OtTOBKn !0, ISS-'?.] 



SCIENCE. 



539 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 Greenland geology. 



In the seventh volume i>f Heer's Flora fossil is 

 arctica, just issued, my distinsuislied colleagues. Pro- 

 fessor Ileer of Zurich," and Herr K. F. V. Steenstrup 

 of Copenhagen, seem to be at cross purposes with me, 

 regarding the positions anil Eskimo names of the 

 localities where the collections of fossil plants discov- 

 ered by us were obtaineil; Mr. .Steenstrup giving the 

 spot one name, and I another, while, owing to this 

 misapprehension, the exact latitude of at least one 

 place is differently entered in our respective papers. 

 For instance: we apply the name of ' Kudlisaet ' (Kit- 

 ludsat) to spots at considerable distances from each 

 other, and do not quite understand the same place by 

 the word ' Unartok.' Ileer, who has, however, never 

 been in Greenland, notes (p. 203) that "nach Steen- 

 strup fiillt Ujarasuksumitok von R. Brown (Flora 

 foss. arct., ii. p. ■I'y2) mit Unartok zusamnien und 

 der Name beruht auf missverstandniss." Again: 

 Steenstrup, in the admirable memoir appended to 

 Heer's work, mentions that " Brown zufolge I. c. 

 [Philosuphical transactions, ISOy, p. 44.), and Trans- 

 actions of the geological society of GlasQoit; vol. v. 

 p. ■^6], war es hier [at Unartok], dass er und Whymper 

 im jahr 18C7 versteinerungen sammelten. Meines 

 erachtens riiht der name Browns ' Uiarasuksumi- 

 tok' von dem umstande her, dass der Gronlander 

 ihn missverstanden und geglaubt hat, dass er gefragt 

 wiirde, woher er (der Gronlander) wiire, worauf er 

 eine antwort gab, die ungefiihr bedeutet ' Ich bin 

 aus Ujaragsugsuk ' " (p. 247). I do not doubt for a 

 moment that Mr. Steenstrup may be right; and his 

 general accuracy forbids me to assert that he is wrong. 

 My acquaintance with Danish was in 1S67 (as it is 

 still) trifling, while of Eskimo I was all but igno- 

 rant. And even with the greatest care, it is always 

 difficult to arrive at the exact designation of localities 

 in Greenland. However, Mr. Tegner, who accom- 

 panied us, was familiar with Eskimo, and of course, 

 as a Dane, with Danish; and the names attached to 

 my map and i)aper referred to were arrived at, after 

 re|)eated cross-questioning of our native boatmen, 

 and of Paulus, the intelligent Eskimo catechist at 

 Ounartok (Unartok), who" wrote them down in a 

 note-book, at present before me. Curiously enough, 

 in a note in the hand-writing of the late "Chevalier 

 Olrick, so many years governor of Xorth Greenland. 

 the place is called ' Ujarasaksumitok,' which natu- 

 rally led me to believe that this was a synonyme of 

 Ujaragsugsuk, under which name it is also desig- 

 nated by Dr. Rink, in my edition of Danish Green- 

 land (p. 349). 'Ritenbenks KolbrofE' I regarded as 

 the same place as Unartok, for there coal was being 

 mined; while Steenstrup seems to consider it the 

 same as Kudlisaet. The latter spot, after a series of 

 very careful, and, I am certain, accurate, meridian 

 altitudes, I place in Lat. 70° '>' 35" N., while Nares 

 puts the Ritenbenk coal-mine, so called (Kudlisaet), 

 in Lat. 70° ?/ 4", which convinces me that this spot is 

 what I took to be Unartok. At my Kudlisaet there 

 was, in 18<i7, no coal being dug. Anyhow, in the 

 'Geological notes on the Nourso^ak Peninsula, Disco 

 Island, etc' {Trans, i/eol. sac. Glasgow, vol. v. p. 

 55), I have so fully described these localities, that 

 no future explorer can mistake them. But as many 

 may see Heer's work who may not be able to con- 

 sult my humbler brochure, I ask permission to make 

 these explanations in the columns of a scientific 

 journal, which, as the mouthpiece of American 

 geologists, takes cognizance of far-away Greenland 

 also. Moreover, as one might suppose, from Mr. 



