302 



NATURE 



[January 27, 1898 



remark books of H.M. ships from 1830-94. Although charts 

 for each month have been prepared, it has been thought advis- 

 able to publish four only, viz, for the representative months 

 January, April, July and October, as the amount of inform- 

 ation is still deficient in many places unfrequented by ships. 

 The charts show the average direction of the currents and the 

 maximum and minimum velocity which may be expected. In 

 the case of the Japan Stream, which runs almost uninterruptedly 

 to the north-eastward, the velocity sometimes reaches from 

 seventy to seventy-five miles a day. It is seen that there is 

 generally a south-easterly current down the west coast of North 

 America, and a northerly current along the coast of South 

 America, and that these two streams are deflected near the 

 equator to form the equatorial current. 



We have just received the general report of the operations of 

 the Survey of India Department for the year ending September 

 30, 1896. The report states that the most interesting and 

 important feature of the year's work is the completion of the 

 telegraphic determination of the difference of longitude between 

 Greenwich and Karachi, undertaken with the view of obtaining 

 a definite value for the longitude of Madras (see p. 284). The 

 tidal observations appear to have been regularly and successfully 

 prosecuted. Self-registering gauges are maintained at thirteen 

 stations, and during the year a new tidal observatory was erected 

 at Suez, while preliminary surveys have been made at Perim, 

 Port Albert Victor, and Porbandar, with the view of adding 

 these places to the list of stations. The error of predicted time 

 of high and low water at those open coast stations which are 

 provided with self-registering gauges did not exceed fifteen 

 minutes in about 65 per cent, of the observed tides, while on 

 about 95 per cent, the predicted height did not differ from the 

 observed by more than eight inches. At the riverain stations, 

 the same amount of accuracy in both time and height was 

 reached in 57 and 60 per cent, respectively, but the time of low 

 water was much less certain than that of high. The bulk of the 

 volume is taken up with details concerning the progress of the 

 various surveys, and the preparation of the results for public 

 use. These surveys, of various kinds, extend over a wide area, 

 and bring home to us the immense amount of work accomplished 

 by the department. Here one may read some details of the 

 delimitation of the frontier between British territory and Afghan, 

 and a few pages further on trace the work of demarcation of the 

 Burma-Siam boundary. The interests of the department are 

 wide enough to embrace, and the machinery sufficiently elastic 

 to produce, either a series of sun pictures or illustrations of the 

 action of cobra poison on the blood. 



The remarkable shark, Chlamydoselachus anguinens, whose 

 tricuspid teeth and other structural peculiarities render it unique 

 among recent fishes, has been so rarely obtained that the dis- 

 covery of a specimen in the Varanger Fjord is a matter of con- 

 siderable interest. Up to the year 1889 only thirteen specimens 

 of this reanimated Devonian fossil had been secured by 

 naturalists, and all of these came from Japanese waters — the last 

 abode of so many primitive oceanic types. In 1889, however, 

 the Prince of Monaco captured a small Chlamydoselachus off 

 Madeira, and now Mr. R. Collett provides a description of an 

 unusually fine and complete specimen caught off" the coast of 

 Norway rather more than a year ago. His memoir contains a 

 history of all previous records, and is illustrated by an excellent 

 photograph of the fish taken soon after its capture. 



The reason why spiral growths in nature should sometimes 

 take one direction and sometimes another, is often difficult to 

 determine. Mr. George Wherry recently described a few of these 

 puzzles in nature growth before the Cambridge Medical Society. 

 Referring to shells he pointed out that the ancient whelk, now 

 in fossil forni {Fusus antiqiius) is usually left-handed, while in 

 . the present generation of common whelks the shell is always 



NO. 1474, VOL. 57] 



right-handed. Nevertheless, among the right-handed shells 

 there is occasionally found a specimen of a modern whelk of 

 the ancestral type going a contrary curve. What was there at 

 work in the whelk when the soft young creature began life to 

 give it the twist to left or right ? and why are the ancient whelks 

 found going the "wrong" way? Similar questions may be 

 asked of other natural torsions. For instance, spiral growth 

 in plant-life is a subject of bewildering interest, and though 

 worked at by so many great observers, from John Hunter 

 to the Darwins and De CandoUe and the modern Germans, 

 there are still many phenomena wholly unexplained. The 

 hop and honeysuckle take the form of a left-handed screw ; 

 the majority of twining plants, however, twine like a right- 

 handed screw — i.e. from the left below to the right above when 

 the plant and its support are looked at from the exterior. A 

 twining plant will make its spiral curves without a support if 

 the terminal be merely steadied by a thread and weight over a 

 pulley so that the apex of the shoot is drawn vertically upwards, 

 but a free horizontally sweeping shoot will make no spiral turns 

 at all. There are also other spiral growths which present 

 many points of interest, and sometimes the value of a twist in a 

 particular direction can be easily understood. Mr. Wherry 

 points out that the horns of the koodoo, for example, are twisted 

 in a right-handed spiral on the left side and a left-handed 

 spiral on the right side. The result is that when the animal 

 rushes through the bush the horns thrown back act as a wedge 

 and drive aside the branches as the koodoo dashes through the 

 thicket. With regard to hoofs and nails, it is astonishing under 

 the influence of moisture and absence of friction how these 

 organs will curve and grow spirally. 



The cause of death by electric shocks has been experimentally 

 investigated by Prof. T. Oliver and Dr. R. A. Bolam, who 

 describe their methods and results in the British Medical Tournal. 

 The increasing employment of electricity within the last few 

 years has demonstrated, by the accidents to workmen engaged 

 in its generation and distribution, that danger is involved. Two 

 opinions are held as to the cause of death in such cases, viz. : 

 (i) that death is due to failure of the respiratory centre (d'Ar- 

 sonval) ; (2) that it is due to sudden arrest of the heart's action. 

 From the appearance presented by the internal organs after 

 death, some physiologists have maintained that death is due to 

 asphyxia. But other evidence suggests that death is not due to 

 failure of the respiratory centre. In the experiments carried 

 out by Prof. Oliver and Dr. Bolam, an alternating current 

 was used, and death appears to have resulted from heart rather 

 than respiratory failure. Whilst in some of the experiments death 

 seemed to be due to contemporaneous cessation of the respira- 

 tion and heart's action, yet in most there was ample demonstra- 

 tion that the organ first to be arrested was the heart, for 

 breathing was observed to continue rhythmically for a brief 

 period, and then irregularly and feebly before stopping. There 

 is reason to believe that only in the case of very high voltages 

 with currents considerably above the potential usually required 

 to kill the animal is there simultaneous stoppage of heart and 

 respiration. Primary cessation of the heart's beat is, without 

 doubt, the general rule, while under no circumstances did the 

 authors succeed in causing primary arrest of respiration followed 

 by failure of the heart. It follows from this that resuscitation in 

 apparent death from electric shock is made much more difficult 

 than if the fatal result were brought about by respiratory failure. 

 With reference to these experiments. Dr. Lewis Jones calls 

 attention, in the Electrical Review, to a similar investigation 

 carried out by him in 1895, using a continuous current. 



The first volume is announced of the new " Flora of the 

 Pyrenees," by the late P. Bubani, edited by Prof. Penzig, of 

 Genoa. It is published by Hoepli, of Milan, and will be 

 followed by three other volumes. 



