nent with one of Jansen's five sons. Among persons inclined to believe in the genuineness of this relic was Prof. Owen, in whose care it remained for a considerable time, and who considered it from an anatomist's point of view with reference to the acknowledged portraits of Shakspere. Others of a like opinion are Hettner and Hermann Grimm. Among those who have specially investigated the subject, and are believers, are Mr. Hart, the writer of an article on the death-mask in Scribner, and Dr. Schaffhausen, the finder of Beethoven's death-mask at Bonn. I may also name Lord Ronald Gower and Dr. Ingleby. Several attempts-none wholly satisfactory-have been made by distinguished artists to create a living likeness from the dead face. Mr. Lowenstam, in his difficult task, seems to me to have followed the outline of the face closely, but the large abiding solemnity of death is replaced necessarily by an aspect of life, which must not be too pronounced in any direction lest the element of conjecture should overlay the element of fact. The resemblance between the mask, the Droeshout engraving, and the Stratford bust, not in expression (where it could hardly be looked for), but in the very unusual proportions, seems sufficient at least not to repel belief.

The evidence, then, on behalf of the Kesselstadt mask amounts to more than zero; it is something, and something considerable. Yet I should not like to express myself more strongly than I have done in my Introduction when speaking of Mr. Lowenstam's etching: "The portrait may be viewed as possessing a real and curious interest, while yet of doubtful authenticity." EDWARD DOWDEN.

CARD. WISEMAN AND BISHOP BLOUGRAM.

Castell Farm, Beddgelert: Aug. 31, 1881.

In my enquiries for my Bibliography of
Robert Browning, I find, from friendly inform
ants, that Card. Wiseman himself reviewed
Bishop Blougram's Apology" in Browning's
Men and Women (1855) in the Rambler, doubt
less soon after the appearance of the poem.
I cannot doubt that many of your readers,
besides the members of the Browning Society,
would be interested in knowing what the
Cardinal said of Mr. Browning's humorous and
powerful exposure of himself; and I therefore
appeal to some reader of the ACADEMY who is
not, like myself, under the shadow of Snow-
don, to turn to the Rambler of 1855, and give

us a short account of Card. Wiseman's article.
A friend of John Stuart Mill's and John
Forster's also informs me that in Forster's copy
of Browning's Pauline in the Forster Library,
at South Kensington, are the pencil-notes of
J. S. Mill for an article which he proposed to
write on Pauline. May I ask the librarian of
the Forster Library, or some charitable reader
at it, to send a description of these Mill
notes ? Such memoranda should be worth
publicity.
F. J. FURNIVALL.

THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS.

London: Aug. 30, 1881.

Though the communications of two correspondents in the ACADEMY, writing under the above head, are interesting, they say nothing of the explanation of the myth itself; for the suggestion cited from the Journal of Philology is hardly one for discussion.

I do not propose to say much here on a subject already treated in a satisfactory way by Preller. It is clear that the Sirens have a certain resemblance to the Muses, who also appear in bird form (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 255), and contend in song with them.

The wonderful song of both is probably the
wind. The swan shape of the Muses suggests
a cloud myth, and points to the sky-sea as the
primary seat of the beings of this type. The
alluring, deceitful appearance of the Sirens,
taken in conjunction with the circumstance that
their fatal, bone-strewn island lies beneath the
waves, must be an image of the hidden perils
of the treacherous sea. Preller cites the words
of Claudian, blanda pericla maris, terror quoque
gratus in undis (G. M. I. 504). Before leaving the
mythological question, I may call attention to
the Valahassa, white horse, Horse King, of the
Indian legends. Such a conception is often to
be traced to a cloud myth; and here, I observe,
Dr. Morris distinctly renders Valâhassa by
cloud-horse." Assuming that to be correct,
it would have a certain mythological im-
portance.

