436 



NATURE 



{March 30, 1S76 



side of New Guinea appears to be chiefly inhabited by the indi- 

 genous Papuans, and the eastern by a superior race. 



The mail steamer Congo arrived at Madeira on Saturday with 

 Lieut. Cameron on board ; his health is perfectly restored. The 

 Coni,o left Madeira the same afternoon, and is expected to arrive 

 in England during the present week. Sir H. RawJinson an- 

 nounced to the Geographical Society on Monday that it is pro- 

 posed that Lieut. Cameron should appear at the next meeting of 

 the Society, and as it is expected that the audience will be 

 unusually large, the meeting will be held in St. James's Hall on 

 Tuesday week, April li. 



At the last meeting of the Geographical Society Capt. Ander- 

 son, R.E., read a paper on "The North American Boundary 

 from the Lake of Woods to the Rocky Mountains." Capt. 

 Anderson was chief astronomer of the North American Boundary 

 Commission. 



The most important paper in the last ( February) part of the 

 Bulletin of the French Geographical Society is the first part of 

 Dr. Nachtigal's account of his travels in Central Africa in 1869-74. 

 M. H. Duveyrier has a paper on Lieut. Cameron's trans-African 

 journey, and the account of Abbe David's second exploring 

 journey in the West of China, and M. J. Codine's paper on the 

 Portuguese discoveries on the Western African coast in 1484-8 

 are continued. 



We have received the first number of La Revue Gtographique 

 Internationale, whose proposed fortnightly appearance we an- 

 nounced recently. It is a well-printed quarto of sixteen pages, 

 and starts with a very promising programme. The most 

 notable paper is on Ancient Geographical Monuments of the 

 Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, by M. E. Cortamberr, being a 

 notice of the principal maps of that time which have reached us. 

 Under the heading of " Courriers de I'Exterieur " letters from 

 correspondents in various parts of the world are published. 



Intelligence from Kasan announces that the German 

 Exploring Expedition to Western Siberia has arrived there. 



The state of Mount Vesuvius was reported by the Daily News' 

 correspondent on Sunday to have been unchanged. Prof. Palmieri 

 wrote from the Observatory on Saturday: "Smoke is still 

 abundant. There is a reflected glare at intervals from the fire 

 within the crater. No lava has yet made its appearance." No 

 immediate eruption is, however, expected. 



The annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute was com- 

 menced on Tuesday in London, and will be concluded on 

 Friday. The Bessemer Medal for 1875 '^^ presented to Mr. 

 R. F. Mushet. To-day the Council will be entertained at 

 dinner by the Lord Mayor, at the Mansion House. 



M. Friedel, an able mineralogist, has been appointed Pro- 

 fessor to the Museum of Natural History of Paris, to fill the place 

 vacated by the retirement of M. Delafosse. It is to M. Dela- 

 fosse that is due the admirable arrangement of the Gallery of 

 Mineralogy in the Museum. 



The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education have 

 given directions for a course of instruction in Botany to be 

 delivered at South Kensington, commencing about the middle 

 of June, 1876. This course willjbe given by Prof. Thiselton 

 Dyer, M.A., B.Sc, &c. It will consist of a daily lecture, with 

 practical instruction in the Laboratory, and will extend over 

 about eight weeks. A limited number of Science Teachers, or 

 of persons intending to become Science Teachers, will be 

 admitted to the course free of expense. They will also receive 

 their travelling expenses to and from London, together with a 

 maintenance allowance of 30^ per week while attending the 

 course. The hours of attendance will be from 10 A.M. to 4 or 

 5 P-M. 



A "Victoria and Albert Palace Association" has just 

 been formed. It is intended, if the consent of the Govern- 

 ment can be obtained, to build a palace on the banks of 

 the Thames, near Battersea Park, for the "health, recreation, 

 and instruction of the metropolis," combining " the amusements 

 of the Crystal Palace, the pleasures of the Albert Hall, with the 

 instruction and benefits furnished by the Kensington Museum." 

 It is hoped that the palace will be opened on May i, next year. 



An International Exhibition is to be held in Paris in 1878 or 

 1879 at latest. 



The Bulletin de la Sociiti des Sciencei d' Alger for 1875 con- 

 tains interesting papers on the ethnology of the Barbary races, 

 by M. J. A. N. Perrier ; and the geography, ethnography, 

 geology, zoology, and archa2ology of Algeria, by Prof Jourdan. 

 Meteorological tables are appended, giving the observations 

 made from three to five times daily, the barometric observations 

 being made unfortunately with an aneroid, by which their value 

 is much lessened. 



A COURSE of Twelve Lectures on Geology, free to the public, 

 will be delivered in the large hall of the London Middle Class 

 School, Cowper Street, Finsbury, on Tuesday and Friday 

 evenings, at eight o'clock, commencing April 4, by Dr. W. B. 

 Carpenter, C.B., F.R.S. 



Prof. Rubenson has published in the Transactions of the 

 Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, a discussion of the 

 rainfall of Sweden, with five plates, from the observations made 

 at twenty-nine stations from 1S60 to 1872. From this discus- 

 sion we learn that Go:eborg is the wettest, and Kalmar the 

 driest station ; that in advancing from S.W. to N.E. the line of 

 maximum precipitation passes from Goteburg to near Gefle, and 

 that as regards seasonal distribution, the maximum is assimilated 

 to that of continental Europe, occurring generally in July and 

 August, and the minimum to that of the eastern part of Great 

 Britain, south of the Grampians, occurring in March and ApriL 

 Two valuable tables are added, one giving the monthly means 

 at places at which long-continued observations have been made, 

 and the other the annual averages for the twelve decennial 

 periods, beginning with 175 1. 



In the Bulletin International of the Observatory of Paris, P, 

 Denza gives an interesting notice of a comparison of the baro- 

 meters at fifty-five of the Italian stations, made by him during 

 1870-75. The comparison was made in each case with the normal 

 barometer of the Observatory at Moncalieri, whose error had 

 been ascertained by comparison with the standard of the Paris 

 Observatory through that of the Observatory at Turin. 



We have received the meteorological observations made at 

 the Naval Hydrographic Office at Pola for January last. This 

 number is the first of a new series giving the hourly obser- 

 vations of the barometer, thermometer, and anemometer, in- 

 cluding both direction and force of wind, together with the daily 

 and hourly averages for the month. The position of Pola on 

 the comparatively confined basin of the Adriatic gives a peculiar 

 value to these hourly observations. 



In the Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society appear,; 

 among other matters, a paper on the rainfall at Calcutta for the 

 twenty-eight years ending with 1874, by Mr. R. Strachan, in 

 which the main facts are carefully summarised and tabulated 

 in a useful form ; a description of a self-regulating atmometer, 

 by Mr. S. H. Miller ; and a short paper by Mr. William Mar- 

 riott, on the reduction of barometric observations, with a table 

 for combining the corrections for index error, temperature, and 

 altitude. The table will facilitate the work of reduction, and i; 

 sufficiently exact for most practical purposes for which such 

 tables are required, and may be used in preparing observa- 

 tions and means for the press, provided the observations and 

 means themselves be also printed uncorrected for height. 



