THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1892.

MAN IN NATURE.

L'Homme dans la Nature. Baillière et Cie., 1891.)

T is with much pleasure that we announce the appearance of a new work from the pen of Dr. Paul Topinard, formerly General Secretary of the Anthropological Society of Paris, and Professor in the École d'Anthropologie. Dr. Topinard is well known in this country as one of the most eminent, if not the most eminent, physical anthropologist in France at the present day, and it is with much regret that anthropologists here have observed the shameful way he has been treated by a faction of the Anthropological Society of Paris, who have done their best to diminish his usefulness and retard the advancement of true anthropological science in Paris. Notwithstanding the troubles and anxieties he has gone through-to which we would not have alluded here had they not been public property, and discussed in French scientific journals-it is gratifying to find that Dr. Topinard has pursued the even tenor of his way, and been | able to enrich anthropological science by another of his valuable works, forming the seventy-third volume of the "International Scientific Series."

The work under review is divided into twenty-two chapters. The first contains, in addition to a statement of the scope of the book, a short but interesting history of the development of anthropological science. In the second chapter, its nature, its proper limits, and its relation to biology, ethnology, psychology, and sociology, are pointed out. The term "anthropology" is restricted to the study of man as an animal and a member of a group in the zoological series, in conformity with the acceptation in which it is used by Blumenbach, Broca, Quatrefages, and others. In the third chapter, the various subjects of study included in anthropology, as above restricted, are set forth, and the general principles of zoology on which the distribution of animals in groups of different values rests, the choice of characters on which they are founded, and the differences between race, species, family, and order are indicated.

The methods employed in anthropological research are considered in the fifth chapter. These may be briefly stated as descriptive and anthropometric. As descriptive terms are liable to vary very considerably according to the ideas of different observers, their value has hitherto been much less definite than characters based upon measurement. For some time past the author has been endeavouring to elaborate a system of observation which will render descriptive characters more uniform and trustworthy than heretofore. Having had some practical experience of the plan advocated by Dr. Topinard, we may state that we have been favourably impressed with it, not only for producing more uniform results, but also for saving labour to the observer, facilitating the analyses of observations, and for classifying the latter according to their type.

The character of the hair is dealt with in the sixth chapter. The hair is shown to furnish us with characters which are of importance not only in distinguishing races,

mammals displaces the woolly hair-the homologue of the woolly under-fur; while in the woolly-haired races the reverse takes place. These characters of the hair would have formed an impassable gulf between the yellow and negro races had not some intermediate forms fortunately been left. The abundant generalization of fur as lanugo in the foetus would go to prove that man descended from a furred progenitor.

The value of statistical maps is discussed in the seventh chapter, and as an example of their use in tracing racecharacters, the distribution of the blonde and dark types in France has been taken and illustrated. It is shown, however, that the combination of the descriptive and anthropometric methods gives the most trustworthy results in determining the natural types of man. The latter method is discussed in chapter viii., and the use of indices, projections, seriations, graphic curves, averages, &c., are also explained.

The ninth chapter deals with measurements of the skeleton and the living body, and how these should be made by travellers and others. The directions given for the measurement of the long bones by ascertaining their maximum length is undoubtedly the best method. The proportions which these bones bear to the height of the skeleton (the latter being taken as 100) he gives as follows: humerus 20 ̊0, radius 14'3, femur 273, tibia 22'1. To get the stature of the subject when alive, he adds 35 mm. to the height of the skeleton obtained from the detached bones by the above formula. The proportions just mentioned correspond very closely to those of the second series of French skeletons given in the "Éléments d'Anthropologie," and also with Rollet's important observations. Our own observations on subjects which have been carefully measured before dissection, go to support those of Rollet, and to show that the formulæ above given indicate the actual stature as nearly as possible, without adding 35 mm., as Dr. Topinard does. This is probably due to difference in mounting the skeletons-a fertile source of error. We are of the opinion that where it is not possible to get measurements of subjects before dissection in sufficient numbers to establish the formula for the race, it is more trustworthy to do so from the mean stature of the living, than from the height of articulated skeletons. The directions given for measuring the living body and tabulating its descriptive characters, are specially arranged for the purpose of encouraging travellers to undertake anthropometric observations. A model schedule of observations is given, arranged so that the various questions may be answered by a figure or a measurement, which should prove valuable to travellers. The system of measuring the body aimed at in it is to obtain the relative proportions of the several parts, rather than absolute anatomical dimensions; in other words, the author's idea is that it is better that travellers who are not anthropologists, and consequently not trained to anthropological research, should confine their attention to obtaining such measurements as will enable the canon

of proportion of the several parts of the body to be made out, and compared in different races to that which obtains in Europeans, rather than attempt to do work which requires previous anatomical knowledge. The measurements are divided into two classes, according to their importance, but all of them are such as any intelligent traveller, with a little practice, should be able to make with accuracy.

