46 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 260 



graphical names, their meaning, origin, derivation, etc. As it is 

 desirable that the annual reports should be as complete as possible, 

 and as a large amount of material is scattered through American 

 journals, and particularly through the publications of the State sur- 

 veys and historical societies, which are difficult of access in Europe, 

 American authors can materially help Professor Egli by sending 

 him copies, or at least the titles, of their remarks bearing on this 

 subject. 



— Last autumn an attempt was made, says Nature, to bring live 

 cod from Iceland to Norway on board smacks, and six thousand 

 fish were brought over to Bergen successfully. Here, however, 

 many of them died, on account of the basin in which they were kept 

 until the sale could be effected being too small. This year fresh 

 attempts will be jnade. 



— Dr. Asa Gray has been seriously ill for some weeks. 



— The second meeting of the International Copyright Associa- 

 tion was held in Boston, Jan. 24, President Eliot in the chair. Sec- 

 retary Estes announced that satisfactory progress had been made 

 in the movement to obtain the recognition of authors' rights in 

 their literary work. A resolution was adopted approving the prin- 

 ciple involved in the amendments of the Chase Copyright Bill pro- 

 posed by the executive committee of the American Copyright 

 League and the American Publishers' Copyright League, and re- 

 questing Senator Chase to adopt these amendments, with such 

 verbal changes as may be recommended by the council of this 

 association and adopted by the committees mentioned. A resolu- 

 tion was also passed asking the chairman to appoint a sub-com- 

 mittee to confer with Senator Chase regarding these amendments. 

 After a general discussion, in which Messrs. Houghton, Scudder, 

 Ticknor, Ernst Lothrop, and others participated, the meeting ad- 

 journed. 



— Nature comments on French architects as seeming to attend 

 to the decorative rather than the useful parts of the buildings they 

 design. The architect who designed the new medical school in 

 Paris took so little pains about the distribution of the water-pipes, 

 that in very cold weather the laboratories (chemistry, physiology, 

 bacteriology, experimental pathology, etc.) are wholly deprived of 

 water. Recently the water in all the pipes was frozen, so that not 

 a drop of water was available in a single laboratory. Of course, 

 every one connected with the school complains that work under 

 such conditions is nearly impossible. The new Sorbonne will be a 

 handsome building, but, unfortunately, the work is soon to be 

 stopped ovvjng to lack of money. The ornamental part of the 

 building is finished, but the useful part has not yet been begun. 



were situated farther South than the Powhatans. The doctor 

 should have omitted the r in his orthography of the word kd- 

 ivher'-ta {kd-whe'-ta), as it does not occur in the speech of the 

 Onondagas of the present time. J. N. B. Hewitt. 



Washington, D.C., Jan. 23. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



.* Cor 



tion will be /u\ 



t with the character 0/ 



^spondetits are requested to be as brie/ as possible, Th 

 in ail cases required as proof of good faith. 



Twenty copies of the number containing his cor< 

 free to any correspondent on regitest. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries c, 

 the journal. 



The Snow-Snake. 



In a letter {Science, xi. No. 259) pointing out certain errors in an 

 article on Pocahontas, referring especially to two games mentioned 

 therein, Dr. Beauchamp says, " The children indoors were playing 

 at ^?«-/i«'-t'/2 (or ' peach-pits '), it is said ; but where the peaches 

 came from at that early day is not explained." Yet the doctor 

 fails to give us a hint as to the true rendering of this word, and the 

 proper name of this game. This game was played generally with 

 ' plum-pits,' though sometimes with small pebbles, etc. ; but, as the 

 pits were more convenient and symmetrical, they were preferred, 

 and, being used in most cases, they gave their name to the game, 

 namely, 'plum-pits,' or, better, 'pit-betting.' 



In regard to the use of the snow-snake among Powhatanic tribes. 

