30 



NA TURE 



\_Nov. 12, 1885 



are delivered in tbe medical schools of Great Britain and Ireland." 

 You say : " Syslematic lectures are delivered in every medical 

 school in the United Kingdom ; and it is difficult to believe that 

 the translator could have been unacquainted with the fact." 

 Now, I do not admit that it is the duty of a mere translator to 

 correct all the errors of the original, and, as a matter of fact, I 

 have, I think, only once put the author right (at p. leg) ; but I 

 do not admit the author to be wrong in his assei'tion. Looking 

 through the Medical Directory for this year, I find that eleven 

 medical schools make no jjrovision whatever for ophthalmological 

 instruction, and I doubt very much if the "Ophthalmic Demon- 

 strations," " Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Eye," " Oph- 

 thalmic Surgery," &c., advertised at many of the other schools, 

 would properly come under the head of Dr. Fuchs's "regular 

 lectures," or the "systematic lectures " you speak of. As it is 

 upwards of forty years since I was a student at a medical school, 

 I may of course be mistaken respecting the present state of 

 ophthalmologic education in this country ; at all events, I had 

 not any knowledge of an opposite state of things which would 

 have enabled me to say that Dr. Fuchs was wrong in saying that 

 "aj a rule no regular lectures on ophthalmology are delivered " 

 in our medical schools, and the facts I have given above seem 

 to prove that " regular lectures " on ophthalmic medicine are 

 still the exception in the medical schools of the United Kingdom. 



R. E. Dudgeon 

 53, Montagu Square, November 4 



[We have i-eferred Dr. Dudgeon's letter to the writer, who 

 replies as follows : — 



Dr. Dudgeon's letter will not bea' a moment's examination. 

 In the first place he misstates what he calls the " first accusa- 

 tion." He was not accused of "often" rendering "Augen- 

 heilkunie" by "Ophlh.ilmology," but of having done so in one 

 particular place, in which the eft'ect of the mistranslation was to 

 give a certain amount of cilour to a statement which, in the 

 original, was wholly untrue. 



It is obvious that "Ophthalmology" is neither English, 

 French, nor German. It is common to all three, and the forms 

 of it differ only in termination. " Ophthalmologic " should be 

 rendered by "ophthalmology," and vice v^rsA. Its meaning 

 embraces everything appertaining to the eyes, and its German 

 equivalent is " Auijenlehre." 



" Augenheilkunde," on the other hand, is a word of limited 

 significance, the meaning of which embraces only the treatment 

 of aflections of the eyes. Dr. Dudgeon's suggested rendering, 

 " Ophthalmic Medicine," is so far inadequate that it might not 

 be understood to include surgery, and it could hardly be 

 understood to include the use of optical appliances. " Augen- 

 heilkunde" fonns part of ophthalmology, an important part 

 indeed, but a part only. 



Dr. Fuchs .asserted that, "as a rule, no regular lectures on 

 'Augenheilkunde' were delivered in the medical schools of Great 

 Britain and Ireland." This assertion, very possibly made in 

 honest ignorance, is absolutely the reverse of the truth. Dr. 

 Dudgeon altered it into the statement that "no regular lectures 

 on ophthalmology " were so delivered. This, in a sense, is 

 true ; because the lectures, which cover the whole extent of 

 "Augenheilkunde," neither cover, nor attempt to cover, 

 " ophthalmology." 



I do not think it is too much to expect that a translator shall 

 correct a misstatement in the original work, especially when that 

 misstatement is one which casts a wholly unmerited stigma upon 

 the institutions of the translator's native country. Instead of 

 correcting it. Dr. Dudgeon casts it into an altered form, in 

 which it may be said to be true literally, although calculated 

 to produce an entirely erroneous imjjression upon the reader. 



Dr. Dudgeon must not go to the extremely condensed state- 

 ments of the A/eJical Directory for complete accounts of the 

 work done by British Schools of Medicine, but to the pro- 

 spectuses of the schools themselves. There are thirteen such 

 schools in London, and regular lectures on "Augenheilkunde" 

 are delivered at all of them ; at Bartholomew's by Messrs. 

 Power and Vernon ; at Guy's by Mr. Higgins and Dr. Brailey ; 

 at King's College by Mr. MacHardy ; at the London by Mr. 

 Waren Tay ; at the Middlesex by Mr Lang ; at St. George's 

 by Mr. Brudenell Carter and Mr. Frost ; at St. Mary's by Mr. 

