514 



NATURE 



\_SepL 25, 187c 



called a tidal wave of moderate magnitude." The old process of 

 replenishment which had gone on since the last eruption in 1868, 

 is reported to have begun again, and after another decade another 

 disgorgement may take place. 



The Indian correspondent of the Times has recently referred 

 to the terrible famine now prevailing in Cashmere, the immediate 

 cause of which is no doubt the long-continued drought which has 

 prevailed in the country. This drought unfortunately followed 

 ■upon a snowfall in the winter and spring of 1877-78 in magni- 

 tude and duration unprecedented in Cashmere, or probably in 

 any other country. Some interesting details of this extraordinary 

 snowfall are given in a paper in the just -issued number of the 

 yournalai the Asiatic Society of Bengal by Mr. Lydekker. Early 

 in the month of October, 1877, snow commenced to fall in the 

 valley and mountains of Cashmere, and from that time up to 

 May, 1878, there seems to have been an almost incessant snow- 

 fall in the higher mountains and valleys ; indeed, in places it 

 frequently snowed without intermission for upwards of ten days 

 at a time. At Dras, which has an elevation of 10,000 feet, Mr. 

 Lydekker estimated the snowfall from the native account, as 

 having been been from 30 feet to 40 feet thick. The effects of 

 this enormous snowfall were to be seen throughout the country. 

 At Dras the well-built travellers' bungalow, which had stood 

 some thirty years, was entirely crushed down by the weight of 

 the snow which fell upon it. In almost every village of the 

 neighbouring mountains more or less of the loghouses had like- 

 wise fallen, while at Gulmarg and Sonamarg, where no attempt 

 was made to remove the snow, almost all the huts of the Euro- 

 pean visitors were utterly .broken down by it. In the higher 

 mountains whole hillsides have been denuded of vegetation and 

 soil by the enormous avalanches which swept do\i n them, leaving 

 vast gaps in the primeval forests and choking the valleys below 

 with the dibris of rocks and trees. As an instance of the amount 

 of snow which must have fallen in the higher levels, Mr. 

 Lydekker mentions the Zogi Pass, leading from Cashmere to 

 Dras, which has an elevation of 11,300 feet. He crossed this 

 early in August last year, and he then found that the whole of 

 the ravine leading up to the pass from the Cashmere side was 

 still filled with snow, which he estimated in places to be at least 

 150 feet thick. In ordinary seasons this road in the Zogi Pass is 

 clear from snow some time during the month of June. As 

 another instance of the great snowfall, Mr. Lydekker takes the 

 valley leading from the town of Dras up to the pass separating 

 that place from the valley of the Kishengunga River. About the 

 middle of August almost the whole of the first-mentioned valley, 

 at an elevation of 12,000 feet, was completely choked with snow, 

 which in places was at least 200 feet thick. In the same district 

 all passes over 13,000 feet were still deep in snow at the same 

 season of the year. Mr. Lydekker gives other instances of snow 

 lying in places in September where no snow had ever before been 

 observed after June. As to the destruction of animal life, 

 in the Upper Wardwan Valley large numbers of ibex were seen 

 imbedded in snow ; in one place upwards of 60 heads were 

 counted, and in another not less than 100. The most convincing 

 proof, however, of the havoc caused among the wild animals by 

 the great snowfall is the fact that scarcely any ibex were seen 

 during last summer in those portions of the Wardwan and Tilail 

 Valleys which are ordinarily considered as sure finds. So also 

 the red bear and the marmot were far less numerous than usual. 

 Mr. Lydekker estimates that the destruction to animal life caused 

 by the snow has far exceeded any slaughter which could be 

 inflicted by sportsmen during a period of at least five or six 

 years. 



Prof. Adler has published a paper on the excavations at 

 Olympia from which it appears that altogether the following 

 numbers of antiquities have been found there : — 1,328 different 



sculptures, 7,464 bronzes, 696 inscriptions, 2,935 coins, 2,09^ 

 terra-cotta objects, and 105 different objects made of glass, horn, ■ 

 lead, &c. 



Baron Taylor, the celebrated founder of a number of literary 

 and scientific associations for assisting literary men, artists, and 

 men of science, has died in Paris at the age of ninety. The 

 aggregate income of the seven associations which he founded 

 amounts to about 10,000/. The son of an Englishman, he 

 was born in Brussels, and became a Frenchman by natura- 

 lisation. He made a number of explorations in .Spain and 

 Egypt — the Luxor obelisk being brought over mainly by his 

 exertions. He was appointed a member of the French Senate 

 by Napoleon III. in 1869, owing to which circumstance his 

 funeral did not take place at the public expense, although a 

 similar honour was paid to M. Claude Bernard, who had been 

 his colleague in the Imperial Senate. 



In a recent part of the Zeitschrift fiir Biologie, Herr Carl 

 Norr published the results of some experiments made by him 

 with a view of determining the power of the human ear 

 for distinguishing different intensities of sound. The experi- 

 ments were made with leaden balls, which from a measured 

 height were dropped on to an iron plate; thus it was 

 possible to determine the exact intensity of the sounds by means 

 of the distances and weights of the balls. Herr Norr made 

 seven different series of experiments, each with a definite 

 intensity of sound, which varied from a just perceptible one to , 

 one 500,000 times as loud. The results showed that the per-i 

 centage of correct determinations made by the ear, decreased s 

 the difference in intensity between any two sounds compare^ 

 increased. When the difference in intensities remained tha 

 same, the percentage of correct determinations was the samd 

 both for loud as well as for scarcely audible sounds. A calculaJ 

 tion of the numbers of correct determinations found by thjf 

 experiments showed that the power of distinguishing the intensiJ 

 ties of sound follows Fediner's law most closely, i.e., that the 

 measures of sensitiveness stand in the same proportion as tha 

 reciprocate values of the square roots of difference of intensitie 

 of sounds. 



We notice among the interesting communications made at thd 

 late Anthropological Congress at Moscow, a communication, bj 

 Prof. Inostrantseff, on the discovery of very numerous remain, 

 of man of the stone period, on the shores of Lake LadogaJ 

 All these remains are accompanied by bones of Bos primigcniusj^ 

 bear, wolf, and seal, and belong to the post-glacial epoch. 



The Russian collections of stone implements at the Moscow 

 Archccological Exhibition were very rich, and if we take into 

 consideration that this subject was quite neglected in Russia until 

 the last few years, we must conclude that Russia will soon 

 become a wide field for the exploration of this period of huma n 

 civilisation. The ease with which these remains are excavated, 

 the immense quantities in which they are found, both on tlie 

 shores of the northern lakes and on the banks of southern 

 rivers, and the very good state in which the bones are preserved 

 (as, for instance, the skull and bones discovered by Count 

 Ouvaroff, already mentioned in Nature), will surely much 

 contribute to the development of these studies in Russia. 



In a recent paper on the radiometer to the Vienna Academy, 

 Dr. Puluj criticises Reynold's evaporation theory and Zollner's 

 emission theory, and holds that neither evaporation nor emission 

 can be the sole or chief cause of radiometric movements, -else 

 there should not be a decrease in the motion when a certain 

 degree of rarefaction has been passed. It must be supposed 

 that the reaction-force arising from any emission of particles 

 which takes place is extremely small in comparison with the 

 forces arising through rebound of molecules of gaseous material 

 already present, so that the motion is exclusively or chiefly con- 