Chapters x. and xi. are devoted to the study of the skull and the head of the living subject. A list of the chief measurements of the skull which the author recommends is given. These are to our mind much more satisfactory than any previous list he has produced, and will, we feel certain, be hailed with pleasure by anthropologists in this country, as being quite in accord with their ideas of what the essential measurements of the skull are. This list also agrees more nearly with the measurements used by our fellow-workers in Germany and Austria; indeed, we might even go so far as to say that when an international system of measuring the skull s arrived at (a time which we hope is not far distant), the difference between it and that now propounded by Dr. Topinard will be slight. The most important measurements of the living head, he considers, are those of the nose, and next to them the diameters of the head. As an example of what may be learned from a single craniometric character when systematically studied, the cephalic index is selected, and he alludes with satisfaction to the international agreement recently arrived at regarding the measurements from which it is obtained and its divisions, and shows that it is a character of the first importance for distinguishing types of races.

Having thus prepared the way, he next discusses the connection between man and the animals which approach nearest to him, the distance which separates them, and the relative place which man occupies amongst them. This naturally leads him to the consideration of the characters and descriptive morphology of the Primates. As the subject is a very wide one, he has restricted his investigation to a comparative study of the brain and the skeleton. Chapters xiii. and xiv. are occupied with the evolution of the brain in the vertebrate series, the form and volume of that organ, and the arrangement of its convolutions. The mechanism of the evolutionary transformation of the cranium of the animal into that of man is traced in the fifteenth chapter, and the craniometric characters connected with this transformation are dealt with in the succeeding chapter. The characters of the head, the vertebral column, the thorax and pelvis connected with the quadrupedal and bipedal attitude, are discussed in the seventeenth chapter, and those relating to the attitude of the body and the function of prehension in the eighteenth.

The nineteenth chapter is devoted to the zoometric characters related to the adaptations of the limbs for prehension and locomotion; the muscular and visceral characters connected with attitude are also discussed shortly. Other characters distinctive of man, the anthropoids, and the monkeys, in the vertebræ, the sacrum, mandible, teeth, liver, &c., are pointed out in the twentieth chapter. Retrogressive anomalies, or the accidental appearance in man and other animals of morphological arrangements foreign to the type, but resembling those

3rd Sub-order-The Lemurs. Supposing the distance between the Cebidae and the Pithecidæ to be I, that between the latter and the Anthropoids would also be 1, while the distance between the Anthropoids alone, or in conjunction with the other two families, on the one hand, and man on the other, would be represented by 3; the same figure would also represent the distance of the lemurs from the monkeys. We note that Dr. Topinard includes Galeopithecus among the lemurs, although this genus is now accepted by zoologists as belonging to the Insectivora, but this slight error is immaterial.

man.

The important subject of the relationship and descent of man is dealt with more briefly than we could have wished. He shows that man cannot be descended from an Anthropoid, which is essentially a perfected and specialized monkey, and that we must look to a lower source for the origin of the human stem, to one where more generalized conditions obtained; indeed, to a type sufficiently far back in time and low down in the animal series as to be the progenitor of the monkeys and The beginning of the Miocene period is pointed out as a very remarkable one in the history of the world, during which many of the initial types of our existing genera were formed, and amongst others the first monkey succeeding the lemurs of the preceding Eocene period. It is during this epoch that we must seek for the stem proper of man, and that common to the monkeys, or to both of these suborders. According to Cope, man has descended directly from the lemurs, without passing by way of the monkeys and Anthropoids, the lemurs themselves coming through the Marsupials. Beyond this the genealogy of man is merged with that of the Mammalia, of which the first representatives existed as far back as the Trias.

