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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Cape Colony and Natal has been only 

 too forcibly brought home " to the Eng- 

 lish. Expeditions sent out by Canadian 

 surveys are constantly opening up new 

 countries and producing maps of great 

 geographical and industrial value. Mr. 

 A. P. Low finds Labrador not quite so 

 bleak and hopeless a country as had 

 been generally believed. Sir Martin 

 Conway has done some very creditable 

 exploration in the Andes and in Tierra 

 del Fuego, the scientific results of which 

 are of considerable value. In Chile, Dr. 

 StafTcr and his colleagues have been ex- 

 ploring the wonderful fiords of the coast 

 and the rivers that come down to them 

 from the Andean range. Dr. Moreno 

 has described the results of twenty-five 

 years' exploration of the great Pata- 

 gonian plains, and of the lakes and gla- 

 ciers and mountains on the eastern face 

 of the Andes. One of the most impor- 

 tant scientific enterprises during the 

 year, the London Times says, was the 

 German oceanographical expedition in 

 the Valdivia, under Professor Chum, 

 which went south through the Atlantic 

 to the edge of the antarctic ice, and 

 north through the Indian Ocean to Su- 

 matra, and home through the Red Sea. 



Royal Society Medalists. — The 

 Copley medal was conferred, at the re- 

 cent anniversary meeting of the Royal 

 Society, upon Lord Rayleigh for his 

 splendid service to physics, his investi- 

 gations, the president said in presenting 

 the award, having increased our knowl- 

 edge in almost every department of 

 physical science, covering the experi- 

 mental as well as the mathematical 

 parts of the subject. " His researches, 

 from the range of subjects they cover, 

 their abundance, and their importance, 

 have rarely been paralleled in the his- 

 tory of physical science." A summary 

 account of the principal ones was given 

 in the sketch of him published in the 

 twenty-fifth volume of the Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly (October, 18S4). At the 

 same meeting of the Royal Society the 

 Royal medals were conferred upon Prof. 

 G. F. Fitzgerald, for his brilliant contri- 

 butions to physics, and Prof. William C. 

 Mcintosh, for his very important labors 

 as a zoologist. Professor Fitzgerald's 

 investigations have been in the field of 

 radiation and electrical theory, and in 

 a manner complementary to those of J. 



Clerke Maxwell. Among his works is 

 a memoir presenting a dynamic formu- 

 lation of the electric theory of light on 

 the basis of the principle of least action, 

 which concludes with a remark upon 

 the advantage of " emancipating our 

 minds from the thraldom of a material 

 ether." Professor IVIcIntosh was spoken 

 of as " one of a distinguished succession 

 of monographers of the British fauna, 

 who, beginning with Edward Forbes, 

 have, during the last fifty years, done 

 work highly creditable to British zool- 

 ogy." He is author of a great mono- 

 graph of the British Annelids, which is 

 still in progress of publication by the 

 Royal Society, and of an important con- 

 tribution to the Challenger reports, and 

 was the founder of the first marine bio- 

 logical station in Great Britain — the 

 Catty Marine Laboratory at St. An- 

 drews. The Davy medal was bestowed 

 upon Edward Schunek for researches of 

 very high importance in organic chem- 

 istry. These works include a remark- 

 able series of contributions to the chem- 

 istry of the organic coloring matters, 

 particularly those relating to the indigo 

 plant and to the madder plant. Of late 

 years he has studied, with distinguished 

 success, the chemistry of chlorophyll. 



Anglo-Saxon Superiority. — The 

 question of the superiority of the Anglo- 

 Saxon race is at present interesting 

 economists of other stocks, especially of 

 the supposed Latin races. The fact of 

 superiority seems -to be conceded. The 

 problem is to account for it. A French 

 writer, M. Dumoulins, attributes it to 

 the superiority of Anglo-Saxon educa- 

 tional institutions. Signor G. Sergi, 

 the distinguished Italian anthropologist, 

 thinks it is a result of the mi.xture 

 of ethnic elements of which the Eng- 

 lish people are made up, and he goes 

 over the history of the colonizations 

 which have overtaken Britain, to show 

 how upon the first neolithic settlers of 

 the Mediterranean stocks came a small 

 emigration of the Asiatic Aryan or In- 

 do-European peoples. Caesar's conquest 

 brought in a Roman infusion with some 

 African elements, which did not last 

 long, but left their mark. Next the An- 

 glo-Saxon tribes of northern Germany 

 made the principal contribution to the 

 formation of the English people. A por- 

 tion of Scandinavian blood was added to 



