Dec. 9, 1875] 



NATURE 



109 



Conjunction in R.A. Oct 12, 1605, at oh. 31m. 44S.G.M.T. 



R.A 197° 41' 51" 



Moon's hourly motion in R. A. ... ... 35 37 



Sun's „ „ „ 2 19 



Moon's declination ... ... 6 40 28 S. 



Sun's 7 31 33 S. 



Moon's b curly motion in Declination ... 10 50 S. 



Sun's „ „ I. •• .. o 56 S. 



Moon's horizontal parallax ... ... 59 21 



Sun's „ „ 9 



Moon's true semi-diameter ... ... 16 io"4 



Sun's ,, „ 16 3-9 



The sidereal time at Greenwich mean noon Oct. 12 

 was i3h. 24m. io'9s., and the equation of time 13m. 29s. 

 additive to mean time. The eclipse would be total and 

 central with the sun on the meridian, in longitude ii"^ 18' 

 W., and latitude 52° 26' N. For Naples, a direct calcu- 

 lation gives a total eclipse, the sun at an altitude of 31°. 

 Beginning of totality at 2h. i8m. i8s., ending at 2h. 

 19m. 28s., mean time at Naples, or duration im. los., which 

 appears to correspond fairly with Kepler's statement that 

 the sun was " covered for a short time " only. 



The Minor Plaxet.s.— M. Stephan, Director of the 

 Observatory at Marseilles, announces the discovery of 

 another small planet by M. Borelly, on December i. 

 Right ascensional midnight, 65° 31' j north polar dis- 

 tance, 66° 2' ; motion towards north-east, thirteenth mag- 

 nitude. Supposing all the recently detected minor planets 

 to be new, this will be No. 157. The last circular of the 

 " Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch," however, has a sug- 

 gestion by Prof. Tietjen that No. 152, discovered by M. 

 Paul Henry at Paris on November 2, may prove to be 

 the same planet which was found by M. Borelly, 1868, 

 May 29, and which received the name Dike. No. 152 

 passed the ascending node soon after noon on November 

 3, the geocentric longitude at the time being 41° 54', 

 and it was not far from opposition, which is so far favour- 

 able to the supposition of identity with Dike, with 

 ascending node in 41° 50' according to the most probable 

 orbit that could be obtained from the short course of 

 observations in 1 868. Dike was estimated of thirteenth 

 magnitude, yet in 1868 was observed within 10° from 

 perihelion ; in ascending node the planet would be less 

 than 29" from aphelion ; No. 152 is called eleventh mag- 

 nitude, a difference, considering the respective orbital 

 positions, which is adverse to identity. The unfavourable 

 weather has prevented observations siifificient for a proper 

 calculation of elements for No. 152. Should this planet 

 prove to be identical with No. 99 (Dike), the numbers from 

 153 onwards will of course require to be diminished by one, 

 and the actual number of small planets, including M. 

 Borelly's late discovery, will stand at 1 56. 



THE MAMMALS OF Y ARK AND* 



THE unfortunate death of the lamented naturalist, 

 Stoliczka — one of the most promising members of 

 the Indian Geological Survey — must be fresh in the 

 memory of many of our readers. After a successful cam* 

 paign in Yarkand in company with Sir D. Forsyth's late 

 expedition, he did not live to return to India, but perished 

 of exhaustion amongst the snows of the Himalayas. We 

 are pleased to hear that his Indian friends have under- 

 taken the preparation of a work intended as a memorial 

 of him, which will embrace an account of the extensive 

 collections of natural history amassed during his last 

 journeys. Mr. W. T. Blanford has just issued a prepara- 

 tory- list of the mammals of which specimens were obtained 

 in Yarkand and the adjoining countries. They are refer- 

 able to forty-two species, mostly belonging to groups 

 characteristic of the elevated districts of the Palasarctic 



* "List of Mammalia collected by the late Dr. Stoliczka when attached 

 to the Embassy under Sir D. Forsyth, in Kashmir, Ladik, Eastern Tur- 

 ^staj, and Walchau, with descriptions of new species." By W. T. Blanford, 

 F.R.S., F.Z.S. ^Joum. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xliv. p. 105, et segg.) 



