368 



NATURE 



\Aug. 31, 1876 



Capt. Trauzl's volume is specially and mainly devoted 

 to the consideration of one particular class of operations to 

 which dynamite, like gun-cotton, has recently been applied 

 with considerable success, namely, to the removal of tree- 

 stumps from forest-ground which is being cleared, as also 

 to the felling of trees, the removal of piles, and similar 

 operations. By the judicious application of these explo- 

 sive agents, tree-stumps may be removed with much 

 greater expedition than by manual labour, and the 

 experimental results collected by the author, with 

 special reference to this utilisation of dynamite, will be 

 found valuable to large landowners or to those engaged 

 in clearing land in new settlements. Many of the data 

 given by him in regard to this application of dynamite, 

 are confirmed by corresponding results obtained in this 

 country in extensive experiments with both gun-cotton 

 and dynamite. 



The special information with regard to the removal of 

 tree-stumps, &c., is prefaced by a concise account of the 

 properties of dynamite and of the methods of preparing 

 and exploding dynamite charges. Capt. Trauzl has 

 done well to direct special attention to the necessity for 

 care in handling dynamite, and especially in carrying out 

 the essential operation of thawing frozen dynamite, the 

 careless or ignorant performance of which has given rise 

 to many frightful accidents. It has unfortunately been the 

 practice with many whose interests are identified with 

 the sale of explosive preparations of this class, to lay undue 

 stress upon their great safety in transport and use, as 

 compared with gunpowder, and thus to foster, to a very 

 lamentable extent, the tendency to recklessness which is 

 specially prevalent among the class of people who have 

 to employ those explosive agents. 



Capt. Trauzl concludes with a chapter on the appli- 

 cation of dynamite to the breaking up of ground 

 for agricultural purposes. It appears doubtful whether 

 even the less violent forms of dynamite, the employment 

 of which is suggested for this purpose (for which a com- 

 paratively gradual explosive effect is most advantageous) 

 are likely to prove superior to gunpowder for this special 

 application. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



The Cnmea and Transcaucasia j being the Narrative of a 

 Journey in the Kouban, in Gouria, Georgia, Armenia, 

 Ossety, Imeritia, Swannety, and Mingrelia, and in the 

 Tauric Range. By Commander J. Buchan Telfer, 

 R.N. Maps and Illustrations. Two Vols. (London : 

 King and Co., 1876.) 



The author of this work took advantage of a three years' 

 residence in Southern Russia to make acquaintance with 

 the region to which his work refers, and which is pretty 

 adequately indicated in the title. He does not, however, 

 give a regular narrative of the visit he made to various 

 places at various times, but arranges all the information 

 he has collected along a route supposed to occupy ninety- 

 two days. In this way a large tract of ground is gone 

 over systematically, commencing at Sevastopol, visiting 

 the surrounding district, coasting and touching at several 

 places in the Crimea, crossing over to Circassia, coasting 

 south to Poti, and penetrating through Mingrelia, 

 Imeritia, and Georgia, south to Mount Ararat, and as far 

 north as the country of the Ossety and the Swannety. 

 Although no doubt many travellers pass through these 

 countries, yet they have really been little explored, and in 



Commander Telfer's work will be found much informa- 

 tion that, we are sure, will be new to the majority of 

 readers. His account of the Swannety, especially, a 

 curious mongrel, half savage people, to the north of 

 Mingrelia, will be somewhat of a surprise to many. But 

 the author has trusted not only to his own observations ; 

 he has taken evidently great pains to make himself master 

 of all that is known of the history and antiquities of the 

 region to which his work refers. This information he 

 judiciously mixes up with his own observations, and 

 the result is a work which may be regarded as a standard 

 book of reference for the extremely interesting districts to 

 which it refers. With its two good maps and its many 

 illustrations, and its substantial and attractively put to- 

 gether information, it ought to take a prominent place 

 among works of travel. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[TTie Editor does not hold himself responsible for of inions expressed 

 by his cotrespondents. Neither can he undertake to return^ 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. \ 



The Basking Shark 



In Nature, vol. xiv. p. 313, Prof. E. Perceval Wright gives 

 some account of the Basking Shark, with especial reference to 

 the curious pectinated appendages which lie along the branchial 

 arches of tliat huge fish. His paper is illustrated by a charac- 

 teristic woodcut from a drawing by Prof. Steenstrup, who had 

 recently described these appendages, and who finds that they 

 were alluded to by Bishop Gunnerus, about lOO years ago. 

 Prof. Wright also gives a very interesting original figure of one 

 of the branchial arches with the appendages attached. 



Prof. Wright's notice will be welcomed as a further contribu- 

 tion to the history of a very remarkable and little-known struc- 

 ture. In one point, however, his description will need correc- 

 tion, for he speaks of the appendages in question as composed of 

 a whalebone-like substance. They are nevertheless essentially 

 different from whalebone, and were it not for their whalebone- 

 like colour and for their pectinated 'arrangement, somewhat like 

 that of- the balene-plates of a whale, their comparison with 

 whalebone would scarcely have suggested itself. Though elastic, 

 they are hard and brittle, dnd when bent beyond a very limited 

 angle, they snap like a plate of steel. 



In consequence of the rarity of the opportunities afforded to 

 anatomists for the examination of the Basking Shark, the pecti- 

 nated appendages have hitherto received but little of the notice 

 which is due to such a singular anatomical character, and the 

 readers of Dr. Wright's communication might easily believe 

 that since the days of Bishop Gunnerus no one but Prof. Steen- 

 strup and himself had called attention to their existence. 



It is now more than thirty years ago that in a communication 

 to the Dublin Natural History Society I placed on record the 

 capture of a Basking Shark on the south coast of Ireland and 

 described the pectinated appendages as fully as the mutilated 

 state of the specimen would allow. Since then I have in 

 vain watched for an opportunity of further investigating the 

 anatomy of the great shark. 



The following is the abstract of this communication, published 

 at the time in Sdunders's Newsletter, which was then the vehicle 

 for the proceedings of the Society. It contains perhaps little 

 which has not been since noticed by Prof. Steenstrup and Prof. 

 Wright, but I may nevertheless be permitted to quote it in 

 order to show that the subject has not been so entirely ignored 

 as the readers of Dr. Wright's paper might suppose : — 



' ' A paper was read by Mr. AUman upon the recent occurrence 

 on the Irish coast of the great Basking Shark, Selachus maximus. 

 Guv. This fish had been entangled in the trammels of the 

 fishermen, and towed into the strand at Coolmain, on the 

 southern coast of the county of Cork, when it was almost imme- 

 diately cut in pieces by the country people with the expectation 

 of obtaining oil from it. . . . The principal object of Mr. 

 Allman's communication was to notice an interesting fact in the 

 anatomy of this fish, which had not been hitherto described. 

 The fact alluded to was the existence along each of the branchial 

 arches of a very curious and beautiful pectinated structure con- 

 sisting of a series of narrow elastic laminae arranged vrith great 



