Feb. 8, 1877] 



NATURE 



311 



we may add Chauveau and Steele] this has been con- 

 founded with the spigelian lobe of man." 



In conclusion, we are sure that all teachers of anatomy 

 will agree that, in an educational point of view, Mr. 

 Steele's volume is a most valuable addition to the litera- 

 rature of the subject on which he treats. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Dutch Guiana. By W. G. Palgrave. (London : Mac- 

 millan and Co., 1876.) 



Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana. By C. Barring- 

 ton Brown, Assoc.R.S.M. (London : Stanford, 1876.) 



These two works deal with a small portion of a region of 

 considerable interest from various scientific points of 

 view, but of which we as yet know comparatively little ; 

 indeed much of the region included under the name 

 Guiana is a terra incognita, and presents a fine field for 

 an enterprising explorer. Mr. Palgrave, whose long 

 -silence smce the publication of his classical work on 

 Arabia many have wondered at and regretted, spent only 

 a fortnight in Dutch Guiana, and this volume testifies 

 made a diligent use of his time. The work is more con- 

 nected with the historical, social, and commercial aspects 

 of the Dutch colony than with the strictly scientific, but 

 contains much valuable information about a country of 

 which even the Dutch themselves, we suspect, know 

 httle. Mr. Palgrave has gathered many facts about the 

 colony from various quarters, and ingeniously weaves 

 these into his pleasant narrative, so that a reader who 

 gets to the end of the little volume will have a very fair 

 idea of its history, present condition, and future pros- 

 pects. In a graphic and popular way he describes the 

 journeys he made up the rivers near the coast, and con- 

 veys a fair idea of the productions, the people, and 

 the aspect of the district visited. To the ethnological 

 reader, one of the most interesting chapters is that on 

 the Bush Negroes. Scattered all over the colony to the 

 number, Mr. Palgrave thinks, of about 30,000, are various 

 tribes of independent negroes, descendants of former 

 slaves, who rose against their Dutch masters, fought for 

 and obtained their freedom and liberty to settle pretty 

 much where they chose, and have lived peaceably beside 

 their former masters ever since. These Bush Negroes are 

 descended mostly from Africans of the same type, but are 

 now divided into three main tribes, and several subordi- 

 nate branches, with chiefs and sub-chiefs, each tribe 

 named from the place at which its treaty of peace and 

 freedom was signed, as Aucan, Saramaccan, and Moe- 

 singa. The interesting point is that "the grouping, once 

 made, perpetuated, and in the course of years it has pro- 

 duced in each instance a distinct type, till what was at 

 first merely nominal and accidental has become per- 

 manent and real." Mr. Palgrave's work is one of great 

 interest from beginning to end. It contains a clear map 

 and a plan of Parimaribo. 



Mr. Brown is a much better surveyor and explorer than 

 he is a book-maker. As Government Surveyor of British 

 Guiana, he has visited nearly every corner of it — the 

 tracings of his routes on the map forming a regular net- 

 work of blue lines— and during his journeys has collected 

 a vast amount of valuable information about its physical 

 aspect, geology, fauna, flora, and people. The reports on 

 the physical features and descriptive geology of the 

 colony have, he says, been already published by the 

 Treasury Commissioners, and in the present volume he 

 professes to give only a popular narrative of his travels. 

 But the volume is something more than this, as almost 

 every page contains notes on the fauna and flora and 

 geological features, as well as natives that came under 

 his observation. All these notes are put down miscel- 

 laneously in the order of time, amid the notes of the 



' incidents that occurred during the journeys, so that it 

 is difficult for one interested in the natural history of 

 the country to ferret out and classify the observations. 

 Mr. Brown would have done great service both to the 

 general and the scientific reader, had he gathered these 

 notes together and arranged them in an appendix, or 

 even if he had taken care to see that his work was pro- 

 vided with a carefully compiled index. In another edi- 

 tion we hope the latter want will be supplied, as it 

 will certainly add much to the value of the work, which, 

 notwithstanding the defects in plan we have mentioned, 

 is an important contribution to the information we 

 already possess about British Guiana. Mr. Brown, it 

 may be remembered, was the discoverer of the magnifi- 

 cent Kaieteur Fall, on the river Potaro, a tributary of the 

 Essequibo, an account of which we gave in Nature 

 shortly after its discovery in 1870 (vol. iii. p. 108). The 

 excellent map and well-execute I illustrations add much 

 to the interest and value of Mr. Brown's work. 



The Royal School of Mines' Magazine. (London : 

 Wyman and Sons, 81, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's- 

 Inn Fields, W.C.) 



This magazine, the first number of which we have just 

 received, is to be issued three times a year, under the 

 auspices of the students of the Royal School of Mines, 

 and is to be devoted to articles on travel, athletics, foot- 

 ball, and to other matters connected with the school. The 

 present number contains several articles, by former stu- 

 dents, on travel, an article on football, together with 

 a record of matches played by the Royal School of 

 Mines' Football Club, during the session 1875-76. It also 

 contains a list of papers on mining and metallurgy ; re- 

 sults of Royal School of Mines for 1875-76 ; a report of 

 the annual dinner of the club ; besides two original poems, 

 both of which are good. 



We confess we are a little disappointed that greater 

 attention has not been paid to scientific subjects ; we 

 have no doubt, however, that this will be rectified in 

 future, and we heartily recommend the magazine to all 

 interested in the Royal School of Mines. J. McD. C. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Nather can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the zuriiers of, rejected viaituscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anofiymous cotiimunications.'] 



Storm Waves of Cyclones 



I BEG to submit the following suggestion, to explain in a 

 general way by the accompanying diagram the view that might 

 be taken of the rise and great height of storm waves of cyclones 

 at sea, such as occurred in the Bay of Bengal, and inundated and 

 devastated extensive tract* of the coasts and islands on October 

 31 and November i, 1876. 



It is generally observed that when the winds blow into a re- 

 entering angle of any sea-walls or quays, that the surge of the 

 wave rises higher in it than against the plane sea wall, and fre- 

 quently it shoots up the comer in a kind of spouting form. 

 Again, the tides in estuaries and friths, having bell-shaped 

 mcuths facing the ocean, and contracted inner ends receiving a 

 river, ri^e to very extraordinary heights, as in those of the Severn 

 and Thames, where disastrous floods have just occurred. 



These heights are much increased when the winds blow into 

 them, as westerly into the Severn estuary, and easterly into the 

 Thames mouth, as during the recent gales. The ordinary 

 rise on the south coast of England of the tides is generally 

 only about ten feet, but at Bristol ihey may rise to thirty or 

 forty feet, which, in fact, would be greater than the height of 

 any storm-wave in a cyclone in India. Now if the course of 

 the revolving winds in a storm mass be considered as a spiral from 

 the outside to the inside, like a coiled watch-spring, then the 

 section of each spiral turn may be considered as decreasing from 

 the oi-tside to the centre inside. This will therefore resemble a 

 long re-entering angle or estuary tube twisted upon itself as a 



