778 REPORT— 1894. 



4. The Heredity of Acquired Characters. 

 By Professor A. Macalister, M.D., F.B.S. 



5. Notes on Skin, Hair, and Pigment. 

 By Professor Arthur Thomson, M.A. 



6. On the Anthropological Significance of Ticklishness. 

 By Louis Robinson, M.D. 



The ticklishness which is so marked in children, and which is associated with 

 laughter, appears to be different from the ticklishness of the surface of the skin. 



Its universal distribution indicates that it was at one time of importance, 

 although at present it appears to fill no place in the animal economy. 



It is found that in young apes, puppies, and other like animals, the most 

 ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight. In the mock 

 fights of immaturity, skill in defending these spots is attained. 



In children, and in anthropoid apes which fight with their canine teeth, the 

 most ticklish regions are practically identical. Young orangs and chimpanzees 

 grin, and behave otherwise much like children when tickled. 



It seems probable, therefore, that in the ticklishness of children we have a 

 vestige of a state of racial development when the canine teeth were habitually used 

 by our ancestors in war for mates or food. 



7. On the Boiv as a Musical Instrument. By H. Balfour, M.A. 



The bow has been for a long while commonly accepted as the prototype of a 

 large series of stringed musical instruments. Witness the Greek legend which 

 attributed the first appreciation of the musical potentialities of a tense string to- 

 Apollo, who observed them in the twang of the bowstring. In India legend refers 

 the invention of stringed instruments to Siva, who used a bow for musical pur- 

 poses. In Japan the origin of the six-stringed koto is, in the legend of Amaterasa, 

 traced to an extemporised instrument composed of six bows lashed together. So, 

 too, modern writers have for the most part regarded the bow as a parent form of 

 many of the instruments even of the highest types. Stages in the probable 

 phylogenetic development of stringed instruments may be studied in the survivals- 

 of primitive forms still existing in various countries. Simplest of all is the mono- 

 chord of the Damaras (Ilerero), extemporised from the ordinary shooting bow of 

 the coimtry by the addition of a string bracing the bowstring to the bow, and 

 thus tightening it and dividing it into two parts, whose notes are elicited by tap- 

 ping upon the string with a small stick. To increase the resonance the bow is held 

 to the mouth of the performer. Stage 2 is represented in m^ny parts of Africa 

 by musical bows, still simple bows, very slightly modified for musical purposes 

 only. These are either held in the teeth or to the mouth, or rested upon resonant 

 bodies (gourds, &c.) to increase resonance. Stage 3 is that in which a resonator is 

 attached to the bow, usually a gourd, as in the Zulu ' gubo.' Musical bows in these 

 three stages occur from the Niger down the west of Africa to the Cape, and along 

 the more easterly regions as far north as the Dohr or Bongo tribes. This dis- 

 tribution is nearly continuous. In Asia we meet at the present day with musical 

 bows in forms corresponding with stage 2, as in the Pinaka of North India, a lightly 

 made bow strung with fine string. Also the musical bow of the Bhuiyars (abori- 

 ginalj of Mirzapur, though this is an aberrant form. It seems likely that a musical 

 bow almost identical with the bow and gourd resonator of South Africa exists in 

 India, this observation being partly based upon a small figure of a man with such 

 a bow in the Pitt-Rivers collection, and partly upon a study of forms which seem 

 to have passed through such a stage. In the Malay regions we find musical bows 

 used with or without resonators in the ' busoi ' of Borneo, and in a simple form in 



