488 
NATURE 
- [April 20, 1871 
oe Eee 
or Corunna, called anciently Portus Brigantinus, in Gallicia.” 
According to this the Briges would be the common ancestors of 
the Britons of England, France, and Spain, and the similarity 
of the names in these countries could be accounted for. 
A. R. H. 
Faunas of Oceanic Islands 
In Nature, of February 16, I observe the reviewer of Mr. 
Godman’s ‘‘ Natural History of the Azores,” makes the following 
statement :—‘“ Mr. Godman appears to be the first who has, after 
a personal exploration of one of these oceanic groups, endeavoured 
to collect all that is known of its natural productions.” Now, 
it is not with the intention of detracting from the merits of Mr. 
Godman’s work, but merely to re'resh the memory of your 
reviewer, that I beg to state, that I published in 1859 a small 
volume entitled ‘The Naturalist in Bermuda,” which contained 
all that was known of the natural productions of those islands 
at that date. It was by no means a complete essay, but as 
stated in the preface ‘‘merely a prelude to a more complete 
publication on the same subject, which anticipated work, the 
result cf several visits to the group, I hope to present to public 
notice shortly. J. MA1THEW JONES 
Institute of Natural Science, Halifax, Nova Scotia 
Influence of Barometric Pressure on Ocean Currents 
In the recent discussions on the influence of barometric pres- 
sure upon ocean currents, I have not seen any allusion to the 
observations that have been made upon the effect of variatiens 
of barometric pressure upon the sea-level. In a memoir by M. 
Ch. Aimé, “Sur les variations de niveau de la Mediterranée,” 
in the Annales de Chimie, tome xii., 1844, it is stated that a 
fall in the barometer is pretty uniformly accompanied by a rise in 
the sea-level to about thirteen times its amount. The Report of 
the British Association for 1841 contains a letter from my old 
friend, Mr. T. G. Bunt, of Bristol, stating that his observations 
upon the tide-gauge under his charge led him to conclude that a 
fall of one inch in the mercurial column was accompanied by an 
average rise of about 133 inches in the high-water level. And 
the same industrious and careful observer, in a recent ‘‘ Discus- 
sion of Tide Observations at Bristol” in the Philosophical 
Transactions for 1867, gives as the mean result of twenty-one 
years’ examination of this point, ‘‘12°772 inches of tide to one 
inch of mercury.” I referred to Mr. Bunt’s observations in a 
discussion at the Geological Society (March 6, 1867) on a 
paper by the Earl of Selkirk ‘‘On some sea-water-level marks 
on the coast of Sweden,” pointing out that some of the discre- 
pancies in the observations as to the sea-level of the Baltic might 
be attributed without improbability to variations in barometric 
pressure. I have since learned from Admiral Key, who served 
in the Baltic fleet during the Russian war, that he had been led 
by his own observations to a like conclusion. And I find it 
stated in the description of the Baltic Sea, in the English Cyclo- 
feedia, that its level is sometimes observed to rise, and to remain 
thus elevated for a time without any obvious cause, two or 
three feet, of which pheromenon the explanation is probably the 
same. 
I am sorry to find that I have not succeeded in convincing Mr. 
Laughton of the existence of a regular undercurrent in the Strait 
of Gibraltar. If he will take the trouble of carefully perusing 
the detailed report which I have presented to the Royal Society, 
he will find that he is quite in error in stating that I rest my 
affirmation upon ‘‘one observation after several attempts made 
in vain.” All our observations, when rightly interpreted, tended 
to the same conclusion. The vedurction of the boat’s drift almost 
to nothing, in the first set of experiments, when it lay in a 
surface-current running nearly three miles an hour, with a breeze 
setting in the same direction, was just as conclusive evidence that 
a reverse current must have been acting on the current-drag 
below, as was the veversa/ of the boat’s drift in the subsequent expe- 
riment, when the surface-current was less rapid and the opposing 
breeze diminished its action on the boat. And our observations 
of the Temperature and Specific Gravity of the 250 fathoms’ 
stratum most unmistakeably indicated on both occasions its 
Mediterranean derivation. 
