40 



NATURE 



\_May 13, 1875 



such as that described by Dr. Hooker in the Himalayan range, 

 where the mean gradient of the surface was 40° to 50° and the 

 actual fall was 14,000 feet in five or six miles, Dr. Hooker 

 found great lakes attendant upon the mountains. Supposing the 

 ice was a mile thick, the pressure would be half a ton on the 

 inch, in the Himalayas at least, and the production of water by 

 friction of ice upon ice enormous. Friction is dependent upon 

 pressure and distance moved, and independent of velocity of 

 motion. 



Anthropological Institute, April 27. — Col. A.' Lane-Fox, 

 president, in the chair. — Mr. Francis Galton, F.R.S., contributed 

 a note on the height and weight of boys aged fourteen, in town 

 and country schools. The principal results showed the compara- 

 tive heights and weights of those boys who were fourteen on 

 their last birthday, in two groups of public schools, the one 

 group of country schools and the other of town schools. It 

 appeared that boys of fourteen in the country group were about 

 I \ inches taller and 7 lbs. heavier than those in the town group, 

 and that the difference of height was due in about equal degrees 

 to retardation and to total suppression of growth ; and that the 

 distribution of heights in both cases conformed well to the results 

 of the " Law of Error."— Rev. Joseph Mullens, D.D., read a 

 paper on the origin and progress of the people of Madagascar. 

 The Malagasy appeared to be a single race. No tribe is to be 

 found secluded in any corner or in the hill districts different from 

 the people of the plains or open provinces such as is met with in 

 India, in Sumatra, and in Borneo ; nor is any portion of the people 

 specially degraded. The Malagasy are divided into fV.rcc^ t ibes — 

 the Betsimisarakas, the Sacalavas, and the Hova>;. the latter 

 largely predominating in numbers and influence. With regard 

 to the origin of the people, the author rejected the theory of 

 Crawfurd and others, who argued for their African descent. 

 Their language and tribal customs suggested a very different 

 origin. There could hardly be any doubt that the Malay entered 

 largely into the composition of the grammar and vocabulary, 

 and continued researches into the Malay and Malagasy languages 

 gave more and more evidence of their resemblances. The con- 

 clusion was that the Malagasy are' a Malay people, following 

 Malay customs, some of them possessing Malay eyes, hair, and 

 features, and speaking a Malay tongue at the present time. 

 They were an intelligent people, orderly, were well governed, 

 and were daily improving, and the author of the paper could see 

 the promise of a great and useful future for them.— Mr. J. J. 

 Monteiro read a paper on the Quissama tribe of Angola, which 

 he had written with the object of correcting some erroneous 

 statements concerning them that had been formerly brought 

 before the Institute, 



Cambridge 



Philosophical Society, March 8. — The following com- 

 munications were made by Mr. W. T. Kingsley :— (i) On the 

 cause of the "wolf" ia the violoncello; (2) A description of 

 the instruments used in sounding some of the lakes in the 

 Snowdon district, and an account of the results obtained. Mr. 

 Kingsley said that the " wolf" occurs somewhere about the low 

 E or E flat, and was attributed to the finger-board having the 

 same pitch, so that the finger-board becomes as it were a portion 

 of the string stopped down on it and vibrates with it : if this is 

 the true cause, the "wolf" cannot be got rid of, but may be 

 placed at such a pitch between E and E flat as to occur on a 

 note rarely used ; also by thickening the neck of the finger- 

 board, the extent of discursion in the vibration may be made 

 less. — The Master of St, Catharine's College remarked that a 

 different explanation of the phenomenon was given by M. Savart, 

 which was to this effect. The old Italian makers constructed 

 the violoncello of such dimensions that the mass of air included 

 within the instrument resonates to a note making 85*33 vibra- 

 tions in a second, a number which then represented the lowest 

 r on the C string, but which now, owing to the rise of pitch 

 since the beginning of the eighteenth century, nearly represents 

 the note E immediately below it. Savart's theory was that notes 

 half a tone above or below this E will cause beats between the 

 vibrations of the string and those of the mass of included air. 

 It seemed quite possible that the mass of air contained in the 

 instrument should be capable of controlling the vibrations of the 

 whole instrument, but not that the vibrations of the finger- 

 board alone (as Mr. Kingsley suggested) could do this. For the 

 sound, technically called the "wolf," is an actual check to the 

 whole vibration of the violoncello, producing not merely beats, 

 but a baying sound, destitute of the freedom of vibration which 



characterises other notes. But a' great objection to the above 

 explanation is this experiment. On an Italian instrument, the 

 upper D on the fourth or lowest string is the imperfect note. 