Passing to the different forms of the legend,
everyone will agree with Mr. Axon that the
story he quotes is "a curious and close analogue
to the Homeric myth of the Sirens." But is it
not derived directly from it? Leaving that
enquiry to Sanskrit scholars, I may mention
that, in the literature of mediaeval Europe,
the Sirens tale-like many other episodes
of the Odyssey and the Iliad-re-appears
in various forms, one of the most curious
of which is perhaps that to be found in Ireland.
I borrow it from O'Curry; and I omit the
depreciatory criticism with which it is now the
fashion to season extracts from that scholar's
useful works. Ruad, son of Rigdonn, a king's
son, crossing over to Northland with three ships
and thirty men in each, found his vessel held
fast in mid-sea. At last he leaped over the side
to see what was holding it, and, sinking down
through the waters, alighted in a meadow where
were nine beautiful women.
These gave

him nine boat-loads of gold as the price of his
embraces, and by their power held the three

vessels immovable on the water above for nine

Lowell. And it seems to me time that some.
one should point out the curious injustice done
to Gower by Mr. Lowell in the following
passage of the essay on Chaucer in My Study
Windows :—

"Gower had no notion of the uses of rhyme except
as a kind of crease at the end of every eighth
syllable, where the verse was to be folded over
again into another layer. He says, for example,
'This maiden Canacee was hight,
Both in the day and eke by night,'
as if people commonly changed their names at
dark.'

I have not by me any of the good MSS. of Gower, and so am obliged to quote Pauli's edition:

"The sone cleped was Machaire, The doughter eke Canace hight. By day bothe and eke by night While they be yonge of comun wone In chambre they to-gider wone." Here even Pauli punctuates rightly, and it is a pity that Mr. Lowell, before charging Gower with such absurdity, did not consider whether the alteration of a stop might not give good

sense. Ard one would like to know what text

Mr. Lowell followed; for Gower always accents "Canace" on the second syllable, and knew his own speech much too well to suppose that "hight" was a participle.

answering to that of the Latin
Gower sometimes puts "and" in a position
peculiarity I have never seen noticed. Thus he
que"-
says that Charlemaine took his way

"Over the mountes of Lumbardie.
Of Rome and al the tirannie
With blody swerd he overcome
i.e., and all the tyranny of Rome. It is extra-
ordinary that Pauli, with so plain an instance
before him, should, on the very same page
(i. 29), make Gower say of Charles that

"He toke as he hath well deserved
The diademe and was coroned
Of Rome, and thus was abandoned
Thempire, whiche came never ayeine
Into the hande of no Romaine."

Of course there ought to be a comma after

"coroned" and none after "Rome."

I hope there may be some Englishmen who lady that they will die together in a kiss and go read Ronsard. In one of his odes he tells his to Elysium in company. Blanchemain, whose edition I presume to be the standard one, prints thus (ii. 390):

"Ains serrez demourrons,

Et baisant nous mourrons.

days. Promising to visit them on his return,
the young Irish prince got away from the Sirens
and their beds of red bronze, and continued his
course to Lochlann, where he stayed with his
fellow-pupil, son to the king of that country,
for seven years. Coming back, the vessels put
about to avoid the submerged isle, and had
behind them the song or lamentation of the
nearly gained the Irish shore when they heard
nine sea-women, who were in vain pursuit of
them in a boat of bronze. One of these
murdered before Ruad's eyes the child she had
borne him, and flung it head foremost after
him. O'Curry left a version of this tale from
the Book of Ballymote. I have borrowed a
En mesme an et mesme heure,
detail or two from another given in the Tochmarc
Et en même saison,
'Emere (fol. 216)-e.g., the important Homeric
Irons voir la demeure
feature of the watery meadow (machaire). The
De la palle maison."
story given by Gervase of Tilbury (ed. Lie- Obviously if they went in the same hour they
brecht, pp. 30, 31), of the porpoise-men in the must a fortiori go in the same season.
Mediterranean and the young sailor; the Shet-writhed a long time over this monumental anti-
land seal-legend in Grimm's edition of Croker's climax till it occurred to me to punctuate
Tales (Irische Elfenmürchen, Leipzig, 1826,
Pp. xlvii. et seqq.); and the story, found in Vin-
centius Bellovacensis and elsewhere, of the
mermaid giantess and her purple cloak, may be
named as belonging or related to the same
cycle. These legends are represented in living
Irish traditions; and the purple cloak just
referred to appears, much disguised, in the
story of Liban in the Book of the Dun.

