244 
resist this inexorable enemy on the part of the shallow water 
denizens of the sea or any encroachment on exposed areas during 
fine weather by animals unfitted to meet the storm will incur the 
penalty of death. 
The prime necessity for every member of the littoral fauna is 
the power of resisting the attacks of waves ; and every develop- 
ment and variation undergone by such littoral fauna must of 
necessity have been carried out under the immediate control of 
waves. 
If, as Prof. Moseley tells us, it was in the ‘‘littoral zone. . . 
that all the main groups of the animal kingdom first came into 
existence,” we may go further and say that these main groups 
were modelled by the ceaseless action of waves, as these in their 
turn were brought into being by winds raised by solar heat. 
Thus the early stages of evolution can be carried back directly, 
by the two short links of wind and wave, to the sun itself. 
One point that I have never published myself or seen recorded 
by others, is the curious conflict that may be observed between 
wave- and tidal action. For example, a shell with a wide bathy- 
metrical range, from tide-marks to, say, fifty fathoms, may 
evince a tendeney towards the elaboration of a useful form and 
sculpture, in the deeper water; whereas, between tide-marks 
the two daily checks to growth arising from the fall of the tide 
would immediately check any such variation in sculpture, and 
the altered form would no longer be best suited to the along- , 
shore conditions. 
Moreover, as the form best suited to tide-marks is often in 
conflict with that best suited to deeper water, the form of a 
species living between tide-marks might soon diverge from that 
of the same species frequenting deeper water. As a possible 
instance I would adduce the case of Zrochus zizyphinus and 
T. granulatus. These gasteropods have always, I believe, been 
considered distinct species ; but I have in my possession speci- 
mens from about fifteen fathoms, showing a distinct passage 
between the smooth zizyphinus and the sculptured granulatus, 
and this both in outline and sculpture. 
I regret that I have been unable to obtain odontophores of the 
intermediate forms to ascertain if they confirm the passage from 
the one species into the other. It is, I think, evident that though 
T. cizyphinus can retain its form in deep water, 7. eranulatus 
could not retain its symmetrical granulated sculpture were it to 
invade the tidal strand. 
The variety of method exhibited by the littoral fauna in 
resisting wave-currents affords a most interesting subject of 
research. Take for instance an exposed ledge of rock—no hypo- 
thetical one—with sturdy limpets living on it, the fragile Pho/a- 
didea papyracea living in it, and the hardy little Z7ttorina 
obtusata clinging to the sea-weed. A storm attacks the trio, and 
tests their several methods of defence. The limpet is safe on 
the rock, the Pholadidea in it, and the Littorina, though at once 
washed off its feeble support, is safe, thanks to its solid shell, 
from the utmost violence of the storm. The tenacious hold of 
the limpet on the solid rock and the feeble adherence of the 
Littorina to the sea-weed indicate very opposite methods of 
meeting a common danger. 
In conclusion I would put in a plea for working-models of the 
sea in some of our new aquariums. When one sees in a tranquil 
tank such a fish as the gurnard with its far-spreading feelers 
ready to steady itself amid swinging wave-currents, one would 
like to see its machinery brought into action. A gentle swing- 
ing motion could be easily imparted to the waters of a tank,,and 
under such conditions the observer would see the animals.use 
the special appliances they possess for resisting or evading their 
most formidable enemy. ARTHUR R. Hunt 
Torquay, July 6 
““New System of Orthography for Native Names of 
Places ” 
ALLOW me room for a few remarks on the Royal Geographi- 
cal Society’s ‘‘ New System of Orthography for Native Names 
of Places,” just published in your number for July 2. The 
Society has earned the thanks of the public for grappling with 
the neglected and vexatiously inconsistent question of place- 
name spelling. Attention was called by myself to this subject 
in oles and Queries of May and July, 1884, and I can take no 
exception to the vowel and consonant system suggested by the 
Society, save to the retention of the un-English letter x and to 
one other particular. 
This latter exception deals with the statement contained in 
paragraph (2) that ‘‘no change will be made in the spelling of 
NATURE 
names that have become by long usage familiar to English 
readers—as Calcutta, Cutch, Celebes, Mecca, &c.” Now, why 
make even these exceptions to the excellent rules laid down? 