 Dr. Beauchamp remarks that " it is not wise to place a Northern 

 game so far South," evidently wholly oblivious of the fact that 

 ' betting ' with the tt-trd-hwe'^'' -tie (' snow-snake ') was a favorite 

 outdoor sport of the Carolinian and Virginian tribes of Iroquois, — 

 too important offshoots of the family to be overlooked, — and who 



The ' Act of God ' Once More. 



Mr. W. W. Nevin's interesting note {Science, Dec. 2) as to the 

 Mexican doctrine of ' fuerza mayor' emphasizes my point. The 

 Roman law having always been, as it still is, the law of continental 

 Europe, it was inevitable that such American colonies as were 

 settled from the continent should retain the doctrine of the ' act of 

 God,' and that when the Spanish brought it to Mexico, and im- 

 planted it in a community saturated with superstition, it should 

 have augmented quite as rapidly as its adumbration has waned with 

 us, until even so anticipated an occurrence as the flooding of a river 

 in a rainy season should relieve from the obligation of a contract. 

 But United States capital and energy are speedily civilizing Mexico 

 by building railroads within her territory, and doubtless we may 

 expect a very considerable attenuation of the doctrine at no distant 

 day. I do not think all of Science's correspondents share in the 

 good faith of Mr. Nevin. It does not impress me, for example, as 

 in good faith that one of them asks {Science, Nov. 25) whether, had 

 a certain car-stove he specifies upset and ignited a certain train, it 

 would have been an ' act of God ; ' or that another {Science, 

 Dec. 16) demands whether I propose that the railways of this Re- 

 public be operated by Mexican law. But in good faith, neverthe- 

 less, will I answer both these questions. Up to the date of the 

 latest of the five accidents I specified, no practicable means of heat- 

 ing cars had been invented except car-stoves. Steam-pipes from 

 the engine had, indeed, been proposed for twenty years, but no 

 coupler-joint had been perfected, and no means of keeping the 

 steam from cooling, sufficient to overcome the extreme coolabie 

 surface of a pipe serving long trains in the severe weather of the 

 mountains, or the low temperatures of the North and North-west, 

 devised. At present, however (stimulated, in fact, by the very cas- 

 ualties I specified at Republic and White River), there are certainly 

 three or four of these contrivances which have been tested and 

 found practicable. Therefore, had your correspondent's stove 

 overturned and partially roasted him', he would certainly have been 

 deprived of the opportunity of asserting that he had been roasted 

 by an ' act of God,' since the company could have availed itself of 

 that particular progress of applied science which had invented a 

 heating apparatus which in case of accidents would not induce 

 combustion of the train. As to the second question, I say, No, 

 and Yes. I proposed no Mexican laws for regulation of our own 

 railroads, but I did question whether an already well-known rule 

 of law limiting the responsibility of the employer for mental 

 conditions of the employee was entirely without bearing upon a 

 certain state of admitted facts. The common law expressly de- 

 clares that there are possible conditions of an employee's mind 

 which discharge the employer. An employee who, in ejecting tres- 

 passers, becomes vindictive, passionate, or wilful, and on that ac- 

 count employs a surplusage of force, so acts at his own and not at 

 his employer's peril. I therefore suggested a question whether an 

 entirely unforeseen and instantaneous absence of mind on an em- 

 ployee's part was any more within his employer's control than a 

 burst of passion. 



Again : it seems immaterial to my point that different investi- 

 gators, tribunals, or commissions may receive different reports of 

 the causes directly forwarding a casualty. A question of pre- 

 cedence between parallel proximate causes is alwaj's an exceed- 

 ingly nice one. Indeed, the only report of a railway accident likely 

 to be substantially unreliable is the newspaper report ; and this not 

 necessarily because the newspaper is biassed against the company, 

 but simply because newspapers are at the mercy of their reporters, 

 precisely as railway companies are at the mercy of their employees. 

 The reporter first on the ground 1:akes the impressions of the by- 

 standers, and reconciles them somehow out of his inner conscious- 

 ness. The only persons present who possess the slightest actual 

 knowledge as to the why and wherefore of the catastrophe are the 

 employees of the company, and they are silent. They have their 