DAVID FITZGERALD.

MISPUNCTUATIONS IN GOWER AND RONSARD.
London Institution: Aug. 22, 1881.

There are, I believe, a few people who still
read and relish Gower in spite of the con-
sistently bad metre, and the occasional bad
grammar and bad sense, of Pauli's edition; in
pite also of the terribly worded warnings of so
distinguished a critic as Mr. James Russell

"Et baisant nous mourrons
En mesme an et mesme heure ;
Et en même saison
Irons

"

EDWARD B. NICHOLSON.

"SCOTTICISMS."

Aberdeen, N.B.: Aug. 30, 1881. I should like a word of reply to the review of Scotticisms which appeared in the ACADEMY of August 20:

1. The reviewer says that " none but a Scotch dominie could have conceived such a book as this, or carried it out so seriously." Now the fact is that in making the collection I was avowedly following the lead of David Hume and James Beattie. Both of these not

undistinguished persons published lists of Scotti

I

cisms; and, if they are to be taken as typical specimens of the Scotch dominie, I am only proud to be in so good company.

2. The reviewer complains that I have cast my net too widely; that one-half of my examples are not Scotticisms at all, but English provincialisms. Now, I have neither ignored nor suppressed the fact that many of the errors are to be heard also in England. If, however, a teacher in the North of England were to publish a list of the provincialisms prevailing in his district, it might contain a few similar examples, but it would be substantially different from mine. I have not cast my net out of Scotland; I have only narrowed my mesh so as to catch the most common idiomatic blunders. No doubt my main object was to secure the errors peculiar to Scotland; but would it not have been capricious to exclude an example because, though common in Scotland, it might be a common blunder also in England?

3. The reviewer is right when he says that on such a subject the home influence is more potent than the teacher's. But if children talk provincialisms out-of-doors, they will write them down at school, where the teacher is bound to notice and condemn them. His condemnation will in itself do something to diminish the evil; while, by diffusing a printed manual in the homes of his pupils, he is likely to enlist home sympathies, and thus obtain a powerful and necessary support to his authority.

A. MACKIE.

[The real point is this-why should provincialisms, or rather vernacularisms (if such a word is allowable), be condemned, at least in spoken speech ?-ED. ACADEMY.]

SCIENCE.

Studies in the Theory of Descent. By Dr.

Aug. Weismann. Translated and Edited by Raphael Meldola, F.C.S. Part II. With Six Coloured Plates. (Sampson Low.) HERE, with necessary brevity, is the gist of a remarkable book which every biologist will do well to read for himself. Nothing more than the barest and most meagre outlines can be attempted in this abstract; for the filling in, readers must go to the work itself, and they will be amply rewarded for their pains.

Four known agencies contribute to the differentiation of organisms-direct action of the environment, use or disuse, natural selection, correlation of growth. But can all differentiation be set down to these and to these alone? Mr. Darwin and most of the soundest evolutionists say yes; a somewhat fanciful school, not yet free from the metaphysical teleology of the old biologists, say no. They believe in what Dr. Weismann calls "a phyletic vital force;" that is to say, an inherent energy prompting variation towards a given end. According to these thinkers, evolution has proceeded from a fixed starting-point, with a predisposition to arrive at a fixed goal. It is the unfolding of a preconceived idea, and it is (not all due to functional or spontaneous variations, guided and controlled by natural selection. To oppose this crude and really extra-scientific doctrine-a rehabilitation of the creation hypothesis under a plausible alias, and a real denial of all that Mr. Darwin has effected for biology-Dr. Weismann devotes the whole of his work. It is not sufficient, he thinks, merely to pick out a few salient peculiarities here and there, and then show that any one

of them might have been produced by the
action of natural selection alone; we must
take a certain group of organisms as a whole,
and defeat the metaphysicians and teleologists
by showing that every peculiarity which they
display, however seemingly useless, can be
adequately accounted for by the Darwinian
principles only. For this purpose, in the
first essay of the present volume, our author
chooses the larvae of the sphinx-moths, whose
markings seem at first sight purely otiose,
mere playful vagaries of Nature, intended only
to show how prettily she can sport with lilac
If these can be
lines and pink eye-spots.
shown in all their variations, from species to
species, to be of real functional value, and,
therefore, explicable by means of natural
selection only, Dr. Weismann rightly thinks
that a great victory will have been won over
the believers in spontaneous modification.

