August 24, 191 1] 



NATURE 



261 



elementary schools and the means which should be taken 

 to raise the standard of efficiency in these subjects." 



It appears that attempts hitherto made by the Board of 

 Education to give teachers a special training in rural sub- 

 jects have not been successful, and the only real progress 

 made in this direction has been due to the efforts of local 

 education authorities in providing special courses for the 

 teachers in their rural schools. The report recognises that 

 ther " is no inducement for teachers to qualify themselves 

 for rural schools. The rate of pay is lower and chance of 

 promotion less than in town schools, so that young teachers 

 naturally object to become earmarked for country schools. 



The chief recommendations of the committee are : — the 

 extension of the training-college course so that teachers 

 would be able to specialise in rural subjects during the 

 third year ; the provision by county local authorities of 

 classes and courses in rural science ; the encouragement of 

 rural teachers by making their pay more nearly equal to 

 that of the town teacher ; the inclusion of rural subjects 

 in the curriculum of secondary schools attended by intend- 

 ing rural teachers ; and increased grants by the Treasury 

 to the local education authorities. 



Summaries of the evidence received is given in the 

 appendices contained in both reports. J. J. G. 



ESKIMO MUSIC 

 T X [888 Franz Boas published nineteen melodies of the 

 central Eskimo in his well-known work on this people. 

 In 1899 and 1900 R. Stein obtained thirty-nine songs from 

 the Eskimo of Smith sound, on the land west of the 

 extreme north of Greenland. Between 1903 and 190b 

 William Thalbitzer collected a far greater number of 

 melodies from North-West and East Greenland. It is 

 good to hear that from some twenty-live of his many 

 phonographic records permanent matrices in bronze were 

 made, and that these are now deposited in the phonogram 

 archives of the Danish Folklore Collection at Copenhagen. 



Possessed of such extensive material first- and second- 

 hand, Herren Thuren and Thalbitzer have endeavoured to 

 review " the whole musical system of the Eskimo." Herr 

 Thuren is responsible for the work of transcribing the 

 phonographic records. This he appears to have been able 

 to do with all the care that such an operation demands. 

 For instance, "as in most cases an A (435 wave-lengths) 

 was blown into the phonograph before the beginning of 

 the melody, we were able in writing this off to set the 

 phonograph to the speed used when the tunes were played, 

 and thus frequently knew the absolute pitch." It is, 

 however, a pity that equal care was not bestowed on the 

 English dress in which this valuable monograph appears. 

 Herr Thalbitzer is the collector of the music ; a great 

 number of melodies which were not sung into the phono- 

 graph were noted down by him " directly on the spot, the 

 singer repeating his song for me several times whilst I 

 used my violin to help in fixing the notes." 



Unfortunately, the music of the western Greenlanders is 

 much contaminated by European influence. In South- 

 West Greenland " it is the European music which interests 

 tli Greenlander, and not rarely we hear Danish street 

 melodies, to which the Greenlanders themselves put the 

 words." The melodies, however, are always altered by 

 adoption, and it is often difficult to determine whether 

 these melodies are transformed European tunes or have 

 been composed by Eskimo who have had some know- 

 ledge of European songs. In North-West Greenland 

 European influence is less, and here " we might certainly 

 talk of the pentatonic scalp." The authors of this mono- 

 graph believe that this choice of pentatonic intervals is due 

 to the recent acquaintance of the Eskimo of North-West 

 Grpenland with European music, and that " their earlier, 

 individual choice of intervals " is that " still found in East 

 mil." 



The North Greenland's' songs resemble in several 

 respects thosp of the Smith Sound Eskimo. On the other 

 hand, the East Greenlanders differ from the latter in 



that the melodic recitatives of the Smith Sound Eskimo 



1 "The Eskimo Music. (7) On the Eskimo Music. (2) Melodies from 

 East Greenland." Bv H. Thuren and W. Thalbitzer Pp. ii + 112. 

 (Copenhaaen : Printed bv Bianco Luno, ton.) Reprinted from "Meddel- 

 elserom Greenland," xl. 



