March 27, 1913] 



NATURE 



will in the near future supply the _ data 

 lei essary to enable the designer of aircraft 

 to construct fish-form bodies of low resistance 



and high efficiency. 



C. G. E. 



LIVINGSTONE AS A MAN OF SCIENCE. 



NOW, as in the year 1874, which followed his 

 death, discussions are being carried on as 

 to whether Livingstone was more a missionary 

 of religion than a man of science or an enthusiastic 

 and skilful geographer. Such contentions are a 

 waste of argument. Livingstone ardently believed 

 in the supreme value of Christian ethics and the 

 power of undenominational, basic Christianity to 

 raise the backward peoples to a happier condition 

 of life ; but to his broad mind — a mind fifty years 

 in advance of most of its contemporaries — reason- 

 able religion and honest science were the same 

 thing. Most of the dogmas of his day — for which 

 people were still being persecuted— he tacitly 

 ignored as being either unprovable or so little 

 essential to " true religion and undefiled " as not 

 to be worth discussion. 



If Livingstone had lived seventy years later, he 

 would probably have sought for some science 

 scholarship or endowment and have gone out in 

 his religious search for knowledge as a layman, 

 a layman of that most holy profession, the healer 

 of disease. He had about him the making of 

 another Darwin. As it was, he chose the path 

 of the missionary, and fortunately selected that 

 missionary society (the London) which had already 

 produced men like Campbell and Moffat, and which 

 left with its agents singular freedom of movement 

 and judgment. Consequently, he was able to 

 enrich science with much material for the compre- 

 hension of Africa, even when working as a mission- 

 ary at a modest salary of 100L a year. 



No one has ever charged Livingstone with 

 neglecting to do the work of this profession. He 

 taught, he expounded, he translated, pleaded; 

 and exercised a most potent influence for good 

 over the minds of thousands of savages; impress- 

 ing their chiefs, moreover, so strongly with the 

 worth of his character and the exemplar of his 

 own hard-working, blameless life, that he really 

 laid firm foundations for the Christian civilisation 

 which has now laid hold on Bechuanaland. But 

 from the moment of landing in South Africa he 

 stored up all the observations he could put into 

 writing on the African flora, fauna, geology and 

 native races. 



A review of his work as a practical philanthro- 

 pist, a consul and a geographer has been already 

 dealt with by various writers during the month 

 which preceded the centenary celebrations. Per- 

 haps the best and the most novel treatment of 

 these aspects of Livingstone is that given in three 

 articles by Mr. Ralph Durand in The African Mail. 

 The British Medical Journal has published^ an 

 essav on the medical and surgical skill of Living- 

 stone and his great ability in this profession, be- 

 sides his anticipation of the modern treatment 

 NO. 2265, VOL. 91] 



oi malarial fever and the cogency of his researches 

 into tsetse-fly disease. To get an all-round view 

 nl the capacity of this remarkable man there only 

 remains to be considered his quality in other 

 hranches of scientific research — philology, ethno- 

 logy, .zoology, botany, geology and meteorology. 

 In about a year after arriving in South Africa 

 he had mastered the Sechuana language and had 

 acquired a vehicle for conversation with the tribes 

 between the Orange River and the Upper Zambezi, 

 the Limpopo and Lake Ngami ; for many of the 

 Bushmen could speak some Sechuana dialect, and 

 the conquests of the Makalolo (a Basuto tribe) had 

 carried the Sechuana tongue northwards almost 

 to the verge of the Congo basin. But Living- 

 stone, appreciating the great interest which the 

 Bantu language-family possessed for philologists, 

 busily collected vocabularies of the still little- 

 known languages of Ngamiland and the western 

 Zambezi; and though these are either stored at 

 the Grey Library at Capetown or lost, they served 

 the purposes of'Dr. W. I. Bleek in assisting him 

 to compose his unfinished "Comparative Grammar 

 of the South African Languages." Ethnology- 

 owes a great debt to David Livingstone. It is 

 impossible to write on the races of South Africa 

 without quoting from his stores of information- 

 information which is exact, unemotional, graphic 

 and discerning. He wrote on the Stone Age in 

 Central Africa before anyone had thought of such 

 a period in negro culture; on the ancientness of 

 pottery among the Bantu ; on the domestic animals 

 of south Central Africa ; on fragments of unwritten 

 history and half-forgotten migrations ; on the im- 

 portance of the Pleiades as a measurer of the 

 seasons in the eyes of the African agricultural folk ; 

 on the racial and cultural influence of ancient 

 Egypt on negroland. 



His notes' on the life-history and habits of the 

 lion, ratel, giraffe, rhinoceros, buffalo, elephant, 

 giant chimpanzi, baboon, hippopotamus, zebra, 

 lechwe, situtunga, and the other striking mammals 

 of southern and Central Africa, are strewn through 

 his three published books, and have done good 

 service in many a natural history book. No suc- 

 ceeding naturalist traveller has called his informa- 

 tion in question. Amongst his discoveries in zoo- 

 logv were several antelopes and the pygmy 

 elephant of the Congo forests, "a small variety, 

 only 5ft. 8 in. high,' vet with tusks 6 ft. 8 in. in 

 length." (This form was only rediscovered by 

 the Germans a few years ago.) Livingstone's 

 notes on birds, lizards, snakes and frogs are as 

 good reading and as accurate as those on mam- 

 mals. His observations on the part played in 

 the economy of nature bv the termites (which con- 

 sume and cover with soil all dead timber) were 

 subsequently confirmed and elaborated by the late 

 Prof. Henry Drummond. 



Livingstone's botanical collections and innumer- 

 able botanical notes— more especially about the 

 Zambezian flora— are incorporated in the old and 

 the new editions of the " Flora of Tropical Africa." 

 His discoverv of fossil Araucarias in the rocks 

 of the Central Zambezi valley led him to guess 



