420 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Oct. 19, 1888. 



the occurrence of the crossbill on migration in 

 Heligoland : — " Have you seen any crossbills (Loxia 

 curvirostra)! We are swarming here with them. Since 

 the 16th of June there have been flights from ten, twenty, 

 fifty — and sometimes all the hawthorns in my garden 

 you know so well are crammed with them. There must, 

 during some days, have been hundreds dispersed amongst 

 the foliage. When they are feeding they remain quite 

 dumb, and only when taking wing the whole chorus 

 begins, calling ' ciit, cut, exit.' I have just mounted an 

 old male, almost as red all over as a male Fringilla 

 erylhrinus ; a few with white bars have been reported 

 but I have not seen one. They are of all shades, from 

 lemon to orange scarlet, and almost carmine, but 

 the greater number, as you may fancy, are grey birds, 

 but not a single striped young one amongst them. These 

 birds are rather out of date; they are not regular visitors 

 to this island, years intervene without any being seen, 

 and when they do appear it has almost invariably been 

 in August, with boisterous north-westerly winds and 

 rain ; this }'ear flight has been two months too early, 

 and came with fine sunny weather. All are in excellent 

 plumage — wings, tail, and all." 



In conclusion, it may be noticed that what I have said 

 refers merely to the phenomena of bird-migration. The 

 motives in the little wanderers' minds are still, and are 

 long likely to be, an inscrutable mystery. We can only 

 affirm that they proceed from a divinely-planted im- 

 pulse, an ei/ipiyeta, which in truth must underlie both 

 use and wont on long experience in directing these 

 hidden irresistible journeys over wide continents and 

 waste seas. How this instinct or impulse works is a 

 proper question for investigation by naturalists. Thus 

 Darwin supposes that migration is due to long habits, 

 originally awakened by the need of a distant search for 

 food. Mr. A. R, Wallace's view, however, holds that 

 migration is one of the means of getting rid of the 

 enormous surplus of bird population, as only a small 

 number, he thinks, survives out of the vast crowds 

 which seek to pass from one region to another. What 

 this instinct is in itself is as fruitless a question as similar 

 inquiries in human psychology. The more a lover of 

 birds attempts to understand the motives which bids 

 them change their skies or pass from the ken of man to 

 the comparative obscurity of the woods, the more he is 

 foiled. But the attempt to penetrate this great secret 

 of bird life will assuredly fill him with ever-increasing 

 wonder as he reflects on the resolution shown by even the 

 feeblest birds in carrying out this law of their being — 

 ho w such feathered atoms as the golden crested wren 

 brave the rough nights and severe weather of the North 

 Sea in October to reach our shores ; how the sand 

 martins, the smallest of the British swallows, do not 

 scruple to commit their delicate forms at the same time 

 to wastes of sea and leagues of land, in order to 

 arrive at their winter homes. 



Cheltenham Natural Science Society. — The annual 

 meeting took place on October 4th, when the President, 

 Mr. Francis Day, C.T.E., read the annual address, and the 

 election of President and Council for the ensuing year 

 took place. Mr. Day was again chosen President. Mr. 

 Day,in his address, reviewed the work of the past session. 

 At the conclusion of the business of the annual meeting 

 the first regular meeting was held, when a paper was 

 read by Dr. Drew on " Flight of Birds and Insects." 



Liverpool Microscopical Society. — At the meeting 

 held on October 5th, Mr. J. C. Thompson, F.L.S., F.R.M.S., 

 was elected President for the year 1889. Mr. J. C. 

 Thompson exhibited under the microscope and made 

 some remarks upon some remarkable and little-known 

 Cladocera, a genus of the Crustacea, which he had 

 recently found at various depths in the Cumberland 

 lakes. One of these — the Leptodora hyalina — is an ex- 

 quisitely transparent creature about a quarter to half an 

 inch in length, and has the appearance when alive of a 

 minute fragile glass canoe rapidly beating its way through 

 the water. He had found it in Grasmere, Easedale, and 

 Thirlmere lakes, its presence in the latter possibly pos- 

 sessing some interest in the near future to Manchester 

 water-drinkers. The other forms Mr. Thompson ex- 

 hibited were Bythostrephes cederstromis, Bosmina longi- 

 rostris, an animal not uncommon in London drinking- 

 water, and Hyalodaphnia kalhlbergensis, a most eccentric- 

 looking microscopic crustacean, with an immense eye, 

 surmounted by a long pointed head. An interesting dis- 

 cussion followed, in which the President, the Rev. H. H. 

 Higgins, Dr. Carter, and others took part. 



Penrith Literary and Scientific Society. — The 

 annual meeting and conversazione in connection with this 

 Society were held on October 4th, when there was a 

 large attendance of members and others. 



Bristol Naturalists' Society. — At the first meeting 

 the Hon. Secretary showed a specimen of Staphylea 

 pinnata, the bladder or bag nut, which he had seen grow- 

 ing in the neighbourhood. Dr. G. Munro Smith gave a 

 demonstration of apparatus used in physiological research. 

 He first said that one of his objects in giving the demon- 

 stration was to call attention to the fact that the Bristol 

 Medical School possessed a laboratory and apparatus 

 for physiological research, and he expressed a hope that 

 Bristol would help generously in the contemplated 

 increase of the medical school. 



TOTEM CLANS AND STAR WORSHIP. 



A Paper Read by Mr. George St. Clair, F.G.S., before 

 the Anthropological Section of the British Asso- 

 ciation. 



{Continued from p. 393 ) 



IT has been stated already that the word "totem " appears 

 to mean crest, mark, or sign ; the Rev. Lorimer Fison 

 says, a badge of fraternity. In Queen Charlotte Islands, the 

 Huidas are universally tatooed, the design being in all cases 

 the totem, executed in a conventional style. It is of practical 

 use to prevent wrong marriages. 



Next, it may be observed, that if the totem-crest has an 

 astral origin, we need seek no other origin of the worship of 

 the totem animal. Plutarch long ago suggested that the 

 worship of animals may have arisen lrom the custom of 

 representing them on standards.* He was not far wrong if 

 the animals were figured on the standards, because they were 

 star-gods. The worshipper was created by his god. Prof. 

 Sayce finds that a common phrase in Assyrian texts is this : 

 " The man the son of his god " ; t and of these deities, one 

 is represented as a fish, another as an antelope, etc. As a 

 parallel to the phrase, " The man the son of his god," we 

 have, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Moabites called " sons 

 and daughters of Chemosh " (Num. xxi. 29), and even 

 Malachi calls a heathen woman the daughter of a strange 

 god (Mai. ii. 11). Among the Arabs, the Kalb tribe consists 



* Lubbock's " History of Civilisation," 252. 

 t Sayce's " Hibbert Lectures," 244, 284. 