Carefully breeding larvae from eggs laid by
the living moth under his own eyes, Dr.
Weismann instituted a regular comparison
between the various caterpillars of the
Sphingidae in all stages of their growth. He
found that they all passed at first through
the same stages of marking; but while some
species got as far as stage four, others stopped
short at stage three, stage two, or even stage
one. At first, all were green, and devoid of
lines or spots altogether. Then, after their
first or second moult, they began to acquire
longitudinal stripes; and many species never
got beyond this stage at all, remaining so
marked till the period of their pupation.
Others, passing through the longitudinal stage
at an earlier period, assumed oblique mark-
ings in their adult larval form. Yet others,
again, the most advanced of all, relegating
the oblique lines to their penultimate moult,
acquired eye-spots or ring-spots in their
mature caterpillar life, just before entering
the chrysalis. The Sphingidae, in fact, on
the strength of their developmental history,
may be divided into four such groups, each
group being newer and more highly differen-
tiated from the parent stock in the order
above enumerated.

The

Now, can these variations be functionally
explained as products of natural selection?
Dr. Weismann thinks that they can.
original sphinx larva was presumably green
all over, without lines or markings of any
sort; and so are all the existing caterpillars
in their earliest age. But as they grow they
get longitudinal lines, because such lines break
up the conspicuous mass of green, which
would otherwise be very noticeable in
large caterpillars on the food-plant, and would
therefore lead to their being eaten by insec-
tivorous birds. For the Sphingidae have all
edible larvae, undefended by hairs, spines, or
nauseous taste; so that their colours are
universally protective, and usually imitative.
The caterpillars which never get beyond this
longitudinal stage are those which live upon
grasses, pine-needles, or other longitudinally
arranged leaves; and their stripes harmonise
exactly with the foliage, as do the spots of the
tree-cats with trees, and the speckles of trout
with waving weed. There are other Sphin-
gidae, however, which have taken to feeding
on trees or large-leaved plants; and these are
the obliquely striped species. The obliquity
assimilates them to the ribs or veins of the

foliage, and the side lines simulate shadows, both in direction and colour. For insectivorous birds have sharp eyes, and any caterpillar whose hues betrayed it, on the under-side of a leaf, would certainly be noticed and devoured. Finally, there are the rings and eyes. These form the greatest crux of all; but they occur only in a few species, and Dr. Weismann explains their function variously in various cases. Sometimes they seem to imitate the berries on the food-plant; sometimes, on the contrary, they seem to be deterrent. In the latter case, they occur on certain segments which can be protruded by the withdrawal of the head; and they then resemble two great red, staring eyes, sufficiently formidable to raise a panic among sundry species of birds on which Dr. Weismann repeatedly tried them. Throughout the whole family it is clear that the seemingly freakish markings are in reality of great functional value, and that they could certainly be produced by the natural selection of favourable variations. How easily these variations might arise from the original groundwork in each case Dr. Weismann most ingeniously points out.

The second essay-on Phyletic Parallelism. in Metamorphic Species-also deals with another aspect of the same question, tried over very similar ground. Dr. Weismann here dwells upon the fact that, in Lepidoptera generally, the resemblances between larvae do not always run parallel with the resemblances between imagines, so that a classification based wholly upon the one would differ from a classification based wholly upon the other. He also shows that each stage has been separately affected by natural selection, and has therefore adapted itself to its own environment, independently, to a great extent, of the adaptations adopted in the other stage. Thus we get varying differences or resemblances between the same two or more species in various stages of their development. If variation and the genesis of species were due to an inherent tendency towards definite generic and specific types, this could hardly be so, because each species and genus would proceed steadily and regularly to its own goal, without cross-resemblances and unequal divergences; but if they are due to natural selection mainly (that is to say, with the aid of the other accepted causes alone), such phenomena as these would necessarily occur, since each stage would be passed in a different environment, where it would be exposed to different selective agencies. Unequal divergences run parallel with a strong deviation in the conditions of life. So that here again the theory of a phyletic vital force is shown to be as untenable as it is superfluous. It will not explain all the facts; and all the facts can be otherwise explained without it. Thus it is doubly damned-first, because it is not a vera causa; and, secondly, because it is an inadequate cause.

