Nov. 21, 1889] 



NATURE 



67 



paper is to prove that the Etruscans probably came from North- 

 ern Africa, and belonged to the same stock as the Kabyles. 

 on the borders of whose country Dr. Brinton had spent some 

 time before his visit to Italy. He thus sums up his conclusions : — 

 (l) The uniform testimony of the ancient writers and of their 

 own traditions asserts that the Etruscans came across the sea 

 from the south, and established their first settlement on Italian 

 soil near Tarquinii ; this historic testimony is corroborated by 

 the preponderance of arch^eologic evidence as yet brought for- 

 ward. (2) Physically, the Etruscans were a people of lofty 

 stature, of the blonde type, with dolichocephalic heads. In these 

 traits they corresponded precisely with the blonde type of the 

 ancient Libyans, represented by the modern Berbers and the 

 Guanches, the only blonde people to the south. (3) In the 

 position assigned to woman, and in the system of federal 

 government, the Etruscans were totally different from the 

 Greeks, Orientals, and Turanians ; but were in entire accord 

 with the Libyans. (4) The phonetics, grammatical plan, voca- 

 bulary, numerals, and proper names of the Etruscan tongue pre- 

 sent many and close analogies with the Libyan dialects, ancient 

 and modern. (5) Linguistic science, therefore, concurs with 

 tradition, archaeology, sociologic traits, and anthropologic evi- 

 dence, in assigning a genetic relationship of the Etruscans to the 

 Libyan family. 



A LAKE-DWELLING has been discovered in the neighbourhood 

 of Somma Lombardo, north-west of Milan, through the drain- 

 ing of the large turf moor of La Lagozza. The Berlin Corre- 

 spondent of the Standard, who gives an account of the dis- 

 covery, says that this "relic of civilization" was found under 

 the peat-bog and the underlying layer of mud, the former being 

 I metre in thickness, and the latter 35 centimetres. The build- 

 ing was rectangular, 80 metres long and 30 metres broad ; and 

 between the posts, which are still standing upright, lay beams 

 and half-burnt planks, the latter having been made by splitting 

 the trees, and without using a saw. Some trunks still retain 

 the stumps of their lateral projecting branches, and they have 

 probably served the purpose of ladders. The lower end of 

 these posts, which have been driven into the clay soil, is more 

 or less pointed, and it can be seen from the partly still well-pre- 

 served bark that the beams and planks are of white birch, pine, 

 fir, and larch. Among other things were found polished stone 

 hatchets, a few arrow-heads, flint knives, and unworked stones 

 \\ ith traces of the action of fire. 



Mr. R. Etheridge, Jun., contributes to the Report of the 

 Australian Museum, just received, an interesting appendix on 

 the limestone caves at Cave Flat, junction of the Murrumbidgee 

 and Goodradigbee rivers, county of Harden. Having recorded 

 the observations made by him in these remarkable caves, Mr. 

 Etheridge offers some remarks on the Murrumbidgee limestone. 

 This, he says, is of a dense blue-black colour. It is much 

 jointed and fissured, highly brittle in places, with a hackly 

 conchoidal fracture, and crammed with fossils, especially corals. 

 As a display of these beautiful organisms in natural section, he 

 has never seen its equal. Large faces of limestone may be seen, 

 with the weathered corals, and particularly .Stromatopora, stand- 

 ing out in relief and in section also. Many of these masses of 

 coral, particularly those of Stromatopora and Favosites, are as 

 much as 4 feet in diameter. The Murrumbidgee limestone has 

 been classed as Devonian by the late Prof de Koninck, but 

 Mr. Etheridge has not yet sufficiently examined the fossils of 

 this deposit either to gainsay or confirm this view. He thinks 

 it not improbable, however, that Prof de Koninck's view may 

 be correct. 



