208 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 110. 



decadence has been offered except the diminished at- 

 tendance at certain meetings. But is this a proof of 

 decadence, or merely of increasing specialization? 

 No one complains of the decadence of science in 

 and about London, I take it; and yet nothing sur- 

 prises an American in London more than the small 

 numbers he meets at scientific societies, whose names 

 are famous throughout the world. If I remember 

 rightly, I heard one of the most eminent philologists 

 in England, Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, read his inaugu- 

 ral address as president of the Philological society, 

 in 1872, before about twenty persons, and I attended 

 a meeting of the Anthropological society, with Sir 

 John Lubbock in the chair, and not more than 

 twenty-five present. When we consider that the 

 most eminent popular lecturers on science, such as 

 Tyndall and Tylor, lecture, or lectured in 1872, to 

 popular audiences of only two hundred or three hun- 

 dred, it is evident that at the British capital the test 

 of numbers can hardly apply. Across the channel it 

 is still worse. At the College de France, in 1878, I 

 heard eminent men lecture to audiences of a dozen, 

 although Charles Blanc told me triumphantly that 

 he always had auditors standing up when he lectured 

 on the history of art in a hall holding perhaps fifty. 

 My experience of German lectures is limited, but I 

 was struck with the same thing there. Were I a 

 man of science, it seems to me that I should advance 

 the thesis that it is in the cruder period of scientific 

 knowledge that it attracts large numbers, and that 

 the tendency of specialization is to give ' fit audience, 

 though few.' 



Then there is another view which is in the nature 

 of an argumentum ad hominem. Does not the very 

 existence of Science refute the lamentations of Sci- 

 ence ? If scientific activity is greater elsewhere than 

 in Boston and Cambridge, how came your valuable 

 periodical to be established here ? 



T. W. Higginson. 

 Cambridge, Feb. 22. 



[Specialization of work is an increasing necessity 

 of science, but wherever it begets absorption of in- 

 terest, and this specialization of interest infects the 

 whole body scientific, there science in any true sense 

 will begin to show signs of decadence. It was not the 

 small, but the decreasing attendance at Boston scien- 

 tific meetings ; not the attendance only, but the char- 

 acter of the communications made, — to which we 

 drew attention. 



As to the argumentum ad hominem, Cambridge was 

 taken as the place of publication of this journal, 

 merely from the accident that it was the residence of 

 the editor chosen to conduct it. — Editor.] 



Nadaillac's 'Prehistoric America.' 



In the review of the American edition of Nadaillac's 

 'Prehistoric America' {Science, No. 108), there are 

 two allusions calculated to produce a false impression, 

 which it seems advisable to notice, as many of your 

 readers may learn all they are ever likely to know of 

 the book from your notice of it. 



It is stated that ' quotations and references are in- 

 correctly given.' In any book containing several 

 thousand references, errors are almost certain to oc- 

 cur. Having, in the capacity of editor, to examine 

 many of these references (for none of which I was 

 responsible, as is explained in the preface), I have a 

 much better knowledge of their average accuracy 

 than the casual reader can possibly obtain, and can 

 assure those interested that the person to whom the 

 verification was intrusted performed that task in a 

 way to which no reasonable exception can be taken ; 



and the result is a considerable advance upon the 

 original work, which, like most French books, was 

 defective in this respect. Certain blunders appear 

 in the index, of which no proofs were submitted to 

 me; but they are, so far as I know, of a character to 

 cause no difficulty to an investigator. 



The second is a more delicate matter. There are 

 many good persons to whom any comparison of reli- 

 gions which includes their own is painful. For these, 

 anthropologists do not write. It is, I acknowledge, 

 a painful surprise that my endeavor to indicate the 

 kernel of spirituality in a husk of barbarous rites 

 by a reference to a strictly parallel case within our 

 own cognizance, should give offence to any scientific 

 mind. Had I known, however, that this would 

 occur, I should not, even then, have omitted an obser- 

 vation which is undeniably true, and which is neces- 

 sary to a right understanding of a fundamental 

 feature in the religions of Central America. My 

 language was as follows : " It must be borne in mind, 

 however, that the practice of cannibalism, in many 

 cases was not a mere devotion to a diet of human 

 flesh, but a rite or observance of a superstitious or 

 religious character, not so far removed from the an- 

 thropomorphism which, in the middle ages, claimed 

 for the chief Christian rite the ' real presence of body 

 and blood ' of the victim sacrificed for the welfare 

 of the race." The inference of the reviewer, that 

 one individual civilized Christian of our day (not to 

 speak of half Christendom) partakes of the eucharist 

 with a belief of mediaeval literalness, is, in my opin- 

 ion, a libel upon humanity, and carries its own refuta- 

 tion. Such an individual, did he exist, would be no 

 better than an Aztec, and entitled to no more consid- 

 eration. Wm. H. Dall. 



[In answer to the above, it may be said, 1°, that 

 the statement in the editor's preface that 'many 

 quotations have been verified,' is an admission that 

 all were not, and that, if proof of this fact be needed, 

 it can be found in mistakes like those on pp. 4tf, 

 51, 71, and 90, in which the accounts of the figures 

 there given are incorrectly quoted; 2°, that tran- 

 substantiation is an essential article of faith in a 

 church which numbers rather more than half the 

 Christian world ; and to assert that the sacrament of 

 the eucharist as received by them is ' not so far re- 

 moved ' from the cannibalistic rites of the Aztecs, is 

 an offence which is only equalled by the intimation 

 that those who profess this belief in the actual pres- 

 ence, do not really mean it. In conclusion, the re- 

 viewer wishes once again to say, that, in spite of 

 certain defects, "this is the best book on prehistoric 

 America that has yet been published," and he takes 

 pleasure in adding that much of this excellence is 

 unquestionably due to the improvements made by 

 the editor. — Reviewer.] 



The photograph of a Dakota tornado. 



A photograph of the Dakota tornado, a woodcut 

 of which appeared in No. 107, Science, was submitted 

 to me last November, when the question of admitting 

 it in the New-Orleans exposition free of charge for 

 space, was under discussion. The sharpness of out- 

 line, and the fact that it was claimed that the photo- 

 graph was taken at a distance of twenty-six miles, 

 made me doubt its genuineness so much, that I sub- 

 mitted it to two of the best out-dobr photographers 

 connected with the government surveys. Both pro- 

 nounced it a manufactured photograph, most prob- 

 ably taken from a crayon-drawing. J. W. Gore. 



Chapel Hill, N.C., Feb. 26. 