Natural selection is a real known agency, and it is an agency sufficient to produce all the observed results.

The whole work—which is, in fact, a crucial testing of Darwinism by its application to the most seemingly capricious facts-is being published for subscribers in the first instance, and will be complete in three parts. It is admirably translated by Mr. Meldola, who adds many interesting notes and fresh in

stances; and it is illustrated by beautiful and highly finished plates. All biologists should get it, and the only pity is that it should have been written with so much German diffuseness and such a waste of needless schematism. But we cannot afford to quarrel with such good work as this for petty faults, and we must thank both author and translator for a really masterly and valuable book. GRANT ALLEN.

relief. First of all, the kind of metaphysical cosmogony which we usually associate with Gnosticism is by no means confined to an age of philosophy. The process of Creation in Polynesian mythology is represented by a succession of Aeons, who sometimes pass before us in Syzygies, like the Dyana-Buddha. The beginning is always Night, out of whom comes forth a series of cosmological emanations, each ruling creation for thousands of years. Thus one of these systems begins with Te Kore, or "Nothing," after whom follow "Darkness," Desire," "Process," "Conception of Thought," "EnHeilige Sage der Polynesier. By Adolf Bas- largement," "Breathing Power," "Thought," tian. (Leipzig: Brockhaus.) "Spirit Life," &c. We find ourselves, to our astonishment, among the disciples of Valentinus. It is, however, difficult to suppose that such highly philosophic systems could have been the spontaneous invention of the half-civilised ancestors of the Polynesians; and I cannot help thinking, therefore, that they were originally due to an early contact with Buddhist teachers.

BASTIAN'S " RELIGIOUS MYTHS OF THE
POLYNESIANS."

DR. BASTIAN needs no introduction to our readers. Students of anthropology have long been accustomed to pillage the storehouse of facts he has heaped together, and to which he is never weary of adding. There is no one to whom the science of man owes a deeper debt. It is special matter for congratulation, therefore, that he should have made a voyage in the Pacific for the express purpose of studying the fast-dying habits and legends of

its inhabitants. The volume now before us is the result of his travels.

Nowhere can the primitive myths and cosmological imaginings of man be better studied than among the Polynesians. The Polynesians, though scattered over a considerable part of the earth's surface, display a most wonderful unity of race, language, ideas, and customs. At the same time, the small islands into which they have been cooped have preserved them from contact with other races, as well as from further mixture with each other after their original separation. Here, if anywhere, we should be able to test the value of tradition, and to trace the precise mode in which myths grow.

Dr. Bastian gives but a poor account of the way in which these peculiar advantages have been turned to account. With the exception of a few workers like Ellis, Gray, Whitmee, and Gill, the missionaries have been content to see the old manners and legends of their converts passing away without any attempt to record them before it is too late, or else have left it to chance travellers to give popular and misleading accounts of Polynesian myths and religious ideas. Seldom has any effort been made to penetrate below the surface, and discover the kernel and essence of the theology and mythology of the natives. The result has been disastrous to those scholars at home who have been obliged to depend upon such untrustworthy information as was at hand, and to draw their conclusions from it.

Much, alas! is now lost to us for ever. But to those who would recover what still remains, Dr. Bastian has set a good example. After an instructive Introduction, he gives us some very remarkable legends, first from New Zealand, and then from Hawaii. The volume concludes with voluminous notes, in which he has stored away, more suo, a vast amount of knowledge, but, unfortunately, with very insufficient references and impossible comparisons of proper names.

