The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/Issue 697/Editorial Gleanings
EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
The Presidential Address to the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union by Sir Michael Foster, Secretary of the Royal Society, &c, is a very important and welcome deliverance in the cabal of modern biological scholasticism. The Tower of Babel finds its equivalent in the current methods of building the city of Natural Knowledge, and raising the "tower of Science." Amidst the plethora of much scientific jargon, Sir Michael well remarks, "the old example of the plain of Shinar bids every thoughtful man to ask himself the question, Is not this confusion of languages hindering and spoiling the work, even if it will not, as it did of old, stop it altogether?" We have specialized ourselves to the point of ignorance. Take the Royal Society and its purview of ascertainable knowledge. Our authority cites as an example the papers read before a single meeting, that of June 16th, 1897. He observes:—"I make bold to say that neither the President of the Society, nor any other of the officers, nor any one of the Fellows, could of his own knowledge state what was the exact meaning of each of all those titles. If you asked such a one to do it, he would tell you that he did not understand the speech of most of them.... The tower has risen to a considerable height since the Royal Society was founded, and its Fellows are no longer able to understand one another's speech." We wish we could print the whole of this address; no extracts do it justice. "There is a good old word 'Naturalist,' which, though it originally had to do with the nature of all things which exist, has in course of time been narrowed to the things which are alive. In this sense the naturalist was a man who busied himself with 'Nature' as manifested in living creatures, who sought to solve all the problems which life presents. Form, structure, function, habits, history, all and each of these supplied him with facts from which he wrested his conclusions. Observation was his chief tool, and the field his main workshop. To him invidious distinctions between different parts of biologic learning were unknown. He had not learnt to exalt either form or structure or function to the neglect of the rest. Everything he could learn came to him as a help towards answering the questions which pressed on him for an answer. A naturalist of this kind, however—a whole-minded inquirer into the nature of living beings—is for the most part a thing of the past. He has well-nigh disappeared through the process of differentiation of which I have spoken."
At the Annual Meeting, on the 25th of June, of the Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France, M. le Myre de Vilers, President, in the chair, the large silver medal of the Society, bearing the portrait of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was decreed to Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, of St. Albans, England, for her work in Economic, or Applied, Entomology. Miss Ormerod will be heartily congratulated by her numerous agricultural and other friends on the receipt of this distinguished mark of appreciation of her disinterested labours.
We read in 'The Shooting Times and British Sportsman' that at the end of May the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club held their first meeting at Beal, and inspected, with the permission of Mr. C.J. Leyland, of Haggerston Castle, the large collection of animals and birds which he has collected from all parts of the world. Perhaps the most important feature of Mr. Leyland's collection is the herd of American Bison. In this connection the owner of Haggerston Castle is conducting the experiment of attempting to perpetuate, by breeding from animals kept in confinement, the American Buffalo, which is rapidly disappearing from the North American prairies. The herd exceeds thirty in number, and the results so far attained promise that the experiment will be attended with a fair measure of success. Mr. Leyland, who began his Bison experiment on a small scale about eight or nine years ago, has added considerably to his herd, and there are several additions as the result of cross-breeding with Highland Cows. The little humped cattle of India and Afghanistan form another interesting feature of the collection, as well as the Gnus, Antelopes, and Deer, not omitting the Wapiti, or North American Deer, besides the Kangaroos and Ostriches. An inspection was next made of a number of Nylghaus, a species of Antelope from the Neilgherry Hills, several of which have been bred on the Haggerston estate. The Indian cattle also were a fairly numerous company. Among birds were Crowned Cranes from Africa, Screamers from South America, Emus, Ostriches, and Black Swans from Australia. An Ostrich was disturbed sitting on nine huge eggs, and beat what some of the company termed a "cowardly" retreat, leaving the eggs exposed.
In these pages (ante, p. 41) we referred to a paper on "White Cattle: an Inquiry into their Origin and History," in which the conclusion was reached that these White Cattle "are simply the descendants of Roman cattle imported into the country during the Roman occupation." We have just received the Annual Report and Transactions of the North Staffordshire Field Club for 1898-99, which contain an illustrated paper by Prof. Boyd Dawkins on "The Chartley White Cattle." The Professor's opinion as to the origin of these cattle is not in unison with the writer of the previously mentioned memoir, who discarded the conclusions of Rutimeyer, and accepted those of Prof. McKenny Hughes. Prof. Dawkins considers that the breed of these large White Cattle was "domesticated on the Continent, as Rütimeyer has shown, in the Neolithic age, and occurs in the refuse-heaps accumulated round the pile-dwellings in Switzerland. It is descended from the great wild Urus, which abounded in the forests of the Continent in pre-historic times, and lingered in Europe as far down as the time of Charles the Great. It has nothing to do with the large fawn-coloured cattle of Italy, as suggested by Prof. McKenna Hughes. These are derived from the east, and probably from Egypt. This larger breed spread over the Continent of Europe through the Pre-historic and Early Historic period, and became defined from all others by its white colour and red or black ears, not merely in the British Isles, but also in Spain."
The ultimate conclusions are:—
"1. That the beautiful Chartley breed was originally introduced into this country along with the closely allied breeds of Chillingham and other places, in a domesticated condition, from the Continent, where they had been carefully selected by man during long ages.
