Septembee 14, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



353 



3. A waving line, which denotes nasal 

 emission. 



4. A line closing the curve, which denotes 

 stoppage of the breath. 



The letter thus says to the reader : — 



Stop the breath by means of the lips, and 

 sound the voice throiu/h the nose. 



It must be obvious that such directions, 

 conveyed without words, will be uniforml3- in- 

 terpreted by readers of any nationality who 

 have simply learned the meaning of the radical 

 .S3"mliols. All the Visible-speech letters are 

 formed in this way, by synthesis of two or 

 more out of a total number of nine elements. 

 ISucii letters, consc(iiiently, make up an alpha- 

 bet adapted for universality, because independ- 

 ent of explanatory language ; also because its 

 sj"nibols are physiological pictures, and because 

 tiie writing, even of unheard foreign tongues, 

 is self-explanatory to the reader's eye. 



Visible speech was first published sixteen 

 years ago (August, LSG") ; and it has been very 

 generally studied by philologists, and adopted 

 in theoretical works as a necessary exponent 

 of linguistic phonetics. It has also been widely 

 utilized in America for the teaching of articu- 

 lation to the deaf. But its popular uses for 

 the teaching of vernacular languages to chil- 

 dren and illiterates, and of foreign languages 

 in schools and colleges, as well as for the litera- 

 tion of hitherto unwritten Indian and other 

 tongues, have not yet been correspondinglv 

 developed. People generally do not take the 

 trouble to investigate the nature of the charac- 

 ters, but suffer themselves to be repelled by 

 fancied difficulty, — as if what is strange must 

 needs be difficult. Rut the difficulty is only 

 to eyes unacquainted with the principles of the 

 symbolization. When these are known, there 

 is no comparison, in point of simplicity, be- 

 tween Roman letters and Visible-speech letters. 

 To children and illiterates, all letters arc e(iual- 

 ly strange. To one who can already read, the 

 eye is simply prejudiced in favor of established 

 letters. In the present exposition the letters 

 of Visible speech have not been made the basis 

 of illustration, but only the rudimentary sym- 

 bols from which all the letters are derived. 

 This mode of treatment will, it is hoped, leave 

 no room for prejudice to act. 



In this stage of the world's histor}- we do 

 not need to concern ourselves about a uni- 

 versal language : that will develop itself in 

 due time. Hut a universal medium for the 

 communication of languages is a practical 

 necessity, which every day rendere of more 

 and higher importance. Without a universal 

 alphabet there never could be a universal lao- 



guage ; with a univei-sal alphabet the progress 

 of the fittest language towards universality 

 will be enormously accelerated. At present, 

 Knglish seems the most likely to achieve this 

 distinction ; but its natural fitness is antago- 

 nized b}' its defective and irregular system of 

 letters. Give English the advantage of an 

 alphabet simple and phonetically perfect, and, 

 whereas it is now the most difficult of all 

 tongues for foreigners to learn, it will become 

 b\- far the easiest. 



In the system of Visible speech a universal 

 alphabet is for the first time attained : the 

 system is of English birth. Let its native 

 language have the benefit of this instrument 

 of diffusion, and the world-wide predominance 

 of the speech of Britain and America will be 

 assured. A. Melvili.k Bkll. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 Variations in butterflies. 



Between the 20th of June and the 10th of July, 

 I obtained three liun<lred and eighty Vanessa Anti- 

 opa from cati^rpiliars fed on swamp willow. Twenty- 

 five of these were varieties, and the balance were of 

 the usual form. Two of the varieties were Lintne- 

 ri. fiom which all the blue ha<l disappeared. The 

 third had the primaries Lintneri, while the secon- 

 daries had the usual blue spots. The fourth liad 

 the secondaries Lintneri, while the primaries bore the 

 blue spots. In the remaining tw<'nty-one, tlie whole 

 upper surface of the wings had a mottled appearance, 

 showing that the colors had been disturbed. They 

 retained tlie blue spots, but the spots were much 

 smaller than usual. 



The veins in the twenty-five varieties remained 

 soft for several days; not i)ecomiu!; firm and hard, 

 like the veins in the otliers, although treated in the 

 same manner. I have also found this softness of 

 the veins in the varieties of Turnns, where the red 

 is suffused, and in the rust-colored specimens. 



All the V.anessa Antiopa which I have seen this 

 season have the yellow of a much deeper shade than 

 I have ever before noticed. 



Colias Philodice is also remarkable this se:isnii in 

 this respect. S. Lowell Ei.i.iot. 



New York Citj , M Aui^st, 188.X 



Function of the colorless blood-corpuscles. 



The interesting .abstr.act of Zawarykin's important 

 investigations into the function of the leuco(!ytes in 

 the absorption of fats from the intestinal canal 

 (Science, ii. 192) calls to mind an investigation by 

 Franz Hofmeister, into the absor|>lion and assimila- 

 tion of the peptones, which will be of interest in 

 connection with the abstract referred to. 



In a series of papers published in 1S81, Hofmeister' 

 conies to the interesting conclusion, that " absorption 

 of peptones in the intestinal canal is, accordingly, no 

 simple mechanical process of dilTiision or tillration, 

 but is rather a function <if particular living ceils, the 

 colorless blood-corpuscles; and these play, in the nu- 

 trition of the organism, a similar r^le to that of the 

 red corpuscles in respiration.'" 



In his discussion lie calls attention to the presence 

 1 Zeiuctar. phya. chem., v. 151, 