NO. 2l82, VOL. 87] 



are interwoven with or end in more complete melodic 

 periods, whilst the East Greenlanders carry the recitative 

 throughout the whole melody when the recitative is at all 

 used. The very prominent East Greenland motifs con- 

 structed on the first, fourth, and fifth are not found at all 

 among the Smith Sound Eskimo. Lastly, even the join- 

 ing of the strophes to form a melody is different for the 

 two tribes." Herr Thuren divides the East Greenland 

 music into the following groups : — (i) recitative melodies ; 

 (ii) melodies based on the scale CFG (15) or CFGA (17) ; 

 (iii) melodies based on the scale FAC (15), or F(G)AC (27), 

 or F(G)ACD (20) ; (iv) melodies not included in the above 

 (9). The arabic numbers enclosed in brackets give the 

 number of songs belonging to these groups and sub- 

 groups. 



The writers direct attention to a curious feature of East 

 Greenland music, the tendency for the melody to rise 

 instead of to fall at its close. They find that just those 

 divergencies from our own diatonic scale which occur there 

 have been noted among the Indians of British Columbia. 

 They also lay stress on the complexity and accuracy of 

 the rhythms characterising East Greenland music. " The 

 more we study the songs of the East Greenlanders, the 

 more we become convinced that not even the smallest 

 rhythmic feature is due to chance. The same complicated 

 accentuation, the same extremely fine subdivision of the 

 melody come again when the periods are repeated." 



These extracts are sufficient to demonstrate the import- 

 ance of the study of primitive music, alike for comparative 

 aesthetics and for ethnology. 



THE KNEE-JERK. 

 A RECENTLY issued number of The Quarterly Journal 

 of Experimental Physiology (vol. iv\, No. 1, p. 07) 

 is notable in containing a paper by Dr. W. A. Jolly, of 

 Edinburgh, which finally settles a long-disputed question 

 as to whether or not the knee-jerk is a reflex action. 

 Everyone knows that when the tendon just below the 

 knee-cap is tapped smartly, the leg is suddenly jerked 

 forward, and the importance of this phenomenon arises 

 mainlv from the fact that its presence, absence, exag- 

 geration, or diminution is a valuable diagnostic sign 

 in certain nervous diseases. A reflex action demand- 

 the journey of a nervous impulse from the point struck 

 up to the spinal cord, and down again from the spinal 

 cord to the muscles of the thigh, and the statement has 

 been generally credited that the time interval between tin- 

 tap and the jerk is so short that it is impossible for this 

 to occur. It was therefore held that the jerk was the 

 direct result of stimulating the muscle itself. Neverthe- 

 less, the knee-jerk increases and decreases under the same 

 conditions as those which increase and decrease actions 

 which are undoubtedly reflex. 



Various elaborate explanations, the best known of which 

 is that of Sir William Gowers, have therefore had to be 

 invented to reconcile these two statements. Such explana- 

 tions are no longer necessary, now that we know that 

 nerve impulses are in man propagated at the rate of 120 

 metres per second, and not at the rate of 30 metres per 

 second, as was formerly supposed. 



Dr. Jolly has made careful time-measurements, and 

 shown that in the knee-jerk there is sufficient time for the 

 nerve-impulse to travel to the spinal cord and back again, 

 but that the time occupied in the cord itself is only about 

 half that which is necessary in the case of ordinary co- 

 ordinated reflex actions, such as the withdrawal of the 

 feet when the soles are tickled. This is explicable on thp 

 assumption that, in the case of the knee-jerk and othei 

 similar tendon reflexes which do not involve the cooperation 

 of several muscles, the number of nerve cells traversed in 

 the cord is less. The increased rapidity of a tendon reflex 

 is useful, for a sudden strain on a ligament would rupture 

 some of its fibres or lead to injury of the joint surfacps 

 if too great a time intervened before the muscles could 

 contract to save the joint. 



We should like to add a word of congratulation to 

 Prof. Schafer, the editor of the journal in which this 

 paper appears, on the continued excellence of the new 

 physiological periodical, which has now entered on the 

 fourth year of its existence. 



