373 



NATURE 



\_Fcb. 19, 1880 



north wall, the distance being accurately measured with a 

 tape, the error of which was found by comparison with 

 the standard yard preserved in the Observatory. 



The cistern was filled with tbree-fourths of a gallon of 

 "lycerine, coloured red by aniline, first heated to a tem- 

 perature of 100° F. to render it more limpid, so as to 

 disengage the air more freely; the plug, E, was then 

 removed, and the air extracted out of the tube by means 

 of an air-pump connected at the top of the glass tube, when 

 the pressure of the atmosphere forced the liquid up to a 

 height of 323 '5 7 1 inches, being equivalent to 30 inches of 

 mercury, the Kew standard at the time reading 303 

 inches. The plug was then screwed in to support the 

 column, air admitted at the top, the air-pump connections 

 removed, and the tube filled up to the top with glycerine, 

 and the india-rubber stopper inserted. The screw plu.; 

 being removed for a few seconds to allow the column to 

 fall an inch or two, was then replaced, and the instrument 

 left, until the liquid was completely exhausted of air, 

 which slowly rose to the surface, into the vacuum above ; 

 the india-rubber stopper was again withdrawn, the tube 

 filled up, the stopper replaced, and the cistern plug finally 

 removed, when the column gradually fell until balanced 

 by the weight of the atmosphere, leaving a small quantity 

 of glycerine in the cup above the stopper, over which a 

 plate-glass cover was placed to keep out the dust. 



Daily observations of this instrument are now being 

 regularly taken at Kew Observatory, under the superinten- 

 dence of Mr. Whipple, the Director, which will decisively 

 prove whether the instrument is to be regarded as one of 

 scientific precision, but in any case the inventor is to be 

 congratulated on having reduced to a simple construction 

 an instrument forming a large scale weather-glass, suitable 

 for ordinary observation, which cannot fail to be of interest 

 and value at our museums and other public institutions. 



C. E. R. 



THE HISTORY OF WRITING* 

 T HAVE promised to speak to you to-night on a large 

 *■ subject, one which, to be treated adequately, would 

 require, not a single lecture or a single hour, but many 

 lectures and many days. The history of writing is in 

 great measure the history of the human mind ; just as 

 anything like real abstract thought is impossible without 

 language of some kind, so, too, without writing it is diffi- 

 cult to conceive of a progressive civilisation or a deve- 

 loped culture. The trained memory is no doubt able to 

 accomplish marvellous feats, as we may learn from the 

 Hindus, who have preserved by means of it, through long 

 centuries, not only poems, but even scientific works as 

 well ; nevertheless, the memory has a limit, and I think 

 most of us would be sorry to trust to it alone for the 

 record of our own thoughts and discoveries, much less 

 those of others. If language gave man the power of 

 continuous thought, writing has enabled him to develop 

 and make use of it. 



There is a striking analogy between the history of 

 language and the history of writing. Both have sprung 

 from a humble origin. Language began with a feu- 

 sounds and cries which symbolised and expressed an 

 equally small number of ideas ; writing began with pic- 

 tures of such objects as fell within the experience of the 

 first draughtsmen. How early this was in the history of 

 our race has recently been disclosed to us by archaeo- 

 logical research. Like the child, primitive man amused 

 himself by drawing pictures of the things he saw about 

 him, and like precocious children sometimes showed 

 remarkable talent in practising the art. The drawings of 

 reindeer and other animals, scratched by means of rude 

 flint implements on reindeer-horns or mammoth- tusks, 

 which have been found in the caves of France and our 

 own country, are frequently of high merit, and prove that 



* Lecture at the London Inslituti jn, February 12, by Prof. A. H. Sayce. 



considerable skill in the art of drawing may coexist with 

 the lowest savagery in other respects. It is a lesson that 

 we might already have learnt from the Eskimo, whose 

 etchings on whalebone are not unworthy of European 

 artists, or from the Bushmen of Southern Africa, who have 

 long excelled in painting animal forms on the smooth sur- 

 faces of ro:ks. But these contemporaries of the reindeer 

 and the mammoth, who belonged to what is termed 

 the age of polished stone tools, when England and France 

 were still enfolded for six months of the year in a gar- 

 ment of glaciers and solid ice, were not the first in the 

 West who practised the art of drawing. A remarkable 

 discovery, made during the past year in the region of the 

 Pyrenees, has shown that long before then, in the days 

 when the cave-bear and hyaena and other extinct monsters 

 of the old world still existed, and when the geography of 

 Europe differed widely from that of our own time, there 

 were men who employed their leisure in depicting the 

 animals about them as well as themselves. A number of 

 teeth belonging to the cave-bear have been discovered in 

 a cave of the palaeolithic or "old-stone" period, adorned 

 with drawings, some of which represent human beings, 

 covered, let it be observed, with long hair like the mam- 

 moth. I have sometimes fancied that language itself 

 may have owed its first start and progress to pictorial aid. 

 It is said that two Chinamen, in despair of understanding 

 each other through the help of a language which has to 

 denote so many different ideas by the same sound, have 

 been known to have recourse to writing; and most of us 

 remember when our own efforts to learn to read, and in 

 some cases to increase our acquaintance with our mothei- 

 tongue, were assisted by the use of pictures. An appeal 

 to the eye is surer and more impressive than an appeal 

 to the ear, and we recognise objects more readily by their 

 pictures than by their names. After all, therefore, it may 

 not be a paradox to imagine that the beginnings of writing 

 may be older than the beginnings of language, that men 

 drew pictures before they uttered articulate sounds. 



However this may be, the development of writing was 

 soon far outstripped by that of language. Language 

 enabled man to create and record ideas; the pictures he 

 made were pictures of objects only. Until he could 

 represent to the eye ideas as well as objects, his writing 

 was a very poor affair indeed. It is only by courtesy 

 that it can be called writing at all. But a time came 

 when a great step forward was made. The ideas that 

 had to be supplied when combining the pictures of 

 several objects into a story gradually came to be read 

 into the pictures themselves. A pair of legs, for in- 

 stance, came to signify not only a man's legs but the idea 

 of walking as well. Writing began to pass out of its 

 infantile stage ; to cease to be merely pictorial and to 

 become ideographic. 



This is the point at which the development of writing 

 lias stopped among some races of men. Thus certain of 

 the North American Indians have long possessed a means 

 of communicating with one another, and of inscribing 

 magical charms and exorcisms on rocks or the bark of 

 trees, by means of pictures and ideographs. When these 

 hieroglyphs, as we may term them, are painted, the system 

 of writing is called Kekinowin, and some of the pictorial 

 symbols employed in it are curious enough. A warrior, 

 for example, is represented by the picture of the sun, with 

 eyes, and nose, and two pendant lines, because he ought 

 to be as bold and strong as the great luminary of day. 

 A hand held upwards with the fingers extended denotes 

 death, and a series of circles one within the other signifies 

 time. This system of writing has been developed to such 

 an extent among the Mikmaks, that a religious work has 

 been published at Vienna entirely written in it, and 

 containing no less than 5,701 different signs. 



As soon as writing advances to the ideographic stage, 

 the exact delineation of outward objects naturally ceases 

 to be necessarv. When once it has been determined that 