The Comptes rendiis of the Paris Academy of Sciences, of 

 November 4, contains a note by M. A. Angot, on the mean 

 hourly velocity of the wind at the summit of the Eiffel Tower, 



measured during loi days, ending with October i, by means of an 

 anemometer placed at 994 feet above the ground, and compared 

 with the results of a similar instrument at the Paris Meteoro- 

 logical Office, placed at 66 feet above the ground. The average 

 velocity on the tower was 16 miles an hour, being over three 

 times the amount registered at the Meteorological Office, where 

 it was only 5 miles an hour. At the lower station the diurnal 

 variation showed a single minimum about sunrise, and a single 

 maximum about i h. p.m. On the tower the minimum occurred 

 about loh. a.m., and the maximum about llh. p.m., while the 

 characteristic maximum of lower regions about the middle of 

 the day was hardly perceptible on the tower. It is remarkable 

 that this inversion, which is usual upon high mountains, should 

 occur at so small a height as that of the Eiffel Tower. The ratio 

 of increased velocity was constant at about 5 : i between mid- 

 night and 5h. a.m.; it then decreased rapidly and became 2 : I 

 at about loh. a.m., and maintained this value until 2h. or 3h. 

 p.m., when it again rose regularly until midnight. These results 

 are of considerable importance to the study of aerial navigation. 



The new number of the Mineralogical Magazine opens with 

 an important paper, by Mr. L. Fletcher, F.R.S., on the 

 meteorites which have been found in the desert of Atacama and 

 its neighbourhood. This paper is accompanied by a map of the 

 district. Prof McKenny Hughes, F.R.S., has a paper on 

 the manner of occurrence of Beekite and its bearing upon 

 the origin of siliceous beds of Palaeolithic age. There are also 

 three short papers by Dr. M. F. Heddle, and one by Mr. R. 

 H. Solly. 



Some experiments on the photography of the red end of the 

 spectrum, by Colonel J. Waterhouse, appear in the Proceedings 

 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for April 1889. In order to 

 render the ordinary commercial gelatine dry plates sensitive to the 

 red rays they are bathed for one or two minutes in a solution of 

 I part of alizarin blue (C1-.H3.NO4) to 10,000 parts of distilled 

 water with I per cent, of strong ammonia added. Plates treated 

 with this dye show very intense action through the violet and 

 blue regions as far as b ; from E to C there appears to be 

 a minimum of action ; the sensitiveness, however, increases 

 between C and A, and is strongest between C and B and a 

 to A. Below A the sensitiveness quickly diminishes. Colonel 

 Waterhouse finds that plates saturated with a special preparation 

 of cyanin and sulphate of quinine have their maximum sensitive- 

 ness between D and B, but between B and A the action is much 

 weaker than that obtained by using alizarin blue, hence the 

 latter dye is valuable as a ready and simple means of photograph- 

 ing the spectrum between C and A with ordinary dry plates. For 

 orthochromatic photography, rhodomine was found to be almost 

 as efficient as erythrosin, and to be especially useful for photo- 

 graphing the region immediately about D. The photographs were 

 taken by means of Rowland's plane and concave diffraction 

 gratings. 



A NEW mode of preparing manganese, by which the metal 

 can be obtained in a few minutes in tolerably large quantities 

 and almost perfectly pure, is described by Dr. Glatzel, of Bres- 

 lau, in the current number of the Berichte. A quantity of man- 

 ganous chloride is first dehydrated by ignition in a porcelain dish, 

 and the pulverized anhydrous salt afterwards intimately mixed 

 with twice its weight of well-dried potassium chloride. The 

 mixture is then closely packed into a Hessian crucible and fused 

 in a furnace at the lowest possible temperature, not sufficient to 

 volatilize either of the chlorides. A quantity of metallic mag- 

 nesium is then introduced in small portions at a time, the total 

 quantity necessary being about a sixth of the weight of the man- 

 ganous chloride employed. Provided the crucible has not been 

 heated too much above the melting-point of the mixture of 

 chlorides, the action is regular, the magnesium dissolving witb 



