16 



NATURE 



[May 4, 1S82 



irritation of the earth-air, which sometimes sends out 

 flames. It is said that a kind of beast accompanies the 

 thunder, and it moves about in the air. This is nothing 

 strange, because at a certain island called Ampon, which 

 is about 3900 ri ( i ri = 2A miles) from Japan, there is a 

 bird called the Kasubara, which is covered with fur 

 instead of feathers, and which eats fire. Other birds live 

 on wind. As this world is unlimitedly great and extensive 

 there may have lived strange beasts and birds, like the 

 thunder beast which the Japanese talk about. The volume 

 of sound given out by thunder depends on the number of 

 water-clouds in the air. When the latter is small, the sound 

 of the thunder is not loud and appears far off. On the 

 other hand when the clouds are piled up in the heavens, 

 the sound is loud and is simultaneous with the lightning. 

 The sound is caused by the passage of fire through the 

 water. The ancients regarded thunder as the report of 

 the battle between fire and water — the male and female 

 elements. If this were the case there is no reason for the 

 interval between the flash and the sound. Earthquakes 

 are subterranean thunder ; the noise is caused by the 

 rush of water which has long been kept confined by the 

 earth-air. Snow is the vapour which rises from the 

 earth ; when it ascends high enough it becomes frozen 

 and falls as snow. Fog is also this vapour. Haze 

 is the vapour mixed with smoke from some volcano. 

 The writer concludes by expressing his intention of 

 making the actions of nature, such as rain, wind, &c. — 

 difficult as they are to explain — quite clear on a future 

 occasion. 



These ideas may be taken as representing those of 

 most educated Japanese of half a century ago, with the 

 exception perhaps of a few who had been taught by the 

 Dutch. What the Japanese peasant thought, and still 

 thinks of thunder, earthquakes, storms, and other striking 

 natural phenomena will be found in a deeply interesting 

 chapter of Mr. Griffis's " Mikado's Empire." One of the 

 principal Japanese artists, Hokusai, some of whose works 

 have recently been given to the English public, did not 

 think it beneath his genius to endeavour to picture the 

 extraordinary creatures that form the zoological mytho- 

 logy of Japan. There the astonished student of Japanese 

 pictorial art can behold Futen, the wind demon, Raiden, 

 the creator of thunder, the fish whose movements cause 

 earthquakes, the kappa, or demon of the deep, and 

 dragons of sufficient variety of form to satisfy the 

 weirdest imagination. 



NOTES 



Rarely has so distinguished and representative an assembly 

 been seen in Westminster Abbey as that which met to pay the 

 last honours to Mr. Darwin, on Wednesday last week. The 

 Abbey indeed was crowded. The character of the long line of 

 distinguished men who followed the honoured remains to the 

 grave, may be seen from the list of pall-bearers : — The Duke of 

 Devonshire, the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Derby, Mr. J. 

 Russell Lowell, the American Minister, Dr. W. Spottiswoode, 

 P.R.S., Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. A. R. Wallace, Prof. Huxley, 

 Sir John Lubbock, and the Rev. Canon Farrar. Mr. Darwin 

 has been buried close beside the grave of Sir John Herschel, 

 and within two paces of that of Sir Isaac Newton. At the 

 Royal Academy dinner on Saturday, Mr. Spottiswoode, in 

 replying for science, could not but refer to the loss "of our 

 greatest philosopher and noblest spirit." "I know not," he 

 said, "whether, in the presence of statesmen and leaders of 

 thought, of commanders both by sea and land, of artists, of 

 preachers, of poets and men of letters of every kind, it is fitting 

 that I should speak of greatness ; but if patience and persever- 

 ance in good work, if a firm determination to turn neither to the 

 right hand nor to the left, either for glory or for gain, if a con- 

 tinual overcoming of evil with good in any way constitute 



elements of greatness, then the man of whom I speak — Charles 

 Darwin — was truly great. He lived, indeed, to a good age ; he 

 lived to complete the great work of his life ; he lived to witness a 

 revolution in public opinion on matters with which he was con- 

 cerned such as few had seen before — a revolution from opposition 

 to concurrence, a revolution from antipathy to sympathy, or 

 whatever else may better express a complete change of front. 

