55^ 



NATURE 



[CCTOBER I, 1908 



absorption followed the same law, he had worked out 

 some results for the earth's atmosphere. If the atmo- 

 sphere were of imiform constitution, so that the absorp- 

 tion by a la3er of air of given mass was the same at 

 whatever height the layer was taken, then the state of 

 conveetive equilibrium could not exist to heights greater 

 than those corresponding to a pressure equal to half the 

 surface pressure. He found that for greater heights than 

 this the radiation absorbed from the earth and the rest 

 of the atmosphere alone was greater than that emitted 

 at a temperature corresponding to the state of conveetive 

 equilibrium. In consequence of this the temperature of 

 the air in the upper layers would rise, and there would 

 be a further increase owing to the absorbed solar radia- 

 tion. In the actual case, the absorbing power of the 

 atmosphere diminishes with increasing height owing to 

 the diminution in the proportional amount of water vapour 

 present. The absorbing power was therefore taken to be 

 equal to a:(q — p), where o and q are constants. Two values 

 were taken for q, for one of which the diminution in 

 absorbing power was quicker, in the other slower, than 

 the diminution in the proportion of water vapour present. 

 The value of a was deduced from the observations of 

 Langley, Paschen, and others. 



The conclusions arrived at were : — 



(i) If the temperature gradient in the lower layers of 

 the atmosphere is such that Tccy>i, i.e. is approximately 

 adiabatic, and if the upper layer is isothermal, then the 

 state To:/i must extend to a height greater than that for 

 which /) = />,j/2, and in general less than that for which 

 p = p„l^, where p„ is the surface pressure. 



(2) The temperature in the lower layers cannot be main- 

 tained by absorption of terrestrial and solar radiation ; 

 these layers tend to grow cooler, and their temperature is 

 kept up by the supply of heat through convection from the 

 earth's surface and by condensation of water vapour in 

 the atmosphere. 



(j) The lowest possible temperature in the atmosphere 

 over a place at temperature 300° A. must be greater than 

 150° A. or 210° A., according as the atmosphere radiates 

 and absorbs throughout the spectrum or transmits freely 

 25 per cent, of the earth's radiation. 



Prof. Turner said that whereas meteorologists were 

 perhaps primarily concerned with the facts tliemselves, and 

 physicists with the causes of them, astronomers were 

 interested in the effects of the existence of this isothermal 

 layer, especially in the phenomena of atmospheric refrac- 

 tion. It had been usual to make certain assumptions 

 about the upper air for the calculation of refraction, and 

 these assumptions were now shown to be wrong. Were 

 the refractions calculated on such assumptions wrong? 

 The answer seemed to be that very rough assumptions 

 were sufficient for astronomers ; he had found, for instance, 

 that the assumption of two homogeneous shells of air 

 would give empirical results corresponding closely to the 

 facts observed. 



Further, no very great improvement was found bv add- 

 ing a third shell — ^the chief step came in taking two instead 

 of one. Possibly this fact (that two shells were absolutely 

 necessary, but a third was not so much needed) was in 

 some way connected with the existence of two principal 

 regions in the atmosphere. 



Prof. J.^ J. Thomson asked if there was any indication 

 of the thickness of the layer, and remarked that the 

 ionisation in the atmosphere was a maximum at a laver 

 considerably below this layer. 



Dr. Walker stated that the Indian peasants were so 

 ignorant that he had not yet ventured on sending up 

 haUons-soiide.1 there, the chances of recovering them being 

 so remote. 



THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS FOR 



THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. 

 ^ XFORD has good reason to be proud of the success 

 ^^ of the congress, which was held there from Sep- 

 tember 15 to September 18 ; not only was the general level 

 of the papers high, but the attendance of members — 

 nearly 600 — was so large that the Transactions will con- 

 tain, besides the presidential addresses, some of the more 

 important papers in full, with an abstract of the remainder. 



NO. 2031, VOL. 78] 



The total number of papers was well over 100, hence the 

 need for limitations. 



At an Oxford congress of religions it was natural that 

 a part should be played by the Father of Anthropology, 

 and the enthusiasm with which Dr. Tylor was greeted 

 when he introduced the president. Sir A. C. Lyall, was 

 as flattering a tribute to his greatness as he could desire. 

