288 



NA TURE 



\_7an. 27, 1 88 1 



have been published during the four past years. If, as 

 we suppose, about twenty more parts are required to 

 tinish the work, it is manifest that unless the present rate 

 of progress be expedited it will be twenty years before we 

 are able to send our new "History of British Birds" to 

 the binders. The edition was commenced, we believe, in 

 1871. Now thirty years seems rather long for the execu- 

 tion of a new edition of any work, even with all the 

 improvements which, as we have shown above, the 

 present editor has doubtless bestowed upon it We would 

 fain ask therefore whether the author and publisher 

 cannot manage to move on a little faster. If this cannot 

 be done it appears to us that the first portion of the work 

 will be almost out of date before the last part is pub- 

 lished, and that the subscribers will have good reason to 

 complain. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



J ahrbiicher fur wissenscliaftliche Botanik. Herausgege- 

 ben von Dr. N. Pringsheim. Elfter Band, drittes und 

 viertes Heft. With twenty-four plates. (Leipzig : W. 

 Engelmann, 1877 and 1878.) 

 Dr. Jakob Eriksson describes in a lengthened paper 

 the protomeristem of the roots of Dicotyledons, and 

 directs attention to the four great types of structure 

 observable in these roots. In the first type the apex 

 consists of three separate zones of meristem : the 

 plerome, periblem, and dermocalyptrogen. In the second 

 type only two zones are present : the plerome and a 

 common zone for primary cortex, epidermis, and root- 

 cap. In the third type there is a common meristem zone 

 from which all the others develop ; while in the^fourth 

 there are two zones, the periblem and the plerome. Two 

 additional types are met with in Monocotyledons : (i) in 

 which there are four zones of meristem : calyptrogen, 

 dermalogen, peroblem, and plerome ; and (2) in which 

 there are three zones : the calyptrogen, the plerome, and 

 a common zone for cortex and epidermis. 



The germination of Equisetum and SchizeEaceae forms 

 the subject of two papers, one by Sadebeck and the other 

 by Bauke, whose work was arrested by premature death. 

 Woronin contributes a paper on the Plasmodioplwra 

 Brasskcv, the remarkable Myxomycete which seems to 

 be the. cause of the so-called Hernia of the cabbage 

 plant, which has recently attracted so much attention. 



The remaining papers are by Reinke, on Monostroma 

 hultosmn and 1 etraspora bibrica. Wydler discusses at 

 great length the morphology of certain forms of inflores- 

 cence, chiefly dichotomous ; and lastly there is a paper 

 by Pitra on the pressure in stems during the appearance 

 of bleeding in plants. The contents of the parts are, as 

 will be seen, very varied and deal with many different 

 departments of botany, and will be found to sustain the 

 reputation of the " Jahrbiicher " so long associated with 

 the name of Pringsheim. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for of inions expressed 

 by his correstondcnts. Neither can he undertake to return, or 

 to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. No 

 notice is taken oj anonymous communications. 

 The Editor tirgently requests correspondents to keep their letters as 

 short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great that it 

 IS impassible othenuise to ensure the appearance even of com- 

 munications containing interesting and nmiet facts.^ 



Unconscious Memory— Mr. Samuel Butler 



Will you kindly .lUow me a portion of your valuable space 

 in order that I may demonstrate the completely groundless 

 cliaraclcr of a series of insinuations which Mr. Samuel Butler 



has made not only against myself, but also against Mr. Charles 

 Darwin, in the work which he has recently published, entitled 

 " Unconscious Memory " (Op. 5). 



1. Mr. Butler insinuates that Mr. Darwin caused my essay on 

 Dr. Erasmus Darwin to be translated simply in order to throw 

 discredit on his work, " Evolution, Old and New " (Op. 4), 

 which was published in May, 1879. Upon this point I have to 

 observe that Mr. Darwin informed me of his desire to have my 

 essay published in English more than two months before the 

 appearance of Mr. Butler's book ; that tlie translation did not 

 appear earlier is due to the fact that I asked for a delay in order 

 that I migh; be able to revise it. 



