^30 



NA TURE 



\yuly'\, 1889 



red hair, albinos, games, masks, marks of property, superstitions 

 connected with the chase, " tree and man," circumcision, draw- 

 ing amongst primitive peoples, thunderbolts, money for the 

 dead, emotional expressions and gestures, demoniacs and mental 

 disorders, &c. 



The latest number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal (vol. Ivii. part ii. No. 4) contains, among other papers, 

 some interesting notes, by Prof J. Wood Mason, on objects 

 from a Neolithic settlement recently discovered by Mr. W. H. P. 

 Driver, at Ranchi, in the Chota Nagpore district. Among the 

 objects described, and represented on plates, are some chisel- 

 edged arrow-heads similar to those which have been found in 

 Egyptian tombs — in several cases still secured by bitumen to the 

 shaft — and on Neolithic sites in different parts of Europe, 

 including the British Isles. 



The Trustees of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, have issued 

 the first number of a Catalogue, by Prof. J. Wood Mason, of 

 the Mantodea, with descriptions of new genera and species, and 

 an enumeration of the specimens, in the collection of the 

 Museum. This number consists of 48 pages, and is illustrated with 

 34 woodcuts. 



We have to welcome the first report on Greek climate pub- 

 lished in Greek by Prof. Sp. E. Marinos, of Corfu. Some 

 meteorological reports relating to Greece have at times appeared 

 in the Proceedings of the Society Parnassus at Athens, but these 

 have mostly emanated from the late Baron Sina's observatory, 

 directed by Dr. Schmidt, have rel«ed to Attica, and have been 

 published in German. The present paper is a short notice of the 

 records of Corfu for 1887 and 1888. 



The Annual Report of the Director of the Mauritius Observa- 

 tory for the year 1887 shows that the mean temperature of the 

 year was i°-4 below the average, and that the temperature was 

 below the average in every month, the greatest deviation being 

 2°-5 in August. No storm passed near the island, which has 

 not been visited by a hurricane since March 1879, During the 

 year 1887 the velocity of thirty miles an hour was reached only 

 once, in June. Rainfall is recorded at seventy-five stations, and 

 Dr. Meldrum states that the comparisons made during the last 

 ten years show conclusively that there is a close connection 

 between the rainfall and the malarial fever on the low lands. 



In his last Meteorological Report for India, Mr. Elliot, re- 

 ferring to sun-spots and weather in India— a subject which has 

 been frequently mentioned in these Reports — says :— " So far as 

 India is concerned, it would appear that it is the period of mini- 

 mum sun-spots which is associated with the largest and most 

 abnormal variations of meteorological conditions and actions. 

 Thus, exceptionally heavy snow fell in the North- West Hima- 

 layas in the winter of 1866, and again in 1876 and 1877. 

 The latter is to some extent described in the Annual Reports 

 on the meteorology of India for these two years. Again, the 

 most striking and disastrous famines of recent years in India | 

 have occurred near the period of minimum sun-spots ; as, for [ 

 example, the Orissa famine of 1866, the Behar famine of 1874, | 

 and the Madras famine in 1876-77. Similarly, there is a clearly 

 marked tendency for the largest and most intense cyclones to 

 occur shortly before the period of minimum sun-spots ; a?, for 

 example, the great Calcutta cyclone of 1864, in which 60,000 

 people were drowned by the storm-wave, and the still larger 

 Backerganj cyclone of 1876, in which 100,000 lives were lost 

 by drowning. As we are now approaching or passing through 

 the same phase of the sun-spot period, it is interesting to inquire 

 whether there are any large abnormal variations common to the 

 present period of minimum sun-spots, and the previous corre- 

 sponding periods of 1865-66 and 1876-77." 



The Manchester Microscopical Society has published its ninth 

 Annual Report, with a Presidential address, by Prof. Milnes- 

 Marshall, on " Inheritance," and a lecture, by Prof W. Stirling, 

 on "Electrical Phenomena in Animals." The volume also 

 contains many papers and communications by members of the 

 Society. 



The new number of the Mineralogical Magazine opens with 

 a valuable paper, by Mr. P'letcher, on crystals of percylite, cara- 

 colite, and an oxychloride of lead (daviesite) from Mina Beatriz, 

 Sierra Gorda, Atacama. The number also contains, besides 

 some shorter papers, an article by Prof Judd, on the processes by 

 which a plagioclase felspar is converted into a scapolite. 



The ninth part of Cassell's "New Popular Educator" has 

 just been published. It contains a good map of the world, 

 showing isothermal lines, and the distribution of races and 

 vegetation. 



The first twelve numbers of Life Lore, a monthly magazine 

 of biology, have now been collected in a volume, a copy of 

 of which has been sent to us. The volume contains many 

 brightly-written articles, and should do much to excite the in- 

 terest of young readers in the more popular aspects of biological 

 science. 



Prof. Milton Whitney, Professor of Agriculture and 

 Vice-Director of the Experiment Station of the University of 

 South Carolina, has devised a modification of Six's thermometer 

 for soil temperature. The bulb is 6 inches long, protected by a 

 metallic cylinder perforated with many holes, and is buried vcv 

 the soil, so that the bulb shall extend from 3 to 9 inches below 

 the surface of the soil — the maximum and minimum scale being 

 of course above the soil, and arranged very much as in the 

 ordinary Six's form. The long bulb allows a good height of 

 scale, while it is narrow enough to respond readily to changes of 

 temperature. In a series of readings the instrument gives exactly 

 the mean of the readings of a 3-, 6-, and 9-inch thermometer of 

 the usual form placed beside it at these respective depths in the 

 soil, besides recording the maximum and minimum temperatures. 

 This length of bulb and depth in the soil was decided on, as it is 

 assumed to be the depth which contains most of the roots of the 

 ordinary cultivated plants. The instrument need only be read 

 once a day, and saves an immense amount of calculation 

 and tabulation attending the tri-daily readings of the 6 to 8 in- 

 struments com^jrising the set of the usual form. 



The Russian Geographical Society is now publishing its 

 Memoirs in parts, each of which contains a separate paper, 

 and is circulated as soon as the paper has been printed. The 

 last parts of the "Memoirs of General Geography " contain the 

 following interesting papers: — "The Agricultural Meteoro- 

 logical Observations in Russia in 1885 and 1886," by Dr. 

 Woeikof, being the observations made at fifty-one different 

 stations in accordance with a scheme issued by the Geographical 

 Society ; " On Barometrical Observations at Distant Stations 

 and during Journeys," by R. N. Savelieff ; "On the Measures 

 taken in Western Europe for consolidating Shifting Sands, and 

 growing Bushes and Trees upon them," by S. Rauner ; and " On 

 the Comparison between Normal Barometers of the Principal 

 Meteorological Stations of Europe," by P. Brounow. It appears 

 that the corrections to be applied to the pressures shown by the 

 barometers of the following stations are as follows (the normal 

 barometer at St. Petersburg being taken for zero) : — Berlin, 

 — 0"02 millimetres ; Hamburg, - 0^39 ; Utrecht, - o'32 ; 

 Brussels, ■\- 0^23 ; Paris, -t- O'li ; Sevres (Bureau International 

 des Poids et Mesures), -f o'lo ; Zurich, - 0'o6 ; Vienna, 

 -t- 0"II. 



In a communication lately mad€ to the Russian Geographical 

 Society, General Annenkoff insisted upon the possibility of the 



