October 27, 1898] 



NATURE 



627 



School, held on Thursday last. Referring to the excavations at 

 the prehistoric capital of the island of Melos, discovered at 

 Phylakopi, the director of the School, Mr. Hogarth, said that the 

 School began to excavate it in 1896, little suspecting the great 

 importance of the site. It was proving a second Hissarlik, an un- 

 disturbed repository of the products of the primitive civilisation 

 of the .ligean from the " Mycenaean" age back to the Neolithic 

 period. Much had been eaten away by the sea, but what was 

 left was equal in extent to Tiryns. Mr. Hogarth picked up the 

 work where Mr. Cecil Smith left it, and after determining the 

 limits of the city on south and east, and digging test trenches to 

 obtain a relative chronology of the potsherds, in which the site 

 was marvellously rich, proceeded to open out the great barrack- 

 like structures on the north and west. Here were remains of 

 three settlements, divided by layers of debris, the middle and 

 lower ones being singularly well preserved. The best rooms 

 were on the higher ground to the west. The blocks were 

 divided by narrow lanes with covered drains down the centre. 

 The depth varied from seven metres to three metres. In the 

 two lower settlements was found a mass of pottery, and almost 

 as many vessels, complete or little broken, as in a large 

 cemetery. These covered the whole development of the potters' 

 art up to the fine Mycenaean work. Fabrics, shapes, and de- 

 coration were in many cases new. The most notable vase was 

 pipe-shaped and decorated with four scantily-clad figures, bear- 

 ing fish in either hand. This was about the most interesting 

 primitive ^Egean vase in existence. In several rooms painted 

 fresco was found, in one case white and gold lilies on a red 

 ground ; in another a beautiful scene of the sea with flying fish 

 and marine growths, and a man working a casting net. Of the 

 primitive symbols now attracting so much attention on Cretan 

 stones, &c., over fifty distinct examples were found scratched in 

 clay before baking. Many fine steatite vases, clay lamps (un- 

 known previously on early sites), and other stone utensils and 

 implements came to light. There was a little bronze and bone, 

 but no gold or silver. 



Referring to the collection of moUusca in the Madras 

 Government Museum, Mr. Edgar Thurston states, in his report 

 for the year 1897-98, that a right-handed chank ^^\\{Turbinella 

 rapa), that is, a chank shell with its spiral opening to the right, 

 was acquired in the Madras bazaar for the small sum of Rs. 150. 

 A shell of this nature, found off the coast of Ceylon at Jaffna in 

 1887, was sold for Rs. 700. Such a chank is said to have been 

 sometimes priced at a lakh of rupees (Rs. 1,00,000) ; and, 

 writing in 1813, Milburn says {"Oriental Commerce") that a chank 

 opening to the right hand is highly valued, and always sells for 

 its weight in gold. Further, Baldceus, writing towards the close 

 of the seventeenth century, narrates the legend that Garroude 

 (Garuda) flew in all haste to Brahma, and brought to Krishna 

 the chianko or kink-horn twisted to the right. 



It has been suggested by several people that the recent 

 wreck of the Mokegan on the Manacles Rocks was due to a 

 local deviation of the compass of the ship. In a letter to the 

 Times, Prof. A. W. Riicker points out that a disturbance of a 

 magnitude sufficient to have caused the disaster is most im- 

 probable. He remarks : — " During the magnetic survey of the 

 United Kingdom, carried out by Dr. Thorpe and myself, observ- 

 ations were made at twelve places in Cornwall. Of these Lizard 

 Down, Porthallow, and Falmouth were the nearest to the scene 

 of the disaster, and at all of them the deviation of the com- 

 pass from the normal magnetic meridian was extremely small. 

 The largest disturbance of this kind which was observed in Corn- 

 wall occurred at St. Levan, near the Land's End, and only 

 amounted to eleven minutes of arc, or less than two-tenths of a 

 degree. The largest disturbance of the dipping needle was at 

 Mullion, and was only fourteen minutes." 



NO. 1513, VOL. 58] 



Mr. F. H. Glew, of 156 Clapham Road, sends us a photo- 

 graph of an oscillatory electric discharge which was taken in 

 daylight. The photographic shutter was connected with a 

 coherer and relay, so that the first component of the discharge 

 operated the shutter and allowed an image of the succeeding 

 components of the discharge to be caught. Mr. Glew suggests 

 that a similar arrangement might be employed for photographing 

 lightning in the day-time. Mr. Glew also sends us a photograph 

 of a flash of lightning taken with a vibrating lens. From the 

 multiple image produced, and the rale of vibration, he calculates 

 that the total duration of the flash in question, which appears to 

 have been of a triple compound nature, was one-nineteenth of a 

 second, or less than one-half of a single vibration of the lens. 

 He has also used a rotating photographic plate, but finds the 

 vibrating lens to be more satisfactory. 



Two papers on the circulation of the residual gaseous matter 

 in Crookes' tubes, read before the Physical Society by Mr. A. 

 A. C. Swinton, appear in the October number of the Phil- 

 osophical Magazine. The experiments described lead to the 

 conclusion that "at very high exhaustions there exists a mole- 

 cular or atomic stream from anode to kathode, which carries a 

 positive charge and travels at considerable velocity outside of 

 the opposite kathode-stream." 



When the poles of an arbitrary plane are taken, with respect 

 to the conies of a Steiner's surface, it is known that another 

 Steiner's surface is obtained. Prof. Brambilla, writing in the 

 Kendiconto of the Naples Academy, iv. 7, has extended the 

 same property to the two non-ruled surfaces of the fourth 

 order, one in four-dimensional and the other in five-dimen- 

 sional space, which, when projected from one or two arbitrary 

 centres on our space, produce Steiner's surfaces. 



The phenomenon of equilibrium in mixtures of isomorphous 

 substances has been studied by Kiister since 1890. A further 

 investigation, leading to somewhat different conclusions, is given 

 by Signor Giuseppe Bruni in the Atti dei Lincei, vii. 5, who 

 finds that the curve of congealment of a mixture deviates to a 

 marked extent from the straight line obtained by Kiister, and 

 that serious objections can be raised against the latter's views on 

 the coefficient of distribution. Signor Bruni, however, concludes 

 that, in respect both of the variations in the temperature of 

 congealment and of the distribution of the solid and liquid 

 phases, isomorphous mixtures always follow completely the 

 general theory of Van t' Hoff on solid solutions. 



A SOMEWHAT novel line of investigation, which bids fair to 

 throw light on certain problems of petrology, has been taken up 

 by Prof. R. V. Matteucci in connection with the last eruption 

 of Vesuvius. The method consists in artificially cooling portions 

 of flowing lava, so as to partially or totally check the crystallisa- 

 tion of the substances contained in their magma ; and in this 

 way it appears possible to obtain information as to the exact 

 stages at which different minerals separate out from the first exit 

 of the lava up to its final consolidation. 



The coasts of Japan are peculiarly liable to incursions from 

 spring tides, of which the one occurring on June 15, 1896, in 

 the course of eighteen minutes swept away 9381 houses and 

 6930 boats, killing 21,909 people and wounding 4398. To 

 minimise the damage done to life and property by such inroads, 

 protective forests have been planted at various places along the 

 littoral. Dr. Seiroku Honda, Professor of Forestry in the 

 University of Tokyo, writing in the Bulletin of the Imperial 

 University College of Agriculture, gives an interesting account 

 of these protective forests, and advocates their further extension 

 to parts as yet unprotected. The action of these forests is three- 

 fold : they check the force of the tidal wave ; they delay its 



