Oct. 17, 1889] 



NATURE 



595 



Prof. H. G. Seeley, who has recently returned from an 

 expedition to South Africa, has obtained from the Karroo, 

 among a large number of other treasures, a complete specimen 

 of the much-discussed J'arieasaurus. 



The ordinary general meeting of the Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers will be held on Wednesday, October 30, and Thurs- 

 day, October 31, at 25 Great George Street, Wesminster. The 

 chair will be taken at half-past seven p.m., on each evening, by 

 the President, Mr. Charles Cochrane. The following papers 

 will be read and discussed, as far as time permits : — On the 

 results of blast-furnace practice with lime instead of limestone as 

 flux, by the President ; description of a rotarj- machine for 

 making block-bottomed paper bags, by Mr. Job Duerden, of 

 Burnley, communicated through Mr. Henry Chapman ; further 

 experiments on condensation and re-evaporation of steam in a 

 jacketed cylinder, by Major Thomas English, R.E., Superin- 

 tendent, Royal Carriage Department, Woolwich, 



The Government of Victoria has definitely deputed Mr, James 

 Stirling, Assistant Geological Surveyor in the service of the Govern- 

 ment, to make a thorough and systematic survey and mapping of 

 the coal districts in the colony. This step has been taken in conse- 

 quence of the suggestions of Sir James Hector, the Director of 

 the Geological Survey of New Zealand, who, during a recent 

 visit to Victoria, examined the supposed coal-bearing seams, and 

 reported favourably on them. The great drawback to Victorian 

 prosperity so far has been the absence of coal deposits. 



The Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore says that Mr. 

 Dauvergne has succeeded in erecting a monument to the memory 

 of Mr. Dalgleish, where the latter was murdered at the foot of 

 the Karakoram Pass two years ago. 



Dr. a. Alcock, of the Indian Marine, has been deputed to 

 examine and classify the collections which the Indian Marine 

 Survey has made over to the Imperial Museum, Calcutta, during 

 the past few years. 



The cultivation of the Egyptian date-palm in India is to be 

 tried on a large scale, and an order for over 700 off-sets and 

 three maunds of seed has been sent to Egypt. It is intended 

 that the consignment shall be distributed in the Punjab, Bombay, 

 Madras, Rajputana, and Coorg, for experiment. 



The ICe7u Bulletin for October opens with a paper on a valu- 

 able fibre, largely used in this country under the name of Bahia 

 piassava. This fibre is obtained from the leaf-stalks of a Brazilian 

 palm known as Attalea funifera, Mart., and is used in the 

 making of brushes and brooms. Some interesting remarks on 

 the condition of the industry in Brazil, by Mr. W. S. Booth, 

 are presented in the paper. In another paper there is a letter, 

 addressed by Mr. D. Morris to the Colonial Office, on the 

 treatment of seedling sugar-canes at Barbados, and of any that 

 may be found in other sugar-producing colonies in the West \ 

 Indies. The remaining subjects dealt with are cinchona in 

 Jamaica ; the commercial product called gambier, used by 

 tanners ; and the fibre industry at the Bahamas, 



The Pliotographic Quarterly, if we may judge from the first 

 number, is likely to be of great service to all who interest them- 

 selves in the study of photographic methods. It opens with a 

 series of hints, by the Rev. T. Perkins, on the production of 

 pictures by photography. Among the other articles are " Che- 

 naistry and Photography," by C. li. Bothamley ; "The Influ- 

 ence of Photography on Art, and its Consequences," by A. M. 

 Rossi ; "A Plea for Photogravure," by Major J. F. Nott ; 

 " Photo-micrography," by J. Hall-Edwards ; and " New 

 Method of Printing in Clouds in Lantern Slides," by Lionel 

 •Clark. A portrait of Mr. James Glaisher, F. R. S., President of 

 the Photographic Society of Great Britain, accompanies the first 



number. There is also a view of Salisbury Cathedral from the 

 Bishop's garden. 



The Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for the month 

 of October shows that September was very stormy, especially 

 off the American coast and in the West Indies. l/ow barometer, 

 accompanied by gales, prevailed along the transatlantic routes 

 from the 4th to the 15th inclusive. The most notable disturb- 

 ance was the West India hurricane, which seems to have 

 originated east of the Windward Islands at the end of August, 

 reaching Antigua and Martinique on September 2, and con- 

 tinuing with unabated force in a west-north-west direction until 

 the 1 2th. The large area and the severity of this hurricane make 

 it one of the most notable on record, and it is the subject of a 

 special appendix, with charts, showing its behaviour over the 

 ocean during each of ten days. The rapidity with which these 

 charts have been published is, we believe, unequalled in mari- 

 time meteorology, and indicates, as stated in the remarks, the 

 cordial support that the Washington Office receives from masters 

 of vessels in its efforts to collect and utilize maritime data. 

 There was a marked diminution of fog during the month, and 

 an unusually large amount of ice as far as the 49th meridian, 

 and even south of the Soth parallel. 



The appendix to the Bulletin of the New England Meteoro- 

 logical Society for the year 1888, shows that the number of 

 stations constituting that weather service amounts to 172. The 

 year was, on the whole, cool and wet, and some of the cyclones, 

 of which 88 are classified according to the direction of their 

 paths, were of great violence. Thunderstorms were very nume- 

 rous, and in some cases destructive. A marked peculiarity of 

 the year was the heavy rainfalls which occurred in the last six 

 months. In the five months August to December the excess 

 was nearly li inches. The greatest and least movements of the 

 wind, as shown by anemometrical records, were in March and 

 June respectively ; the largest totals for the year were at Blue 

 Hill Observatory, 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 

 on August 20, Mr. J. H. Maiden read an interesting paper on 

 spinifex resin. The resin examined was a sample obtained by 

 Mr. W. Froggatt near Derby, North-West Australia, last year, 

 and presented by Sir William Macleay to Mr. Maiden. It is in 

 flat cakes, about 3 inches in diameter, has a dirty bronze-green 

 appearance, and a -persistent disagreeable odour not easily 

 described. It consists of vegetable debris (which may prove to 

 belong to a grass) cemented with a yellowish-brown resin, and 

 containing about 3 per cent, of fat, Mr. Froggatt states that it 

 is employed by the natives as a cement for spear-heads, &c. ; 

 and the consistent testimony of the natives, as well as of the 

 Europeans, is that it is obtained froai the roots of spinifex 

 grass {7'riodia irritans, R.Br.). As far as the author knows, 

 the extraction of resin from a grass has never previously been 

 recorded. The resin isolated bears no resemblauce to any 

 other Australian resin known to the author. 



A scheme is now being matured to establish regular training 

 schools for surveyors in the Straits Settlements. The demand 

 for surveyors is very great on the part both of the Government 

 and of private individuals, and this demand is sure to increase 

 with the rapid development of the Malay Peninsula. 



Technical instruction is receiving a good deal of atten- 

 tion in the Central Provinces of India. Under the new scholar- 

 ship rules, high school scholarships are tenable in the engineering 

 and agricultural classes which were opened last year at Nagpore, 

 and College scholarships have also been reserved for engineer- 

 ing students who desire to study in some Engineering College, 

 or in any superior School of Forestry. At present, the classes 

 at Nagpore are not well attended. In the engineering class, thirty 



