Dec. 20, 1888] 



NATURE 



185 



been exposed to a fall of rain, and the various hygrometers have 

 shown the air to be completely saturated with moisture. Under 

 such circumstances the fogs in London are always less injurious 

 to life than those of a drier nature, and it \Vill be observed that 

 we have iiad no reports this year of cattle being suffocated at 

 the Cattle Show by London fog, as they were a few years ago. 

 What the difference may be between the two conditions would 

 be an interesting subject for inquiry. On both occasions the 

 fogs were anticyclonic, and it cannot be said that the number of 

 fires in London has decreased during the past ten years." 



The Report on the Administration of the Meteorological 

 Department of the Government of India in 1887-88, which has 

 just been published, is divided into two parts. The first deals 

 with the more important administrative questions that have 

 arisen during the year ; the second describes the actual working 

 of the Department, and the condition of the observatories ; it 

 contains also extracts from the reports of the inspection of the 

 stations. These reports show that in many cases the paid 

 observers take but little interest in their work. Mr. Eliot has 

 introduced various changes, among the chief of which are : (i) 

 ihe discontinuance of solar and terrestrial radiation observations, 

 except at a few selected stations, on the ground that these obser- 

 vations are open to various objections, and that the instruments 

 are unsuited for exact measurement, — two instruments, apparently 

 identical in construction, frequently giving different readings 

 under the same circumstances ; (2) the tabulation of all obser- 

 vations in a form admitting" of easy reference, and of the calcula- 

 tion of daily averages, — at present, although the monthly means 

 have been obtained, the average conditions of each day or week 

 arc not yet known ; (3) the extension and improvement of the 

 methods of collecting rainfall statistics. Rainfall is registered at 

 all the meteorological stations, but each province has established 

 its own method of taking the observations, the result being an 

 utter want of uniformity in the hours of measurement, the times 

 varying from sunrise to midnight. An observatory has been 

 opened at Bagdad ; and the question of the establishment of one 

 at Perim, at the entrance of the Red Sea, is under consideration, 

 at the suggestion of the English Meteorological Council. 



On November i, a bird very rare in Europe was shot in the 

 Island of Moen, in Denmark, viz. a specimen of the " isabel- 

 coloured runner" {Ctnsoriiis isabellinns). The home of this 

 bird is the Desert of Sahara. Only one or two specimens have 

 hitherto been seen in Europe. 



We notice in the Izvestia of the East Siberian branch of the 

 Russian Geographical Society, a very interesting paper by M. 

 Khangaloff, on the customs of the Buriates some three or four 

 centuries ago, when they did not yet carry on agriculture, and lived 

 only by hunting and cattle-breeding. The author's attention has 

 been devoted chiefly to \}c^Qzcgheteaba, i.e. the periodical hunting 

 by whole tribes gathering together from places as distant from one 

 another as Verkholensk, Tunea, and Transbaikalia. Several 

 hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of men gathered for these 

 communal huntings, which lasted for forty days, and the author 

 gives interesting details as to the customs in use on such 

 occasions. They are still maintained, although only few tribes 

 come together, and in order to keep up the old associations, 

 fines have been imposed on those who do not assist at the 

 huntings. Several "gentes"take part in the communal hunt- 

 ings, and must send one man out of each ten men of each 

 "gens." The poor are freed from the obligation. The 

 cleverness of the Buriates in killing wolves with their arrows, 

 while riding at full speed, is really astonishing. The best 

 archers kill a wolf at a distance of lOO yards. 



The Superintendent of the Anting Missionary Hospital, in a 

 report on that institution, says that the Chinese believe that 

 various animals, principally the hedgehog, weasel, fox, snake, | 



and rat, take up their abode in man and control his fortunes. 

 The reason given by the Chinese for the selection of these 

 animals is that they have discovered the secret of long life 

 possessing which every other good thing is certain to follow. 

 One patient insists that a man inside him holds interminable 

 conversations with him. A strong cathartic removes this delu- 

 sion for a few days, but the intruder is certain to return at 

 the end of that time. With regard to the insane in China, they 

 have a pitiable lot there. A plea of insanity is of no avail in a 

 trial for murder, and the culprit is decapitated just as if he were 

 sane. Usually, however, insanity takes a very harmless shape : 

 holding conversations with imaginary persons is the commonest 

 form ; refusing to eat or drink, and insisting on sitting continually 

 in one place, are also common. 



A report from Hirschberg states that while a reservoir was 

 being made a subterranean river was lately discovered in the 

 Kiesengebirge. It is 2 metres below the surface of the earth. 

 The river is said to be, at one spot, 150 metres broad. 



Prof. Kikuchi has published the geometry for Japanese 

 students upon which, as we stated some few months since, he 

 has been engaged. The English equivalent of the title-page is, 

 "A Text-book of Elementary Geometry, vol. i., Plane Geo- 

 metry, Books i., ii., iii. (corresponding to the Books i., ii., iii., 

 of the Association Geometry)." The work is brought out by the 

 Educational Department of Japan. 



Prof. Matthias Duval, of the Paris Medical Faculty, has 

 just published a quarto atlas of embryology. It contains forty 

 double plates, with over five hundred figures, concerning the 

 embryological evolution of the chick. 



A new alkaloid has been isolated from the poisonous plant 

 Fritillaria ivipcrialis, a member of the order Liliacese, by Dr. 

 Fragner, of Prague. All parts of this plant, and particularly the 

 bulbs, have long been known to be violently poisonous ; the 

 action of the poisonous principle being very similar to that con- 

 tained in the Scilla tnaritima, which is so much used in 

 medicine. In order to investigate the nature of this noxious 

 substance, a large number of the crushed bulbs were triturated 

 with lime, and the mixture evaporated to complete dryness upon 

 a water-bath. The residue was then repeatedly treated with hot 

 chloroform, and the solution so obtained agitated with water acidi- 

 fied with tartaric acid. On the addition of sodium carbonate to the 

 concentrated solution, the alkaloid itself was obtained in the form 

 of a voluminous yellow precipitate. After removal of the mother- 

 liquor as completely as possible by means of the filter-pump, the 

 substance was dissolved in hot alcohol. From this solution in 

 alcohol the alkaloid crystallized in short needles, which, after 

 several recrystallizations were obtained perfectly colourless. 

 The crystals are very sparingly soluble in water, but readily in 

 ether, chloroform, and alcohol, imparting to these liquids an 

 extremely bitter taste. They melt at 254° C, and furnish, on 

 analysis, numbers pointing to the formula C35HgoN04. Dr. 

 Fragner, in consideration of its source, has endowed the new 

 alkaloid with the name " imperialine." On allowing a solution 

 cf imperialine in alcohol saturated with hydrochloric acid gas 

 to stand for a short time, large translucent crystals of the hydro- 

 chloride, C35Hg„N04lICl, separate out ; this salt is very soluble 

 in alcohol or water, and these solutions also possess the bitter 

 taste. On the addition of ether to a mixture' of platinum or gold 

 chloride and the alcoholic solution of the hydrochloride, a yellow 

 oil is obtained which eventually becomes semi-solid. If this 

 pasty substance be dissolved in hot dilute hydrochloric acid and 

 allowed to stand, the platinum or gold salt is obtained, the 

 former in orange and the latter in yellow-coloured crystals. 

 The platinum salt, on analysis, was found to 'possess the com- 

 position 2C35HgoN04HCl + PtCl.i, and the gold salt gave 

 numbers agreeing with the formula CjjHgoNOjHCl + AuClj. 