Regarding the question of the unity or plurality of origin of man the author has not very much to say, and although he has reasoned on the assumption of the monophyletic hypothesis of the human species throughout the work— that is to say, that man has originated from a single stemhe considers that there is not sufficient evidence to show clearly one way or other whether this is the case, or that man has a double stem of origin developed during one epoch, or at two epochs separated from one another by a considerable interval of time. This question has yet to be definitely solved with respect to the monkeys, notwithstanding the fact that some American zoologists have shown that the monkeys of the New World have not the same origin as those of the Old World, which, if substantiated, would support the argument of a double cradle of origin for man-namely, according to the

hor, one common to Asia and America, the other, ated in some southern continent uniting Africa and ceania, for the negro.

Whatever the origin of man may have been, the thor shows that two periods must be recognized in his story, one before the acquisition of language, which lates to his precursor, and the other after that, during nich man properly so-called was constituted. The author sums up respecting man, the Anthropoids, ad the monkeys, by comparing the order of the Primates a tree. The lemurs are the roots, and give rise to ne or several stems. One of these is the stem of the onkeys, a branch of which sends out a bough more evated than the others-namely, that of the Anthrooids. Another, of which the point of origin or of contact with the former has yet to be discovered, gives off the uman branch, which grows up parallel with that of he Anthropoids, but without relation to it, and shoots beyond it.

The book concludes with a few words on the question of whether or not man has attained his perfection. The author's idea is that the volume of the brain cannot increase much more, though it is possible for the anterior lobes to become larger. One thing he thinks is certain, that dolichocephaly will be replaced by universal brachycephaly. Although the brain has probably attained its limits in respect to size, the limits to which the quality of its cells may improve are, as far as can be seen, uncircumscribed, and in this direction man may yet hope to attain to still higher perfection by the development of his intellectual faculties.

From the critical sketch we have given, it will be seen that the book is an important addition to anthropological literature. Not only will it be useful to anthropologists, but also to general readers who desire to obtain an insight into anthropology and to follow what is being done in that science. As an exposition of the subject, we have no hesitation in stating that it is a work of much merit, and worthy of the high reputation of its author. There remains yet the duty to be performed by the publishers, of putting it within the reach of a much wider range of readers than it is accessible to in its present form, by the publication at an early date of the English edition. J. G. G.

FURNITURE WOODS.

amateur requires no information at all-or practically none about these woods, but recommends him to trust a respectable dealer. We venture to remark that both the dealer and the amateur stand in need of, and would have been much interested in, a good description of these various woods.

It would at least have been worth mention that the word mahogany, like most trade names of the kind, may refer to very different woods: thus the Cuban or Spanish mahogany (Swietenia Mahogani, L.) is a very different wood from the mahogany of India (Cedrela Toona, Roxb.), which goes more commonly, perhaps, under the name of cedar (Moulmein cedar), another fallacious appellation, since it has nothing in common with the cedar of the botanist (Cedrus), or the pencil cedar of commerce, which is a Juniper, while it is closely allied to the "Cuban cedar," also known as Honduras and as Mexican cedar (Cedrela odorata, L.). The author is partially alive to this, as his remarks on p. 42 show; but we think he might have put the whole matter in a much clearer light by giving good descriptions of these very different woods. The African mahogany, from Sierra Leone, is a different wood again.

Under oak, the author, as elsewhere, begs the whole question by the remark, "Oak, like mahogany, is too well known to require any minute description." Possibly so-it all depends on the meaning of the word "minute"; but we think that such a work as this would be very much more useful if a description of the general distinctive characters of oak were given, and that the reader is entitled to expect such a description. He mentions that several kinds of oak are in the market, but this kind of thing only confuses, instead of helps, the reader.

Then, again, what does the author mean by "rosewood"? The rosewoods of India-Dalbergia latifolia (Roxb.) and Pterocarpus indicus (Willd.)—are by no means the only timbers which come into this country under that name, and the author might have done much more than merely remark that, "so far as mere appearance is concerned, there is not much difference between the various kinds."

We think that the author has missed an opportunity of compiling what is very much needed in this country, a concise and practical chapter on the distinctive characters of the various cabinet woods, on the lines, for instance, sketched in Marshall Ward's little manual on "Timbers, and some of their Diseases." The expectation that

THIS

HIS neat little volume purports to be "a practical hand-book to the construction of cabinet furniture, the use of tools, formation of joints, hints on designing and setting out work, veneering, &c., together with a review of the development of furniture." It is well planned, and written in a pleasing and simple style, and appears admirably adapted for its purpose in general.

