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460 serpents ont été récoltés de 1954 à 1965 dans la partie Nord de la République du Tchad, appartenant à 19 genres et à 24 espèces différentes. L'auteur étudie particulièrement la région voisine du Laboratoire de Farcha (Fort-Lamy) où dominent: Psammophis sibilans sibilans (54 p. 100), Causus rhombeatus (18 p. 100), Atractaspis watsonii (9 p. 100), Naja haje haje (5 p. 100), Naja nigricollis (4 p. 100), Boaedon fuliginosum (4 p. 100) et Bitis arietans arietans (1 p. 100). Dans cette zone, les serpents sont rares de novembre à mai. Ils sont beaucoup plus nombreux durant l'hivernage et en arrière-saison (octobre). Chez l'homme, le pourcentage d'envenimations ophidiennes relevé en 1956-1957 se situe autour de 0,75 p. 100. Chez les animaux, les piqûres de serpents causent relativement peu d'accidents mortels, sauf chez les poulets

DESPITE ATTEMPTS IN RECENT YEARS to provide a workable methodology, the problem of the "identification" of folklore elements in literary works continues to plague both the professional folklorist and the literary scholar.' It will surely not do, as Richard M. Dorson has reminded us, to endorse the "flimsy," "puerile," and ultimately unscholarly viewpoint represented by such earlier scholars as E. E. Leisy and Levette J. Davidson; yet, as Daniel G. Hoffman points out, Dorson's own criteria of biographical, internal, and corroborative evidence, while they "do indeed insure that folk motifs found in a work of fiction come directly from its author's personal exposure to actual folk traditions," would nevertheless "in practice limit our search for folklore in literature to the writings of regional and provincial authors" and force us to "regard the work of a minor local colorist such as Rowland Robinson as a more important document in folklore-literary relations than the writings of Herman Melville, or of any other considerable literary figure committed to larger cultural considerations than the faithful recording of folkways."2 This objection is important and goes straight to the heart of the matter, for a novelist or poet or short story writer is, if he is truly any of these, a literary artist. His primary concern lies in "creating works of art rather than providing transcriptions of life."" Indeed, Archer Taylor recognized this distinction some years ago when, in remarking on the differences between folklore and literature, he observed that "an obvious difference is that folklore uses conven

To the Editor: —The Journalrecently called attention to an infringement on the automobile insignia for physicians which it has been selling. The spurious emblem has two snakes entwined on the staff, instead of one. In 1931 an enterprising doctor presented a gold badge of office to the president of the Toronto Academy of Medicine as an official emblem portraying the sacred serpent being fed from a bowl. The official button of the American Medical Association is mostly snake-entwined staff. Why the snake and even so, why its continuance? Since the days of the Romans, the emblem of orthodox medicine has been the snake-entwined staff. Insignia are multum in parvo, but why continue to sail under such false colors? What, then, should the insignia of medicine portray? We are living in a wonderful day and surely beyond our present possibilities; we must realize that the advanced thought being scrutinized

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16 The Clerk's claim of coincidence is reported in the New York Times, Jan. 11, 1941, 1, 3. For speculation regarding the assigning of the number 1776, see Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (rev. ed.; New York, 1950), 228; Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 258, where they sarcastically state the bill was "happily designated" 1776; Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries, II, 217, who calls the number "symbolic," and two contemporaries of Roosevelt who blandly label it "reminiscently numbered," Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper: From the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York, 1942), 184. All imply that it was a planned strategem. HAWTHORNE AND JONES VERY: TWO DIMENSIONS OF SATIRE IN "EGOTISM; OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT"

THE Great Wall which forms the northern boundary of China proper tells of a conflict of races. Extending for fifteen hundred miles along the verge of the Mongolian plateau, it presents itself to the mind as a geographical feature boldly marked on the surface of the globe. Winding like a huge serpent over the crests of the mountains, it seems, in the words of Emerson, as if "The sky Bent over it with kindred eye, And granted it an equal date With Andes and with Ararat."

The serpent has always stood for two diametrically opposed ideas: the foe of mankind and the symbol of evil on the one hand, and man's protector and savior in disease and distress on the other. The combination of corruption and salvation, of darkness andlight, of good and evil in the Aesculapina symbol—the serpent and the rod—is so remarkable and so truly antique that it merits an inquiry into the origin, the deeper meaning, and the use we made of this symbol. The author, an eminent art historian, is the Director of the Municipal Museums of Gouda in The Netherlands and is well qualified to author this book. The book itself is well written and extensively illustrated with photographs (unfortunately in black and white) of beautiful and obscure examples of sculpture, paintings, and engravings which are indexed and foot noted. For anyone having even a remote interest in medicine and history

