;62 



NATURE 



{April 15, 1880 



As to figuring fragments of bones, I did all that my limited 

 knouledi'e of mammalian osteology would permit in identifying 

 the common mammals, and in giving a list of them as other 

 writers have dune in similar investigations. Possibly Mr. 

 Dickins may here find a fruitful yield for investigation, in which 

 he may establish the recent nature of the deposits. I cheerfully 

 proffer it to him with a large accumulation of fragments of bones 

 in Tokio waiting to be put together ! 



His comparison of the Omori pottery with Eanko will greatly 

 amu^e any one at all familiar with Banko, or its associate forms, 

 Hansuki, Otagukuan, Miki, Bashodo, Tokonabe, or their 

 imitators either ancient or modem. 



Hi.; review being thus occupied with a series of misstatements, 

 he naturally finds no room to discuss my evidences of cannibalism 

 or platycnemic tibiae. 



Finally, his ungenerous complaint of my well-merited com- 

 pliment to the Japanese printers and binders who made the 

 pamphlet illustrated a lamentable but too common trait of the 

 ordinary Briton in Japan, namely, that which manifests itself in 

 a childish delight at the failures of the Japanese and in sneers at 

 their successes. Edward S. Morse 



Salem, Mass., U.S., March 25 



Wallace's "Australasia" 

 Mr. Everett appears surpri-ed that he should have to make 

 any corrections in my brief account, in the above-named work, of 

 Borneo and the Philippines, countries in which he has resided 

 and travelled for many years. My surprise is that he has not 

 been able to make far larger and more important corrections. 

 Residents abroad soon acquire a mass of local information, and 

 naturally think that what has been long familiar to themselves 

 must be well known in England, forgetting that books on such 

 subjects are written at long intervals, and when written rarely 

 contain all the information up to date. I am exceedingly thankful 

 for any additional facts or corrections for a new edition of the 

 book, but 1 do not acknowledge to "errors" in the omission of 

 facts which were not to be found in any books in English 

 libraries at the time I wrote. I will make a few observations 

 on the chief points in Mr. Everett's letter. 



1. As to the accuracy of the maps I am not responsible, as 

 Mr. Everett might well have supposed in a series of works issued 

 in Mr. Stanford's name. The fact that Palawan and Mindanao 

 are now as completely Spanish possesions as Luzon, is, I think, 

 quite new to British readers. 



2. I certainly omitted the mention of Tupaia among the 

 Philippine mammals by an oversight. In giving a general sketch 

 of the peculiarities of Philippine zoology I should, however, 

 again omit Palawan from consideration, as that island is zoologi- 

 cally more nearly connected with Borneo. In the absence of all 

 other information about Palawan, I took my account chiefly from 

 Crawfurd's "Descriptive Dictionary." He mentions the frizzled 

 hair of the natives, and deer among the wild animals ; and as 

 deer abound both in Borne ; and the Philippines, their absence in 

 Palawan requires proof rather than their presence. 



3. The detailed range of the rhinoceros and wild cattle in 

 Borneo has not yet, that I am aware, been given by any writer, 

 My general statements, though imperfect, do not seem very far 

 from the truth. 



4. As to what Mr. Everett styles my "extraordinary state- 

 ment" about the "Idaan" and "Milanow" tribes, I founded it 

 on Mr. Spencer St. John's book. He says (vol. i. p. 396) of the 

 Idaan— "They were a dark, sharp-featured race, intelligent- 

 looking, and appeared in features very much like the Land 

 Dyaks of Sarawak." While of the Milanows he says (i. p. 46) 

 "some are clothed like Mahomedans, others like Dyaks, to 

 which rdcj they undoubtedly belong." As the Milanows live at the 

 mouths of rivers, while the Idaan live inland, I cannot see the 

 "extraordinary" character of the statement that they "corre- 

 spond " to the division of Land and Sea Dyaks usually made in 

 the Sarawak territory. This does not imply that there are no 

 differences of language, customs, &c, but rather that there are 

 such differences; but if there are radical physual differences 

 they were evidently not known to Mr. St. John, who-e long 

 residence in Borneo and great opportunities for acquiring infor- 

 mation entitle him to be considered an authority. 



