i6: 



JVA TURE 



\_yune 13. 1889 



;nnd eventually picks it out), while she cannot be taught 

 to distinguish any of the others, I conclude that her 

 failure in this respect is not due to any want of intelligence, 

 but to some deficiency in her powers of colour-perception. 



NOTES. 



The annual meeting for the election of Fellows of the Royal 

 "Society was held at the Society's rooms in Burlington House, on 

 June 6, when the following gentlemen were elected : — ^John 

 Aitken, Dr. Edward Ballard, Alfred Barnard Basset, Horace T. 

 Brown, Latimer Clark, Prof. David Douglas Cunningham, 

 Lazarus Fletcher, William Bolting Hemsley, Charles Thomas 

 Hudson, Prof Thomas McKenny Hughes, Edward B. Poulton, 

 Prof. William Johnson Sollas, Charles Todd, Herbert Tomlinson, 

 Prof. Gerald F. Yeo. 



The statue of Le Verrier is to be unveiled in the court of the 

 Paris Observatory on June 25. 



Herr Victor Apfelbeck, the entomologist, will shortly 

 start, in behalf of the Bosnian Government, on a journey of 

 /research in Herzegovina. Last year he discovered in Southern 

 Bosnia five new sp2cies of eyeless cave beetles, and his investi- 

 gations excited much interest among entomologists. 



According to the British Medical Journal, the programme 

 of the Leeds meeting of the British Medical Association in 

 August next "is developing in such manner as to afford the 

 ample promise of a meeting of great scientific as well as social 

 interest, and one which will be worthy of the traditions of this 

 great medical centre." ;; 



Mr. John Frederick La Trobe Bateman, F.R. S., died 

 on Monday morning at Moor Park, Farnham, at the age of 

 seventy-nine, after a severe illness. Mr. Bateman was well 

 known as the engineer who supplied Glasgow with water from 

 Loch Katrine. 



The death of Eugen Ferdinand von Homeyer, the eminent 

 ■ ornithologist, is announced. He had been President of the 

 Ornithological Society at Berlin, was the author of several 

 works, and possessed the largest existing collection of European 

 birds. He was born at Herdin, near Anklam, in 1809, and 

 died at Stolp, in Prussia, on June i. 



Information has been received in Berlin of the death of 

 Dr. Bernhard Weissenborn, the zoologist to the German 

 •Cameroons Expedition, from a fever contracted through the 

 hardships of the work and the bad climate. ; 



German papers record the death of Dr. C. Jessen, the 

 naturalist, formerly Professor at Greifswald, and lately at the 

 Berlin University. He was sixty-eight years of age. 



At a meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society on Tuesday, 

 - a paper on orchids was read by Mr. H. Veitch. In the dis- 

 cussion which followed the reading of this paper, various 

 speakers referred with regret to the death of Prof Reichenbach, 

 and to the strange provisions of his will, by which botanists of 

 the present generation will be prevented from studying his fine 

 • collection of orchids. Mr. Thiselton Dyer invited those inter- 

 ested in the nomenclature of orchids to put themselves in com- 

 munication with the Kew Herbarium, and it was stated that 

 Messrs. Veitch and Sander could furnish many duplicates of the 

 examples which were to be locked up under the will of Reichen- 

 bach. Sir T. Lawrence spoke of an orchid which had been in 

 'this country to his knowledge for fifty years. 



The June number of the Kcw Bulletin opens with an instruc- 

 tive paper on Jamaica cogwood. This is one of the most valuable 

 timber-trees in Jamaica, yet until recently its flowers and fruit 

 had not been received in this country, so that, as the writer 

 points out, the position of the plant in botanical classification 

 I had been left in doubt. Good herbarium specimens, including 

 I flowers and fruit, have lately been sent to Kew by Mr. W. 

 Fawcett, Director of Public Gardens and Plantations in Jamaica; 

 and from this material Prof Oliver has determined the cogwood 

 to be a species of Zizyphus, a genus not previously recorded from 

 Jamaica. Zizyphus is the Jujube or Lotus genus of Rhaninccc, 

 and the fruits of several species, such as Z. vulgaris and Z. 

 Ju/ulia, have an agreeable flavour, and are commonly eaten- 

 Besides this paper, there are contributions on cocoa-nut coir from 

 Lagos, a wheat pest in Cyprus, patchouli, P'u-erh tea, and 

 agricultural industries at the Gambia. 



We take the following from Allen's Indian Mail: — "The 

 appointment of Mr. A. Hartless from the Royal Gardens, Kew, 

 to fill the vacancy in the staff of the Botanic Gardens at Shippur 

 has given much satisfaction. This gentleman is a first-class 

 botanist, and will no doubt contribute hereafter many original 

 and important observations on the flora of India." 



In addition to the papers announced to be read at the ordinary 

 meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society on June 19, a com- 

 munication will be made on the recent thunderstorms, and a 

 number of photographs of lightning will be exhibited. 



A violent shock of earthquake, accompanied by local sub- 

 terranean rumblings, was felt at Brest on June 7 at a quarter 

 past one o'clock, its direction being from north to south. The 

 shock is said to have resembled the vibration caused by the firing 

 of a gun of large calibre. On the same day a shock of earthquake 

 was felt at New Bedford, in Massachusetts. 



On April 13 and 14 a volcanic eruption occurred on Oshima 

 Island, Japan. It is said that upwards of 300 houses were 

 destroyed, and that 170 persons were killed by being buried 

 beneath the ruined buildings. 



According to the Japan Weekly Mail, an earthquake of a 

 most unusual character was recorded at 2h. 7m. 41s. p.m., on 

 Thursday, April 18, in the Seismological Observatory of the 

 Imperial University, Tokio. The peculiarity lies, not in its vio- 

 lence, but in the extreme slowness of its oscillations. The 

 beginning of the shock had all the chai-acteristics of the ordinary 

 earthquake, but gradually the motion augmented, until at a 

 certain stage of the shock it reached 17 millimetres, but the 

 ground swayed so gently that the house did not vibrate visibly, 

 nor were the senses alive to it. It took from four to seven . 

 seconds to complete one oscillation — a most unusual pheno- 

 menon, and one never before noted in the Observatory. The 

 motion was almost entirely confined to the horizontal plane, and 

 mostly south to north, but there were a few vertical motions of 

 equally slow periods. This state of things lasted for 10 minutes 

 36 seconds. Prof. West, of the Engineering College, observed the 

 water in a small pond to oscillate gently from north to south. At 

 one time the water-level fell about 2 inches on one side of the pond, 

 and exposed the bank, while, a few seconds later, the, water im- 

 mersed it nearly to the same depth, exposing the opposite bank, 

 and this process continued for a quarter of an hour. " Slow 

 oscillations of this nature have been called earth-pulsations, and 

 these usually take place where there is a destructive earthquake 

 or a submarine disturbance going on at a great distance. Earth- 

 pulsations ai-e known to have caused slow oscillations of the 

 water in lakes. From this fact it may not be unreasonable to 

 conjecture that a terrestrial or submarine agitation of unusual 



