Aug. 31, 1876] 



NATURE 



381 



groups — I. Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, Mongolia, including 

 Mantchuria and Corea, China Proper, and Japan ; 2. India Cis- 

 Gangetic and Trans-Gangetic, Afghanistan, Persia, and the Indo- 

 Chinese Archipelago ; 3. Turkey, including Arabia and Egypt. 

 The subjects to be treated in these seven seances are the carto- 

 graphy, ethnography, linguistic science, history, and literature of 

 the respective countries. The last two seances will be devoted 

 (i) to the questions relative to the archaeology and numismatics, 

 (2) to their religious and philosophical systems. An exhibition 

 of objects illustrative of the antiquities and actual present condi- 

 tion of the Eastern peoples will be a novel and interesting 

 feature. The Emperor of Russia has given to the St. Peters- 

 burg committee a sum of 75,000 roubles to defray the expenses 

 of the meeting. 



In connection with the remarks on the influence of tempera, 

 ture on the herrings, in last week's Nature (p. 352), we 

 have read with much interest, in the Scotsman of August 25, 

 the fishing report of the fishery district officer for North Sunder- 

 land. From this report it appears that for the week ending 

 Saturday the 19th, the sea thermometers furnished to the fisher- 

 men by the Scottish Meteorological Society indicated a tempera- 

 ture on that coast of from 58" to 59°, but that on Monday evening, 

 the 2 1st, when the nets were shot, the temperature had fallen to 

 55°, and this was the first night the herrings were caught. Since 

 then the shoals of herrings have been so dense that several crews 

 have sustained heavy loss by the weight of the herrings taking 

 the nets to the bottom. The writer states that all this season 

 during the warm weather the herrings were found low in the 

 nets from Northumberland to Peterhead, and it was only 

 when they came close upon the shore into shoal water, or from 

 fifteen to eighteen fathoms, that the herrings were got. He 

 thinks it premature to say that the Fraserburgh and Peterhead 

 fishing will be a short one, as probably an inshore|fishing, and a 

 heavy one, may yet be made, the herrings having been approach- 

 ing the shore at a depth below the nets. Evidently the remark- 

 able weather and fishings of this herring season will furnish 

 data for a contribution of no little interest to this difficult but 

 important inquiry. 



From a programme before us we gather that the exploration 

 of the Cresswell Caves, carried on last year by the Rev. J. M. 

 Mello, assisted by Mr. Heath, is now being conducted by a 

 committee, of which Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., is presi- 

 dent, and Prof. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., is secretary. The 

 superintendence of the work is in the hands of the Rev. J. M. 

 Mello, the secretary, and Mr. Heath. The results are now being 

 classified in Owens College, and we can confidently inform our 

 readers that when the report by Mr. Mello and the secretary is 

 presented to the Geological Society of London, it will add as 

 much to our present knowledge of palaeolithic man as the dis- 

 coveries in Brixham did to the knowledge of 1857. The names 

 of the members of the committee are a sufficient guarantee that 

 the work will be carried out as well as it can be. 



M. Leverrier has sent a circular to the several presidents of 

 departmental councils notifying them that the Director of Govern- 

 ment Telegraphy has agreed to send telegraphic messages to each 

 head town of the departments (eighty-seven in number) if a proper 

 organisation has been established to spread the warnings and to use 

 them in the proper way. Departmental councils wishing to esta- 

 blish agricultural warnings are consequently to communicate with 

 M. Leverrier, who will help them in doing so. The conditions 

 required for the establishment of a departmental meteorological 

 service are the appointment of a local meteorological board, 

 which is to modify, according to local circumstances, the general | 

 in'^ormation sent to the chief town, and to disseminate it in the 1 

 several districts. The state telegraph circulates, free of charge, 

 these local warnings. But in each district there must have 



been established a public barometer, thermometer, and rain- 

 gauges, regularly inspected, verified, constructed according to the 

 official pattern, and a competent local observer must have been 

 appointed. 



The Turkestan Messenger states that M. Severtsow proposes 

 to undertake, this autumn, a journey of exploration in the valley 

 of Fergana and the neighbouring mountains. Next summer he 

 will explore the Altai and the mountains of Southern Khokand, 

 pushing on in the autumn of 1877 as far as the Pamir. M. 

 Severtsow will be accompanied by an astronomer, a mining 

 engineer, and a botanist. 



The steamship, which intends to cross with preserved meat 

 from Buencs-Ayres, set sail from Rouen on August 23, M. 

 Tellier, the inventor of the system, being on board. The cold 

 is to be obtained in the hold of the ship by constant circulation 

 of air, refrigerated by contact with tubes in which methylic ether 

 is constantly evaporating. 



The Secretaries of the British Pharmaceutical Conference, 

 whose thirteenth annual meeting commences at Glasgow on 

 September 5, [have already issued a list of papers which are 

 promised for reading. We think it would be well if the British 

 Association took a leaf out of the book of the Pharmaceu- 

 tical Conference. 



THEfLords of the Committee of Council on Education being 

 of opinion that the subject of Physical Geography, as now 

 defined in the Science Directory, is not one towards instruction 

 in which the 'special aid of the Science and Art Department 

 should be continued, intimate that the outlines of the syllabus 

 of a subject which will take the place of physical geography, 

 are now under consideration. The subject (physiography) will 

 embrace those external relations and conditions of the earth 

 which form the common basis of the sciences of nautical astro- 

 nomy, geology, and biology, as treated in the Science Directory, 

 At the same time it is proposed to allow payments for the 

 next two years for those students who have already been under 

 instruction by any science teacher in physical geography, but 

 not for any others, nor for any examination held after May, 

 1878. 



From the American Journal of Microscopy we learn that 

 arrangements have been made with Prof, Huxley to deliver 

 three lectures in New York on the i8th, 20th, and 22nd of 

 September, the subject being " The Direct Evidence of Evo- 

 lution," 



Mr. F. J. Faraday, the Secretary of the Manchester Field 

 Naturalists' and Archaeologists' Society, has also been appointed 

 Secretary to the Manchester Aquarium. 



In a pamphlet recently issued by the Russian Government, 

 detailed statistics are given with reference to the damage done by 

 wolves throughout that empire. There are said to be not less 

 than 170,000 of these animals, which, during last year were the 

 cause of death to not less than 200 people ; whilst the destruc- 

 tion of cattle and poultry by them is enormous, almost as much 

 as by the cattle-plague. 



The number of visitors to the Loan Collection of Scientific 

 Apparatus during the week ending August 26 was as follows : — 

 Monday, 2,926; Tuesday, 2,4605 Wednesday, 323; Thursday, 

 305 ; Friday, 322 ; Saturday, 4,361 ; total, 10,697. 



M. Abel Transon, a Professor in the Polytechnic School, 

 Paris, has died at the age of seventy years. He was the author 

 of numerous memoirs in the Journal de Mat/iematitjues , edited 

 by Lionville. He had been successively a disciple of Saint 

 Simon and Fourier, and had attracted f.ublic notice by the part 

 he played in the propagation of these eccentric doctrines of social 

 reform. 



