172 



NATURE 



[Dec. 20, il 



" S piengel has ingeniously demou-trated, in some hundreds 

 of in t-ince-, how the corolla serve«; as an attraction to insects, 

 indicating by various marks, sometimes perhaps by its scent, 

 where they may find honey, and accommoilating them with a 

 convenient re ting-place or shelter while they extract it. This 

 elegant and ingenious theory receives cimfirmation from almost 

 every flower we examine. Proud man is disposed to think that 



■ Full many a fluwer is b m to blush unseen." 

 because he has not deigned to explore it ; but we find that even 

 the beauties of the most sequestered wilderness are not made in 

 vain. They have myriads of admirers, attracted by their charms 

 and rewarded with their treasure-, which very treasures would 

 be useless as the gold of the miser to the plant itself, were they 

 not thus the means of bringing insects about it." 



It seems to me that this is a pretty decided indorsement of 

 Sprengel's views. \V. Whitman Bailey 



Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., 

 December 4 



Salt Rain and Dew 



I SENT Mr. H. N. Draper's letter (Nature, vol. xxix. p. 77) 

 to my father-in law. Dr. Petzholdt, of Dorpat University, who 

 has made a special study of South Russii, Caucasus, Russian 

 Turkestan, &c., and his reply is that it is a fact long known to 

 chemists that the aqueous vapour in the atmosphere due to the 

 evaporation of sea and salt-lake waters invariably contains 

 chloride of sodium, which is precipitated to the ground by rain 

 and dew. Dr. Petzholdt is not aware, however, that the pheno- 

 menon is more striking on the coasts of the Caspian and Aral 

 than in other localities. In the Aniialm der Chemie nml Physik, 

 vol. XXXV. p. 329, Liebig writes : " All the rain water which fell 

 in Giessen (Hesse) during two years, in seventy-seven rainfalls, 

 contained salt." F. Gillman 



Quintana 26 (Barrio Arguelles), Madrid, December 6 



Lunar Rainbow 



About 6.20 this evening I was fortunate enough to observe a 

 fine lunar rainbow. Previous to its appearance there was a halo 

 caused by a band of cirro-strati, which gradually developed into 

 a crescent-shaped rainbow, which, after disappearing for a minute 

 or two, again was observed, only circular, finally fading aw.iy as 

 the clouds dispersed about 6.40. C. H. Romanes 



Beckenham, Kent, December 1 1 



At 1.30 on the morning of the I2th inst., during the progress 

 of the storm, I looked out of the window in a north-easterly 

 direction and observed a beautiful lunar rainbow. The arc at 

 first was complete, and faint traces of prismatic colours, especially 

 on the outside, were noticeable. A portion in the middle having 

 for a moment disappeared, the complete arc again again became 

 vi.ible, but with only a whitish colour. M. F. Dunlop 



Greenwich, December 15 



PROFESSOR NILSSON 

 'T'HE oldest naturalist in the world, as respects both 

 -*• age and the priority of his writings, has now left it. 



S. Nilsson of Lund, in Sweden, was born in 1787, and 

 therefore was nearly a centenarian at the time of his 

 death. His earliest publication was in 1812, being a 

 paper on the various methods of classifying the Mam- 

 malia ; and in every subsequent year he enriched the 

 s :ientific literature of his own and other countries. The 

 Annals and Magazine of Natural History and the Re- 

 ports of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, for instance, contained several articles from his 

 experienced pen. He especially devoted himself to the 

 fauna of Scandinavia, and became the pioneer of that 

 host of naturalists who have so ably distinguished them- 

 selves by similar researches and publications. He was a 

 zoologist, pateontologist, anthropologist, ethnologist, and 

 antiquary. Nihil tctigit quod non ornavit. 