 And so having at the beginning been somewhat rudely pushed 

 aside as an intruder and disturber of accepted opinions, he was in 

 the end not only borne on the shoulders of his comrades to his 

 last resting-place, but was welcomed at the threshold by the 

 custodians of an ancient fabric and of an ancient faith as a fitting 

 companion of Newton and of Herschel, and of the other great 

 men who from time to time have been gathered there." 



M. Jamin, president of the Academy of Sciences, having 

 summoned M. Quatrefages to deliver an iloge on the late Mr. 

 Charles Darwin on Monday last, the eminent zoologist read a long 

 and eloquent oration, which was receivedjwifh unanimous plaudits, 

 and will be printed in the next Comptes Rendus. 



We take the following from the Times: — The Council of 

 the Royal Society have selected the following fifteen from 

 the fifty-two candidates for the Fellowship who have pre- 

 sented themselves during the present session. The election, 

 which rests with the Fellows of the Society, will take place on 

 Thursday, June S, at 4 p.m. The names are — Prof. V. Ball, 

 Dr. G. S. Brady, Dr. G. Buchanan, C. Baron Clarke, Francis 

 Darwin, Prof. W. Dittmar, Dr. W. H. Gaskell, Mr. R. T. 

 Glazebrook, Mr. F. Ducane Godman, Mr. J. Hutchinson, Prof. 

 A. Liversidge, Prof. I. Malet, Mr. W. D. Niven, Mr. R. H. 

 Inglis Palgrave, and Mr. W. Weldon. 



The fifty-second Annual Meeting of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science will commence in Southampton 

 on Wednesday, Aug. 23. The President-Elect isC. W. Siemens, 

 D.C.L., F.R.S. Vice-Presidents-Elect: The Right Hon. the 

 Lord Mount-Temple, Capt. Sir F. J. Evans, K.C.B., F.R.S., 

 Hydrographer to the Admiralty, F. A. Abel, C.B., F.R.S., 

 Prof, de Chaumont, M.D., F.R.S, Col. A. C. Cooke, R.E., 

 C.B., Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, Wyndham S. 

 Portal, Prof. Prestwich, M.A., F.R.S., Philip Lutley Sclater, 

 F.R.S. General Treasurer : Trof. A. W. Williamson, F.R.S., 

 University College, London, W.C. General Secretaries : Capt. 

 Douglas Galton, C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S., Francis Maitland Bal- 

 four, F.R.S. Secretary, Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S. Local 

 Secretaries : C. W. A. Jellicoe, John E. Le Feuvre, Morris 

 Miles. Local Treasurer, J. Blount Thomas. The Sections are 

 the following : A — Mathematical and Physical Science — Presi- 

 dent, Right Hon. Prof. Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S. Vice-Presi- 

 dents : G. H. Darwin, F.R.S., Prof. G. C. Foster, F.R.S. 

 Secretaries : W. M. Hicks, M.A., Prof. O. J. Lodge, D.Sc, D. 

 McAlister, M.A., B.Sc. (Recorder), Rev. G. Richardson. B — 

 Chemical Science— President, Prof. G. D. Liveing, F.R.S. 

 Vice-Presidents: A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S., Prof. H. E. 

 Roscoe, F.R.S. Secretaries: P. Phillips Bedson, D.Sc. (Re. 

 corder) H. B. Dixon, F.C.S., J. L. Notter. C— Geology 

 —President, R. Etheridge, F.R.S. Vice-Presidents: Prof. 

 T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., Prof. J. Prestwich, F.R.S. Secre- 

 taries : T. W. Shore, F.G.S., W. Topley, F.G.S. (Recorder), 

 E. Westlake, F.G.S. , W. Whitaker, F.G.S. D— Biology- 

 President, Prof. A. Gamgee, M.D., F.R.S. Vice-Presidents : 

 Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., G. E. Dobson, F.L.S., 

 Prof. M. A. Lawson, F.L.S., Prof. J. D. Macdonald, F.R.S. 

 Department of Anatomy and Physiology : — Prof. A. Gamgee, 

 M.D., F.R.S. (President), will preside. Secretaries : W. 

 Heape, A. Sedgwick, B.A. (Recorder). Department of Zoo- 

 logy and Botany : — Prof. M. A. Lawson, F.L.S. (Vice-Pre- 

 sident), will preside. Secretaries: W. A. Forbes, F.Z.S. (Re- 