 Critchett ; at St. Thomas's by Mr. Nettleship ; at University 

 College by Mr. Tweedy ; at the Westminster by Mr. Cowell ; 

 at the West London by j\lr. Vernon ; at the School of Medicine 

 for Women by Mr. Mackinlay. At Charing Cross the lectures 



are delivered by arrangement with the staff of the adjacent 

 Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. It would be tedious to 

 enter into particulars with regard to the provincial, Scotch, and 

 Irish schools, but similar lectures are delivered in all of them.] 



The Helm 'Wind 



The helm wind oi Cumberland has been the subject of much 

 discussion in England. I wonder how the true explanation has 

 not been found, viz. that the helm 'oindis a bora, i.e. identical in 

 character with the extremely strong dry east snd north-east winds 

 blowing on the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia, as well as on the 

 north part of the east coast of the Black Sea, especially at Novoros- 

 siisk. At the latter place it blows from the Varada chain, about 

 2030 feet high, and, as with the helm wind, it is not felt a little 

 distance to the east. I give the translation of a passage on the 

 bora in my book on "The Climates of the World" : — 



" Seamen call the bora an air-waterfall. There is reason to believe 

 that it begins when the stable equilibrium between the air-strata on 

 the mountain and the bay is disturbed, i.e. when the latter is more 

 than 10° warmer than the former. The Varada chain falls in 

 a gentle slope eastward towards the broad Adegoa valley, to the 

 north-cast of which is the Svinzovy (Lead) chain. In this 

 walled-in valley the temperature is much lower than on the 

 coast, especially in winter and autumn, and when the cold air 

 fills it to overflowing there arises an unstable equilibrium towards 

 the west, and the colder it is on the mountain in comparison to 

 the bay, the stronger is the reaction, ;' e. the bora." 



Here also the b^r.i may arise, not only on account of a strong 

 local cooling of the air in the Adegoa valley, but also accompany 

 general north-east winds to the north of the Caucasian chain. 

 They bring cold air from afar, are sometimes prevented by the 

 Varada chain from .'inking to the sea-level, and during this time 

 the equilibrium is disturbed and they appear as bora, even if 

 they blow as gentle farther to the east. 



/ have no doubt the En:^iish helm win i is also due to a ais- 

 turhed equilibrium. The east is colder than the west, and the 

 contrast is stronger when east winds blow, i.e. local radiation 

 makes the east yet colder, and in short a difference of tempera- 

 ture of about 14° is likely to occur between the Cross Fell 

 Range and the Penrith v.alley. In summer the wind is not felt — • 

 the west being then colder th.an the east ; and it is less frequent 

 in winter than in November, March, and April, because the 

 prevailing west winds and the cloudy weather which necessarily 

 accompanies them equalise the temperature. 



St. Petersburg, October 19 [31] A. Woeikof 



The Resting Position of Oysters 



The evidence adduced by Mr. Cunningham to prove that 

 oysters rest on the right or flat valve in their natural state seems 

 conclusive. Remembering, however, that I possessed a young 

 oyster-shell detached from a sandstone rock years ago on the 

 coast of Arran, I turned to it, and was surprised to find that 

 the lower or attached valve was unmistakably the larger, overlap- 

 ping the other at the hinge and all round. I have another single 

 valve of some foreign s]jecies taken from a Haliotis shell, which 

 furnishes similar evidence. Apparently, therefore, in the young 

 or attached state it is the larger or convex valve which is the 

 lower, and probr.bly this is the evidence on which the ordinary 

 statement in conchologic.al books rests. It will be curious if 

 the truth turns out to be that the oyster changes its position 

 when it becomes unattached. Perhaps the remarkable inequali- 

 ties in the shape of the convex valves may arise from the in- 

 equalities in the objects to which they are originally fixed. 



W. Turner 



27, Queen's Crescent, Edinburgh 



The Australian Lyre Bird 



Having been stationed at intei-vals for some years on the 

 mountains of Eastern Manaro, in the southern part of New- 

 South Wales, the habitat of the Lyre Bird or Native Pheasant 

 {Menura supi-ba or Paradisea), I have thought some fuller 

 particulars regarding its habits, than are usually obtainable, 

 might be interesting to your readers. 



This range of mountains, the more sheltered sides of which 

 form the home of these interesting birds, attains a height of over 

 4000 feet above sea level. The sides, sloping towards the 

 coast at a general angle of about 45°, are heavily timbered with 



