112 



■ NATURE 



[Dec. I, 1887 



won him the affection and esteem of all who had the good 

 fortune to know him : by his death, at the early age of 

 thirty, Mineralogy is deprived of the most promising of its 

 investigators. 



Dr. Gustav Theodor Fachner, the well-known physicist, 

 died at Leipzig on November 18. He was bora near Moscow, 

 on April 19, 180 1. 



Naturalists have learned with much satisfaction that Mr. 



William Davison has been appointed to the Curatorship of the 



Singapore Museum. Mr. Davison's appointment has been 



objected to on the score that he is a "mere collector," but, 



even if this were the case, it would scarcely be denied that 



he is one of the best collectors ever known. Certainly he 



is without a rival in the present day, and only Wallace or Bates 



or Clarence Buckley could be named along with him. Such 



objectors, however, are singularly ignorant of Mr. Davison's 



career. For thirteen years he was Curator to Mr. Allan Hume, 



whose private museum was one of the best managed in the world, 



and he has conducted some of the most important scientific 



expeditions of modern times. At Singapore he will have the 



opportunity of completing his explorations in Malacca, which he 



commenced some ten years ago, when he traversed the whole of the 



western half of the peninsula, but was not able to penetrate to 



the mountainous regions of the eastern half. A rich field of 



discovery awaits him, if we may judge from the collections sent 



by Mr. Wray to the British Museum from the Larut Range 



behind Perak. Every naturalist may depend upon the hear'ty 



co-operation of Mr. Davison in any branch of science, and we 



shall expect to see that, in the course of a few years, Singapore 



possesses one of the most famous natural history collections in 



the East. 



Comparing the proceedings of the Anthropological Sections 



of the British and American Associations for the Advancement 



of Science, the American journal Science decides that the 



anthropological work done in the English institution is superior 



to that of the Americans. " We do not mean to say," it states, 



that there are no vague theories held by British men of science, 



or that no eminent work is done by Americans ; but the favourite 



studies of ethnologists as a whole, and as expressed in the subjects 



of papers presented to the English Association, seem to be of a 



more general and of a higher scientific character than they are 

 here. 



In a recent number of the Korrespondenzblatt of the German 

 Society for Anthropology and Ethnology, there is a good 

 account of the archaeological explorations which have been 

 carried on near Reichenhall, in the south-eastern part of Bavaria. 

 An ancient cemetery was discovered here som2 time ago, and 

 no fewer than eighty-five skulls have been found, with some 

 well-preserved skeletons, and a great quantity of weapons and 

 ornaments. The skulls are of the primitive Germanic type, and 

 the skeletons show that the people must have been about the 

 size of the existing population of the Bavarian highlands. 

 Among the treasures which have been recovered is a thin gold 

 coin, evidently an imitation of a Roman coin. This coin pro- 

 bably belongs to the fifth century, and it may have found its way 

 to this part of Germany in consequence of the intimate relations 

 which are known to have existed between the ancient inhabit- 

 ants of Bavaria and the Langobardi. 



On Saturday last Mr, Francis Galton gave at the South Ken- 

 sington Museum the first of three lectures on heredity and 

 nurture. Towards the close of the lecture Mr. Galton spoke of 

 the advantages which might be derived from the establishment of 

 a permanent anthropometric laboratory. An anthropometric 

 laboratory is a place where a person may have any of his various 

 faculties measured in the best possible way, at a small cost, and 

 where duplicates of his measurements may be preserved, as 

 private documents for his own future use and reference. Such 

 an institution would contain apparatus both of the simpler kind 

 used for weighings and measurings, and for determinations of 

 chest capacity, muscular strength, and swiftness, and that of a 

 more delicate description, used in what is technically called 

 psycho-physical research, for deter joining the efficiency of each 

 ofthe various senses and certain mental constants. Instruction 

 might be afforded to those who wished to make measurements at 

 home, Dgether with information about instruments and th- 

 registration of results. An attached library would contain works 

 relating to the respective influences of heredity and nurture 

 These would include statistical, medical, hygienic, and other 

 memoirs in various languages, that are now either scattered 

 through our different scientific libraries or do not exist in any of 

 them. Duplicates of the measurements, but without the names 

 attached, would form a growing mass of material accessible to 

 statisticians. From conversation with friends, Mr Galton 

 gathers that the library might fulfil a welcome purpose in 

 becoming a receptacle for biographies and family records, which 

 would be in two classes-the one to be preserved as private 

 documents, accessible only to persons authorized by the depositor ; 

 and the other as ordinary books, whether they were in manu- 

 script or in print. Mr. Galton will be grateful for any communica- 

 tions that may show whether sufficient interest really exists to 

 justify a serious attempt to found an Anthropometric Laboratory 

 and Family Record Office, as well as for any helpful suggestions 

 towards the better carrying out of the idea. 



An interesting account of a series of experiments upon the 

 so-called alloy between the metals sodium and potassium is 

 given by M. Joannis in the current number of the Annales de 

 Clnmie et Physique. For some years it has been known that, 

 althou^di in many respects so similar, the e two metals possess a 

 certain affinity for each other, and unite under suitable circum- 

 stances to form a liquid amalgam-like substance. M. Joannis 

 has at length shown that a definite compound, NaKg, is formed 

 with considerable evolution of heat when the fused metals are 

 brought together in the right proportion. In order to prove 

 this fact, thermo-chemical methods were resorted to, liquid 

 mixtures of the composition Na,K, NaK, NaKj. and NaKs 

 being successively introduced into the calorimeter. The hydro- 

 gen liberated by decomposition of the water in the calorimeter 

 was caused to pass first through a perforated platinum plate, and 

 afterwards through a long thin -walled glass spiral, eventually 

 escaping in minute bubbles through the water itself, after be- 

 coming reduced to the temperature of the calorimeter. The 

 liquid mixture of metals was gradually introduced by means of 

 an ingenious apparatus consisting of a drawn-out delivery-tube 

 containing the alloy between two layers of protecting naphtha, 

 and which, by means of a valve, could be placed in communica- 

 tion with a reservoir of compressed air, so that, by regulating 

 the valve, a gentle stream of the liqyid could be forced out as 

 required. When the calorimetrical experiments were concluded, 

 the amount of alkali was determined in an aliquot part of the 

 water in the calorimeter, and thus the amount of metal used could 

 be arrived at. From the data afforded by these experiments, 

 M. Joannis appears to have conclusively shown that the only 

 stable compound is NaK^, all others being mixtures of this with 

 excess of one or other of the two metals. It is very satisfactory 

 that a reliable method has at last been found of distinguishing 

 between true compounds and physical mixtures of metals, and 

 rather remarkable that one of the earlier analyses of the most 

 stable combination of sodium and potassium gave as the per- 

 centage of potassium 76-5, a number which closely approximates 

 to that required for NaK2. 



Since the Ben Nevis Observatory was opened four years ago, 

 eleven cases of St. Elmo's fire have been recorded. These case 



