i6o 



NATURE 



[June 17, 1897 



A VERY severe shock of earthquake was felt at Calcutta, at 

 5 o'clock last Saturday afternoon, June 12. It is stated that, 

 from first to last, the disturbances continued for fully five 

 minutes. Few houses escaped damage of some description, and 

 many are in ruins. Many church towers and spires collapsed, 

 and most of the public buildings were badly damaged by the 

 disturbances. Reuter's agency reports that the area affected by 

 the earthquake was very extensive. Telegrams received from 

 Simla, Agra, Bombay, Manipur, and from places far down in 

 the Central Provinces, report that a shock was felt almost at the 

 same time as the earthquake occurred at Calcutta. The shock 

 appears even to have left its record on seismometers on this side 

 of the earth. Prof. Milne obtained at Newport, Isle of Wight, on 

 Saturday morning, a seismographic diagram of an earthquake of 

 unusual magnitude. It began at about 11.30 a.m., and lasted 

 three hours. Further, a Reuter telegram from Paris states that 

 the seismograph at Grenoble registered an earth treftior at 

 11.28 on Saturday morning. Both these records evidently refer 

 o the Calcutta earthquake. 



President McKinley has transmitted to the Senate the 

 report on forestry made by the Committee of the National 

 Academy of Sciences at the request of the Secretary of the 

 Interior. The following general scheme of administration of forest 

 preserves is submitted : — A forestry bureau under a director, 

 who is to be president of an advisory board, consisting of himself, 

 an assistant director, and four forest inspectors. It also provides 

 that the bureau shall have a disbursing officer, clerks, and legal 

 advisers ; twenty-six head foresters, twenty-six assistants, to 

 constitute a permanent corps ; two hundred rangers and various 

 assistant rangers, the salary roll calling for an annual appro- 

 priation of 250,000 dollars, with preference of appointment to 

 West Point graduates. The Legislature of the State of New 

 York at its recent session granted one million dollars for the 

 purchase of forest preserves in the Adirondachs ; and a surveyor 

 has just been appointed to survey the lands about Indian Lake, 

 in order to acquire them for the State under this Act. 



The great anthropological expedition sent out by President 

 Morris K. Jesup, of the American Museum of Natural History, 

 left New York for British Columbia a few days ago. in charge 

 of Dr. Franz Boas, curator of the anthropological section of the 

 museum. His associate, Mr. Harland J. Smith, preceded him, 

 and Dr. Livingstone Farrand, of Columbia University, ac- 

 companies him. The headquarters of the expedition will be 

 situated in British Columbia, where about thirty Indian dialects 

 are spoken. The language and habits of the Indians will be 

 carefully studied, and elaborate anthropometrical observations 

 made. Mr. Smith will engage in archaeological researches in 

 the southern portion of the territory, and several other parties 

 will be scattered throughout British Columbia. An expedition 

 to Alaska is contemplated for next spring ; also, at some time in 

 the near future, an expedition to Southern Siberia. All this 

 work is under the general supervision of Prof. F. W. Putnam, 

 though he will not take the field in person, at least for the 

 present ; the field work being under the direction of Dr. Boas. 



It has been briefly announced that next year Captain 

 Sverdrup proposes to take the Fram up Smith Sound to the 

 north-west coast of Greenland for the purpose of prosecuting 

 exploration in that direction. Though Dr. Nansen will not 

 accompany the expedition, the Times states that there is reason 

 to believe that he is taking an active share in the direction of 

 the expedition. The object will be to penetrate north through 

 Smith Sound and Robeson Channel as far north as possible 

 along the north-west coast of Greenland. An attempt will be 

 made to discover how far Greenland extends northward, and to 

 survey the north-west, north, and north-east coasts. In short, 

 NO. 1442, VOL. 56] 



one prime object will be to complete the exploration of the 

 Greenland coast, a considerable extent of which is still quite 

 unknown. 



Lieut. Peary has been detached from duty at the Brooklyn 

 Navy Yard, and granted five years' leave of absence in order to 

 enable him to prosecute his Arctic researches. He expects to 

 begin the first trip on July 10, sailing from Boston, and will be 

 away three or four months. Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, of Amherst, 

 and Prof. Geo. H. Barton, of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, will accompany him, and also probably a party 

 from Yale. The route will be from Boston to Sydney, U.S., 

 thence through the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Belle Isle 

 Straits to Resolution Island and the Greenland coast, then along 

 the coast 1200 miles to Melville Bay. The scientific parties will 

 be landed on the way, and picked up by the ship on its return, 

 trip in September. The main object of this trip is to prepare 

 for a longer one of three or four years to be undertaken next 

 year, and to attempt to reach the Pole by gradual approaches, 

 and colonising Eskimos in high latitudes. Lieut. Peary states 

 that he is assured of funds sufficient to prosecute the work for 

 five years if need be, but the name of the donor is withheld. 

 The scheme, however, has the endorsement of the American 

 Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural 

 History. 



The results of a preliminary study of the conditions which 

 exist in highly rarefied media under discharges of electricity are 

 described, by Prof John Trowbridge, in a paper entitled "The 

 Energy Conditions necessary to produce the Rontgen Rays " 

 {Proc. Ainer. Acad, of Arls and Sciences, vol. xxxii. No. 14, 

 April 1897). It appears from the experiments " that the discharge 

 in a Crookes' tube, when on the point of emitting the Rontgen 

 rays most intensely, is an oscillatory one, and that each dis- 

 charge encounters a resistance less than five ohms. An estimate 

 of the great amount of energy thus developed in an exceedingly 

 small interval of time can be obtained if we suppose that 

 Ohm's law holds for individual oscillations. This reserva- 

 tion is an important one, for the investigations I have 

 described in this paper show that a discharge of six inches in 

 length encounters no more resistance during its oscillations than 

 one of two inches in length. In popular language, it can be 

 maintained that a discharge of lightning a mile long encounters 

 no more resistance than one of a foot in length. Ohm's law 

 does not hold good for electrical discharges in air and rarefied 

 gases. It is well known that a voltaic arc can be started in a 

 vacuum. My experiments lead me to believe that in every case 

 the arc is started by a spark which breaks down the medium, 

 and the arc follows. I am led to believe that electrical oscilla- 

 tions are of the nature of voltaic arcs, and that the discharges in 

 Crookes' tubes are voltaic arcs. I am thus forced to the con- 

 clusion that under high electrical stress the ether breaks down 

 and becomes a good conductor." 



Dr. H. H. Hildebrandsson, Director of the Meteoro- 

 logical Observatory at Upsala, has recently communicated to the 

 Royal Swedish Society of Sciences the results of an important 

 investigation upon the "Centres of action of the atmosphere," 

 or the regions at which are situated the mean barometric 

 maxima and minima. The monthly differences of the pressure 

 of the air from the mean, ai being the principal meteorological 

 element, were calculated fjr the years 1875-84 at sixty-eight 

 stations, distributed as widely as possible over the surface of the 

 globe; the mean differences were then plotted upon monthly 

 charts. The results obtained from the lines of equal differences 

 show: (i) That the differences are greater in winter than in 

 summer, and increase from the equator towards the polar 

 regions, and also that the barometrical variations at certain 

 localities, e.g. at the Azores and in the vicinity of Iceland, are 



