i6o 



NATURE 



[June i6, 1892 



Mont Blanc and its erection there have been intrusted to the 

 charge of two capable guides— Frederick Payot and Jules 

 Bossonay. 



Lkctures on subjects of great practical interest are being de- 

 livered daily in connection with the International Horticultural 

 Exhibition. Mr. H. Cheshire will lecture to-day on " Guano : 

 its origin and composition, use and abuse." Among the sub- 

 jects of other lectures for which arrangements have been made 

 are "The relation of insects to flowers," " Strawberry culture," 

 and "The tomato: its diseases," by Prof. F. L. Cheshire; 

 " Hatching : the management of the brooding hen," by Mr. W. 

 Cook ; and " Plant food and the formation of composts," by Mr. 

 H. Cheshire. 



Dr. W. L. Abbot has prepared for the Smithsonian 

 Institution an excellent descriptive catalogue of the collection of 

 ethnographical objects from KilimayNjaro, presented by him to 

 the National Museum. Dr. Abbot expresses his belief that 

 Kilima-Njaro, with its cool, healthy, and bracing climate, will 

 some day be a great sanatorium for Europeans from the hot and 

 fever-stricken coast regions. He would be sorry, however, to 

 see civilization invade this region, and hopes the day may be far 

 distant when a railway shall open the way into the interior, and 

 drive off " the herds of game that still pasture within sight of 

 Africa's great snow mountains." 



Messrs. Joseph Baer and Co., booksellers, Frankfort, are 

 selling the botanical library of the late Prof. L. Just, director of 

 the botanical garden connected with the Polytechnicum at 

 Carlsruhe. The list includes many important works in various 

 departments of botanical science. 



Mr. L. Rybot writes to us from Southampton that he caught 

 a very perfect specimen of the rare crimson speckled Deiopeia 

 ptilchella, on the afternoon of Friday last (June lo), in a field 

 on the right bank of the Itchen, not far from Southampton, 



In 1874 the British Association published a volume of 

 "Notes and Queries on Anthropology," the object being to 

 promote accurate anthropological observation on the part of 

 travellers, and to enable those who were not anthropologists 

 themselves to supply information wanted for the scientific study 

 of anthropology at home. A second edition has long been wanted, 

 and a Committee was appointed by the British Association to 

 consider and report on the best means for bringing the volume 

 up 10 the requirements of the present time. The Committee 

 recommended that the work should be transferred to the 

 Anthropological Institute, and this proposal was accepted, the 

 Association making grants amounting to £'jo to aid in defraying 

 the cost of publication. The new edition has now been issued, 

 the editors being Dr. J. G. Garson and Mr. C, H. Read ; and 

 every one who may have occasion to use it will find it thorough 

 and most suggestive. The first part — Anthropography — has been 

 entirely recast ; the second part— Ethnography — has been 

 revised, and additional chapters have been written. Among 

 the contributors to the volume are Mr. F. Gallon, Mr. A. W. 

 Franks, Dr. E. B. Tylor, General Pitt-Rivers, and many other 

 well-known authorities. 



Mr. Cyrus Thomas announces in Science, of May 27, that he 

 has discovered the key which will unlock the mystery of the 

 Maya codices, and, probably, the Central American inscriptions. 

 The progress of decipherment will be slow, but he is confident 

 that it will be ultimately accomplished. He has already 

 determined the signification of some dozens of characters, and 

 in several instances ascertained the general sense of a group 

 forming a sentence, although there are a number of conventional 

 symbols. Mr. Thomas holds that the great majority of the 

 characters are truly phonetic, and that the writing is of a higher 

 grade than has hitherto been supposed. 

 NO. II 8 I, VOL. 46] 



The members of the Johns Hopkins Marine Station accumu- 

 lated during the summer of 1891, in addition to the results of 

 their special researches, many general observations upon the 

 fauna of Jamaica. These notes are printed in the April 

 number of the Johns Hopkins University Circulars, and will be 

 of considerable service to any one who may desire to obtain what 

 is called in the Circular "a preliminary view of the material." 



The new number of the Internationales Archiv fiir Ethno- 

 graphie, contains interesting notes (in English) by A. Ernst,. 

 Caracas, on some stone-yokes from Mexico. R. Parkinson con- 

 tributes (in German) a paper on tattooing among the natives 

 of the district Siarr, on the east coast of New Mecklenburg, New 

 Ireland. A paper on the development and geographical dis- 

 tribution of the various types of building in use among Finnish 

 peoples is contributed by Axel O. Heikel, of Helsingfors. The 

 illustrations, as usual, have been carefully prepared. 



The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has issued 

 a fresh series of coloured representations of plants. They have 

 been printed in Germany, and ought to be of good service to 

 students and teachers of botany. 



The first volume of " A Treatise on Hygiene," edited by Dr. 

 Thomas Stevenson and Mr. Shirley F. Murphy, will shortly be 

 issued by Messrs. J. and A. Churchill. It consists of articles, by 

 eminent writers, on many different phases of hygienic science. 

 The second volume is in the press. 



Mr. C. F. Mabery gives in Science, of May 13, a full account 

 of the new chemical laboratory of the Case School of Applied 

 Science, Cleveland, Ohio. In devising plans for the labora- 

 tory, Mr. Mabery felt that while it was not good economy to 

 construct a building several times larger than present needs 

 demanded, it was important to provide for the possibility of 

 unlimited extension. A plain, rectangular form was therefore 

 designed, and it was found that extension of the main hall into 

 a wing of any size would not interfere with a convenient 

 arrangement of the rooms for present use. 



Icebergs seem to be unusually plentiful in the Atlantic this 

 year. According to a writer in the Times, the log of the Inman 

 liner City of Berlin, which arrived on the 3rd inst., shows how 

 dangerously close to the Transatlantic path the icebergs are 

 hovering. On the afternoon of May 31, about 5.45 o'clock, 

 the City of Berlin was in latitude 50° 20', longitude 42" 15'. It 

 was a clear and pleasant evening, and almost all the passengers 

 were on deck. About 5 o'clock the air became very chilly, and 

 the temperature of the water was very low. Captain Land at 

 once suspected icebergs, and steered a more southerly course in 

 the hope of avoiding them. About 6 o'clock, only a few miles 

 to the north, a towering double-pinnacled berg was sighted. 

 The berg was fully 200 feet high and about 600 feet long. Twenty 

 minutes later another berg was sighted on a direct line with the 

 first; between 6 and 8.30 o'clock four bergs were sighted. 

 None of them was less than 100 feet high and 300 feet long ; all 

 were in a good state of preservation, and looked as though they 

 would be able to drift about for some time. Icebergs have also 

 been sighted by other vessels. 



The Todas, inhabiting the Nilgiri plateau, are not dying out 

 gradually, as has long been supposed. The last census figures 

 show that they have increased by no less than 10 per cent, during 

 the last ten years, there being now nearly eight hundred of them 

 altogether. 



In the new number of the Journal of the Straits Branch of 

 the Royal Asiatic Society there is an interesting note on the 

 little insectivore, Ttipaia javanensis. It is very common in 

 Singapore, and especially in the Botanic Gardens, where it may 

 be often seen running about among the trees. It is easily mis- 



