March 30, 1876] 



NATURE 



435 



Rayleigh, and James Stuart? May there not be some unobvious 

 explanation of this phenomenon ? The whole report consists of 

 only forty-one lines. 



The Daily Nrws of Thursday last contains a letter from its 

 Challenoer correspondent, giving an account of the voyage from 

 Valparaiso to Monte Video between December lo and February 

 16. Most of the work of this cruise was done among the islands 

 on the South American coast between the Gulf of Penas and 

 the Straits of Magellan, and at the Falkland Islands. A con- 

 siderable number of soundings were taken, and successful hauls 

 made ; the naturalists landed on several islands and made col- 

 lections of specimens. This is the first part of the last section 

 from Valparaiso to England, when the work of the ship will be 

 completed. 



Mr. W. Spottiswoode, F.R.S., has been elected a corre- 

 sponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, in the 

 Geometrical Section. 



On the 2ist inst, a fine bronze statue of the late Lord Rosse, 

 erected in the principal street of Parsonstown, was unveiled. 

 It is described as one of the latest and best of Foley's works. 



Geological Time was the subject of Prof. McKenny Hughes' 

 lecture at the Royal Institution on Friday evening. He told the 

 audience that "A wise man before building a structure first 

 examined the nature of the foundation," and he then proceeded 

 to inquire into the nature of the evidence upon which the calcu- 

 lations have been made, as to the rate of denudation of valleys, 

 the wearing back of sea coasts, the growth of peat-mosses, 

 and the deposition of alluvium. He endeavoured to show by 

 means of examples of exceptional phenomena, happening at long 

 intervals and lasting for indefinitely short periods, that such cal- 

 culations were utterly fallacious, and concluded by comparing 

 our position to that of a " man in a cockle-shell boat, trying to 

 sound an almost unfathomable ocean, firstly, with too short a 

 line ; secondly, with too heavy a weight ; and lastly, with a 

 weight so light that he was perfectly unaware when he 

 touched the bottom." "To doubt," a great biologist tells 

 us, "is the first principle of modem science," but in life, as 

 in art, there are lights as well as shadows, and geological 

 time is so intimately connected with the history of life upon 

 our globe, and with the knowledge we possess of past denuda- 

 tions that have produced those missing leaves in the chapters of 

 the earth's life history that geologist's call unconformities, that 

 we venture to think that though we may not have reached the 

 bottom of the deeper oceans, yet we have certainly sounded some 

 of the most shallow seas. We therefore look forward with 

 pleasure to hearing another lecture from Prof. Hughes, in which 

 drawing on his abimdant resources, he will leave the negative 

 for the positive, the unknown for the known, and show us step 

 by step the lights modern science has already thrown on the 

 great cosmical, physical, and biological changes that are involved 

 in the term " Geological Time." 



At the meeting of the Vienna Geological Society, on March 7, 

 Mr. Haner read a letter dated Manila, Jan. 11, 1875, from Dr. 

 Drasche, who has been staying at the Philippine Islands since 

 December 8 last, and intends to remain there for about six 

 months longer for the purpose of investigating the active vol- 

 canoes and obtaining some knowledge of the geological composi- 

 tion of the island of Luzon. Four considerable excursions have 

 been already made — I. To the plain of Pampanga, with the 

 ascent of the Arayat and the Cordillera of Zambales. 2. The 

 southern shore of the Laguna de Bey, ascent of the extinct 

 volcano Maquilin, and a visit to the solfatara Tierra Blanca. 

 3. Ascent of the volcano TaeL 4. River Poray and Cueva 

 de San Mateo. The wide fertile plain in which Manila lies is 

 • composed of clay strata recently raised from the sea, abounding 



with such species of fossils as are still living in the neighbouring 

 sea. The plain is bordered by a range of hills, consisting of 

 pumice- tuff. On the higher mountains behind these there are 

 found trachytes and andesites, besides the tuffs. Of special 

 interest among these is an amphibole-andesite, containing a great 

 deal of olivine, that composes the Arayat It is the most basic 

 eruptive rock that Dr. Drasche has noted as yet on the isle of 

 Luzon, and belongs probably to a more ancient volcanic period. 

 On the Arayat, which had been hitherto considered as an extinct 

 volcano, neither eruptive matters nor any other signs of distinct 

 volcanic action are to be discovered. Near the River Poray 

 there were found, besides greenstone-trachytes and conglome- 

 rates, large masses of a white limestone, partly crystalline and 

 containing fossils, 'chiefly fragments of corals. When Dr. Drasche 

 despatched his letter he was about to undertake a journey of two 

 months to the wild northern regions of Luzon that have hardly 

 ever been visited by geologist as yet. 



Dr. Parkes, whose death at the comparatively early age 

 of fifty-six years we announced last week, was a man whose 

 loss will be felt in many circles of society ; he had con- 

 nections with manyj scientific bodies, and, we believe, 

 was universally known, beloved, and admired in the medi- 

 cal profession, for the scientific advancement of which he 

 did so much. He served the State in various capacities 

 throughout his life, but is specially known in connection with 

 the Army Medical School, which owes a great part of its eflS- 

 ciency to his exertions] and example. He had had a good 

 training in scientific investigation, and his application of the 

 principles of science to the conduct of research in his own 

 department led to valuable results. Dr. Parkes was elected 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861, and his contributions 

 to its proceedings have been numerous and of high value. 

 Among these we may mention his three papers on the Effects of 

 Diet and Increase in the Elimination of Nitrogen during Mus- 

 cular Action ; in 1870, 1872, 1874, he also contributed papers 

 on the Effects of Alcohol on the Human Body. Dr. Parkes, 

 indeed, seems to have been a model of what a scientific physi- 

 cian should be, and to this he joined a character that attracted 

 the love of all who knew him. 



Letters received in Sydney from Signor D'Albertis, the Ita- 

 lian naturalist, we learn from the Times, who has been for some 

 time resident on Yule Island, on the coast of New Guinea, give 

 further accounts of the belt of coast land, twenty to twenty-five 

 miles in width, of which he is able to speak, and so much of the 

 land beyond this limit as was visible from the summit of a hill 

 about 1,200 feet high. From this eminence he saw a large 

 extent of plains, indented with lagoons, with the River Amama 

 (the Hilda of the Basilisk) flowing downward from a northerly 

 direction to its junction with the Nicura, which discharges its 

 waters into the sea. Apparently, this stream is deep enough to 

 be navigable far into the interior, but its channel is seriously 

 obstructed by fallen timbers. He ascended the Nicura River for 

 a distance of eighteen or twenty miles, and found it fringed with 

 mangroves for the first ten miles, after which these gave place' to 

 splendid thickets of the Nipa palm, while the eucalyptus and the 

 grass tree flotirish at some distance from the stream. He crossed 

 the Amama several times, and describes it as flowing through a 

 large and fertile valley, apparently uninhabited, and well adapted 

 for pastoral purposes. Nowhere did he find the natives pos- 

 sessing any knowledge of gold, silver, or any other metal. He 

 confirms what has been said by Mr. Wallace and other tra- 

 vellers as regards the island being peopled by two races, the 

 one mentally and physically superior to the other ; the invaders 

 having driven the indigenous tribes into the interior. The 

 earlier inhabitants of New Guinea have darker skins than their 

 conquerors, are shorter in stature and their countenances are 

 more prognathous than those of the coast tribes. The western 