Steenstrup's (inadvertently, no doubt) mentioning 

 that Nares and I differed two minutes and thirty-one 

 seconds (2' 31") in our latitudes of 'Ritenbenks 

 Kohlenbruch,' that there was some inexcusable 

 roughness in the use of the sextant and artificial 

 horizon, while in reality we observed at two totally 

 different places, the matter is, though not of great 

 scientific or geograpliical importance, in a manner 

 personal to myself, it not to Sir George Nares. 



Robert Bkown. 



strfalimm, London, Ent;., 

 Sept. 34, 1883. 



Human proportion. 



In a review of my lecture on ' Hum.au proportion 

 in art and anthropometry' (Science, ii. :354), the 

 accuracy of certain statements contained therein is 

 questioned. Permit me space for a brief reply. 



The critic says that the implement in the hand 

 of the Egyptian figure is a crux aiisata, the symbol of 

 eternity, and not 'a key.' But M. Charles Blanc, 

 whose description I was quoting, says 'la person- 

 nage tient une clef de la main droile ; ' and the expres- 

 sion is warranted, as it is, in its symbolical sense, 

 spoken of by Egyptologists as ' a key.' 



His next assertion is, that the Doryphorus of Poly- 

 kleitus was not, as I stated, 'a beautiful youth in the 

 act of throwing a spear,' but a spear-bearer of the 

 body-guard of the Persian king. The latter function- 

 ary, however, wore a long robe, termed the ' candys,' 

 extending from the neck to the mid-leg, and could 

 not have been selected for a model, which neces- 

 sarily required a naked figure. Pliny (Hist, nat., 

 xxxiv. 8) says, • Idem etDoryphorum viriliter puerum 

 fecit,' etc.; and many other allusions in classical 

 writers confirm this view. 



The last and most surprising criticism is the state- 

 ment that my assertion that prior to the time of 

 Phidias, the face, hands, feet, etc., were carved in 

 marble, and were fastened to a wooden block, is " a 

 complete misunderstanding of the nature of the 

 archaic ^oava, or wooden statues, which in Greece 

 preceded those made of stone or metal.'' Now, the 

 ^I'lavov^ was simply a wooden statue. (Cf. Pausanias, 

 vii., 17, 2, Tooi'tic Tjv u^' Cm rH ^oava, etc.) It was suc- 

 ceeded by a more elaborate invention, known as an 

 acrolith, from uKpor and X/Wof. stone-ends. Pausanias 

 describes one of them (ix. 4): "The statue of the 

 goddess [the Plat.aean Athena of Phidias] is made of 

 wood, and is gilt, except the face, and the ends of the 

 hands and feet, which are of Pentelican stone." See 

 also Quatremere de Quincy, Monuments et ouvrages 

 d'art antiques, vol. ii.. Restitution de la Minerve en 

 or et ivoire de Phidias au Parthenon, pp. 6:3-123; 

 also Miiller, Handbuch d. archaeol. d. kunst, § 84. 

 Dr. William Smith states the case concisely (Diet. Gr. 

 and Rom. mythol., vol. iii. p. 2.50): "Up to his 

 [Phidias'sl ''me, colossal statues, when not of bronze, 

 were acroliths; that is, only the face, hands, and feet 

 were of marble, the body being of wood, which was 

 concealed by real drapery." Robeht Fletcher. 



Washington, Oct. 8, 1S83. 



[The most common of all the Egyptian symbols is 

 an emblem in the form of ' a handled cross,' symbol- 

 ical of 'life; ' but both the nature of the object rep- 

 resented, and the reason of the symbolism, are equally 

 unknown. To call it ' a key ' is certainly wrong, .as 

 the Egyptians had none ; and by archeologists it is 

 usually designated by the conventional term ' crux 

 ansata.'t 



That the word ■ Doryphoros,' ex i-nermi?it, cannot 

 mean ' a youth in the act of throwing & spear,' as Mr. 



