36 



NA TURE 



[May 1 1, 1905 



times as surprising and swiftly various as tliat of tlie 

 Eocene Mammalia. We presume that the Stormberg 

 series must then include the whole of the Trias, and 

 not merely the Rhaetic, as Feistmantel and Seward 

 have proposed. The consideration of this and similar 

 questions is made far more interesting by the appear- 

 ance of Dr. Corstorphine's address on the history 

 of stratigraphical investigation in South Africa 

 (" Report of the South African Association for the 

 .Advancement of Science," 1904, p. 145), to which is 

 appended a table showing the classifications of 

 various authors, starting with the brilliant and per- 

 ceptive work of Bain in 1856. 



Prof. R. Broom has provided Mr. Rogers with a 

 chapter on the Karroo reptiles, in which the early 

 carnivorous types, ^lurosaurus, Lycosuchus, &c. , are 

 separated from the Theriodonts as " Therocephalia." 

 The pose given to the skeleton of Pareiasaurus in 

 Fig. 18 is more erect than that at present adopted 

 in the British Museum. The well known work of 

 Prof. H. G. Seeley is mentioned later in the biblio- 

 graphical appendix. 



Mr. Rogers, quoting the view of Mr. Kitchin, who 

 compares the fossils with those of similar beds in 

 India, does not allow the presence of Jurassic strata 

 in the Uitenhage series, so that the Jurassic system 

 may be represented merely by the underlying un- 

 conformity (compare p. 408). The perforation of 

 the Stormberg and preceding rocks by the diamant- 

 iferous volcanic pipes occurred, in all likelihood, in 

 Lower Cretaceous times. The bending up of the 

 strata round these vents presents us with a curious 

 reminder of the old " crater of elevation " theory. 



Denudation has attacked the surface of the in- 

 terior of the colony " uninterruptedly from the close 

 of the Stormberg period (Rhstic) to the present 

 day," and the folded belt of the south seems to have 

 furnished a fairly complete barrier against inroads 

 of the Cretaceous sea (p. 414). .\ useful chapter on 

 the geological features to be observed along the main 

 lines of railway concludes this compact and highly 

 attractive handbook. Gren\ille A.. J. Cole. 



THE NAUMANN FESTIVAL AT COT HEN. 

 ■Vr AUMANN is but a name to nine out of ten British 

 ■'•^ ornithologists, and the proportion of them who 

 h;ivc held in hand a volume with that name on the title- 

 page must be smaller still. Yet it was borne by two 

 men who, taking them all round, were the most prac- 

 tical ornithologists that ever lived, for their personal 

 knowledge of the birds of Central Europe was not ex- 

 ceeded by that of any of their contemporaries, and it 

 may be fairly doubted whether anv of their successors, 

 vastly improved as are the modern means of acquiring 

 such knowledge, have attained to the like acquaintance. 

 Tlie elder Naumann, Johann Andreas, seems hardly 

 ever to have quitted the little village of Ziebigk, near 

 Cothen, in the duchy of Anhalt, where he was born in 

 1744, the son of a small landed proprietor, to whose 

 estate he succeeded. He has left a curious autobio- 

 graphical sketch, which was prefixed to the first volume 

 of the edition of the joint work of himself and his son, 

 Johann Friedrich, published in 1822. If ever a man 

 devoted himself to the observation and study of birds 

 it was this Johann Andreas, who from his boyhood 

 passed days and nights in this sole pursuit. How he 

 found time to take a w^ife — for he tells us that he often 

 forgot his dinner — is marvellous ; but marry he did, 

 and had three sons, the eldest, Johann Friedrich, 

 already named, born in 1780, and two others; one of 

 them, Carl .Andreas, born in 1786. became a fair 

 assistant to his father and brother, without, however, 

 publishing anything on his own account. The father 

 NO. 1854, VOL. 72] 



brought up these three boys to follow his own tastes and 

 live his own life. A gun was put into their hands as 

 soon as they could hold it, they were made familiar 

 with every device for catching birds, and they were also 

 taught to draw. In this last respect the eldest attained so 

 much proficiency that by the time he was fifteen he had 

 executed a great number of drawings of birds, which 

 the father proceeded to have engraved on copper and 

 to publish in folio form. The work thus produced 

 proves to be one of the rarest in ornithological litera- 

 ture, if literature it may be called, seeing that not a 

 word of letterpress accompanied the plates. Whether 

 a complete set of them exists anywhere is uncertain, 

 and Dr. Leverkiihn's labours seem to show that not 

 quite a dozen more or less imperfect copies are 

 known, though there is no room here for bibliographical 

 details. The next thing the father did was to bring 

 out in small octavo the first volume of what was called 

 " A Detailed Description of the Forest-, Field-, and 

 Water-birds of the Principality of Anhalt and the 

 Neighbouring Districts." This appeared in 1797, and 

 was illustrated by coloured figures by the son Johann 

 Friedrich. Some of them are reproductions of those 

 in the older series, but the style of drawing was mani- 

 festly improved, and, moreover, went on improving as 

 the work itself did, for it quite outgrew the bounds of 

 its native principality, and the fourth and last volume, 

 published in 1803, appeared as " The Natural History 

 of the Land- and Water-birds of Northern Germany 

 and the Adjoining Countries." This was followed by 

 a series of eight supplements, the last of which came 

 out in 1817. A remarkable feature of this work is its 

 extreme simplicity and truth, and the absence of all 

 scientific pretence. There is not even a Latin name in 

 it ! Yet there was no attempt by " writing down " to 

 gain popularity, and whether it became popular is 

 doubtful. All that can be said is that copies are now 

 not easily to be had. In England when a man tries to 

 do a thing of this kind we know too well what is gener- 

 ally the lamentable result. He makes a fool of himself 

 on almost every page ; but this is just what Johann 

 .Andreas did not. He wrote with quiet dignity from his 

 own knowledge, and his knowledge was sound. There 

 was no need for him to borrow from anybody else. 



The father's work being thus successfully concluded, 

 the son, Johann Friedrich, lost no time in bringing out 

 a new edition of it, and it is on this edition that the 

 latter's fame rests, and rests securelv. The preface ii 

 dated iSiS, and some copies of the first volume are said 

 to bear 1S20 on the title-page. Doubtless it was then 

 ready for publication, though for some reason it seems 

 to have been delayed for a couple of years. Twelve 

 volumes (parts they are called) appeared at long inter- 

 vals, the last in 1844, and it mav be truly averred that 

 for completeness nothing like them exists in any lan- 

 guage. They continue the same simple and direct style 

 of the father's work ; but the son willinglv cited other 

 authors and showed that he had read them. He also 

 extended his area of observation, journeying to Jutland 

 in the r^orth and to Hungary in the south, beside voyag- 

 ing to Heligoland — the ornithological peculiarities of 

 which he was the first to detect. Moreover, he dis- 

 covered that anatomy was not to be neglected, and ac- 

 cordingly each genus as he treated of it had prefixed to 

 it a brief account of its internal structure, and to this 

 end he had the good fortune to obtain the services of 

 Christian Ludwig Nitzsch, who carried on this portion 

 of the work until his death In 1837, when his place was 

 taken by Rudolf Wagner. Two years after the work 

 was ended the author began a supplement, which had 

 not proceeded far when he died, in 1857, and this was 

 left to be completed by two of his friends, the late Prof. 

 J. H. Blasius and Dr. Eduard Baldamus. 



Carefully elaborated as this great work had been, its 

 information had, of course, fallen behind the times, and 