His works consisted chiefly of scattered papers ; but 

 ir\ 1822 he published his " Historia Molluscorum Suecias 

 Terrestrium at Fluviatilium," which has still a standard 



reputation. As it did not include the marine or Baltic Mol- 

 hisca, the gap was twenty-four years afterwards more than 

 filled up by the eminent Prof. Lovdn ; and that depart- 

 ment of the Scandinavian fauna has now, through the 

 continual labours of the late Prof. .Sars and his no less 

 eminent son, Dr. Uanielssen, Mr. Herman Kriele, the 

 Fraulein Esmark, Dr. VVesterlund, the late Mr. Malm 

 and his son. Prof Steenstrup, the late Dr. Morch, Dr. 

 Berg, Dr. Collin, and many other conchologists, received 

 as great a degree of attention as has been bestowed on 

 any region of the earth's surface and its circumjacent 

 seas. 



The subject of this memoir was, at the last-mentioned 

 date (1822), Regius Professor in the Academy of Lund, 

 and the Director of the Museum of Natural History there. 

 One of his former pupils, Prof. Otto Torell, is well known 

 to all naturalists by his exploration of Spitzbergen, and 

 his present position as the Director of the Geological 

 Survey of India. 



We ought to be thankful in recollecting that other 

 veterans of science are still among us, viz. Professors Owen 

 and Milne-Edwards at the age of eighty-three, and Dr. 

 Isaac Lea, in his ninety-third year. The study of natural 

 history is evidently conducive to longevity. 



J. GwvN Jeffreys 



SEMI TICO- O CEA NIC LING UIS TIC A FFINI TIES 

 T^O the Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria 



^ for May, 1883, the Rev. D. Macdonald contributes 

 a paper, in which he endeavours to establish the identity 

 of the Oceanic and Semitic languages. This is announced 

 as an iinportant discovery both ethnologically and from 

 the theological standpoint. It clears up, we are told, 

 " the hitherto impenetrable mystery surrounding the 

 origin of the Oceanians," because "the Semitic language 

 could only have been carried into Oceania by Semites 

 from the Semitic mainland." It also disposes of the new- 

 fangled " evolution theory," which draws support " from 

 the existence of savages and the supposition that they are 

 descended from ' hairy quadrupeds,' . . . for it shows, as 

 to one of the greatest bodies of savages, that they are 

 descended from the most renowned and civilised people 

 of antiquity." Certainly these are weighty conclusions, 

 which, if established, would fully justify the further infer- 

 ence that " this discovery is more important on the whole 

 than that of the Assyrian or Euphratean inscriptions 

 deciphered of late with such marvellous ingenuity." 



By " Oceanic " the writer understands all the languages 

 except the Australian current in the Indo-Pacific insular 

 world. These he evidently regards as constituting a 

 single linguistic family, the Malayo- Polynesian, "com- 

 prising the Malagasy, Malajran, Polynesian, and Melan- 

 esian, better called the Papuan." His philology has thus 

 not got beyond the days of Forster and Marsden, or the 

 earlier writings of Prof Whitney, all of whom are appealed 

 to in support of this now exploded theory. The readers 

 of Nature need scarcely be reminded that from the 

 Malayo-Polynesian must henceforth be detached all the 

 strictly Papuan and Melanesian tongues, as constituting 

 a fundamentally distinct order of speech, itself doubtless 

 embracing many stock languages. Hence the same 

 reasoning process that establishes the identity of Semitic 

 and Oceanic would also establish the identity of Semitic 

 with any other stock languages wherever spoken. The 

 process thus proves too much, that is, proves nothing. 



Although Semitic is here compared generally with the 

 whole of the heterogeneous " Oceanic " group, it is re- 

 markable that Efatese is taken as the chief point of com- 

 parison, not that this is claimed to be a typical member 

 of the Oceanic group, but merely because it happens to 

 be the dialect with which the writer is most familiar. 

 Now in Efate, a small island about the centre of the 

 New Hebrides, there is a good deal of linguistic con- 

 fusion, strictly Polynesian (Sawaiori) dialects being 



