34^ 



NA TURE 



[August 10, 1882 



lastly that the present diversity of speech on the globe admits of 

 another, a much more simple and rational explanation. 



What are the facts ? Col. Garrick Mallery has an interesting 

 paper also in last week's Nature, on Gesture Speech, in which 

 he tells us that there are, or Were, in the United States alone 

 sixty-five stock languages differing from each other "as radically 

 as each differed from the Hebrew, Chinese, or English." And 

 how many more in Mexico, Central, and South America? In 

 Europe we have at least one still surviving, the Basque. !n Asia 

 there are at least thirty-five or forty. But who will count the 

 number in the Sudan, and in the Oceanic regions occupied by 

 the Negrito, Papuan, and Melanesian tribes ? It is no exaggera- 

 tion to say that probably as many as two thousand of these stock 

 languages have been evolved since man first began to utter 

 articulate sounds. 



Now if it be necessary to postulate two independent evolutions 

 of human speech in order to account for two independent forms 

 of speech, it follows that we must postulate two thousand inde- 

 pendent evolutions of human speech in order to account for these 

 two thousand independent forms of speech. Are the advocates 

 of speechless races prepared to go this length ? Or do anthro- 

 pologists at all realist the nature of the problem, when they 

 propose to explain the existence of fundamentally distinct 

 languages by the assumption of a corresponding number of inde- 

 pendent centres of linguistic evolution ? If they draw the line 

 short of one or two thousand such centres, how do they propose 

 to meet the difficulty presented by so many separate types of 

 speech ? Frederic Midler left the problem just where it was 

 when he arbitrarily fixed the number of physical and linguistic 

 families at twelve. 



But so marvellous is the evolution of speech, that one may 

 well doubt whether it occurred even so many as twelve times 

 ever since the appearance of man on the earth. For my part I 

 decline to believe that it occurred more than once, if once be 

 sufficient to account for the present conditions. And it is on 

 this ground that I take my stand. Anything short of, say, two 

 thousand evolutions of speech are inadequate ; one suffices ! 

 Under like conditions speech becomes differentiated far more 

 rapidly than physical features. The former is essentially more 

 or less evanescent ; the latter are relatively persistent. Hence 

 during the many ages of man's life on the globe, his physical 

 type has been but slightly modified, producing mere varieties — a 

 black and woolly-haired, a yellow and lank-haired, a fair and 

 wavy-haired variety, and so on. Hut the primeval linguistic 

 type or germ has become differentiated into varieties, species and 

 even genera, whence the various morphological orders of speech, 

 four in number, and the many now fundamentally distinct 

 groups and families developed within each of those morpho- 

 logical orders, some extinct, some dying out, some still 

 flourishing. The germ itself, which served as the common 

 starting point, but which was itself at first little more than 

 speech "in petto," has long been effaced past all recovery. 

 Hence, although starting from one common centre, it does not 

 follow that the linguistic families now existing can ever again be 

 traced back to that common centre. Aided as we are by 

 embryology and the fossil world, can we trace back the various 

 orders of plants and animals to their common centres? Yet no 

 evolutionist doubts that they were differentiated from such centres. 

 But language, although it may be said to have a sort of embryo- 

 logy within itself, reveahng the growth of its inner structure, 

 leaves no fossils behind it. Its "missing links" are lost for 

 ever. Hence it is not surprising that, in dealing with the evolu- 

 tion of speech, much more must be postulated than is always 

 necessary in dealing with the evolution of organised life. It 

 follows that while Darwinism, as applied to organisms may one 

 day be established scientifically, Darwinism as applied to lan- 

 guage, must always partake somewhat of the nature of a hypo- 

 thesis. Meanwhile I submit that, on the reasons here given, 

 the hypothesis of a common primeval linguistic germ is both 

 rational and adequate, whereas the hypothesis of speechless 

 races is both improbable in itself, and fails to account for the 

 very conditions to explain which it has been invented. 



A. H. Keane 



The Chemistry of the Plante and Faure Batteries 



In your issue of (lie 20th ult. there is a letter by Dr. Oliver 

 Lodge on the recent experiments of Mr. Tribe and myself. 