There is one drawback to this book, common to all works of its kind, and that is the meagre information given in the section dealing with the various kinds of woods employed. These woods are mahogany, cedar, oak, walnut, ash, rosewood, birch, beech, satinwood, pine, and a few others. The author argues that the

the fairer, since the author, in this very chapter on "furniture woods," goes out of his way to reinstruct amateurs in the use of the multiplication table and superficial measurements, which "may have been forgotten since their school days."

The statement on p. 57 that wood does not contract in length requires modification; and some of the remarks on warping and shrinking would be more intelligible to a reader who understood something of the structure of his woods.

The illustrations are numerous, and, on the whole, good and decidedly useful; and in spite of the omissions we point out, we think the book admirably adapted in many respects for the amateur's shelves.

OUR BOOK SHELF.

L'Électricité dans la Nature. Par Georges Dary. "Bibliothèque Internationale de l'Électricité et de ses Applications." (Paris: Georges Carré, 1892.)

A POPULAR and accurate account of the various forms and ways in which electricity appears in Nature is sure to find a great many readers, for the subject is most interesting. Everyone should become acquainted with at any rate some of the most ordinary electrical phenomena of every-day life, even if he should learn no more than the cause of a flash of lightning and the subsequent peal of thunder. In this volume the author has brought together accounts of many interesting phenomena that have been observed from time to time, with the hypotheses that have been put forward to explain them. The subject is divided into seven parts or chapters. The first relates to the origin, presence, and distribution of electricity in our atmosphere, and also to cosmical electricity, in which the influence of solar spots on atmospheric electricity and the electrical nature of comets and nebulæ are mentioned. There are also descriptions of various conductors and electrometers, the principles of each being brought out clearly. Chapter ii. deals with storms. The author in this part has collected many typical examples which represent various classes of storms. After reference to the formation, height, and constitution of storm-clouds, and the variation and distribution of the storms themselves on the earth's surface, he describes the various forms in which lightning has been observed. Very curious effects, both on men and trees, are recorded to have taken place. An interesting instance here given relates to a flash of lightning that, having struck one tree and travelled down its trunk spiral fashion, suddenly leapt across to another one close by, and went to earth, the spiral curve being continued on this second tree. Chapter iii. contains some useful information relating to lightning-conductors, in which a brief historical summary is given: many kinds that have been or are now in use are described, with accounts of their action, verification, and efficiency. In the next two chapters, hail-storms, waterspouts, tornadoes, and cyclones are dealt with, while earthquakes and auroræ form the subjects of the concluding chapters.

In the above summary of the contents of this volume there is much to which we should have liked to refer, but the reader at any rate will be able to form a general idea of the range of subjects treated of in these four hundred pages.

Besides being interesting, the book will form a useful volume to many readers, for its value is very much increased by the great number of references inserted.

The First Book of Euclid's Elements. By the Rev. J. B. Lock, M.A. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892.)

Now that the concession has been made by the Uni- | versity of Cambridge of allowing in all her public examinations any sound proof of the propositions of Euclid provided that their logical sequence remains unaltered, teachers of geometry will have a far freer scope; since they are no longer bound by any hard and fast rule. The present work, by a writer familiar to our readers, will be read with interest, for the arrangement of the text has undergone somewhat of a change from the sequence usually followed. With regard to the order of the propositions, it will be noticed that the theorems are separated from the problems. This seems to be advantageous, for after all there is a fundamental difference between theorems and problems as the author says, a theorem is a geo

metrical truth based on fundamental ideas and defini tions of geometry, while problems entirely depend o postulates which are practically impossible.

The definitions have also received great attention and are here thoroughly and clearly explained; in two cases, that of the "straight line" and "angle," the author has thought fit to make a slight divergence from the customary definitions. Accompanying the proposition are numerous exercises, while interpolated occasionally are many worked out examples.

Altogether, the book is one that should be in the hands of teachers, and is worthy of being well tested by them in their classes. W.

The Ilford Manual of Photography. By C. H Bothamley. (London: The Britannia Works Co

Ltd., 1892.)

