Sept. 26, 1889] 



NATURE 



539 



On the 12th inst. the administration of the Congo State 

 received intelligence by way of Zanzibar that Mr. H. M. Stanley, 

 on leaving the basin of the Albert Nyanza, endeavoured to 

 make his way southwards by passing to the west of the 

 Victoria Nyanza, but was unsuccessful. He then went north- 

 wards, and reached the eastern shore of the lake, Emin Pasha 

 accompanying him. Mr. Stanley made a long stay on the 

 borders of the lake, awaiting supplies from Msalala and Jabora, 

 for which he had sent. He left Emin Pasha on the eastern 

 shore of the lake several months ago, and proceeded in the 

 direction of Mombassa. Mr. Stanley is expected to reach the 

 eastern coast of Africa towards the end of October next. 



According to information received at Lloyd's from Tromso, 

 dated September 9, the German travellers Kukenthal and 

 Walter, belonging to the Bremen Arctic Expedition, who were 

 shipwrecked last spring in the Bertina, have arrived safely at 

 Tromso, 



M. Joseph Maktin, the French explorer, known in connec- 

 tion with his late expedition to Eastern Siberia, recently left 

 Pekin with a small escort for Tibet, intending to proceed along 

 the Great Wall, subsequently passing through the towns of Liang- 

 Chow and Sining and the province of Koko-Nor, where he 

 expects to arrive next spring. The object of the expedition is of 

 a purely scientific character. 



Mr. Frederick Jeppe, of Pretoria, has recently issued, 

 through Iiulau and Co., an excellent map of the Transvaal 

 and neighbouring territories on the scale of 15 78 miles to an 

 inch. It. includes not only the Transvaal, but the Orange Free 

 State and all the countries between these and the coast, from 

 Delagoa Bay down to Pondoland. It goes north to close on the 



Zambesi, including Matabeleland, Bechuanaland, Griqualand* 

 West, and the northern parts of Cape Colony. There are, 

 moreover, a number of .'pccial ir.seit maps. The physical* 

 features, mountains, rivers, &c., are laid down clearly and in- 

 detail. The gold-fields are coloured yellow, the topography is- 

 almost exhaustive, and the map is really a gazetteer of the exten- 

 sive and important region which it embraces. Mr. Jeppe gives 

 a list of the various authorities which he has used in the compila- 

 tion of his map, and these are the best and latest available. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, September 9.— M. Des Cloizeaux^ 

 President, in the chair.— On the fixationof atmospheric nitrogen,, 

 by M. Berthelot. — Observations on the formation of ammonia 

 and volatile azotised compounds at the expense of vegetable- 

 earth and of plants, by the same. He traces the researches,, 

 initiated by him six years ago, ei-tablishing the fixation, by earth 

 and plants, of free nitrogen of the air, with the aid of mineral 

 matters and living organisms. Analysis of the liquid condensed' 

 within a bell jar inclosing earth, or earth with vegetation, proves 

 the exhalation (of ammonia, &c.) above referred to; and like 

 the ptomaines, &c., produced by animals in a closed space, 

 the products are toxical to the organisms yielding them. — On 

 the nitrification of ammonia, by M. Th. Schlcesing. Small 

 quantities of gaseous nitrogen (negligible in agricultural practice), 

 are liberated during the oxidation of ammonia in soil. The 

 author shows that the nitrification of ammonia put into a soil in 

 the form of sulphate, may be effected very quickly, when 

 favoured by the nature of the soil, its humidity and its tempera- 

 ture. In slow combustion of the organic matter of soil, through 

 the agency of the nitric ferment, much more oxygen is used in 

 burning the carbon and hydrogen, than in nitrification of the 

 nitrogen. But in a soil enriched with ammonia, the activity of 

 the ferment is much increased, in conveying oxygen to the 

 ammonia, and it seeks from organic matter only the carbon- 

 needed for its development and multiplication. — On the bacterio- 

 logical study of the lesions of contagious peripneumonia of the 

 ox, by M. S. Arloing. He distinguishes a bacillus and three 

 kinds of micrococci. — On some observations made at the Obser- 

 vatory of Algiers, by M. Ch. Trepied. The separation of the 

 nucleus of Brooks's comet, affirmed by the Mount Hamilton- 

 observers, could not be certainly made out. This Observatory, 

 begun in the spring of 1885, on a height (350 metres) overlooking 

 Algiers, has now all its instruments except a photographic 

 equatorial. M. Trepied notes that the telescopic image of a. 

 star, during the sirocco, becomes a continuous luminous spot, 

 the intensity diminishing outwards ; an effect, doubtless, of 

 dust.— Observations of Brooks's comet and its companion, made- 

 at the Observatory of Algiers with theo'Som. telescope, by MM. 

 Rambaud and Sy. — The spectro- photography of the invisible- 

 parts of the solar spectrum, by M. Ch. V. Zenger. He de- 

 scribes as advantageous combinations, prisms of quartz and' 

 anelhol ; of quartz and calcareous spar ; of the latter and' 

 sulphide of carbon ; and of rock salt and anethol. One prism 

 of lock salt, with two of anethol, gives nine times more dis- 

 persion, and the red part is six times more dispersed between A. 

 and D, than by a 60° prism of rock salt, — Researches on 

 sulphites, by M. P. J. Hartog. — On a new monobromized) 

 camphor ; on the constitution of monosubstituted derivatives of 

 camphor, by M. P. Cazeneuve. The new compound is obtainedh 

 similarly to the chlorine compound, got by the action of hypo- 

 chlorous acid, and has similar properties. — On phenoldisulphonic 

 acid, by M. S. Allain-Le Canu. — Influence, on bare soil, of 

 gypsum and clay, on the conservation of nitrogen, the fixation of 

 atmospheric nitrogen, and nitrification, by M. Pechard. The- 

 sulphate of lime retains the ammonia in the state of sulphate^, 

 and contributes indirectly to the production of nitric acid, by 

 keeping the nitrogen in a form easily nitrifiable ; also directly,^ 

 (in a way not well understood) by its power of deoxidatioH' 

 and reoxidation. Gypsum and clay, both added to sandy soil, 

 concur in fixing ammonia ; the former keeps the fixing 

 power of the latter active by removing its ammonia in the state 

 of sulphate easily nitrifiable (clay alone is rather adverse to- 

 nitrification). — Manufacture of red glasses for windows (twelfth 

 and thirteenth centuries), by MM. Ch. Er. Guignet, and L. 

 Magne. A microscopic examination of these old glasses shows> 