 While confirming our general results from his own experience, 

 he asks a question about the lead sulphate into which we state 



the spongy lead is converted during the discharge of a Plante or 

 Faure battery. 



In an early stage of our investigation we satisfied ourselves 

 that lead sulphate was capable of both oxidation and reduction 

 by the voltaic current, under the circumstances found in these 

 batteries. Our best experiment is described in Nature of 

 March 16. It was made by spreading lead sulphate on platinum 

 plates ; but I have just had it repeated with lead plates, so as to 

 imitate more closely the conditions of actual practice. The 

 sulphate was reduced by the electrolytic hydrogen as before. As, 

 however, the reduction takes place first in close proximity to the 

 lead plate, it is not easily recognised till the chemical change has 

 advanced some distance, and a good deal of the white salt 

 always escaped decomposition. But the circumstances of the 

 actual practice are much more favourable for the reduction of 

 the sulphate than were those of our experiment : for the sulphate 

 is formed in perfect contact with the metallic lead of the plate or 

 its spongy covering, and the reduction is doubtless facilitated by 

 its intimate mixture with the excess of spongy lead. When we 

 stated that sulphate of lead is finally the "only product of the 

 discharge," we were referring to the disappearance of any 

 peroxide, and did not mean to imply that in actual practice the 

 whole of the spongy metal is usually converted into sulphate. 



In cur experiments Mr. Tribe and I have always employed a 

 sufficiency of acid, and we have never found any difficulty in 

 charging again a plate which had been discharged. 



In conclusion, I may express my great satisfaction that Dr. 

 Lodge is carrying on an independent inquiry into the obscure 

 chemical changes that take place in these cells. 



Bowness, August 5 J. H. Gladstone 



The Late Prof. Balfour 



Permit me to add a few words to Dr. Foster's admirable 

 biographical sketch in the last number of Nature, and thereby 

 correct a slight error into which he has fallen. He assigns to 

 me the credit of inviting our much-lamented friend to give 

 lectures on animal morphology. It behoves me to say that I 

 have no claim to so much foresight. The proposal, so charac- 

 teristic of Prof. Balfour's ardent disposition, originated, to the 

 best of my belief, with him, and all I had to do was to place at 

 his service, with the consent of the Vice-Chancellor for the time 

 being, my private room in the New Museums, which I was glad 

 to see turned to so good a purpose, for hitherto but little u>e 

 had been made of it. The result is sufficiently well known. 



Alfred Newton 



44, Davies Street, London, August 5 



M. Raoul Pictet's Corpuscular Theory of Gravitation 

 I BELIEVE that I can remove M. Pictet's uncertainties regard- 

 ing the credibility of the presumptive origin of attractive force 

 in the undirected motion of an all-pervading material ether, 

 without adopting the desponding alternative to which he appears 

 to be obliged (in perhaps needless extremities) to betake himself, 

 that it might be conceded "without its being possible to explain 

 it." My reasons for accenting the proposition without any doubt 

 or question, would at least, I believe, if they could be submitted 

 to him in a form of faultless coherence and comple'eness, relieve 

 him from pursuing the laborious purpose, which 1 am perfectly 

 assured from my own apprehension of the real character of 

 the equivalence, and of the mode of establishment which it 

 admits of, would fail in its intended object, of undertaking a 

 series of pendulum experiments to prove it. 



Before reading the translation in Nature, vol. xxvi. p. 310, 

 of M. Pictet's paper on a comparison between the potential and 

 corpu cular theories of attractive force, I had in fact just assured 

 myself satisfactorily of the correctness of exactly the conclusion 

 of which he has given such a clear and distinct enunciation, 

 from a theory of thermodynamic actions which proceeds upon an 

 entirely different basis from that which he has skilfully, and in so 

 many ca-es successfully, applied. The demonstration which I used 

 is a sufficiently clear and consistent one to be convincing ; but it 

 is founded upon a chain of reasoning which is quite independent 

 of that employed by M. Pictet, and it does not actually lead me 

 to entertain the theoretical conclusion that the apparent force of 

 gravitation on a planet will be in any measure directly dependent 

 on, and variable with the varying velocities of other planets' 

 motions in the solar system ; but that it will be a constant effect 

 of the ethereal medium. If therefore the proof which I could 