region. No new types were discovered, but amongst the 

 novelties are species of Field-voles, Hares, and Pikas 

 i,Lago}nys), all very distinctive of the regions traversed by 

 the expedition, and adding largely to our knowledge of 

 the fauna of Western Tibet and Eastern Turkestan. The 

 larger mammals were originally better represented, but 

 after Dr, Stoliczka's death, many specimens appear to 

 have been removed from the collection. Of a fine series 

 of twenty-two wild sheep from Kashgar, only eleven are 

 now left, and not one of these has fine horns. Moreover 

 there remain skeletons of wild sheep and ibex in the col- 

 lection, of which the heads have entirely disappeared. 

 Mr. Godwin Austen has invited pubhc attention to these 

 unpleasant facts in another column of this journal. One 

 would have supposed that in the case of a naturalist thus 

 perishing in the performance of his arduous duties, no 

 pains could have been too great to protect the specimens 

 in procuring which he had sacrificed his life. On the 

 contrary, however, advantage appears to have been taken 

 of his untimely death to rob his collection of the choicest 

 specimens. We can only trust that, attention having 

 been called to the fact, restitution will be made, and the 

 missing heads and horns promptly restored to the muti- 

 lated specimens now deposited in the Imperial Museum 

 at Calcutta. 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN KEN- 

 TUCKY AND INDIANA 



T N January last Mr. Putnam laid before the Society of 



-*• Natural History of Boston, U.S., an extended account 

 of his recent archaeological researches in Kentucky and 



Indiana, in which he had examined several rock- shelters, 

 caves, mounds, and circular graves. He called attention 

 to the numerous ancient fortifications in the Ohio valley, 

 and gave a description of two which he had visited in 



Indiana. These fortifications are generally earthworks, 

 many of them of great extent ; but there have been 

 several discovered in which immense walls of stone have 

 been used, extending in one case to] several hundred feet 

 in length, and to nearly ten feet in height ; whilst in 

 another instance a wall about sevent)'-five feet in height 

 had been erected to fill a gap in the othei"wise nearly pre- 

 cipitous natural walL The stones of these walls were 

 simply laid, one overlapping another, so as to break 

 joints, without cement of any kind. Mr. Putnam exhi- 

 bited to the meeting a number of human skulls and other 

 bones found imder various conditions, and pointed out 

 that while the skulls of the New England Indians were 

 long and narrow and belonged to the dolicJiocephali, those 

 from the mounds, the circular graves, the stone graves, 

 and the caves were of the short, broad and high type, or 

 the brachicephali. In the caves, however, there were two, 

 if not three, classes of burials, and at least two well- 

 marked forms of skull. The skulls he found in graves 

 protected wdth slabs of stone were all of a form very 

 closely resembling the high, short and broad crania of the 

 mound builders ; those of the numerous skeletons from 

 the caves were characterised by the marked depression of 

 the frontal bone and the equally marked concavity on the 

 anterior part of the parietals ; and the skulls from the 

 circular graves were distinguished from the others by 

 their decided width and shortness, and the more vertic^ 

 occipital portion . 



A series of shin-bones was also exhibited to show the 

 various degrees of flattening, and to confirm the opinion 

 of Mr, Busk and others that platycfumism cannot be 

 taken as an important race character. 



Of a number of circular graves which formerly existed 

 on a hill near Glasgow, one, having escaped the plough, 

 had been carefully opened. It was a circle about four feet 

 in diameter, and had been dug to a depth of three feet, 

 where a floor had been formed with pieces oi shale 

 brought from a distance of about a quarter of a mile 