I should like to know what is the precise minimum of move- 
ment which is held by Physical Geographers to constitute a 
current. There seems to me a great deal of confusion upon this 
point. The existence of an underflow of polar water towards 
the Equator cannot now bea matter of question. Commander 
Chimmo has 1ecently obtained with the Miller-Casella thermo- 

meters a temperature of 334° at a depth of 2,306 fathoms 
nearly under the equator. What is the rate of this movement is 
a point as yet undetermined. But the rate of the northerly flow 
of warm surface-water between Scandinavia and{Iceland, which 
is usually attributed to the Gulf Stream, but which I regard as the 
complement of the southward flow of deep polar water in a 
vertical oceanic circulation, is estimated by Admiral Irminger at 
from 11 to 2} miles per day. Is this, in the language of physical 
geography, a current ? WILLIAM B, CARPENTER 
University of London, April 10 
The “ Times” Review of Darwin’s ‘“ Descent of 
Man” 
THE British public are deeply indebted to the Zimes Reviewer 
for his very comforting and reassuring remarkson Mr. Darwin’s 
‘‘Descent of Man,” in which he has so well exposed the 
“utterly unsupported hypotheses,” the “unsubstantial presump- 
tions,” the ‘‘cursory investigations,” of that ‘‘ reckless” and 
“unscientific” writer. It is a great satisfaction to find that Mr. 
Darwin’s odious conclusion that the genealogy of the Talbots, 
and the Howards, and the Percys must be traced back beyond 
the Conqueror to an Anthropomorphous Ape, and beyond the 
ape to an Acephalous Mollusk, rests on no logical foundation 
whatever. The Reviewer well suggests that anything so odious 
in idea, so immoral in its apparent tendency, and so different 
from what we have been accustomed to believe, cannot possibly 
be true. One is so glad indeed to be free once and for ever from 
the mischievous influence of such “unpractical,” ‘‘ disintegrating 
speculations,” that it seems worth while trying, if space can be 
found for the experiment, to elicit from the good nature of the 
Reviewer, or of those who think with him, a little clearer expla- 
nation here and there, before the subject is finally consigned to a 
well-merited oblivion. 
Mr. Darwin is invited in one passage, ‘‘if he wishes to corro- 
borate his hypothesis, to commence by experimenting on some 
superior kind of Ascidian, and see whether, by patient selection, 
he can induce any of them to split themselves in half, and aban- 
don their permanent support for a vagrant oceanic existence.” 
Now, it is a fact that among Corals or Polypes, which are not 
far removed from Ascidians, these interesting experiments are 
actually exhibited ; for the caespitose Corals, by what is called 
fissiparity, do split themselves in half, thus forming two complete 
individuals where only one grew before, and the Corals of the 
genus Fungia are fixed when very young, but subsequently break 
their pedicels and become free. The whole group of Zoophytes, 
recent and fossil, connects together marvellously different forms 
by an almost infinite series of wonderfully minute links. The 
study of such a group is therefore no doubt dangerous, if not de- 
cidedly pernicious, as tending to gloss over ‘* the enormous and 
painful improbability” of Mr. Darwin’s speculations. For if 
upon examination it seemed likely, or almost certain, that diffe’ 
rent genera of Polypes were connected with one another by 
descent, some rash enthusiast might think a similar conclusion 
not impossible in the order Primates. Fortunately, one is 
estopped from suggesting that in fact some genera of Polypes 
may be connected by descent, for fear of incurring the sharp re- 
proach to which Mr. Darwin has so frequently laid himself 
open, of ‘conjugating the potential mood.” Hitherto in most 
departments of thought and inquiry, probable evidence has been 
allowed to count for something, and most men are content to 
believe themselves to be the sons of their reputed fathers upon a 
mixture of evidence and authority, which, by the very nature of 
the case, can never rise to absolute demonstration. The Reviewer 
has done good service to society by showing the untrustworthy 
character of the foundation on which all our genezlogies are 
built. It would be well in future if some auxiliary verb, expres- 
sive of doubt and uncertainty, cculd be combined with our 
patronymics. 
Mr. Darwin, it appears, has ‘‘a facile method of observing 
superficial resemblances.” For instance he surprises the appre- 
hension of the vulgar by exhibiting the curious likeness between 
the embryos of a manand a dog. As every one of course knows 
how he looked when he was still in his mother’s womb and less 
than an inch long, that stage in a man’s career when heis only too 
like an embryo puppy, might have been shrouded under a 
delicate reserve. If, in place of this absurd ‘superficial re- 
semblance,” Mr. Darwin could haye pointed out similarities 
between man and the lower animals in regard tc minute struc- 
tures of bone and muscle, or in the organs of sense or speech, 
his argument might have been deemed a little more scientific. 