It will be seen that Mr. Everett's new matter is very scanty, 

 and I should not have thought it worth while to do anything 

 more than make use of it, were not his letter written in a some- 

 what critical spirit, which I think he would not have adopted 



had he known the great difficulty of obtaining accurate informa- 

 tion on the innumerable subjects that have to be treated in a 

 book of so wide a scope as " Australasia," and dealing with 

 countries which have been as yet imperfectly described. Like 

 some other critics, too, he forgets that general statements for 

 popular information, which must be comprised within a few lines, 

 cannot always be made strictly accurate without becoming vague, 

 and thus ceasing to convey any definite ideas. 



Alfred R. Wallace 



The Comet 1861 I. 



In the course of some work on comets lately communicated to 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in which I show reasons for 

 believing that a planet more distant from the sun than Neptune 

 is at present in the position R.A. Ilh. 40m., N.P.D. 85°, or 

 thereabouts, I was led to the conclusion that the comet 1861 I., 

 visible to the naked eye, should have been in perihelion three 

 times before the last appearance. The period of the comet has 

 been calculated to be 41 5 '4 years. It ought therefore to have 

 been visible in the years 1445, 'OS 1 . 615. Comets were observed 

 in 1444, 1032, 617. It will be interesting to many readers of 

 Nature to know that these are identical. They were all 

 observed in July or August, and were all seen to pass close to 

 Leonis. The following accounts of them have been given : — 



A.D. 617 (»'). — "In Ju'y a comet with a tail 3° or 4' long was 

 seen near /3 Leonis." — (Ma-tuoan-lin.) 



A.D. 1032. — "On July 15 an extraordinary star appeared in 

 the northeast. It approached P Leonis." — ("Compendium 

 Historiarum," 730.) 



A.D. 1444. — " On August 6 a comet io° long was seen to the 

 east of Leonis; it became longer day by day till August 15, 

 when it entered the sidereal division of a Virginis." — (Biot.) 



The longitude of /3 Leonis is 169°, its latitude 13° N._ If the 

 earth were to remain fixed in its position for July 15 it would 

 see the comet 1S61 I. pass through the point whose longitude 

 is 169° 30', latitude 13 N. If the earth were in the position of 

 August 6 the comet would pass through a point whose longitude 

 is 177° and latitude 13°, or to the east of $ Leonis, and moving 

 towards a Virginis. Thus these four apparitions are the same 

 comet ; and the meteor-shower of April 20, hitherto considered 

 to depend on the comet 1861 I., cannot be considered to agree 

 in period. GEORGE FORBES 



Anderson's College, Glasgow, April 2 



A Feat of Memory 



The follow ing feat of memory seems to be worthy of record 

 in your pages. It is new to the writer, though by no means 

 uncommon over here. 



Like the country itself, many institutions in the United States 

 run to size in a way apt to astonish the dwellers in our "tight 

 little island." So it is with hotels. Thus at some of them many 

 hundreds of persons are simultaneously dining in one room. At 

 the entrance, the hats, &c, of the guests are deposited with 

 a person in attendance to receive them. He does not check 

 or arrange them in any particular order, and he invariably 

 restores them, each to the right owner, as they emerge from the 

 dining-room. The difficulty of the feat naturally depends on 

 the number of hats in charge at the same time. The most 

 remarkable case which has come under the notice of the writer 

 is at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. There the attendant, 

 who is on duty several hours a day, has sometimes as many as 

 five hundred hats in his possession at one time. A majority of 

 them belong to people whom he has never seen before, and there 

 is a constant flux of persons in and out. Yet even a momentary 

 he-itation in selecting the right hat rarely occurs. The performer 

 at the above hotel says that he forms a mental picture of the 

 owner's face inside his hat, and that on looking at any hat the 

 wearer's face is instantly brought before his mind's eye. It 

 would be interesting to test how far this power is possessed by 

 an average unpractised person when put in the right way of 

 doing it. While many of our ordinary recollections are not visual, 

 at least not consciously so, it appears probable that most cases of 

 extraordinary memory consist in an unusual power of making 

 and retaining visualised impressions. Mr. Galton's interesting 

 paper in Nature (vol. xxi. p. 252) on " Visualised Numerals 

 goes a long way to show this to be so in mental arithmetic. Sys- 

 tems of artificial memory tend towards the same point ; for they 

 may be roughly described as mainly resting on the systematic 



