Nov. 30, 1 8 76 J 



NATURE 



109 



NOTES 



The Kew Committee have appointed Mr. G. N. Whipple, 

 B.Sc, Superintendent of the Observatory. Mr. Whipple's 

 connection with the establishment is of nearly nineteen years 

 standing, he having entered it in January, 1858. 



Dr. Petermann has sent us a map in which he has embodied 

 the discoveries of the English Arctic Expedition. He appears 

 still to maintain his well-known hypothesis of the continua- 

 tion of the north coast of Greenland towards and beyond 

 the North Pole. He draws the line of the visible horizon 

 of the English Expedition at about fifty nautical miles north 

 of Grant Land, its furthest north point being the 84th dcg. 

 (»f lat, and remarks that north of this line may be either 

 land or sea. Of course no one can contradict this. He 

 has, however, restored President's Land in rather a remarkable 

 position, identifying it apparently with Beaumont's Cape Bri- 

 tannia, to the north of Beaumont's furthest point on the north 

 coast of Greenland. The map will be found a very useful one 

 in studying the route of the expedition, especially as compared 

 with that of the Polaris, 



Capt. Nares and the other Arctic officers have been enter- 

 tained b)' the Greenwich cadets and by the Royal Naval Club at 

 Portsmouth. Capt. Nares stated that when the whole story of 

 the efforts of the expedition is published, it will be seen that 

 better wo:k could not have been done. 



The coni-tituents of fodder- remains of rhinoceroses and mam- 

 mo; hs in Northern Siberia have been examined by several 

 observers, and the conclusion arrived at that these animals lived 

 in tl.e places where their frozen bodies have been found, on 

 plants which are still to be met with in Northern Siberia. New 

 ground for this opinion has been furniahed by M. Schmaihausen 

 to the St. Petersburg Academy, who has examined microsco- 

 pically the constituents of a mass of dark- brown matter ext'acted 

 from hollows in the teeth of a rhinoceros in the Irkutski Mu- 

 seum. That this was truly the remains of fodder of the animal 

 seemed clear from the appearance and the macerated character 

 of the vegetable iubstance, of which only the woody and cuti- 

 cular parts showed a more or less distinct structure. The 

 greater portion of the piece consisted of leaf-remains, with here 

 and there a fragment of stem. For the most part the stem and 

 leaf-fragments were those of monocotyledonous plants, probably 

 of Gramine.Te ; there were also, in Ie>s quantity, leaf-fragments 

 of dicotyledonous plants. Besides leaf-shreds of Coniferae, there 

 were woody pieces which indicated the existence of Picea (Obo- 

 vata ?), Abies (Sibiiia?), Larix(Sibirica?), Gnetaceae, Betulaceae, 

 and Salicineae. If it is scarcely possible to detemane certainly 

 the species of a p-ant merely from some of the wood received in 

 the state indicated, and from the structure of the leaf epidermis, 

 it yet seems unquestionable that these remains must be referred 

 ;o northern plants and to such ,as are "still partly found in the 

 ligh north. 



Mr, Coxwell writing to the Daily Nrjjs in reference to 

 Arctic ballooning, maintains that the ordinary practice of bal- 

 looning would be quite unsuitable for the conditions found in the 

 Arctic regions. 



I. MORITZ, director of the Tiflis Observatory, makes an 



resting communication on the results of an examination of 



magnetic instruments there last July by Prof. Smmoff, of 



an, who has been engaged during the last six years travelling 



ugh to determine the elements of terrestrial magnetism. The 



ii ruments employed by Prof. Smirnofif, which cost 300 roubles, 



. I re all verified at Kew, and are furnished with microscopes and 



ill the other accessories of the English system. The compass has 



'irce needles (No. 4, No. 3, and No. 16), four inches in length, 



ml the mean of the readings of the three needles is the true 



liclination. At Tiflis there are two compasses long in use, con- 



structed according to the old method of Gambey, which are now 

 generally looked upon as inferior instruments. They cost respect- 

 ively only 165 and 40 roubles. The results of a very careful com- 

 parison are these : — Assuming the mean of the indications of the 

 three Kew needles as the true inclination the errors of the instru- 

 ments were, Kew No. 4, — o''25 ; No. 3, + 2' '45 ; and No. 16, 

 — 2' '22 ; the error of the large Gambey being -f o'*30, and of 

 the small Gambey — o''09. M. Moritz remarks that the micro- 

 scope and detached circle on which the readings are made, and 

 which add so greatly to the price of the English compass, appear 

 to add nothing to the precision with which the inclination is 

 determined, facilities for minute readings of the compass being 

 made counting but little, it being the form of the pivots of the 

 physical axis of the needle which stamps its character on the 

 instrument. 



" On Some Insect Deformities," by Dr. Hermann A. Hagen, 

 is the ti'le of No. 9, vol. ii., of the Memoirs of the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology, Harvard College, Cambridge, U. S. 



We have received from Herr Schmilt, publisher, Ziirich, Dr. 

 Hermann Berge's " Beittage zur Entwicklungsgeschichte von 

 Bryophyllum Calycinum," and Dr. Gustav Schoch's " Die 

 Schweizerischen Orthopteren." 



The following German publications have been sent us by 

 Messrs. Williams and Norgate : — " Ucbcr die Zugstrassen der 

 Vogel," by J. A. Palmen, of Helsinglors ; "Grundziige der 

 Mikrophotographie," by Max Hauer ; "Sammlung wissen- 

 schaftlicher Vortrage von Prof. Wilhelm I'orster ;" "Die Dar- 

 win'schen Theorien und ihre Stellung zur Philosophic, Religion, 

 und Moral," by Rudolf Schmid. 



The Goldsmiths' Company, whose donation to the Chemical 

 Society we noted last week, have voted 500/. in aid of the fund 

 for extending Edinburgh University buildings. It is stated that 

 this Company spends annually 6,000/. for educational purposes 

 alone. We wish the other City Companies would follow such 

 a good example. , 



The following were elected office-bearers of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh on Monday last : — President, Sir William Thorn- 

 son ; Vice-Presidents, Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Bishop 

 Cotterill, Sir Alexander Grant, Prof. Kelland, Lord Neaves, 

 and David Stevenson ; General Secretary, Prof, Balfour ; Secre- 

 taries to Ordinary Meetings, Professors Tait and Turner ; 

 Treasurer, David Smith ; Curator of Library and Museum, 

 Prof, Maclagan ; Members of Council, Prof. Crum Brown, Dr. 

 James Bryce, Alexander Buchan, Dr. Matthews Duncan, Dr. 

 A. Fleming, Dr. T. Harvey, D. Milne Home, Prof. McKen- 

 drick. Dr. C. Morehead, Sir C. Wyville Thomson, Dr. R. H. 

 Traquair, and Dr. Robert Wyld. 



The next meeting of the French Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science will take place, as we have already intimated, 

 at Havre in the end of August, 1877, under the presidency of Dr. 

 Broca. A local.committee has been already formed at Havre under 

 the presidency of M. Mazurier, the mayor. At the first meeting 

 M. Gariel, the secretary of the committee, suggested many useful 

 and interesting experiments to be made in the Seine or the sea. 

 Special efforts will be made to procure a large attendance of 

 English savants and members of the British Association. It is 

 reported that a special deputation will be sent to the Dublin 

 meeting of the British Association. The place of meeting for 

 1878 has not yet been determined upon, but it will probably be 

 Versailles or Paris. 



The Times of Monday contains a journal kept by the Rev. 

 Mr. Lawes during a voyage from Port Moresby to China Straits, 

 New Guinea. It contains a good many new facts of interest. 