2. The assumption of Mr. Butler that Mr. Darwin had urged 

 me to insert an underhand attack up^n him (Mr. Butler) in my 

 sketch, is not only absolutely unfouuded, but, on the contrary, I 

 have to state that Mr. Darwin specially solicited me to take no 

 notice luhatei'er of Mr. Butler's book, which had in the mean- 

 time appeared. Since however I thought it desirable to point 

 out that Dr. Erasmus Darwin's views concerning the evolution 

 of animated Nature still satisfy certain thinkers, even in our 

 own day (a fact which must add greatly to Dr. Darwin's reputa- 

 tion), I have made some remarks upon the subject in a conclud- 

 ing paragi^aph, without however naming Mr. Butler. And I 

 may here emphatically assert, that although Mr. Darwin recom- 

 mended me to omit one or two passages from my work, he 

 neither made nor suggested additions of any kind. 



3. Mr. Butler's assertion that the revision of my translation 

 was made " by the light " of his book is only in so far justifiable 

 that I looked over the latter before sending off my work, and 

 that my attention was thereby called to a remark of Buffon's. 

 From Mr. Butler's book I have neither taken nor was I able to 

 take the slightest informatiou that was new to me concerning 

 Dr. Erasmus Darwin's scientific work and views, since in it 

 practically only one portion of the " Zoonomia " is discussed at 

 any length, a .d this portion I had already quoted and analysed, 

 while Mr. Butler only refers to one comparatively unimpor;ant 

 part of the " Botanic Garden," and absolutely ignores the 

 " Phytologia " and the " Temple of Nature." So that no single 

 line of Mr. Butler's far from profound work was of the slightest 

 use to me. 



Mr. Butler's contention that I have quoted from his book a 

 remark from Coleridge is entirely without foundation. I have 

 been acquainted with this remark for years, and from thi source 

 quoted. It is also quoted in Zoeckler's work (vol. ii. p. 256), 

 mentioned by me on p. 151, which appeared /;7'or to Mr. Butler's 

 book (Op. 4). The whole of my indebtedness to Mr. Butler 

 reduces itself thei'efore to a single quotation from Buffon. 



4. Finally, a, concerns the main accusation that no mention is 

 made in the preface of the fact that my essay had been revised 

 previously to publication, it is clear, as even a child could not 

 tail to see, that this is not due to design, but is simply the result 

 of an oversight. It would be simply absurd for a writer inten- 

 tionally to attack a publication which appeared subsequently to 

 the date indicated on his title-page ; and the so-called falsifica- 

 tion, so far from injuring Mr. Butler, could only be most agree- 

 able to him, because it might induce the careless reader to fancy 

 that no reference whatever was mtended to Mr. Butler in the 

 closing sentence. Should however such a reference be clearly 

 intended — and to every reader posted up in the subject this could 

 not be doubtful — every man of common sense would recognise 

 this terrible falsehood to be a simple oversight. 



Be-lin, January 12 Ernst Krause 



Hot Ice 



I VENTtJRE, in referring to Dr. Lodge's letter of this week, 

 to put before your readers the meaning of the remarks made 

 on Dr. Carnelley's experiment at the Chemical Society by Prof. 

 Ayrton, who is now away from England. I understood him to say 

 that as Dr. Carnelley's hot ice is obviously in a condition which 

 cannot be represented within the as yet known fundamental 

 water surfaces, it is necessary to produce these surfaces beyond 

 the places at which, hitherto, abrupt changes have been sup- 

 posed to take place in them. He took as an instance the ice- 

 water surface which has hitherto been assumed to stop at Prof 

 James Thomson's "triple point," and showed that although 

 Sir Wm. Thomson's experiments have proved that it is nearly 

 plane for the stable state of water and ice, yet in the imaginary- 

 district beyond the triple point a change of latent heat might 

 give such a change of curvature as to bring this surface into the 

 hot-ice region. 