Exceptions are always a nuisance, and in the cases of justifiable 
reforms prove more often than otherwise the means whereby the 
benefits of such reforms are frustrated altogether. A little more 
boldness by the Society in grasping the nettle is wanted ; and 
while an improved alternative spelling would soon become 
familiar to the public, the help given by this concession to 
logical consistency would encourage reforms both here and in 
other fields. The attempt to consider the public convenience 
here illustrated is, I believe, unnecessary ; while the seeking to 
preserve historical spellings, as with other historical and vener. 
able anachronisms, comes to this—that the progress of reform is 
continually becoming hidebound and stunted, if not stopped 
altogether, by theimpossible attempt to energise distinct stages 
of growth at one and the same time. It is earnestly to be hoped 
that the Geographical Society, upon whom the mantle of 
‘*Bahnbrecher ” in spelling reform has suddenly fallen, will do 
the wise thing here, and boldly declare against all ‘‘ exceptions” 
to wholesome, justifiable improvement. 
The need for, and the influence on other departments of 
spelling reform, of bold action on the part of the Society is 
illustrated by the retention of the letter «. In any reform scheme 
of the spelling of English place-names—the next urgent ques- 
tion to the above—the abolition of this letter will stand in the 
fore-rank of improvements. Witness its mischievous working in 
“* Boxted ” (Buckstead), ‘‘ Hoxton ” (Hogston in 1790), ‘‘Oxted” 
Ocksstead), Huxtable (Huckstable), &c. ! N. 
July 9 
Recession of Niagara Falls in 133 Years 
THE fallacy of Lyell’s guess at the rate of recession was 
always plain if we referred to the first accurate account, that of 
the Swedish traveller Kalm, in Gent. Mag., January, 1751; 
since which the gorge has both been enlarged full 100 acres, 
and had miles of its bed deepened many feet. In p. 16, col. 1, 
A, he said: ‘* Canoes can go yet half a league above the be- 
ginning of the carrying place, . . . but higher up it is quite 
impossible, the whole course of the water, for two leagues and 
a half up to the great fall, being a series of smaller falls, one 
under another.’ Now plainly this whole series have so levelled 
their bed that the main falls now descend some 160 feet instead 
of the ‘‘137 feet’”’ that he repeatedly maintained (col, 2, E) to 
be the utmost the engineers, ‘‘with mathematical instru- 
ments,” then admitted. But as for the plan, he is yet more 
definite. P. 16, col. 1, E: ‘‘The river (or rather strait) runs 
here from south-south-east to north-north-west, and the rock of 
the great fall crosses it, not in a right line, but forming almost 
the figure of a semicircle or horse-shoe.” (Prof. Tyndall has 
well remarked that, the upper stream having probably been 
always much wider than the gorge, the chief fall has always 
been concave ; but Kalm’s view makes it appear very slightly 
so, and we know that very flat segments are, by a perspective 
illusion, commonly thought semicircles or even ‘‘ horse-shoes.”’) 
“* Above the fall, in the middle of the river, is an island, lying 
also south-south-east and north-north-west, or parallel with the 
sides of the river; its length is about 7 or § French arpents (an 
arpent being 120 feet). The lower end of this island is just at 
the perpendicular edge of the fall.’’ He proceeds to tell how 
this island, once thought inaccessible, had been the scene of the 
heroic rescue, twelve years before, of two Indians by two others. 
Then, p. 18, col. 2, F.: ‘* The breadth of the fall, as it runs in 
a semicircle, is reckoned to be about 6 arpents. ‘The island is 
in the middle of the fall, and from it to each side is almost the 
same breadth” (barely 350 feet then, but in his engraving not 
half that). ‘* The breadth of the island at its lower end is two- 
thirds of an arpent or thereabouts.” His view makes it but 
one-third the height, 7.e., one-third of ‘‘ 137 feet.” 
Now this mere reef, about 900 feet by less than 80, was plainly 
one whose length the falls were reducing. Is there the least 
ground for holding they have ever reduced Goat Island (now 
ten times larger than that) or will reduce it one rood? But, 
prolong ‘‘ Luna Islet” north-north-west till 900 feet long, and 
you will have the site, I submit, of Kalm’s middle rock, barely 
350 feet from the point Mr. Wesson marks, on Fig. 2, ‘“ New 
York Shore,” and about as much from a Canadian point west- 
south-west of it. As for Goat Island, it cannot, in his time, 
have yet been touched by the falls, but may be one of those the 
hunters had habitually visited above. His description can 
\Fuly 16, 1885, 
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