578 



NA TURE 



[Oct. 12, 1882 



puscles of animal origin had been found in air which had 

 been vitiated from certain sources, and how by means of 

 the discovery the sources of evil were detected and hence 

 done away with. Dr. Bartlett holds a strong opinion 

 against the probability of finding specific disease germs in 

 any form by which our present powers of observation can 

 recognise them, but he is equally impressed with the 

 indications afforded by the results of some of his experi- 

 ments as to the noxious influence of animal organisms, 

 including, perhaps, the specific matter of the various 

 contagia and of tubercle, which are often contained in 

 impure air. 



Capt. R. T. Hildyard drew attention to the influence 

 for good which might be exerted by medical men if, in 

 the course of their private practice, they had more 

 regard to the sanitary conditions under which their 

 patients were living.— The Hon. J. A. R. Russell brought 

 gether a large amount of carefully-prepared meteoro- 

 logical and other statistics to show how climate improved 

 with slight elevation. In a series of conclusions to which 

 his observations had led, he pointed out how the ranges 

 of temperature, yearly, monthly, and diurnal, were less at 

 certain elevations than in lower sites, and he regarded it 

 most desirable that every house should be built on arches 

 or on piers admitting of ventilation above the ground 

 level, and that in country districts no house should be 

 considered habitable of which the floor is on a level with 

 or below the ground. — Miss Yates, Hon. Sec. to the 

 Bread Reform League, pointed out the advantages of 

 wheat-meal bread over white bread, both as regards its 

 nutritive properties and otherwise, and urged its general 

 use as a means of promoting national health, especially 

 amongst the classes depending on bread as their main 

 article of food. 



ON THE PERCEPTION OF COLOURS BY THE 

 ANCIENT MAORIS 



IN an interesting paper on this subject by Mr. Colenso, 

 he gives a great deal of information on this subject, 

 derived from his individual experience during a very long 

 period of dwelling among the Maoris, and that before the 

 country was settled, and by his having travelled very much 

 among them, frequently in parts where no white man had 

 ever been, sometimes on the battle-field, both during and 

 after the fight, ever with them as medical man, often in 

 the confidence of their best head men. The colours of 

 black, white, red and brown were the prized and favourite 

 ones. The purer states, especially of each of these 

 colours were highly valued, to which may be added green 

 and yellow. These several colours and their varying hues 

 comprised nearly all that pertained to their dresses and 

 personal decorations, to their principal houses and 

 canoes. In the olden times a chief's house might truly 

 be called a house " of many colours," which were artisti- 

 cally and laboriously displayed. Each tint or shade of 

 colour bore its own peculiar name plainly and naturally, 

 or figuratively sometimes both. They possessed a fine 

 general discrimination of the various shades and hues 

 and tints ; they could give an accurate description of a 

 rainbow, of all its various colours ; they noticed the iri- 

 descent hues of the feathers of a pigeon's neck, of some 

 shells, and the delicate evanescent tints on the ventral 

 surfaces of many fish. From their general hues alone the 

 Maoris could accurately tell whether far off and to them un- 

 known districts were covered with a vegetation of fern or 

 flax (Phormium) or grasses, but far above all their fine 

 discrimination of delicate hues and shades was correctly 

 shown in their nice distinction of the various tints of the 

 flesh of the several kinds of kumara and taro. Once 

 travelling on the coast, nearly forty years ago, Colenso 

 met an old chief who told him that long ago he had culti- 

 vated a variety of the taro, which is called Wairuaarangi, 

 but that it had long been lost. Knowing this sort from 



having met it in the north, and remembering the delicate 

 and curious pink colour, Colenso tested the knowledge of 

 the chief by asking what colour it was, which he imme- 

 diately minutely described. They had early succeeded 

 in getting brilliant black and red dyes. The old Maoris 

 had a peculiar bias towards neutral colours. Blue was 

 certainly known to them, and they obtained it from two 

 sources, one mineral, the other vegetable ; and they had 

 even distinct names for several shades of blue. Through- 

 out this paper Mr. Colenso criticises and contradicts 

 many of the assertions made by Mr. Stack, from probably 

 an insufficient knowledge of Maori, in a memoir recently 

 published on the colour-sense of the Maoris {Trans. New 

 Zealand Institute, vol. xiv. p. 49). 



FRIEDRICH WOHLER 



\\J OHLER is dead. A man, who was born four years 

 * * after Priestley died, who worked with Berzelius, 

 who was engaged in chemical research when the bril- 

 liant genius of Davy was ranging over the whole field 

 of chemical phenomena, who was contemporaneous with 

 Liebig and Graham — this man has but now passed away 

 from our midst. 



Wohler witnessed, and well bore his part in helping on 

 the many great advances which chemistry has made since 

 the science was founded by Black, Priestley, and Lavoisier. 



Friedrich Wohler was born in 1800 near Frankfurt ; he 

 graduated as Doctor of Medicine at Heidelberg in 1823, 

 but in place of pursuing the study of the uncertain art of 

 medicine, as he tells us in his " Reminiscences," he deter- 

 mined to devote himself to the more exact science of 

 chemistry. Recommended to Berzelius by Gmelin, Wohler 

 spent the winter of 1823-4 in the laboratory of the great 

 Swedish chemist. 



As we read the Reminiscences of Wohler's youth — pub- 

 lished a few years ago in the Berichte of the Berlin 

 Chemical Society — we are ready to exclaim that it was 

 impossible that, with the appliances which he had at his 

 command, Berzelius could accomplish chemical work of 

 any value. A few tables, an oil lamp or two, a large jar 

 of water, basins and flasks — that was nearly all. The 

 ancient Anna cooked in the kitchen, where also stood 

 the sand-bath and the rarely-used furnace ; Anna still 

 spoke in these days of " oxidised marine acid gas ; " but 

 Berzelius was beginning to think that it might be better 

 to say chlorine. 



Five years later we come to a date memorable in the 

 history of chemistry. Hitherto it had seemed as if the 

 boundary which chemists had found it convenient to draw 

 between organic and inorganic chemistry had a real 

 existence in nature ; but Wohler's preparation of urea, in 

 1828, from constituents of mineral origin, showed that 

 this chemical boundary was as unreal as any other drawn 

 by the too ardent devotees of system ; and that, as 

 Graham said, in nature " distinctions of class are never 

 absolute." The artificial barrier broken down, the living 

 science of the chemistry of carbon compounds rapidly 

 grew and overspread the place where the dead wall had 

 been. Wbhkr's discovery seemed a small one at the 

 time, but what great fruit has it borne : 



" Walls ad coit of no expansion, 

 Trellis work may haply flower 

 Twice the size." 



About this time (1830) the reaction led by Dumas 

 against the Berzelian system of classification was growing 

 in strength ; in their zeal to overthrow the evils which 

 had arisen from the axiom of the Swedish chemist — that 

 every compound must be built up of two electrically 

 opposed parts— chemists had sought likewise to demolish 

 the conception of compound radicles, which formed so 

 marked a feature of the Berzelian system. 