Want of space will prevent me from drawing attention to more than two points which the legends collected by him bring into clear

66

The second point illustrated by Dr. Bastian's
collection of legends is the tenacity and

trustworthiness of oral tradition. There is
clear proof that a fairly faithful record of
history for the last three centuries has been
preserved among the Polynesians by the help
of the memory alone. Fragments of the race
which have been long cut off from all inter-
course with one another have traditions in
regard to their separation which agree most
remarkably together. It is a much-needed
rebuke to that over-sceptical school of his-
torians which was so fashionable a few years
ago. Led away by the old fallacy which
judges everything by the standard of our
selves, they classed the traditions of an
illiterate age with those of the least cultivated
and intelligent part of the people in a literary
one. Hence they not only undervalued
the power of the memory, but forgot that,
where writing is unknown or little practised,
special means are often taken not merely to
preserve the record of past events, but to
preserve it unchanged.

THE JUBILEE MEETING OF THE
BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

York.

which the British Association has met in the ALTHOUGH this is the third occasion upon city of York, the second meeting occurred thirty-seven years ago.

Association."

York

The members' tickets then bore the inscription, Antiquam exquirite matrem, and we repeat the motto now. has been truly called "the cradle of the The discovery of the Kirkdale Cave led to the formation of a museum to contain the specimens found in it; with that museum was associated one of the earliest local scientific societies, called the "Yorkshire Philosophical Society," and Sir David Brewster, in a letter to its secretary, John Phillips, suggested the formation of the larger Association. Thus the first meeting was at York, and the secretaries were those of the Philosophical first president, treasurer, vice-president, and Society. At this time railways did not exist, and it was thought to be desirable to transport to distant centres of the kingdom representatives of the scientific societies of London to lead to a more general interest in natural science. The objects of the Association were more precisely defined by William Vernon Harcourt, its first president, in his opening address. "I propose,"

he said,

"that we should found a British Association for

the Advancement of Science, having for its objects to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific enquiry, to promote the in

tercourse of those who cultivate science in different with foreign philosophers; to obtain more general parts of the British empire with one another, and attention for the objects of science, and the removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress."

All these objects have been attained; and societies, and the enormously increased facilities although the increase of the London scientific of communicating with them, have to some extent done away with the need of this peripatetic congress, it still continues to bring together scientific men both from distant parts of the kingdom and from abroad. Moreover, by its Reports, whether of individuals or of committees, it has done much to stimulate classifying the facts already known, and by many branches of enquiry by summarising and suggesting the direction of future research. We may specially allude to the Reports on Terrestrial Magnetism, on the Manufacture of Iron, and on Meteorology. We are inclined to think that if these Reports could be still further extended, so as to present every year the preIncise attitude of the particular science at that links, and hints concerning the best methods of time, with indications of the positions of missing continuing the researches, great benefits would accrue to the sciences.

Dr. Bastian

Like most other peoples in the world, how-
ever, the Polynesians turn out, upon more
careful investigation, not to have been wholly
unacquainted with some kind of writing.
Hawaii, the king described to Dr. Bastian
certain marks used to assist the memory, and
drew two of them for him. "One of the
most surprising discoveries," however, is that
of Australian written characters," not pictorial
hieroglyphs, like most of those of Easter
Island, the Chinese Mosso or Minahassa, but
real symbolic characters."
first heard of these at Cooktown in 1880,
and afterwards saw them written on sticks,
like the "message-sticks of Western
Australia at Sydney. Three such sticks
from Melbourne are now at Berlin. That the
Australians could make pictures we already
knew; but that such degraded savages had
also invented a system of writing is certainly
unexpected, and affords another confirmation
of the conviction which has been gradually
growing upon me, that man is naturally a
literary animal.
A. H. SAYCE.

The President has very wisely, in this year of jubilee, reviewed the principal discoveries and inventions of the last fifty years. Although competent to speak ex cathedra on more than one subject, he has considered it better to adopt meeting, and to make the past history of the the suggestion of Mr. Spottiswoode at the Dublin Association, which is really the history of science, the theme of his address.

Without much preamble he commenced his survey, beginning with biology, the science in which he is more specially interested. Although the theory of natural selection was not propounded by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace till 1859, it has an early reference to it is pardonable. It is so completely modified biological science that based, according to Sir John Lubbock, upon four axioms:

"(1) That no two animals or plants are identical in all respects. (2) That the offspring tend to inherit the peculiarities of their parents. (3) That, of those which come into existence, only a small number reach maturity. (4) That those which are on the