February 20, 1896] 



NATURE 



373 



Prok. D. Kikuchi informs us that on December 28, 

 1895, an Imperial Ordinance was promulgated by 

 which a new standard time was established in Japan. 

 The ordinance read as follows : (l) The standard time 

 of the Empire hitherto in use shall henceforth be called the 

 Central standard time. (2) The time of the meridian of 120° 

 oast longitude shall be the standard time of Taiwan (Formosa), 

 I loko group (the Pescadores), and Taeyama and Miyako 

 jjroups, and shall be called the Western standard time. (3) This 

 ordinance shall come into effect on January i of the twenty- 

 ninth year of Meiji (1896). 



The Hayden Memorial Medal of the Philadelphia Academy 



)f Natural Sciences has been awarded to Prof. Karl von Zittel, 



whose services to the sciences of geology and pahiiontology 



\tend continuously over a period of thirty years. Born in 



■ ''^39> frof- von Zittel was, at the age of twenty-four, appointed 



to the Professorship of Mineralogy at Karlsruhe, and three 



years later to the Professorship of Palaeontology at the University 



of Munich, a position, jointly with that of Director of the 



Palaeontological Museum, which he still holds. His published 



works cover a large range of personal investigation, not the least 



nportant of which are the researches into the structure and 



ihysiography of the Libyan Desert and the Sahara, and his 



monumental work, " Handbuch der Paliiontologie," which has 



not long been completed. 



The work of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth 

 has, for a number of years, been carried on under great difiR- 

 culties, owing to the want of a suitable steamboat capable of 

 working in the Channel. We are glad to be able to announce 

 hat this difficulty has now been overcome by the purchase of the 

 team fishing yacht. Busy Bee, from Mr. C. E. Treffry, of 

 \ owey. The vessel is 56 feet long, with a registered tonnage of 

 7 9, and is a good sea-boat^ capable of going anywhere in the 

 l^nglish Channel. With the increased facilities for marine work 

 which will thus be offered, it is hoped that a still larger number 

 of naturalists will visit the Laboratory. Applications for the 

 use of tables during the Easter vacation, including, when 

 <lesired, participation in the dredging and trawling work to be 

 carried on by the new yacht, should be sent without delay to the 

 I )irector. 



We regret to notice the death, on Sunday, of General J. T. 

 Walker, C.B., F.R.S., whose work as Superintendent of the 

 Oreat Trigonometrical Survey, and Surveyor-General of India, is 

 widely known and appreciated. From an obituary notice in the 

 Times we learn that he was born in 1826, and entered the 

 Bombay Engineer Corps in 1844. He joined the Trigono- 

 metrical Survey in 1852, and, except for a short time during the 

 Mutinies, he was incessantly employed on work connected with 

 it, under Sir Andrew Waugh, until he succeeded that officer as 

 Superintendent in 1861. He held this post for twenty-two years, 

 combining with it during the last five years the Surveyor- 

 Generalship and the charge of the Revenue Surveys. He con- 

 tinued and completed the original scheme of the Great Trigo- 

 nometrical Survey, and conducted numerous collateral opera- 

 tions connected with it. General Walker's labours were not 

 confined to geodesy. He was in the first rank as a geographer. 

 On retiring from India in 1883, he became an active member of 

 the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, and was an 

 authority on all questions relating to Central Asia. Last July 

 he took a leading part in the geodetical business of the Inter- 

 national Congress, and was doing useful geographical work up to 

 within a short time of his death. 



We cordially welcome the Centralbuitt fiir Anthropoiogie, 



Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, edited by Dr. G. Buschan, as 



supplying a real need. Other sciences, such as zoology, botany, 



■or chemistry, have journals the aim of which is to keep their 



NO. 1373, VOL. 53] 



readers abreast with the literature of their respective subjects. 

 Till now the very comprehensive study of anthropology has 

 been without such a necessary journal, although several anthro- 

 pological serials make a point of giving some idea of current 

 literature. Dr. Buschan has secured the co-operation of a large 

 number of colleagues, which will ensure catholicity in the selec- 

 tion of notices. There are to be a few quite short original 

 articles, and various items of general interest and personal 

 notices. This first number contains short, clear notices of 112 

 papers and books. We hope that the " bibliographische Uber- 

 sicht," which is promised, will give the current literature as ex- 

 haustively as is possible. If this is done, the new journal will 

 be of the greatest value to all those interested in the study of 

 man. 



At the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, on 

 Friday, the gold medal of the Society was awarded to Dr. S. C. 

 Chandler for his many astronomical investigations, and especially 

 for his work in connection with the variations of latitude. 



The successive deaths, following so soon one after the other, 

 of the two great American systematic botanists, Dr. Asa Gray 

 and Dr. Sereno Watson, suspended the publication of their 

 great Synoptical Flora of North America, of which two parts 

 were published, and were reissued by the Smithsonian Institution 

 in 1886. Arrangements have now been made for carrying on the 

 publication, and a fascicle of upwards of 200 large octavo pages 

 is published, under the editorship of Dr. B. L. Robinson. It 

 comprises the orders of Polypedalas from Ranunculaceae to 

 Frankeniaceie. 



AccoRUiNd to the recent investigations of Dr. R. F. Kaindl 

 {Globus, Ixix., 1896, pp. 69, 90), the Huzulen retain many 

 primitive customs ; these people are Slavs who inhabit the 

 Galician Carpathians, and are nominally Roman Catholics. 

 Everywhere one comes across wooden crosses erected over 

 buried brandy-bottles. In 1894a "Brandy-prophet" appeared; 

 he was a simple peasant who waged a successful warfare against 

 brandy-drinking. The zeal of the people constrained the clergy 

 to bury the spirit with ceremonies ; and now in this country the 

 use of brandy has ceased; and the words of an old Huzulen may 

 be true, that at the present time only those drink brandy who 

 are worth nothing. A gypsy, who had sent his wife away, 

 bought the daughter of a Huzulen for fifty florins ; he was 

 had up by the magistrate, but that had no effect ; in a year he 

 was tired of her, and then he hired the wife of another Huzulen 

 for sixty florins ; again the law was powerless, and at the end 

 of the year the husband came for his wife. There are two 

 remedies for back-ache— one is for the priest to walk on the 

 patient's back in church, and the other is to let a bear walk on it. 

 Weasels, snakes, frogs, puppies, and kittens may not be killed, 

 and there are numerous charms against the two first. For three 

 days before the Huzulen moves into a new house he throws a 

 black hen on it, so that snakes may not nest there. Black cattle 

 are lucky. The mentioning of certain words for simmering and 

 boiling is prohibited when applied to milk, lest harm should come 

 to the cows. The grave-diggers and coffin-makers wash their 

 hands over a grave to signify that they are not to blame for the 

 sorrow, and the relatives ask the latter not to be angry with the 

 dead for the trouble he has caused them, and not to ask for pay- 

 ment from him in the next world. Several original sketches 

 illustrate this article. 



Geology and agriculture, as well as meteorology, writes Prof. 

 Abbe in the Monthly Weather Review, are interested in the part 

 played by the small quantity of carbonic acid gas that exists in 

 the atmosphere. The leaves absorb and assimilate a portion ; 

 the falling raindrops and the surrace water of the ocean absorb 