 But when the same note is elicited from the third string, the 

 note is perfectly resonant. This peculiar effect seems then to 

 depend upon the point of the finger-board which is pressed. It 

 is also well known that the " wolf" can be modified by an alte- 

 ration of the position of the sound-post. As an explanation, 

 we may conceive that the whole framework of the violoncello 

 vibrates like a stretched string, producing its fundamental, with 

 a series of overtones, and that a nodal line passes through the 

 point of the finger-board, pressure upon which produces the 

 "wolf," and that thus, all vibrations being destroyed except those 

 which have a node at the point of pressvfre, this peculiar tone is 

 elicited. — Mr. Kingsley then gave a description of the plummet, 

 registering apparatus, and protractors used by him in sounding 

 several of the deep lakes in the Snowdon district last June. The 

 plummet is a modification of the deep-sea plummet now gene- 

 rally used, the principal alteration being in the application of a 

 heavy gouge to aid in bringing up specimens of the bottom. 

 The recording apparatus is a modification of the paying-out appa- 

 ratus used for laying deep-sea telegraph cables. The protractors 

 are diagonal telescopes mounted on bars revolving on vertical 

 axes, and having fiducial edges radiating from the centres of the 

 axes. One protractor is placed at each extremity of the base 

 on a horizontal table, on which is strained a sheet of draw- 

 ing paper ; the telescopes are first coUimated with each 

 other, and then a line is drawn by the fiducial edges on 

 each sheet of paper ; the boat with the sounding apparatus is 

 followed by the two observers at the protractors, and when a 

 signal is given, a line is ruled and numbered by each observer ; 

 finally, the two papers are placed so as to have the lines of coUi- 

 mation in coincidence and the centres at the scale distances 

 apart ; then by looking through the papers and pricking the 

 intersections of the corresponding lines, the positions of the boat 

 are laid down on two maps. In practice this is all done easily, 

 and no particular skill is needed in the observers with the pro- 

 tractors. The results obtained showed that the bottoms of these 

 lakes are comparatively flat, the greatest depths being reached 

 at a short distance from the shore on the cross section, and 

 occurring also nearer to the upper end of the lake than to the 

 lower : the forms of the bottoms correspond in a remarkable 

 manner with the set that would be given to glaciers descending 

 into the hollows in which the lakes lie ; and Mr, Kingsley 

 believed them to have been formed by the action of glaciers 

 during the extreme cold or penultimate glacier epoch ; because 

 in one case, that of Llyn Cawlyd, the Jake lies almost on a 

 watershed, where no glacier could now form, but which was a 

 depression forming a lateral outflow from the great glacier that 

 at one time filled the whole hollow between tne Glydyns and 

 Carnedds ; during the last glacier epoch most of these hollows 

 were again filled with ice to a great height, but these last glaciers 

 were comparatively small. Mr. Kingsley especially (iui. it upon 

 the difficulty of disentangling the scattered mor.unc from the 

 dril't, and also of distinguishing between the striations belonging 

 to the two cold epochs. 



CONTENTS Page 



Lord Hartismere's Vivisection Bill 21 



Geikih's " Life of Murchison," II 21 



Marsden's Numismata Orientalia 24 



Our booK Shelf : — 



The Paris Arboretum 25 



Letters to the Editor : — 



Prof. Willis's Mechanical Models.— John Willis Clark ; W. H. 



Besant 25 



Ants and Bees. — Josiah Emerv 25 



Flowering of the Hazel. — Dr. Hermann Muller 26 



Variable (?) Star in Sextans. — J. E. Gore a6 



Equilibrium in Gases. — Joseph John Murphy 26 



Curious Phenomenon of Light. — Wm. M'Laurin 26 



Destruction of Flowers by tiirds. — R. A. Prvor 26 



Our Astronomical Column : — 



Orbits of Binary Stars 26 



'1 he Star Lalande 19662 (Sextans) 27 



The Star 61 Geminorum 27 



Cometary Astronomy 27 



Lectures at the Zoological Gardens, III.: Mr. Garrod on the 



Deer Tribe 27 



The Irom AND Steel Institute 2« 



The Progress of the Thlegrai'h, V. {.With Illusirations) .... 30 



Recent French Mathematical Publications 32 



Motes 32 



Natural History of Kerguelen's Island. By Rev. E. A. Eaton 35 



Scientific Serials 37 



Societies and Academies 37 