"2. That they were introduced about the time of the English or Danish conquests.
"3. And, lastly, that the shyness and wildness of the breed is due to the fact of their never having been confined in small enclosures, where they would come into close contact with man."
The Linnean Society's Journal—Zoology—contains a paper, read last December, by Mr. H.J. Elwes, "On the Zoology and Botany of the Altai Mountains," the results of a journey made in that region last summer. Mr. Elwes remarks that the Altai Mountains are almost unknown to English naturalists, and practically less known to naturalists as a whole than many parts of Central Africa. So far as he was aware, "the only travellers who have written on the natural history of the country are Pallas, whose great work is well known, though now rather out of date; Ledebour and Bunge, who sixty years ago compiled an excellent account of the botany of the Altai; Helmersen, who has described the geology of the country; and Tchihatcheff, a well-known Russian traveller, who published an account of his travels, in French, in 1852."
As regards the Mammalia, we learn that the Ibex of the Altai (Capra sibirica, Pallas), the head and horns of which were exhibited, is nearly allied to the Himalayan Ibex, and is common in some parts of the mountains, though very difficult to get at in summer. The Elk was formerly more numerous in the northern districts, but has now become extremely rare; and the single head which Mr. Elwes brought back resembles those which he had seen from European Russia, differing somewhat in the set of the horns from the Elk of Norway. The Roe (Capreolus pygargus, Pallas) is very common in some parts of the Altai and Sayansk Mountains, and is a very much larger and finer animal than the European Roe. The wide spread of the horns is not a peculiarity of this species, as it would appear from the nine heads which were exhibited—six from the Upper Yenesei Valley and three from the Altai—that this peculiarity is by no means constant, and that there is nothing but their size to distinguish them from the European race. The Musk-Deer is also very abundant near the upper limit of forest growth, and is snared in quantities by the natives. As many as two hundred skins were seen in one merchant's store. Reindeer are said by Radde to occur in some parts of the Eastern Sayansk range, where they are also kept in a domesticated state; but, so far as could be ascertained, they do not exist in any part of the Altai.
Birds were not so numerous as expected, although Cranes and Ducks were plentiful in the marshes of the Kurai and Tchuja Steppes. Mr. Elwes was astonished to find a Scoter breeding here, which proves to be the species described as Oidemia stejnegeri, and which is an inhabitant of the N.W. American coast and North Pacific. It has never been hitherto procured, as he was informed by M. Alpheraky (who is at present engaged on a monograph of the Anatidæ of the Russian Empire), farther west than the Upper Amur.
Game-birds were very scarce, though Capercaillie, Ptarmigan, and Quail were observed; and in the highest and barest parts of the mountains the magnificent Tetragallus altaicus was not uncommon, though very hard to approach.
The fauna and flora are materially influenced by the very peculiar climate of the Altai, which has great extremes of heat and cold, and is subject to heavy thunderstorms, which fall as snow and hail in the higher regions, almost daily throughout the summer. During the whole of the two months the party were in the mountains they only had seven or eight days quite free from rain or snow. These heavy storms seem mostly to come from the eastward, and from the high mountains at the source of the Kemchik River, which is the westernmost tributary of the Yenesei. To show what sort of climate it is, it was mentioned that there were large beds of unmelted snow close to the camp, at about 7000 ft., all through July.
Last year the Hon. Cecil Rhodes had five hundred young Rooks sent out to South Africa in order to establish a colony in his country place, and the experiment has been so successful that a similar lot has been sent this spring, the last consignment leaving by the 'Dunvegan Castle' on June 10th.
Without expressing any opinion on the subject of vivisection, in connection with the death of Mr. Lawson Tait, the well-known surgeon of the Midlands, it is interesting to recall some words written by him in a letter addressed to the 'Medical Press and Circular':—"Some day I shall have a tombstone put over me, and an inscription upon it. I want only one thing recorded on it, and that to the effect that he laboured to divert his profession from the blundering which has resulted from the performance of experiments on the sub-human groups of animal life, in the hope that they would shed light on the aberrant physiology of the human groups."
At the meeting of the Zoological Society, on June 20th, Dr. Woods Hutchinson read a paper on Zoological Distribution of Tuberculosis from Observations made mainly in the Society's Gardens. Of 215 autopsies made in the Prosector's Room during the past six months, forty-nine presented the lesions of tuberculosis, i.e. 25·3 per cent, of the mammals and birds. This mortality fell most heavily upon the Ruminants and Gallinæ, and least so upon the Carnivores and Raptores. Race or family appeared to exert little influence upon susceptibility, mode of housing only a small amount, and food and food-habits much more. A close correspondence appeared to exist between immunity and the relative size of the heart in both birds and mammals.
It is estimated that the loss to farmers from the "warbled" condition of the hides of their cattle by the well-known Ox Warble Fly, or Bot Fly (Hypoderma bovis), averages £16,000 for every 100,000 hides. Mr. Child, the Managing Secretary of the Leeds and District Hide, Skin, and Tallow Co., Ltd., we are informed, calculates that on 30,000 hides that passed their hands in one year, the net loss to the farmers was no less than £1500 from this cause alone.
We greatly regret to announce the death, on the 1st inst., of Sir William Henry Flower, President of the Zoological Society, and late Director of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. An obituary notice by Dr. P.L. Sclater will appear in our next issue.