Dec. II, 1873J 



NATURE 



99 



the only instance, so far as we know, in which a number of 

 contiguous ^societies 'have united into a connected group> 

 though other societies^ occasionally have excursions in 

 common. 



Wc regret to say that since our list was published, we 

 have ascertained that two of the Yorkshire Societies 

 named therein, are now defunct, viz. the Halifax Natu- 

 ralists' Societ)', once a member of the West Riding 

 Union, and the Leeds Natural History Society. We have 

 been told that the Wigan Field Naturalists' Scientific 

 Society, given in Sir Walter Elliot's list, with 150 mem- 

 bers, is also dead. We hope that in reality these are not 

 dead, but only sleeping ; and that means may soon be 

 taken to rouse them again into activity. 



Altogether, then, including the Lancashire Societies not 

 in our list, and others of which we have heard since our 

 list was published, one of which was founded at Bally- 

 mcna, County Antrim, the result, we believe, of some 

 lectures there last winter, there are at the present time in 

 Great Britain and Ireland at least 169 associations es- 

 tablished solely or partly for the pursuit of science in one 

 form or another. Of these 104 are professedly field-clubs, 

 while a considerable number of the remainder do field- 

 club work in so far as the publication of lists of the 

 natural productions of their surrounding districts are con- 

 cerned. Only 22 of these 169 societies were founded 

 previous to 1830, while all the field-clubs were formed 

 after that year, and by far the greater number of them 

 within the last twenty-three years. We do not reckon 

 among these the scientific societies which have been 

 formed in connection with our public schools, to which we 

 shall refer afterwards. 



Of these societies the English ones are mainly grouped 

 in the North of England, along the Welsh border, and in 

 the southern counties, the midland district being but 

 sparsely represented, and Bedfordshire,* Derbyshire, Es- 

 sex, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Rut- 

 landshire, not at all, not to mention the Channel Islands 

 and the Isle of Man, which would afford opportunities to 

 field-clubs which cannot be attained in the main island at 

 all. Glamorganshire is the only Welsh county repre- 

 sented by a society, while all but three of the Irish 

 counties are unrepresented. Scotland, the birthplace of 

 field-clubs, we have already referred to as b eing far be- 

 hind England in this respect. Ireland, and even Wales, 

 cannot perhaps at present be blamed for their backward- 

 ness in regard to associations of this kind, though each 

 country, in its own way, offers a magnificent field of in- 

 vestigation to local naturalists. With regard to the un- 

 occupied districts of England and Scotland, we can only 

 hope that the scientific contagion may rapidly spread, as 

 no doubt it will when all the conditions are present for its 

 taking effect. Meanwhile, the rapid spread of scientific 

 societies, and especially field-clubs, and the valuable re- 

 sults that have already followed from the labours of a 

 ' number of them, must be exceedingly gratifying to all who 

 ' desire to see the triumph of science, and, indeed, to all 

 i who are earnestly seeking after the elevation of their 

 I fellow-men. Is it not one more sign that "the old order 

 I changeth, yielding place to new ? " 



MARS HALLS TOD AS OF SOUTH INDIA 



A Phrenologist amongst the Todas ; or, the Study of a 

 Primitive Tribe in South India. By William E. 

 Marshall, Lieut.-Col. of H.M. Bengal Staff Corps, 

 (Longmans, 1873.) 



THE Todas are a pastoral hill-tribe in the Nilagiri 

 region of Southern India, whose singularly interest- 

 ing social condition fairly entitled them to be described 

 in a volume by themselves. Colonel Marshall succeeds in 

 communicating to his readers the lively interest he felt 

 in his work, and several points of ethnology will be per- 

 ceptibly advanced by it, notwithstanding much of the 

 theoretical part of the book which will hardly meet with 

 acceptance. 



Especially from the moralist's point of view, the condition 

 of these secluded herdsmen deserved to be put on record 

 while still little changed under influences from without. 

 They show perfectly how the milder virtu-s naturally 

 prevail among men in an intellectually childlike state, if 

 only society is undisturbed from without, and finds its 

 equilibrium within. " The general type of the Toda cha- 

 racter is most unvarj'ing ; singularly frank, affable, and 

 self-possessed, cheerful yet staid ; " theft and violence are 

 almost absent among them ; their quiet domestic life is 

 " undisturbed by the wrongs of grasping, vindictive, over- 

 bearing natures ; " their engagements to support their 

 wives and children, though resting on mere promises, are 

 kept through utter guilelessness and want of talent to 

 plot. Toda society is simply held together by the strength 

 of family affection. " It is a quiet, undemonstrative, bu 

 intensely domestic people ; domestic in the wider sense 

 of viewing the entire family, to the last cousin, much as 

 one household, in which everyone is everywhere entirely 

 at home ; each one assisting, with the steadiness of a 

 caterpillar, in the easy, progressive task of emptying his 

 neighbour's larder ; no one exerting himself by one frac- 

 tion to raise the family. The great feature in Toda 

 organisation, is the all-absorbing power of his domestic 

 attachments, which, like Pharaoh's lean kine, swallow up 

 all other qualities." The points where the moral code of 

 these easy-going folk differs from that of modern intuitive 

 moralists, are especially polyandry and infanticide. Their 

 marriage-relations within the family have perhaps more 

 nearly approached than those of any other known tribe 

 that promiscuity which several modern ethnologists have 

 supposed to belong to a primitive state of society ; 

 " it was formerly their almost universal custom — in the 

 ..days when women were more scarce than they are now — 

 for a family of near relations to live together in one 

 }nand, having wife, children, and cattle all in common." 

 Here, indeed, is socialism of an extreme order, prevailing 

 among a low race, in whose general condition its evi 

 and good are alike visible. As need hardly be said, 

 to the Toda mind polyandry seems part of the natural order 

 of things. So it was with infanticide, till about fifty years 

 ago an English officer, Mr. Sullivan, mounted the Nila- 

 giri plateau and visited the homes of the Todas. Since 

 then all the events of Toda history have been dated from the 

 visit of '■ Sullivan Dore," as we date from the Christian 

 era, and thenceforward the Government put down infanti- 

 cide, and its former prevalence is now only to be traced 

 in the census, and leamt from the memory of old people. 



