July 13, 188:3.] 



SCIENCE. 



43 



of the northern ocean, as is volcanic debris, but that 

 the chief portion of the material consists of the solid 

 matter carried out to sea by drift-Ice and glacial riv- 

 ers. M. E. Wadsworth. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMPLE- 

 MENTS.^ 



"When will hearing be like seeing?" says the 

 Persian proverb. Worils of description will never 

 give the grasp that the mind takes through actual 

 sight and handling of objects ; and this is why, in fix- 

 ing and forming ideas of civilization, a museum is so 

 necessary. One understands the function of such a 

 museum the better for knowing how the remark.able 

 collection formed by Gen. Pitt-Rivers came into ex- 

 istence. About 18.51 its collector, then Col. Lane 

 Fox, was serving on a military sub-committee to ex- 

 amine improvements in small arms. In those days 

 the British army was still armed (except special rifle- 

 men) with the old smooth-bore percussion musket, 

 the well-known 'Brown Bess.' The improved wea- 

 pons of contijiental armies had brought on the ques- 

 tion of reform; but the task of this committee of 

 juniors to press changes on the heads of the service 

 was not an easy one, even when the Duke of Welling- 

 ton, at last convinced by actual trial at the butts, 

 decreed th.it he would have every man in the army 

 armed with a ritle-musket. Col. Fox was no mere 

 theorist, but a practical man, who knew what to do 

 and how to do it; and his place in the history of the 

 destructive machinery of war is marked by his hav- 

 ing been the originator and first instructor of the 

 School of musketry at Hythe. While engaged in this 

 work of improving weapons, his experience led his 

 thoughts into a new channel. It was forced upon 

 him that stubbornly fixed military habit could not 

 accept progress by leaps and bounds, only by small 

 partial changes, an alteration of the form of the bul- 

 let here, then a slight change in the grooving of the 

 barrel; and so on, till a succession of these small 

 changes gradually transformed a weapon of low or- 

 ganization into a higher one, while the disappearance 

 of the intermediate steps, as they were superseded, left 

 apparent gaps in the stages of the invention, — gaps 

 which those who had followed its actual course knew 

 to have been really filled up by a series of interme- 

 diate stages. These stages Col. Lane Fox collected 

 and arranged in their actual order of development, 

 and thereupon there grew up in his mind the idea 

 that such had been the general course of develop- 

 ment of arts among mankind. He set himself to col- 

 lect weapons and other implements till the walls of 

 his house were covered from cellar to attic with series 

 of spears, boomerangs, bows, .and other instruments, 

 so grouped as to show the probable history of their 

 development. After a while this expanded far beyond 

 the limits of a private collection, and grew into his 

 museum. There the student may observe in the ac- 



> Extract from ft lecture on antliropolopy. tlelivercd Feb. 21, 

 at the University museura, Oxford, by E. U. Tylok, D.C.L., 

 F.R.S. From Ifalure of May 17. 



tual specimens the transitions by which the parrying- 

 stick, used in Australia and elsewhere to ward off 

 spears, must have passed into the shield. It is re- 

 markable that one of the forms of shield which lasted 

 on latest into modern times had not passed into a 

 mere screen, but w.is still, so to speak, fenced with. 

 This was the target carried by the Highland regiments 

 in the low countries in 1747. In this nuiseum, again, 

 are shown the series of changes through which the 

 rudest protection of the warrior by the hides of ani- 

 mals led on to elaborate suits of plate and chain 

 armor. The principles which are true of the develop- 

 ment of weapons are not less applicable to peaceful 

 instruments, whose history is illustrated in this col- 

 lection. It is seen how (as was pointed out by the 

 late Carl Engel) the primitive stringed instrument 

 was the hunter's bow, furnished afterwards with a 

 gourd to strengthen the tone by resonance, till at last 

 the hollow resonator came to be formed in the body 

 of the instrument, as in the harp or violin. Thus the 

 hookah or nargileh still keeps something of the shape 

 of the cocoanut-shell, from which it was originally 

 made, and is still called after (Persian, ndrjil = cocoa- 

 nut). But why describe more of these lines of de- 

 velopment when the very point of the argument is 

 that verbal description fails to do them justice, and 

 that really to understand them they ought to be fol- 

 lowed in the series of actual specimens? All who 

 have been initiated into the principle of development 

 or modified sequence know how admirable a training 

 the study of these tangible things is for the study of 

 other branches of human history, where intermediate 

 stages have more often disappeared, and therefore 

 trained skill and Judgment are the more needed to 

 guide the imagination of the student in reconstruct- 

 ing the course along which art and science, morals 

 and government, have moved since they began, and 

 will continue to move in the future. 



THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AMERI- 

 CAN TURRET SPIDER. 



At the meeting of the Academy of natural sciences 

 of Philadelphia, Jime 10, Rev. Henry C. McCook 

 exhibited nests of Tarentula arenicola Scudder, 

 — a species of ground spider of the family Lyco- 

 sidae, properly known as the turret spider. The 

 nests in natural site are surmounted by structures 

 which quite closely resemble miniature old-fashioned 

 chimneys composed of mud and crossed sticks, as 

 seen in the log cabins of pioneer settlers. From 

 half an inch to one inch of the tube projects above 

 ground, while it extends straight downward twelve 

 or more inches into the earth. The projecting por- 

 tion, or turret, is in the form of a pentagon, more or 

 less regular, and is built up of bits of grass, stalks 

 of straw, small twigs, etc., laid across each other at 

 the corners. The upper or projecting parts have a 

 thin lining of silk. Taking its position just inside 

 the watch-tower, the spider leaps out, aiul captures 

 such insects as may come in its way. Nests had 

 been found at the base of the Alleghany Mountains 



