November 11, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



467 



as to what parts oi me were " the majority " and 

 which the " most." 



About the year 1884, Newton prepared 

 courses of lectures on Geograpliical Distribu- 

 tion and Evidences of Evolution. He was to 

 lecture on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 

 noon. He discovered, however, that the lec- 

 tures, as written, would not stretch over a 

 whole term, so he told the class that next Mon- 

 day he would unfortunately not be able to lec- 

 ture owing to urgent business, and this would 

 continue throughout the term. 



Dr. Guillem.ard, in the passage quoted above, 

 has referred to the difficulty of changing [New- 

 ton's well-considered opinions. It must be 

 added, however, that he was -able to keep an 

 open mind on certain subjects of great import- 

 ance to him. Thus he readily appreciated Dar- 

 win's theory at the time of its publication, and 

 only four days after the publication of the 

 Darwin and Wallace papers by the Linnean 

 Society wrote a long letter on the subject to 

 Canon H. B. Tristram. This led to the circum- 

 stance that Tristram was the first zoologist of 

 note to publish his adherence to the doctrine, 

 though unfortunately he was reconverted to the 

 old faith shortly after. He also came to see 

 that the old classification of birds was faulty, 

 and recognized the necessity for fundamental 

 revision. 



Professor IvTewton was an ardent field nat- 

 uralist, and in his earlier days visited the West 

 Indies (St. Croix and St. Thomas), Iceland, 

 Spitzbergen and other countries, always ma- 

 king interesting observations. He did his best 

 to discover the haunts of the great Auk in Ice- 

 land, but although he talked with men who had 

 seen it, it was apparently extinct before his 

 visit. He left copious materials for a history 

 of the great Auk, which he intended to publish 

 had his life been prolonged a few more years. 



ISTewton died in 1907, his last wish being 

 " may the study of zoology continue to flourish 

 in the University." Since then, much good and 

 important work has been done, but there is 

 great need for more room, more assistance, 

 more apparatus, and adequate salaries for the 

 staff. The whole British Empire is concerned 

 in this matter, for in such centers must be 



trained the men who go out to solve the in- 

 numerable problems of the dominions and col- 

 onies. Nor is it merely a matter of training 

 specialists, for modern life requires that the 

 leaders in all fields shall know something of 

 biology. Thus, even if conditions in New- 

 ton's time could have been described as ade- 

 quate (which they were not), they would no 

 longer suffice for modern needs. 



t. d. a. cockerell 

 TJniveesity of Colorado 



ACOUSTICAL NOTES 



Musical Notation. — The recent interesting 

 letter in Science describing a new musical 

 notation and proposing a new keyboard there- 

 for, calls for a brief historical note, even 

 though it should make two ingenious gentle- 

 men " curse those who said our good things 

 before us." 



It is obviously true that the staff which best 

 conforms to our chromatic scale of twelve 

 equal steps to the octave, and best appeals to 

 the mind accustomed to grapho, is one of 

 12 (13) equally spaced lines for an octave; 

 or since it is difficult to distinguish among so 

 many lines alternate lines may be omitted so 

 leaving a 6-line or whole-tone scale. These 

 facts are so obvious that both forms have 

 been invented repeatedly, as is showra by 

 patents long since expired. The earliest use 

 found was by Joshua Steele in " Melody in 

 speech," London, 1Y75. To distinguish be- 

 tween the numerous lines he superposed the 

 ordinary five lines and used some dotted lines. 

 For many years I have found this notation 

 very convenient for writing non-harmonic 

 scales or music and have referred to it oc- 

 casionally in print, but it seems never to have 

 appealed to musicians. 



Modifications of this many-lined staff have 

 been proposed; one uses only four or three 

 lines, but any note, as C, will come in the 

 same position in all octaves; sometimes the 

 note-heads are of different shapes. The most 

 frequent modification is to retain only the five 

 lines that correspond to the black keys of 

 the piano — a scheme closely analogous in 

 principle to the old tablatures. This was 



