50 Years Ago

Not being English or French, but of speech a mid-west American from Manitoba and Dakota, it did not mean anything to me when in 1906 I heard the Eskimos of the Mackenzie Delta and north-eastern Alaska speaking of spruce gum as 'kutsuk'... Years later, perhaps in 1912, I learned that the word for the gum of a Brazilian plant, and of other South American plants, is 'caoutchouc'... Turning now to Greenland, in Sam. Kleinschmidt: “Den Grönlandske Ordbog”, I find “kutsuk... Gummi, Campher og lignende producter”... When I first began to talk about this, I was told it was coincidence. But the intellectual climate is changing, among other things in linguistics, and now... [some] think 'connexion' a likelier word than 'coincidence'. Vilhjalmur Stefansson

From Nature 3 November 1956.

100 Years Ago

Great Bowlers and Fielders. Their Methods at a Glance by G. W. Beldam and C. B. Fry — Following up their interesting volume on “Great Batsmen,” the accomplished authors of “Great Bowlers and Fielders” have practically completed all that action photography can teach us regarding the methods of the great cricketers. The present handsome volume with its 464 action photographs registers for all time the successive positions of the body in the act of bowling of some of the most celebrated bowlers of our day, and also certain very characteristic attitudes of a number of our best fielders... [This] one represents W. Rhodes at the beginning of his final swing, and is chosen partly because of the perfection with which the grip of the ball is indicated.

From Nature 1 November 1906.