THIS manual, which has been compiled at the request of the Britannia Works Company, will be found by our photographic readers to be both well written and useful. containing as it does all information generally needed by amateurs. It is not a complete treatise on the subject. but is intended to aid those who are indulging in the various applications of this art at the present day from a thoroughly practical point of view. The first few chapters are devoted to the description of the apparatus, developing manipulations, faults in negatives, and various printing processes, all of which are well treated; we then come to the method of making enlargements. mounting and framing, lantern slides and transparencies. The concluding chapters are of special interest. consisting of portraiture, copying, photographing of objects in motion, orthochromatic photography, and photography by artificial light.

Preceding the appendix are tables of English and French weights and measures, while the appendix itself contains some formulæ and reprints from one or two photographic journals. Besides an account of the Ilford universal hydroquinone developer, there are papers by Mr. John Howson, on the "Printing Paper of the Future," "Lantern Plates," together with the best methods of cutting up printing-out paper.

A most useful table presents a list of dealers and dark rooms situated all over the world, ranging from modest dealers in Bettws-y-Coed and Leighton-Buzzard to those in South Africa, New Zealand, and Japan. From this table, it can be at once ascertained whether. at a certain place, Ilford plates or paper, chemicals or apparatus, are kept in stock; whether amateurs can receive help or get work done for them, such as printing, mounting, &c.; or whether a dark room is obtainable or not. This list, when thoroughly completed, and other first-class firms included, will be invaluable for tourists on the Continent, while at present it should be used very largely by those travelling in this country.

W.

The Advanced Class-Book of Modern Geography. By William Hughes and J. Francon Williams. (London: George Philip and Son, 1892.)

THE scientific world is deeply indebted to Dr. Dallinger for his excellent new edition of Carpenter's invaluable work on the microscope, and among other things for his retaining unchanged the description of Eozoon canadense, as a monument of an imFortant research up to a certain date.

Dr. Carpenter devoted much time to the study of Eozoon, and brought to bear on it his great experience of foraminiferal forms, and his wonderful powers of manipulating and unravelling difficult structures. After having spent years in studying microscopic suces of Eozoon and the limestones in which it occurs, I have ever felt new astonishment when I saw the manner in which, by various processes of slicing and etching, and by dexterous management of light, he could bring out the structure of -pecimens often very imperfect. Not long before Dr. Carpenter's death I had an opportunity to appreciate this in spending a few days with him in studying his more recently acquired specimens, some of them from my own collections, and discussing the new points which they exhibited, and which unhappily he did not live to publish. Some of these new facts, in so far as they related to specimens in our cabinet here, have since that time been noticed in my résumé of the question in the Memoirs of the Peter Redpath Museum, 1888; but I hope my friend Prof. Rupert Jones may yet be able to complete Dr. Carpenter's

work.

Those who know Dr. Carpenter's powers of investigation will not be surprised that later observers, without his previous preparation and rare insight, and often with only few and imperfect specimens, should have failed to appreciate his results. One is rather surprised that some of them have ventured to state with so great confidence their own negative conclusions in a matter of so much difficulty, and requiring so much knowledge of organic structures in various states of mineralization. For myself, after working for fifty years at the microscopic examination of fossils and organic rocks, I feel more strongly than ever the uncertainties and liabilities to error which beset such inquiries.

As an illustration in the case of Eozoon: since the publication of my memoir of 1888, which I had intended to be final and exhaustive as to the main points, and in so far as I am concerned, I have had occasion to have prepared and to examine about 200 slices of Eozoon from new material: and while most of these have either failed to show the minute structures or have presented nothing new, a few have exhibited certain parts in altogether unexpected perfection, and have shown a prevalence of injection of the canal system by dolomite not previously suspected. Since that publication also, the discoveries of Mr. Matthew in the Laurentian of New Brunswick, and the further study of the singular Cambrian forms of the type of Cryptozoum, have opened up new fields of inquiry.

