July 13, 1882] 



NATURE 



2 4- 



sylvestre should have put the editor on his guard ; the 

 reference to Fuchs which he gives shows clearly that 

 some Allium was intended, and tracing the synonymy 

 through Bauhin to Linnasus, we find that A. vim-ale is 

 the species meant. Even apart from this evidence, it is 

 obvious that the " sellers of simples " who substituted 

 another herb for Teucrium Scordium would have selected 

 one that had a similar smell, and not one like the Colc/ii- 

 cum, which has no such odour. Mr. Mowat rightly iden- 

 tifies the "gosegresse" of the " Sinonoma" (p. 41) with 

 Potentilla Anserinaj but it is hardly accurate to say that 

 it is "generally cleavers" {Galium Aparine). The 

 "Dictionary of English Plant-Names" shows that the 

 Potcntilla is at least as frequently called'goosegrass now- 

 adays ; and it is the "Gosgres" of the Old English 

 Medical MS. printed in Archasologia, vol. xxx. (p. 40S) — 

 a glossary containing many plant-names which have 

 been too little noticed. " Caputpurgium, i. stafisagria," 

 is not Pcdiadaris, as glossed by Mr. Mowat — a plant 

 supposed to favour the growth of lice — but the Staves. 

 acre, which has been used for destroying them since the 

 days of Pliny. Similarly " Calendula, i. solsequium," is 

 not Caltha, but the Marigold, Calendula officinalis s this 

 is made quite clear by the description under Kalendula, 

 which may be cited as an example of the capital diagnoses 

 which the glossary contains. " Kalendula est herba 

 crescens in hortis portans florem rubeum vel croceum de 

 quibus floribus faciunt sibi juvenculae coronas, solsequium 

 idem." 



To make a glossary of this kind useful to other than 

 English-speaking students, the plants should be identified 

 with their Latin as well as by their English names. Even 

 in America, the mention of the cowslip would suggest, not 

 Primula veris but Caltha palustris. Mr. Mowat says (quite 

 correctly) that "pigle, pagle, paigle seems to be the regular 

 old name for cowslip"; and he seems to imply that the 

 entry "pigle, i. stichewort," may also refer to Primula 

 veris. But a previous entry, " Lingua avis, i. stichewort, i- 

 pigle," is quite sufficient to confirm the natural conclusion 

 that by stitchwort Stellaria Holostea (which is still com- 

 monly so called) was intended ; and this plant is called 

 pigle by Gerard in his appendix of " names gathered out 

 of ancient written and printed copies, and from the 

 mouthes of plaine and simple countrie people." Under 

 "Serpillum" we find the name " pelestre," which Mr. 

 Mowat queries " palustre ? " but this is a form of Pelli- 

 tory, already given on p. 34—" Piretrum, pelestre idem " — 

 the name "Piretrum "showing that Anacyclus Pyrethrum, 

 not Parietaria, was intended ; the Anacyclus also figures 

 in the Glossary under the name of " Dentaria," in allusion 

 to its former use in toothache. An instance of the insuf- 

 ficiency of English names is given in the gloss of " Um- 

 bilicus veneris, i. penigresse," as " penny-grass, penny- 

 wort " ; it is of course Cotyledon, not Hydrocotyle, which 

 is here meant, though the vernacular names are common 

 to the two plants. 



In most cases, however, where Mr. Mowat has given a 

 modern synonym, it is correct ; but I do not quite under- 

 stand why only comparatively few plants are identified, 

 as the identifications are by no means confined to cases 

 of special difficulty. Some very obvious explanations are 

 duly set forward, while in more doubtful cases help is 

 often not forthcoming. 



In the volume of Plant-Names which I hope to prepare 

 for the Early English Text Society, I shall try to identify 

 as far as possible all the plant-names, both English and 

 Latin, with their modern scientific equivalents. This will 

 be a tedious work, and one in which mistakes are certain 

 to occur ; but a foundation will then have been laid for the 

 future production of a comprehensive work on English 

 plant-names which shall take in all, from the earliest to 

 the most recent. When such a work comes to be clone, 

 the great value of collections like this of Mr. Mowat will 

 become apparent. James Britten 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

 {The Editor dots not hold himsrff responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 

 [The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letter; 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even 

 of communications containing interesting and novel facts. ] 



The Analysis of the Tuning Fork 



Mr. Hermann Smith, in a letter in Nature last week, 

 commenting upon my paper read before the Physical Society on 

 June 10, of which you gave a short report, offers some very 

 cogent experiments in support of the evidence I have endea- 

 voured to give, that the tuning-fork does not communicate its 

 sonorous vibrations to a sounding-board through a vent raid, as 

 we find generally accepted upon the theory of Chladni. In 

 remarks upon my papei at the Physical Society, Lord Rayleigh 

 suggested that this matter could be demonstrated by cutting a 

 tuning-fork out in both ends of a long steel bar in the manner I had 

 done, for an experiment, in one end only ; we might then observe 

 if sonorous vibrations would be communicated through either of 

 the prongs of the double fork, at the opposite end to that set in 

 vibration. In the following week I constructed such a fork, and 

 I found that either of the non-vibrating prongs, when the 

 opposite ones were set in vibration, would form a perfect stem 

 to the fork, and communicate sonorous vibrations just as well as 

 a single stem. In this case it will be seen that the prongs, 

 which may be considered to form the stem, lead directly to the 

 places on the fork pointed out as its nodes by Chladni. It 

 appears, therefore, evident that a node may communicate 

 sonorous vibration to a sounding-board. 



After reading my paper Dr. Stone told me in conversation 

 that he had constructed a tuning-fork with a rod projecting at right 

 angles to the open space between the prongs, and directly from its 

 stem, and that this rod communicated sonorous vibrations from 

 the fork to a sounding-board nearly as perfectly as the direct 

 stem. This modified form of fork I also made by screwing a 

 stem into my experimental fork, which was made in the end of 

 a flat steel bar. I found it to act as Dr. Stone had stated. These 

 experiments appear further to show that sonorous vibrations are 

 communicated through nodes to sounding-boards. If we may 

 apply this principle to stringed instruments, we must look rather 

 to the bridge than the transverse motion of the string, as the 

 communicator of the sonorous vibrations which produces the 

 note. I may say that the discussion of Chladni's theory was not 

 the object of my paper, the purpose of which was to show that 

 the sonorous vibrations forming a note are possibly compounded 

 of vibrations of much smaller amplitude than generally assumed, 

 which was perhaps better demonstrated by other experiments. 



W. F. Stanley 



The Mount Pisgah (U.S.) Stone Carvings 

 The number of Nature dated June 15 (p. 160) contains some 

 statements relating to the curious stone carvings discovered by 

 Mr. M. S. Valentine in the neighbourhood of Mount Pisg 

 North Carolina, and now exhibited by him in Europe. 

 leaving the United States, Mr. Valentine brought his specimen 

 to Washington, in order to have them examined by Prof. Bai ■!, 

 the Director of the United States National Museum, and ; 

 myself. I am therefore enabled to express an opinion concerning 

 them. Having been for many years in charge of the largest 



