to 
make a language of them. Neither does the cause lie in a want of 
power to distinguish, and in the case of some animals, to imitate 
very accurately the natural sounds they hear, so as to have a 
supply of vocal symbols for things and occurrences ready for 
adoption if they will. Butcan any irrational animal be named 
that has ever begun to use such sounds as symbols denoting 
things or events, still less to modify them in order to express 
modified meanings, and far less to combine them into symbols 
of complex things, or into phrases, propositions, and sentences ? 
The mocking-bird mimics the song of the whip-poor-will, the 
creaking of the wheelbarrow, the lowing of the ox, and the pat- 
tering of the rain; but does it ever, like the Greeks, Romans, 
and Gaels, speak of the ox by the name of éa ; or, like us, speak 
of the rain as patteyving ; or modify that sound, like the Hebrew 
and the Teutonic races, into a name for the substance that pat- 
ters (matar, water, Wasser), and use it to tell that it wants a 
drink? Least of all, has any irrational animal ever juxta-placed 
sounds, as the Chinese do, in different orders to express different 
relations between the things they denote ; or with Aryans, modi- 
* fied soundsinto prefixes and terminations to express metaphorically 
such abstract relations ? 
Ivery step in these processes involves an exercise of reason. 
True, there is no grand intention on the part of one man or 
NATURE 
435 
nation to form a language, but there are countless intentions of 
individual men to express individual ideas and thoughts as they 
emerge, or to express them more accurately than before ; and 
then, when one man by an exercise of reason devises and uses 
a new symbol or phrase, others imitate and adoptit. And so, 
while I admit that there are unintentional variations of words, 
and consequently (by degrees) of languages; and while I admit 
that there has been no intention to form a language as a whole, 
I think we must say that it is by countless intentions of rational 
beings that languages have been gradually formed. 
It may be objected that savages possess languages, and that 
they are not rational. ‘‘My monkey Wadlady,” writes Sir 
Samuel Baker, ‘‘ looks like a civilised beingin comparison with 
the Nuehr savages.” And yet, while the Neuhr savages have a 
language, Wallady has none, any more than my terrier Shag, 
knowing fellow though he be. Why this contrast, but because 
the most savage man is differenced from all other animals by the 
possession of reason ? 
Now, then, the argument against the theory of the formation 
of the species, or of their endowment with new organs, by a 
reasonless process, is this:—The experiment of the possibility of 
such a thing has been actually tried on the most extensive scale in 
the analogous matter of language, and has fatled—failed in every 
instance except where reason has been at work to prompt and 
direct. Ought we not then to pause, while our data are so 
imperfect, and while science is making strides that may soon 
bring her to a point of view that will show her present logic to 
have been utterly at fault—to pause before entertaining a thought 
so revolutionary and perilous as that an eye, a beast, a man 
has been formed without presiding intelligence or design at all. 
The subject is seductive ; but I fear I have already encroached 
too much on your space. WILLIAM TAYLOR 
The Cockroach 
THE cockroach (Aia/fa orientalis, Linz.) has found an apologist 
in Dr. Norman Macleod, who asserts his incredulity in the cur- 
rent stories of this insect’s bad habits. Cockroaches look, he 
says, like black priests among the beetles, and, like the priest- 
hood generally, have been made the objects of misrepresentation 
and slander. Anyhow, the doctor treats as mythical the tra- 
dition, constant on ship-board, that cockroaches are in the habit 
of nibbling the nails of those who sleep with their feet uncovered. 
Not only are they harmless, but they are absolutely useful, inas- 
much as they may be readily trod upon and killed by all who 
are willing to gratify their feelings of disgust and benefit society. 
In the history of the cockroach we can trace the origin of the 
nail-nibbling myth, if myth it be. The insect is indigenous in the 
warmer parts of America, and, in spite of its Linnean name, is 
only oriental through having been carried to the East by shipping. 
It has a natural love for warmth and for sweet things, and can 
indulge the latter taste by feasting on the feet of natives engaged 
in sugar manufacture. If Gilbert White is correct in his surmise 
that the insect was not introduced into England until late in the 
last century, its powers of reproduction and adaptation must be 
very large. It is, of course, very difficult to identify with abso- 
lute certainty the insects mentioned in classical authors, but there 
isa good deal to lead one to suppose that the zvAaxp)s mentioned 
by Aristotle and the Blatta histrinorum of Latin writers was the 
same as our loathsome pest. ‘The English name is curious and 
worth inyestigation, but unhappily there is so much guess-work 
employed in derivations that this branch of philology cannot 
claim to be recognised as one of the ‘exact sciences.” 
Norton Court, Weobley C, J. Ropinson 
On the Dissipation of Energy 
‘11 value of the successive numbers of NATURg is not a little 
enhanced by the papers of Professor Balfour Stewart on 
“Energy,” which also Jead us to long for his fortheeming volume 
on ** Physics.” If that work prove equal to that which he has 
already published on ‘* Heat,” it will give us a manual which 
may well compare with the best of those which have been pub- 
lished abroad, and it will besides possess a freshness of its 
own. 
But is it desirable that the doctrine of the conservation of energy 
should be represented everywhere as a modern discovery? No 
doubt the experimental verijication of the transformability of equiva- 
lent quantities of mechanical power of various kinds into equiva- 
lent temperatures is a modern discovery. But the doctrine itsel? 
