400 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF HUMENNÉ A POLISH SOURCE ON THE SIEGE OF VIENNA AND ITS AFTERMATH (1619-21)

The article is an attempt to present The exploits of Polish elears, who were formerly called Lisovchiks (Przewagi elearów polskich, co ich niegdy lisowczykami zwano) by Wojciech Dembołęcki. The book’s form varies between that of a chronicle, a memoir, and a detailed diary. Nevertheless, the report contains an abundance of valuable and interesting data on the Battle of Humenné and its immediate consequences, particularly the pacification actions led by Polish mercenary troops. Dembołęcki’s Exploits can be thought of as, for many reasons, a unique source of knowledge on several historical episodes of the initial stage of the Thirty Years’ War. Its convention, however, is to show the Lisovchiks as an army of God, and therefore the publication (printed in Poznań in 1623) is also evidence of propaganda-motivated glorification of the notorious elears who supported Ferdinand II’s forces twice (in 1619-21 and in 1622). Despite the exaggerated written praise, these soldiers were soon outlawed (in 1623) because of their conduct, especially during peaceful periods. The diary gives the reader a chance to get acquainted with authentic documents, such as correspondence addressed to Poles and signed by imperial authorities. The article mainly recalls selected facts (war tactics specificity, battles, marches, negotiations, etc.) in the chronological order on the basis of the account, but some examples of Dembołęcki’s comments are also cited, paraphrased, or discussed to give a better idea of the nature of the original memoir. In the concluding part of the study there are some remarks on Dembołęcki’s other work, enriched with a short description of a Latin manuscript (preserved in Prague) and a pair of booklets, the first of which was issued in Vienna and the second somewhat later in Poland (the precise place of publication is unknown).

The Desperate Diplomat Revisited

This article, an elaboration on The Desperate Diplomat (2016), reexamines Japanese Special Envoy Kurusu Saburo’s mission to the United States before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, presenting a new “concurring opinion” in support of his innocence. The u.s. government firmly believed that Kurusu had been informed of the impending attack prior to coming to the United States and thus acted as a smoke screen. And so, the myth of the deceitful ambassador was born. Nevertheless, Kurusu insisted that he had no prior knowledge of Japan’s military action. Misunderstanding of his role in the Pearl Harbor attack and harsh remarks about it upset him. Utilizing Kurusu’s unpublished and previously unused materials in both Japanese and English housed in the National Diet Library in Tokyo, records from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and The Desperate Diplomat, based on his original memoir, this article helps Kurusu tell his side of the story to initiate scholarly debate on this insufficiently researched diplomat. This reassessment also presents excerpts from Kurusu’s unpublished personal correspondences with E. Stanley Jones, Bernard M. Baruch, and Joseph C. Grew.

Smallpox and the double decrement table: a piece of actuarial prehistory

More than 200 years ago, on 30 April 1760, Daniel Bernoulli (1766) read a memoir to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris entitled Essai d'une nouvelle analyse de la mortalité causée par la petite vérole, et des avantages de l'inoculation pour la prévenir (see Bradley, 1971, for a translation). In this remarkable memoir Bernoulli produced the first double decrement life table and one of the related single decrement tables, as well as deriving a mathematical model of the behaviour of smallpox in a community. This model was the forerunner of considerable developments in the mathematical theory of infectious diseases, a description of which is given in N. T. J. Bailey (1975). During the half century following Bernoulli's memoir there were a number of papers by other authors on the subject of that memoir; these, and the original memoir, seem to be little known to actuaries and are the subject of the present paper. They could have been the starting point of the actuarial development of exposed-to-risk formulae, but in fact were not.

The structure of some crystals as indicated by their diffraction of X-rays

A new method of investigating the structure of a crystal has been afforded by the work of Laue* and his collaborators on the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. The phenomena which they were the first to investigate, and which have since been observed by many others, lend themselves readily to the explanation proposed by Laue, who supposed that electromagnetic waves of very short wave-lengths were diffracted by a set of small obstacles arranged on a regular point system in space. In analysing the interference pattern obtained with a zincblende crystal, Laue, in his original memoir, came to the conclusion that the primary radiation possessed a spectrum consisting of narrow bands, in fact, that it was composed of a series of six or seven approximately homogeneous wave trains. In a recent paper I tried to show that the need for assuming this complexity was avoided by the adoption of a point system for the cubic crystal of zincblende which differed from the system considered by Laue. I supposed the diffracting centres to be arranged in a simple cubic space lattice, the element of the pattern being a cube with a point at each corner, and one at the centre of each cube face. A simpler conception of the radiation then became possible. It might be looked on as continuous over a wide range of wave-lengths, or as a series of independent pulses, and there was no longer any need to assume the existence of lines or narrow bands in its spectrum.

