Februarv 24, 18 p8] 



NATURE 



401 



that mere juxtaposition with fire as a ceremonial purification 

 may have been in some cases considered equally efficacious with 

 the actual incineration of the bones. The Marquis de Nadaillac 

 has brought together, with admirable clearness and brevity, a 

 mass of negative evidence proving that no distinctive significance 

 can be proved to attach to either of the two great methods of 

 burial ; indeed, in places like Hallstadt the confusion seems 

 absolute. 



The people who built these mounds must have been a race 

 with very little stone, and almost without copper. Of this metal 

 only a chisel and a few ornaments were found, among the latter 

 being a ring still in its place upon a finger-joint. Their pottery 

 was well represented, though lacking in diversity of type. It 

 was ornamented by cord-marking, by incised and painted 

 designs, and by complicated stamped patterns, some of which 

 give the impression of having been derived from the grain of 

 wooden ware, while others appear to owe their origin to life 

 forms. All the types discovered are copiously illustrated in the 

 plates at the end of the book, and in the woodcuts inserted in 

 the text. The tobacco-pipes discovered differed from those 

 found in Florida, and a mortuary earthenware with a ready-made 

 perforation at the base was non-existent. 



Of the other objects found associated with bodies, those made 

 of shell were the most numerous. They included various im- 

 plements, some possibly agricultural, drinking cups, ornamented 

 gorgets, and large numbers of beads, the latter hardly ever 

 showing traces of contact with fire. Ol^jects of stone and chert 

 were less numerous, but among them may be mentioned celts, 

 hammers, lance and arrow heads, and discoidal stones smaller 

 than those used in the game of Chtnigke, but probably employed 

 in a game of a similar kind. The small pebbles, frequently 

 found in little heaps near human remains, are supposed by Mr. 

 Moore to be the contents of rattles, the turtle-shell covering of 

 which has decayed away. Bone pins were of frequent occur- 

 rence ; and animals' jaws ground away on the lower part, 

 leaving a flat surface, were discovered in a few instances. Almost 

 everything made of wood had entirely disappeared. What the 

 art in wood of the mound-builders may have been we must 

 conjecture from the discoveries made in the Florida Key dwell- 

 ings, where the peat has been instrumental in arresting decom- 

 position. 



The south-eastern corner of the United States is an area of 

 peculiar ethnographical interest, owing to its proximity to the 

 greater Antilles and to South America : it is fortunate that its 

 exploration has been entrusted to such competent hands, and 

 that the results are published in so admirable a manner. 



A JUBILEE VOLUME OF ''WIEDEMANN'S 



annalen:' 



/^N December 11, 1847, Gustav Wiedemann was made Doctor 

 ^^ of Philosophy of Berlin University with a thesis ' ' De Novo 

 quodam Corpore ex Urea producto." To celebrate the fiftieth 

 anniversary of that event, the publishers of Wiedemann's 

 Annalen der Physik und Chemie conceived the happy idea of 

 printing a jubilee volume composed of special papers by the 

 more regular contributors. The result is a collection of fifty- 

 seven papers by a number of eminent men, including Kohl- 

 rausch, Nernst, Ostwald, Quincke, Drude, Warburg, E. Wiede- 

 mann, and others of equal distinction. 



Four years ago, the golden jubilee of the Annalen was cele- 

 brated with a retrospect by Hermann von Helmholtz. These 

 annals, with their lineal ancestors, Poggewiorff^ s and Gilbert's 

 Annalen, cover over a century of German physical science, and 

 are a noble monument to German intellectual activity. No 

 better jubilee gift could have been made to the veteran editor 

 than this collection of choice fruits of his colleagues' labour. 

 We subjoin some extracts which will indicate the nature and 

 value of the work offered, regretting that space does not permit 

 of more. 



Reversal of the valve action in discharge tubes, by E. Hagen- 

 bach. When the gas in a discharge tube is only slightly 

 exhausted, a conduction current is established at a certain 

 pressure. At higher exhaustions a radiation of electricity sets 

 in, chiefly from the kathode. This radiation takes place more 

 easily from a point kathode than from a surface at the lower 

 pressures, while at higher pressures the reverse is the case. — 

 Torsion and magnetism, by P. Drude. The explanation of the 

 connection between torsion and magnetism must be based upon 



NO. 1478, VOL. 57] 



