3o8 



NA TURE 



[January 14, 1909 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 



expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 



to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 



manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 



No notice is taken of anonymous coinmunications.] 

 Sequestrated Church Property. 



.\ WIDELY spread feeling exists, especially among Roman 

 Catholics, that sequestrated church properly carries a curse 

 with it ; that the effect of the curse is 'o e.stinguish the 

 line of descent from its owner, and to fall most heavily 

 on the eldest son. A lady was so much impressed with 

 what had been told her and with the evidences adduced 

 as to the reality of the curse, that she asked me to help 

 in investigating the matter. It had other interesting 

 aspects, so I consented to frame an appropriate question- 

 naire for starting the inquiry on proper statistical lines. 

 This was printed, and 245 copies of it were filled up by 

 a well-known antiquarian, the Rev. Harvey Bloom, of 

 Whitchurch, near Stratford-on-.Avon, in the order in which 

 they happened to be entered in the works of reference 

 that he used. Their contents were then discussed by Mr. 

 Edgar Schuster, fellow of New College, 0.\ford, and 

 formerly research fellow of the eugenics laboratory in 

 University College, London. Finally, such of the results 

 as seemed most appropriate are given here. Mr. 

 Schuster's report was elaborate; it ought (as he wrote 

 when he sent it) to be checked as regards minute par- 

 ticulars if published in full, but he is quite content that 

 the broad results given in the present paper should go 

 forth as they stand. 



The questions referred to the owner of each of the 245 

 properties in 1800 and to its owner at the present time, or 

 at the latest date at which information was easily 

 accessible; also to each of the intermediate owners in 

 succession. 



The phrase " Church property " applies to such proper- 

 ties as were ecclesiastic, wholly or in part, previous to the 

 dissolution of monasteries under Henry VIH., and " Not 

 church property " to those that were not so. 



The results are as follow : — 



Survival of Eldest Sons. 



Tolal numb-r of owner- I Of eldest sons among ihem 



^ per cent. 



Not Church Property ... 459 241 52"5 



Church Propeity 464 ' 240 517 



Length of Tenure (excluding first and last on the 

 list '). 

 Mean length | Median length 



Not Church Property 27-2 years Between 25 and 26 years 

 Church Property ... 27-4 ,, [ ,, ,, ,, 



Calculations were also made of the mean relative fre- 

 quency of tenures in each of the eight groups : — 0-9 years ; 

 10-19 ; ■ • ■ 7'>~79 years. The lines in a diagram con- 

 structed from these ran closely alike, quite as closely as 

 could be expected from the eight-times reduced sizes of 

 the sainples from which these means were derived. We 

 may therefore rest satisfied that no appreciable effect is 

 exerted by a curse supposed to thwart the inheritance of 

 church property by eldest sons, or to shorten the tenure 

 of its ownership. 



A curious anomaly is, however, formed in the more 

 than three-fold greater frequency with which church 

 properties come into the market as compared with non- 

 church properties. The facts are given in the following 



table : 



Not Church Property.. 

 Church Property... 



Tofal of 



459 

 464 



Total of 

 bypTrchLs" 



... IS . 

 so 



Percentage of 



by purchase 



••• 3'3 

 ... IO-8 



The answers to the questionnaire do not give sufficient 

 material for minute examination into the reasons why 

 (hurch property is sold with this remarkable frequency, 

 notwithstanding what has just been established concerning 

 the length of its tenure. It would require a fresh and 

 more dclic.-ite investigation to explain it. For the present, 



1 These are excluded— the first, because the data did not give the com- 

 menceTnent of the tenure : the last, because Ihe'owner was still livintr, and 

 therefore ihi future close of his tenure was unlnoivn. 



1 am inclined to ascribe the anomaly to the comparativir 

 unsuitability to modern requirements of the dwelling 

 houses, such as abbeys, S:c., which frequently accompany 

 church properties. They are nearly always built in low 

 situations, near to fish ponds, and with bad drainage. 

 They are therefore insalubrious, while the arrangement of 

 the apartments is usually inconvenient in many important 

 respects, and very costly to modify. On the other hand, 

 the picturesqueness and romance of old buildings adds 

 much to their market value. So it might be expected that 

 when one of them falls into the possession of a distant 

 relation, who has no very close associations with the place, 

 who knows its discomforts, and probably has a residence 

 of his own, he would be glad to sell. This is a pure 

 speculation, but helps to show that the contents of the 

 above table are not so provocative of a mysterious inter- 

 pretation as they might otherwise be. 



Francis Gai.ton. 



The Isothermal Layer of the Atmosphere. 



Afart from other considerations, I think that Mr. 

 Craig's contention (Nature, January 7, p. 281) as to the 

 isothermal layer is disproved by the results of theodolite 

 observations on ballons-sondes. When a balloon is 

 observed, its altitude above the horizon is in general seen 

 to decrease, showing an increase of wind velocity with 

 height. If Mr. Craig's supposition were true, this de- 

 crease in apparent altitude would become still more 

 marked when the balloon had reached such a height that 

 it no longer ascended ; but the contrary is the case. In 

 nearly all the ascents in which I have observed balloons 

 for a considerable time the angular altitude, after de- 

 creasing, commences to increase again ; on Mr. Craig's 

 supposition this would mean that the balloon, after it 

 reaches the floating condition, enters a current of air that 

 brings it nearer to the observer, and for this to occur 

 frequently is extremely unlikely. 



Two instances will illustrate this point. A balloon on 

 October i last year was watched until it burst; the 

 meteorograph gave a height of 19 kilometres, with the 

 isothermal layer at 12-2 kilometres. If the balloon had 

 ceased to rise at 122 kilometres the observed altitudes 

 show that it would have been moving towards the observer 

 at the rate of 25 kilometres an hour during the six minutes 

 previous to bursting, whereas before this it would have 

 been moving away at the rate of about 70 kilometres an 

 hour. At the time it burst it would have been 46 kilo- 

 metres away, and it fell 104 kilometres from the starting 

 point ; the balloon was unlikely to travel further during 

 the descent than during the ascent. 



In the ascent of October 2 the balloon was also seen 

 to burst ; the height from the meteorograph was 17 kilo- 

 metres, with the isothermal layer at 14-6 kilometres; if 

 the balloon had ceased to rise at 146 kilometres it would 

 have been moving towards the observer at the rate of 

 about 9 kilometres per hour during the seven minutes 

 before bursting, while previously it would have been 

 moving away at the rate of about 50 kilometres per hour. 

 If either balloon had reached a floating condition, it is 

 difficult to see why it should have burst ; it would probably 

 have floated until loss of gas caused it gradually to 

 descend. I think it is quite evident that on these two 

 occasions the balloon was ascending up to the time of 

 bursting, and both traces show the isothermal condition. 

 If it is assumed that the height as given by the meteoro- 

 graph trace is fairly accurate, the increase in angular 

 altitude at the end of the ascent would show that the 

 balloon had entered a layer of the atmosphere where the 

 wind velocity had decreased considerably, which is exactly 

 what one would expect to find in the isothermal la^er. 



In reference to Mr. Craig's supposition that the gas 

 inside the balloon may be sluggish in acquiring the low 

 temperature of the air into which it rises, it seems prob- 

 able that the gas inside the balloon will tend to be at a 

 lower temperature than the air outside, for the gas inside 

 will tend to cool at about the adiabatic rate for dry air, 

 while the rate of decrease of temperature of the air up to 

 12 kilometres or so is nearer the adiabatic rate for 

 saturated air. Charles J. P. Cave. 



Ditcham Park, Petersficld. 



NO. 2046, VOL. 79] 