 The subject of Sir A. C. Lyall's address was religious 

 conflicts and the conditions under which one religion at- 

 tained predominance over its compietitors ; he held that 

 State recognition has been indispensable to religious con- 

 solidation, and ascribed to the absence of State regulation 

 the freedom characteristic of Hindu theology. 



The congress was divided into nine sections, besides a 

 general one for papers of wider import, and in each section 

 a presidential address was delivered ; Sir John Rhys dealt 

 with Celtic religion, and pointed out that our evidence 

 was precarious, and our knowledge inferential only ; Prof. 

 Giles said that the Chinese had a sky-god, lien, who 

 received, however, neither respect nor sacrifice ; eventually 

 this power became an abstraction ; Mr. Hartland discussed, 

 among other things, magic, a subject also dealt with by 

 Dr. Jevons ; Prof. Petrie discussed Egyptian religion, and 

 pointed out that the prominence of the funerary cult in it 

 was accidental and due to the rise of the bed of the 

 Nile, which had covered up the Egypt of the living ; in 

 the life of the ordinary man, the local sacred animal or 

 totem figured largely ; the murder of a cat would have 

 set .Alexandria in flames, even down to Roman times. 



Of the other p.apers, some were sensational, like that of 

 Prof. Haupt, who maintained the non-Semitic descent of 

 Christ ; he argued that Galilee was denuded of Jews in 

 164 B.C., and that when the Jewish religion was reintro- 

 duced fifty years later, it was imposed on Assyrian colonists 

 introduced bv Tiglath Pileser ; an effective criticism on 

 this view was made by Dr. Gaster, who pointed out that 

 the Jews would have been ready enough to seize on a 

 much less valid ground for denying Christ 's descent from 

 David. 



Dr. J. G. Frazer also dealt with Jewish beliefs, but his 

 notes on them were the wonderful collections of parallel 

 instances from all parts of the w^orld which we expect 

 from him ; he traced the silent widow, for example, in 

 North -America, Madagascar, and .Australia, where a two 

 years' ban rests upon them, and has been perhaps a 

 potent cause in the development of gesture language. 



Dr. A. J. Evans read a paper on the cults of Minoan 

 Crete, and pointed out that recent discoveries corroborated 

 the views which he put forward in iqoo ; Minoan cults 

 were predominantly aniconic, though images were also 

 found ; the cult objects were trees and pillars, and the 

 double axe ; the principal divinity was a nature goddess. 

 .As a pendant to this paper may be mentioned Miss 

 Harrison's discussion of bird and pillar cults, in which 

 she argued that the change from the " matriarchal " to 

 the " patriarchal " stage caused a change of sex in the 

 most important divinitv. 



.Anthropologists are far from being agreed as to the 

 definition of religion, and, not unnaturally, there was an 

 attempt to define it in the section devoted to religions of 

 the lower culture. Mr. Marrett held that Tvlor's 

 animism was far wider than religion, though it did not 

 embrace all religion ; the real criteria were two — first, the 

 presence of mana, magico-religious force, and, secondly, the 

 negative rites set up by a belief in maiia, and commonly 

 known as t.abu : when the personal element became prom- 

 inent in religion, animism came in ; but it is really a 

 primitive philosophy far wider than the supernatural. 



Special interest attached to Dr. Seligmann's account of 

 the Veddahs, from whom he has just returned ; with them, 

 as with many other races, fear was the main emotion, 

 and at death they deserted the cave, leaving the body 

 without food or fire ; the cult of the dead was almost 

 the central feature of the psychical life of the A'eddahs. 

 Funerary customs were ,-ilso dealt with by Mr. T. C. 

 Hodson in a paper on the .Assam hill tribes, and by Mr. 

 N. W. Thomas; the latter summarised Schmidt's views, 

 as yet unpublished, as to the three strata in the popula- 

 tion of Australia — old and new Australian and (?) Papuan — 

 and pointed out that the burial customs largely followed 

 the linguistic lines ; in the south and west of .Australia fear 