the different amounts of internal friction encountered in longi- 

 tudinal and transverse deformations respectively, giving rise to a 

 peculiar orientation of the magnetic molecules. — The law of 

 Wiedemann and Franz, by Y. A. Schulze. This law maintains 

 that the ratio between the thermal and electric conductivities is 

 approximately the same for all metals. The author tested this 

 for iron and steel rods, and found them to exceed the ratio, but 

 not by so much as has been alleged by previous investigators. — 

 Theory of galvanic polarisation, by A. Oberbeck. The deter- 

 mination of the galvanic polarisation in the original circuit is not 

 an impossibility, as has been alleged. It may be closely ap- 

 proached along several lines. The capacity of a cell is a 

 function of the polarisation. It becomes infinite when a certain 

 superior limiting value of the polarising force is reached which 

 produces the maximum polarisation. After that the polarised 

 cell behaves like a constant cell opposed to the main current. — 

 Magnetic after-effect, by I. Klemencic. Instead of disappear- 

 ing in strong fields, the magnetic after-effect, or the " viscous 

 magnetic hysteresis," goes on increasing, but its percentage in 

 the total magneli-sation becomes less. — An acoustic thermometer 

 for high and low temperatures, by G. Quincke. This ther- 

 mometer is based upon the interference of a direct and reflected 

 sound-wave of known length, produced by a standard tuning- 

 fork. The wave travels along a tube surrounded by the tem- 

 perature to be measured. A hearing tube is moved to and fro 

 within the interference tube until a node is reached , indicated by 

 the silence of the hearing tube. The displacement of the latter 

 is read on a divided scale, and immediately indicates the tem- 

 perature required. — Excitation of stationary waves by electric 

 spark discharges, by F. Melde. An embroiderer's "gold 

 thread" is made to vibrate between the knobs of a battery of 

 jars, somewhat on the principle of the electrostatic cells. — Mag- 

 netic susceptibility and atomic magnetism, by G. Jager and S. 

 Meyer. The authors have found an interesting new relation 

 between the paramagnetic metals. They investigated the mag- 

 netic susceptibilities of the chlorides, sulphates, and nitrates of 

 iron, nickel, cobalt, and manganese in aqueous solution at 

 various temperatures. The metal was found to be the decisive 

 element, the acid being without influence. The magnetic 

 susceptibilities per gramme-atom of nickel, cobalt, iron, and 

 manganese were as 2 : 4 : 5 : 6. The gap between 2 and 4 is 

 probably filled up by chromium. — Stratified discharge in the 

 open air, by Max Toepler. The author has succeeded in ob- 

 taining a distinctly stratified discharge at atmospheric pressures, 

 which recalls the stratified anode light, by interposing in the path 

 of the spark a semi-conducting plateof dry slate, granite, syenite, 

 or basalt, and ballasting the discharge with a heavy water re- 

 sistance. Between the bright surface on the kathode and the 

 first stratum a sharp black space is seen, usually very narrow, 

 which is analogous to the black kathode space, and tends ta 

 show that there is no fundamental difference between ordinary 

 and vacuum discharges. — Magnetic images, by H. Jaeger. The 

 method of magnetic images may be extended to the ca.se of a 

 constant current traversing a conductor in the neighbourhood of 

 an iron plate. The field created by the current and by the iron 

 plate is the same as if another conductor were placed at the 

 geometrical image of the first conductor in the iron plate, and 

 the latter were removed. — Heating effect of Rontgen rays, by 

 E. Dorn. The author measured the heating effect produced on 

 sheets of platinum or palladium contained in a glass vessel with 

 an aluminium window. The vessel communicated with a 

 Toepler pressure gauge, and the heat was measured by the ex- 

 pansion of the gas. The expansion obtained is much larger 

 than would be accounted for by a dissociation of the gas. — 

 Electroscopic detection of electric waves, by A. Toepler. De- 

 scribes a modified electroscopic arrangement of great sensitive- 

 ness. Two upright metallic cylinders stand in a box with walls 

 of glass and ebonite. One of the rods is connected with a recti- 

 linear resonator, the other is put to earth. Any wave incident 

 upon the resonator which produces sparks, sets in violent motion 

 a fine aluminium wire suspended between the two cylinders, 

 which conveys the discharge from one to the other. The 

 aluminium wire is attached to a steel needle, which is just held 

 suspended by its point by a permanent magnet. — Counter 

 electromotive force of aluminium, by V. von Lang. It is well 

 known that in an aluminium-carbon electrolytic cell a current 

 with a voltage under 22 will only pass in the direction carbon- 

 aluminium, and this has been utilised for the electro-chemical 

 rectification of an alternate current. Similarly, in an arc with 

 two aluminium electrodes, a counter E.M.F. of some 19 volts is 