IX. On the structure and affinities of heliopora cœrulea, Pallas . With some observations on the structure of Xenia and Heteroxenia

Although the structure of Heliopora has been the subject of a careful memoir by the late Professor H. N. Moseley, a renewed examination of this interesting and isolated Alcyonarian has, for many reasons, seemed to me to be desirable. There are questions relating to the structure and formation of the hard parts which were not conclusively settled by Moseley’s paper, and the great increase of our knowledge of the anatomy of other Alcyonaria has rendered it necessary to overhaul all older work in the light of more arecent researches. Professor Moseley himself was anxious that the genus should be re-examined, and, some time before his death, he pressed me to commence work on some specimens which I had brought back with me from Diego Garcia. The material which I have used in the course of my work consisted of the above-mentioned spirit specimens from Diego Garcia, of the fragments of the specimens which served Professor Moseley for his original memoir, and a well preserved portion of a colony, which Dr. S. J. Hickson brought from Talisse, and gave to Professor Lankester, who kindly handed it over to me for examination. This specimen of Dr. Hickson’s was most useful, because the growing tips of the colony were preserved uninjured, and I was therefore able to make sections illustrating the structure at the point where most active growth takes place. Of dried specimens, I have had a large collection, including my own from Diego Garcia, Dr. Hickson’s from Celebes, and a number of specimens from the collection of the late Mr. George Brook, which Mrs. Brook has been kind enough to hand over to me, together with a rich and varied collection of other Anthozoa. Unfortunately the labels have become detached from most of the specimens, but those that remain show that the corals formed part of the collection made by Professor Haddon in Torres Straits.

III. A further minute analysis by electric stimulation of the so-called motor region (Facial area) of the cortex cerebri in the monkey (Macacus sinicus)

In continuation of our former minute analysis of the excitable region of the cerebral cortex, we have explored the so-called centres for the facial, lingual, and pharyngeal movements, or as we prefer to speak of them collectively, the facial area. This district, as will presently be seen, has been mapped out by numerous investigators, and its general limits are fairly well understood; but as we have found in the course of our investigations several points untouched, especially relating to the representation of the movements of the tongue, we think it better to arrange the facts previously determined in an historical introduction and to subjoin our own observations. In this, as in our second paper on the minuter representation of movements in the cerebral cortex, we have, in order to avoid discrepancies in the arrangement of the sulci, employed only the same variety of Monkey, viz., Macacus sinicus . In all we have performed twenty experiments. Historical Introduction. Fritsch and Hitzig, in the original memoir which forms the basis of all modern research on the subject, contented themselves with defining the foci of representation of movements of the face in the Carnivora.

ON THE EUDRIINÆ

In an original memoir on the Zygaenidœ, published by the Essex Institute, Dr. Packard explained the relation of Castnia and allied genera to the European genus Zygaena, and contended for the solidarity of the group as the equivalent of the large family of Bombycidæ in the Latreillean sense. The view, advocated by Agassiz, that form was a family criterion, not only form in general, but form of parts undelying form in general, obtained.

IV.—Remarks on the Genus Megalichthys, Agassiz, with Description of a New Species

There can be no doubt that the name Megalichthys was originally suggested to Agassiz by the gigantic teeth of the great round-scaled fish first brought into notice by the researches of Dr. Hibbert, in the quarries of Burdiehouse, though indeed some of its remains had long previously been figured by Ure in his “History of Rutherglen and East Kilbride.” Incontrovertible evidence of this may be found by referring to the Proceedings of the British Association for 1834, and to Dr. Hibbert's original memoir on the Burdiehouse Limestone published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xiii. 1835. But with the remains of this enormous creature were also associated and confounded certain rhombic glistening scales, belonging really to a considerably smaller fish of a totally different genus, and when Agassiz, subsequently to the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh in the year above quoted, found in the Museum at Leeds a head of this latter form, or at least of an allied species, he adopted it, by description and by figure, as the type of his Megalichthys Hibberti, relegating the other to the genus Holoptychius. This latter, the real “big fish,” is now known as Rhizodus Hibberti, the founder of the genus being Prof. Owen; and though it may be a matter of regret that it did not retain the name Megalichthys, the laws of zoological nomenclature do not admit of any alteration now.