September 23, 1897] 



NATURE 



501 



it traversed." Grace for the sin of killing animals which 

 ought to be preserved may, perhaps, be found in the remark 

 that " many more examples of the different species could easily 

 have been procured, but after what was considered to be a suf- 

 ficient number had been secured no more were killed, no matter 

 how often the animals were encountered." The notes upon the 

 characteristics and habits of the animals in life are very 

 i nteresting- 



In previous numbers we have reproduced records of the 

 Calcutta earthquake-pulsations of last June, obtained by means 

 of the bifilar pendulum at Edinburgh and Cancani's seismo- 

 metrograph at Kocca di Papa near Rome. Another fine diagram, 

 made by the Vicentini microseismograph at Padua, is given in a 

 paper by Dr. M. Baratta in the Bollettino of the Italian 

 Geographical Society. The movement in both components 

 began at 11.17 a.m. (Greenwich mean time), the pendular 

 oscillations soon becoming very great. These lasted until 

 about 11.35, but they were evidently superposed on long 

 slow undulations, for the traces made by the pens are not 

 symmetrical with respect to their normal positions. After 

 11.40 these undulations, which had a period of about twenty 

 seconds, were isolated, and are unusually well marked, especially 

 between 11.45 a"^ ii-50. They are clearly visible on the 

 diagram until 1*30 p.m., and, with the aid of a lens, for some 

 time afterwards ; so that, in consequence of this shock, the 

 ground in Italy must have oscillated for about four hours. 



The kiss in Europe and China is the subject of a short paper 

 by M. Paul d'Enjoy {Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop., 1897, viii. p. 181). 

 Originally, he says, the European kiss was a bite and a suction, 

 the Mongolian being the act of smelling. The whites express 

 to the person embraced that they would eat him or her with 

 great pleasure ; the yellows declare that the smell is that of an 

 agreeable prey, either of nutrition or love. Whether from 

 hunger or the sexual appetite, the two kinds of kissing have 

 their origin, according to this author, in the instinct of the 

 preservation of the race. 



The precommercial age, which was a very early stage in 

 human, culture, is exemplified at the present day, according to 

 Letourneau (Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop., 1897, viii. p. 152), by the 

 Euegans and Australians. The Eskimo, owing to contact with 

 Redskins and Europeans, have, like the Veddahs of Ceylon, 

 just passed beyond this stage. The Eskimo of Kamtchatka 

 trade with the Russians, as do the Veddahs with the Cinghalese, 

 by depots, and avoid all direct communication. 



The lumbar curve of the vertebral column has been studied by 

 Cunningham and by Turner, but very little information concern- 

 ing this feature among the American races was forthcoming till 

 a recent paper by Dr. G. A. Dorsey in the Bulletin of the Essex 

 Jnstiiute, Salem, Mass. (vol. xxvii. p. 53). The mean index 

 of eight varied American peoples ranges between icx)"3 and 

 101-5; they are thus orthorachic. Dorsey considers the lumbar 

 index as an important means of determining sex in any individual 

 •race or tribe, and that it bids fair to become one of the most 

 valuable ethnic tests known in determining the physical 

 superiority or inferiority of any tribe or race. 



We have received a letter from Mr. Saville-Kent with refer- 

 ence to the short article in Nature of September 9 (p. 455) on 

 the successful rearing of lobster larvae by Mr. J. T. Cunningham. 

 Mr. Saville-Kent points out that more than twenty years ago, 

 in 1875, he was fortunate In rearing a number of these crus- 

 taceans from the egg to the final or ambulatory stage. A paper 

 embodying the results of his experiments was communicated to 

 the Conferences held in connection with the Great International 

 Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, and it appears with accompanying 

 illustrations in the official publications issued in connection with 

 NO. 1456, VOL. 56] 



that Exhibition. We have referred Mr. Saville- Kent's letter, 

 and the paper containing the results of his experiments, to Mr. 

 Cunningham, who writes: — "I very much regret that in for- 

 warding to you the facts concerning my experiments in lobster 

 rearing at Falmouth, I overlooked Mr. Saville- Kent's previous 

 success in the same practical problem. Although I had a vague 

 recollection of having heard that he had made experiments of 

 this kind, I had never seen any description of them, and I 

 certainly did not think that he had succeeded in rearing the 

 larvae through the whole of their metamorphosis. Mr. Saville- 

 Kent's paper, which I have now had the pleasure of seeing for 

 the first time, was not in the library of the Plymouth Laboratory, 

 at least I never saw it there, although I was fairly familiar with 

 the contents of that library." 



From the Proceedings of the Chemical and Metallurgical 

 Society of South Africa for July last, it appears that, after many 

 fruitless attempts, the treatment of stamp battery slimes from 

 gold ores has now been mastered, and is steadily going on in 

 several works in South Africa. Formerly the excessively finely 

 crushed portion of the battery tailings, amounting to some 30 

 per cent, of the whole, was perforce allowed to run to waste, 

 though theoretically worth nearly \l. per ton. The slimes are 

 now agglomerated and precipitated from the water in which they 

 are suspended by the addition of lime water, and are then 

 treated by agitation with very dilute solutions of cyanide (con- 

 taining o'Oi per cent, or less of available KCy), and washed 

 by settling and decantation, the gold being deposited by electro- 

 lytic action under the Siemens- Halske system. This process 

 has been running for over twelve months at the Crown Reef 

 Works, and is now costing about 3^. ()d. per ton, including 

 royalty and management. The. extraction is 83 per cent., and 

 the net profit about \os. per ton, or 50/. per day. The freshly- 

 formed slimes in course of treatment at these works yield 

 their gold to cyanide readily enough ; but it is otherwise with 

 accumulated slimes, in which oxidation of the pyrites has taken 

 place. Here the presence of finely-divided ferrous sulphide and 

 hydrate absolutely prevents the dissolution of the gold by with- 

 drawing the free oxygen from the solution. Mr. W. Caldecott 

 has discovered that by the supply of oxygen artificially this diffi- 

 culty is cheaply and effectively overcome, and that jets of air, 

 moreover, form the best means of agitation. Potassium per- 

 manganate is also used as an oxidiser. The oxidation and de- 

 struction of cyanide by air, long regarded as preventing its use 

 for agitating cyanide solutions and promoting their solvent action, 

 is not excessive in presence of ferrous sulphide, when the solu- 

 tion contains only from 0'005 to o'oo8 per cent, of cyanide, or 

 about 2 ounces per ton, an amount which, small as it is, is enough 

 for the solution of the gold. 



An account of the range, cultivation, uses and products 01 

 the Camphor tree (Cinnainomum camphora) is given in a circular 

 (No. 12) just distributed by the U.S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture (Division of Botany). Notwithstanding the comparatively 

 narrow limits of its natural environment, the camphor tree 

 grows well in cultivation under widely different conditions. It 

 has become abundantly naturalised in Madagascar. It flourishes 

 at Buenos Ayres. It thrives in Egypt, in the Canary Islands, 

 in south-eastern France, and in the San Joaquin \'alley in 

 California, where the summers are hot and dry. Large trees, 

 at least two hundred years old, are growing in the temple courts 

 at Tokyo, where they are subject to a winter of seventy to 

 eighty nights of frost, with an occasional minimum temperature 

 as low as 12° to 16° F. The conditions for really successful 

 cultivation appear to be a minimum winter temperature not 

 below 20° F., 50 inches or more oi rain during the warm 

 growing season, and an abundance of plant food, rich in 

 nitrogen. In the native forests in Formosa, Fukien, and Japaii 