In 1892 the Rev. G. J. Chester presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a freestanding figure in bronze of an Assyrian demon, which he said came from San el-Hagar, a small fishing village close to the mound of Tanis in the Egyptian Delta. Recently, when this figure was cleaned for the first time, a badly corroded inscription in Aramaic or Phoenician characters was revealed down the outside of each leg. Fortunately, it was still possible to make out some portions of the text. Although this does not provide direct evidence of the figure's identity, close similarity to a well-known inscribed figure of a demon in the Louvre, and the absence of any female characteristics which might denote the iconographically similar Lamashtu, indicate that this is the demon Pazuzu. See Plate VIII.The figure is 10·8 centimetres high and represents the demon standing on a small rectangular base. Although the ears are human, the bulging eyes, wrinkled jowls, snout-like nose and protruding tongue give the face a leonine expression. A pair of goat's horns rising from the brow curve back to form part of a suspension loop on top of the head. The arms are raised on either side of the head with the ‘hands’ open, empty palms held forward. These are too worn to show certainly whether they were the animal paws usual on these figures. Though the double pair of wings is badly damaged, the feathers are carefully incised on both back and front of the surviving fragments. A pronounced ridge runs over each shoulder from the centre of the back to the chest, so that the wings appear to be strapped on to the body. The creature is ithyphallic, probably with a serpent's head at the end of the phallus. The thighs and legs, terminating in three talons, are rendered like those of a bird of prey. The demon has a scorpion's tail curled up to meet a short bar, which emerges from the lower part of its back, to form a second suspension loop.

I HAVE seen four or five times something like what your correspondent describes and figures, at Llandudno, crossing from the Little Ormes head across the bay, and have no doubt whatever that the phenomenon was simply a shoal of porpoises. I never, however, saw the head your correspondent gives, but in other respects what I have seen was exactly the same; the motions of porpoises might easily he taken for those of a serpent; once I saw them from the top of the Little Orme, they came very near the base of the rock, and kept the line nearly half across the bay.

The ethological command in art is a review of certain aspects of form perception that may be influenced by biological evolution. The information from recent ethological studies, which examines the similarities between animal and human behavior, should interest the artist and augment his intuitive capacity to create aesthetic form. Many factors are involved in the evolutionary changes of most animal species. One factor that has guided the development of animal and human behavior is called selection pressure. An example of selection pressure is the need for social communication for sexual reproduction and group protection. Another category of selection pressure resides in the various dangerous animals and predators that impinge on the survival of particular animal groups. So intense is predator selection pressure that some animal species appear to have evolved unlearned recognition and avoidance of predators. The visual cues for both social signals and predator recognition are termed ‘releasers’ because they evoke a somewhat stereotyped reaction when viewed by certain animals. Man was certainly exposed to specific selection pressures during his long evolutionary history, and, as a result, he uses intricate social signals, such as facial expressions and body postures, for communicating emotional states during interpersonal contact. The spontaneous fear exhibited by man to snakes, scorpions and other insects with many legs suggests that these avoidance responses represent emotional by-products for survival purposes-residual from an earlier evolutionary period. If the artist desires to create an exciting piece of art, he might consider using various releasers and selected social signals to enhance the visual impact of his work. Some of the visual releasers that will be discussed comprise paired concentric circles, serrated contours and linear bands that exhibit high conspicuousness. The artist can attempt to control the viewer’s arousal by selecting visual releasers that will evoke the desired response. Dans le domaine de l’Art, l’orientation ethologique consiste a reconsiderer certains aspects de perception des formes qui peuvent etre influences par l’evolution biologique. De recentes comparaisons ethologiques sur l’evolution du comportement animal et humain devraient etre de nature a interesser l’artiste et a augmenter sa capacite intuitive au moment de creer une forme esthetique. De nombreux facteurs agissent sur l’evolution de la plupart des especes animales. Un premier element, ayant guide le developpement du comportement animal et humain, est la pression selective. Un exemple de pression selective est le besoin de communication sociale visant a la reproduction sexuelle et a la protection du groupe. Une autre categorie de pression selective est illustree par les betes feroces, qui reduisent le temps de survie de certaines especes animales. La pression selective de la bete feroce est si intense, que certaines especes animales ont un flair inne provoquant une reaction de defense vis-a-vis des betes feroces. Les indices visuels des gestes de communication sociale et de detection des betes feroces sont appeles signes stimulants car ils evoquent une sorte de reaction type chez les animaux se trouvant en contact avec ces betes feroces. L’homme fut certainement expose a des pressions selectives precises au cours de sa longue evolution, d’ou l’utilisation de gestes de communication compliques, tels qu’expressions faciales et attitudes corporelles evoquant les etats emotionnels dans les rapports humains. La peur spontanee ressentie par l’homme devant un serpent, un scorpion ou devant tout autre insecte multipattes montre que ces reactions de fuite sont des derives emotionnels de l’instinct de conservation, remontant a une epoque anterieure de son evolution. Si l’artiste desire creer une œuvre d’art extraordinaire, il devra tenir compte de divers signes stimulants et gestes de communication pour rehausser l’impact visuel de son œuvre. Certains signes stimulants visuels, parmi ceux dont il est question, comprennent des cercles concentriques jumeles, des contours denteles et des bandes lineaires aux formes tres marquees. L’artiste peut essayer de controler le degre d’excitation chez l’observateur en selectionnant des signes stimulants visuels qui evoqueront la reaction souhaitee.