I think it proper to state, in reference to Dr. Dallinger's footnote on the recent paper of Mr. Gregory, that it must not be inferred from it that Mr. Gregory had access to my specimens from Madoc and Tudor, though he no doubt had excellent material from the collections of the Canadian Geological Survey. It might also be inferred from this note that I have regarded the Madoc and Tudor specimens as "Lower Laurentian.' The fact is that I was originally induced in 1865, by the belief of Sir W. E. Logan at that time that these rocks were representatives in a less altered state of the middle part of the Laurentian, to spend some time at Madoc and its vicinity in searching for fossils, but discovered only worm-burrows, spicules, and fragments of Eozoon, which were noticed in the Journals of the Geological Society for 1866. (The more complete specimen from Tudor was found by Vennor in 1866.) On that occasion I satisfied myself fully that the beds are much older than the Cambro-Silurian strata resting on them unconformably; but I felt disposed to regard them as more probably of the age of some parts of the Huronian of Georgian Bay, which I had explored with a similar purpose under Logan's guidance in 1856. As my work was not official, and was paleontological rather than stratigraphical, it did not seem proper to express any dissent from what were at the time the probable conclusions of strati

graphical work; but I was quite prepared to assent to the new views afterwards adopted.

In conclusion, the new material bearing on Eozoon is accumulating so rapidly that I cannot hope to be able to master it in detail, but shall be glad to aid others who may have more time; but I hope to be able, in a work now in preparation, at least to present the facts up to date in a popular form. J. WILLIAM DAWSON. McGill College, Montreal, February 3.

The Samoan Hurricane. REPLYING to the communication in NATURE of December 17, 1891 (p. 161), signed "H. F. B.," relative to my preliminary report on the Samoan hurricane of March 1889 (published in the Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, vol. xvii., No. 2, and in the American Meteorological Journal, July 1891), I would submit the following statement.

First of all, I wish to acknowledge Mr. Blanford's appreciation of the difficulties involved in the consideration of the subject, owing to the meagreness of the data; and at the same time to express my own appreciation of the fact that he himself has not had access even to such data as we have succeeded in collecting, but only to my necessarily brief discussion thereof, and the conclusions that I have drawn therefrom.

Mr. Blanford's explanation, as I understand it, is as follows: the vortex of the hurricane formed north or north-east (on the equatorial side) of Apia on the afternoon of the 15th, within a "region of disturbance" that had already caused stormy weather throughout the Samoan Islands and a decided barometric depression at Apia. The first effect of this formation was (by adding slightly to the normal evening rise of the barometer) to cause a decided rise of pressure, which, however, decreased again as the vortex slowly approached the harbour, thus causing the second minimum (the afternoon of the 16th), the duration of the storm being explained by the usual slow motion of the newly formed hurricane.

To the above explanation it is necessary to make a correction, I think, owing to the fact that the shifts of wind at the time of and immediately after the first minimum show that the centre of the disturbance then passed to the westward of Apia, and as the wind thereafter remained from north to north-east, the centre (or vortex) evidently remained to the southward and westward. This fact, however, merely introduces a change in the position where the new vortex formed, according to the theory under discussion.

Revising Mr. Blanford's explanation, then, in the light of this correction, it appears that the track of the depression is about as I have drawn it, but that a vortex formed slightly to the southward and westward of Apia, thus causing a slight rise of pressure at first, succeeded by a second fall, and the slow motion of this newly formed vortex caused the duration of the northerly gale.

Now, I must here take exception to one of Mr. Blanford's statements, which is as follows (referring to the theories given in my paper): "None of these explanations seem to take account of the circumstances that attend the formation of tropical cyclones, which, as we have elsewhere pointed out, differ in many respects from the storms of the temperate zone." A reference to my paper will show, I think, that I took into consideration the special peculiarity to which Mr. Blanford calls attention, and went so far as to insert a plate in order to illustrate two types of storms-namely, (1) the characteristic tropical hurricane type (where there is a decided vortex, or "centre of aspiration"); and (2) the type where there is a comparatively wide central region surrounded by an annular space where there are steep barometric gradients and correspondingly high wind velocities, but without any decided vortex, properly so called. I said also that "it will be seen that the indications are that the Samoan hurricane (on the 15th and 16th, at least) was of the second type, although during the 17th and 18th it doubtless became more like the first." In a word, I said (both explicitly and by means of the varying strength of the track drawn on the chart) that the depression passed Apia on the afternoon of the 15th, recurved (increasing in intensity and delaying whilst recurving, each of which is to be expected), and then moved off to the southward and eastward. I do not intend to convey the impression that I made any definite statement as to just when or where the vortex formed, nor am I wholly prepared to hazard such a statement even at