t,i,S 



NATURE 



[Dec. 8,^1 88>' 



Last Saturday there was a severe earthquake in Calabria. 

 Two shocks were felt : one at 5 o'clock in the morning, the 

 other two hours later. Both shocks were felt all over the pro- 

 vince of Cosenza, but the second was by far the most violent. All 

 the signalmen's huts on the railway near Sibari were destroyed 

 for a distance of 8 kilometres. The station of Lattarico was 

 also destroyed. At Paola the barracks and the Prefecture 

 and Communal buildings were damaged ; at Rogliano and 

 Gravina several houses fell, and all the others were seriously 

 shaken ; and at San Marco part of the monastery fell. The 

 results were most disastrous at Bisignano, the greater part of 

 which was destroyed. More than twenty persons were killed, 

 and about seventy injured. The parish priest of Bisignano, after 

 having made his escape from the church, re-entered it, when the 

 building fell in, and he was killed. The results at Bisignano 

 would have been even more terrible, had not most of the in- 

 habitants, alarmed by the first shock, fled from their houses. It 

 is said that 900 houses are in ruins. 



A CORRESPONDENT Writes to us from Blackburn : — " A shock 

 of earthquake occurred at Chorley, Lancashire, on December i, 

 at about xo minutes to 7 o'clock a.m. It was also felt over a 

 wide area. At Blackburn, two distinct vibrations were felt. 

 The direction of the disturbance appeared to be from south-west 

 to north-east." 



On November 5, at 7.16 p.m., a severe shock of earthquake 

 was felt at Bodo, on the north-west coast of Norway. Houses 

 shook, and several objects on walls fell down. There was only 

 one shock, and it lasted about half a second. 



On the evening of November 21, at 5.18 p.m., a magnificent 

 meteor was observed in the neighbourhood of Stavanger, on the 

 west coast of Norway. It first appeared in the western sky, 

 and, having described a semicircle, disappeared below the 

 horizon. Its size was that of a child's head, and its light a 

 brilliant white. The weather was fine and starry at the time. 



Mr. John Aitken has contributed to the Proceedings of 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh an interesting note on the 

 formation of hoar-frost. Experiments were made with a sheet 

 of glass exposed horizontally near the ground. During the 

 deposition of dew the windward edges were generally dry, 

 because the air has to travel over the cold plate before its tem- 

 perature is reduced to the dew-point ; but, when hoar-frost is 

 deposited, the windward edges of the plate have the heaviest 

 deposit. In this case the air seems to act as if it were super- 

 saturated. Although this is impossible in ordinary conditions, 

 the author shows that, if we have a water suface and an ice one 

 at the same temperature, the vapour will tend to pass from the 

 water to the ice, because the vapour-pressure of water is the 

 higher; and he concludes that something like this takes place 

 when hoar-frost is forming, the air which is saturated to a 

 water surface being supersaturated to an ice one. 



Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, of the Bergen Museum, has announced 

 his intention of attempting to cross the interior of Greenland 

 next summer on Ski, viz. the snow-runners found so advan- 

 tageous during the last Nordenskiold expedition across that 

 continent. It may be remembered what extraordinary progress 

 the Lapps made at that time on these Scandinavian means of loco- 

 motion across snow-fields. Dr. Nansen, who has on a former 

 occasion visited the inland ice in Greenland, has placed his plan 

 before Baron Nordenskiold, who fully believes in its realization, 

 and is giving Dr. Nansen every assistance. The explorer pur- 

 poses crossing from the east to the west coast, the reverse of 

 Baron Nordenskiold's attempt. 



An important paper by Prof Lothar Meyer, upon the subject 

 of " oxygen carriers," will be found in the current number of the 

 Berichte. It embodies the results of a systematic series of 



experiments in which currents of oxygen and sulphur dioxide 

 gases were siinultaneously passed for some hours through solu- 

 tions of certain salts of known strength contained in flasks heated 

 upon the water-bath. At the end of each experiment the sulphur 

 dioxide remaining in solution was expelled by a current of carbon 

 dioxide, and finally a determination was made of the amount of 

 sulphuric acid formed by oxidation of the sulphur dioxide. The 

 results show ihat the salts of certain metals exert a most remark- 

 able action in causing the union of oxygen with sulphur dioxide. 

 The most active of all is manganous sulphate, MnS04 . SH.^O, 

 2"4 grammes of which, dissolved in 200 c.c. of water, caused the 

 formation of no less than six times as much sulphuric acid as 

 that originally contained in the fait ; that is, for every molecule 

 of the sulphate employed, five molecules of free acid were 

 synthesized. Manganese chloride under like circumstances was 

 also f jund to act as an energetic oxygen carrier, one molecule of 

 MnClo . 4H2O causing the formation of 4'3 molecules of free 

 sulphuric acid. Copper salts were next experimented upon, and 

 a 3 per cent, solution of the sulphate, CUSO4. SH^O, was found 

 to be most effective, one molecule causing the production of 

 about a molecule of the acid. Both cuprous and cupric chlorides, 

 the former in spite of its insolubility, act even more energetically 

 than the sulphate, while the oxide hydrate, and, metal itself also 

 work in a lesser degree. In a similar manner salts of iron, 

 cobalt, nickel, zinc, cadmium, and magnesium were found 

 capable of causing the oxidation of sulphurous acid, while salts 

 of thallium and potassium merely acted like pure water, being 

 absolutely powerless in this respect. These remarkable results 

 are due, in the opinion of Prof. Meyer, to alternate oxidations 

 and reductions, and this is certainly very strongly supported by 

 the fact that those metals act most powerfully which readily pass 

 from one stage of oxidation to another. As zinc, cadmium, and 

 magnesium are also found to act in this manner, it is presumed 

 that these metals have also an inclination to form sub-salts which 

 have never yet been prepared. 



Some days ago a peasant ploughing at Tjoring, in Denmark, 

 unearthed a handsome armlet of pare gold weighing 12 ounces, 

 which, according to the Director of the Museum of Antiquities 

 in Copenhagen, dates from the second or third century A.D. 

 There was formerly a barrow in the field where the armlet was 

 found, and flint implements, broken pottery containing decayed 

 bones, &c., have frequently been brought to light ; but all traces 

 of the barrow have now disappeared through ploughing. 



It is reported from India that Mr. Rea, of the Madras 

 Archaeological Survey, has recently excavated some ancient 

 burial-places at Dadampatti, Paravai, and other places in the 

 Presidency, and investigated the cromlechs near Kodaikanaul. 

 He has obtained a considerable collection of ancient pottery, 

 and in some of the tombs found a large number of bones and a 

 complete human skull. The latter had been filled up and 

 inclosed in soft clay, so that its contour and characteristics are 

 perfectly preserved, Mr, Rea also brought away a small 

 specimen of a pyriform tomb. 



Last Thursday, Sir John Lubbock read a paper before the 

 Linnean Society, in continuation of his previous memoirs, on 

 " The Habits of Ants, Bees, and Wasps." He said it was 

 generally stated that our English slave-making ant {Formica 

 sdnguined), far from being entirely dependent on slaves, as was 

 the case with Polyergus rufescens, the slave-making ant par 

 excellence, was really able to live alone, and that the slaves 

 were only, so to say, a luxury. Some of his observations 

 appeared to throw doubt on this. In one of his nests the ants 

 were prevented from making any fresh capture of slaves. Under 

 these circumstance^, the number of slaves gradually diminished, 

 and at length the last died. At that time there were some fifty 

 of the mistresses still remaining. These, however, rapidly died 



