March 26, 1896] 



NATURE 



493 



trees for natural lightning conductors. The pyramid-poplar has 

 also for a long time been known to be specially attached to the 

 lightning flash, so that by planting many of these round the 

 farmhouses they should form natural and inexpensive lightning 

 conductors, more effective perhaps than many now in use. 



AccoRDiNc; to Hermann Feigl(" Die Religion derChinesen," 

 Oesterreich. Monatsschr. fiir den Orient, xxii., 1896, i), the 

 primitive belief of the Chinese has been suppressed by Con- 

 fucianism and Buddhism. Chinese religion has never had the 

 puerilities, the animal cults, the cruelties and fanaticism of other 

 religions. Like the Jews, the Chinese had very vague ideas of 

 future rewards and punishments and of life after death. Their 

 ancestor cult had no mythologic motive like that of India or 

 Japan. The Chinese, like the Jews and ancient Egyptians, had 

 the philosophic conception that continuation of life lies not 

 in the immortality of the soul, but in the perpetual remembrance 

 of the righteous by mankind. The Chinese could not persevere 

 with metaphysical problems, and so did not advance. Confucius 

 appeared at a time when the Chinese felt the need of a religion ; 

 but the greatest of their religious reformers was Lao-tseu, who 

 was born about 604 B.C., or half a century before Confucius. 

 He introduced the word Tao, " way," for the idea of divinity, 

 which previously was confused with the visible sky (Schang-ti). 

 Tao is the element from which everything comes, and to which 

 everything returns. Lao-tseu also taught that the departure of 

 he soul from the body was no disaster for us. But he was too 

 vague to be a convincing reformer. Confucius was not an 

 original thinker like Lao-tseu ; he culled what he liked from the 

 older writers, and allowed people to believe what they chose. 

 When consulted he spoke in an oracular manner, and while 

 satisfying no one he offended nobody. 



Perhaps the most interesting region visited by H.M.S. 

 Challenger, during her memorable expedition, was that desig- 

 nated by Dr. John Murray as the ' ' Kerguelen Region of the 

 Great Southern Ocean." Leaving the Cape of Good Hope on 

 December 17, 1873, the C/za/^-i/^fr proceeded in a south-easterly 

 direction, visiting in succession Prince Edward and Marion 

 Islands, the Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Island, and Heard Island, 

 then southward, until on February 16, 1874, having reached 

 longitude 78' 22' E., some ten miles beyond the Antarctic 

 Circle, she turned north-easterly, for Melbourne, arriving there 

 on March 17, 1874. During this three months' cruise many 

 trawlings were made, and some of the rarest and most remark- 

 able forms were met with. Each one of the staff of writers 

 will remember with what excitement and delight he approached 

 the examination of the results of some of the deep-sea dredgings, 

 from this region, especially the eight trawlings from the most 

 southerly position reached, where the depth was between 1260 

 and 2600 fathoms. It is of this region, and of the zoological 

 treasures found therein, that Dr. J. Murray writes in a memoir 

 published in the early part of this year in the Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh (vol. xxxviii.), thus enabling 

 the student to obtain, within a brief compass, the story, as far 

 as it is as yet recorded, of the marine fauna of this part of the 

 ocean. After a short introduction, we have full lists of the 

 Metazoa found by the Challenger, arranged according to the 

 depths. About some of the islands, Kerguelen especially, many 

 of the species were taken from quite shallow water ; this is 

 followed by a list of Metazoa recorded from sources other than 

 the Challenger, a list of great importance for purposes of com- 

 parison. A list is given of identical or closely-related forms, 

 found in the extra-tropical regions of the Northern and 

 .Southern hemispheres, but unknown hitherto within the tropics. 

 There are also lists of the Foraminifera, Diatoms, and surface 

 rganisms of the region, and of the Radiolaria found in the 

 ;cjx)sit dredged from a depth of 1950 fathoms, at Station 157 in 

 he Southern Indian Ocean. 



NO. 1378, VOL. 53] 



Prok. E. C. PirKERi.NG has communicated to the American 

 Meteorological fournal for this month, the results of an investi- 

 gation carried out by Prof. S. I. Bailey, on the diurnal oscilla- 

 tion of atmospheric pressure at the Peruvian stations of 

 Harvard College Observatory. The stations, which are eight 

 in number, are situated along a line nearly four hundred miles 

 long, drawn approximately north and south across the Andes. 

 The lowest station has a very small elevation above the sea- 

 level, while the highest, that on the Misti summit, has an 

 altitude not far short of 20,000 feet, the others being admirably 

 chosen with a view to obtaining meteorological results from a 

 great variety of elevations. The stations are well supplied with 

 instruments, including in every case a Richard barograph, 

 although no mercurial barometer has been regularly in use at 

 any station except Arequipa Observatory. The natural 

 difficulties of visiting the Misti summit have been increased by 

 the civil war, and in consequence of this the continuity of the 

 record has suffered. Energy less active than that pcjssessed by 

 Prof. Pickering and his assistants would have led to the evacua- 

 tion of the station. At Arequipa Observatory (elevation 8000 

 feet), where the annual range of the barometer varies from 

 22 626 inches to 22*404 inches, a comparison was made between 

 the results obtained from the mercurial barometer and the 

 Richard barograph, and after a certain uniform correction had 

 been applied to the latter, it was found that the monthly baro- 

 graphic means were liable to an error as great as 0-034 inch, and 

 that the mean error for the year was 0-013 inch. At all the 

 stations the diurnal oscillations are well marked, and very 

 uniform from day to day. There are striking differences, how- 

 ever, between the records in the different localities, especially in 

 the hour of the morning maximum, and the intensity of the 

 afternoon maximum and minimum. The paper contains the 

 curves for the mean diurnal variation for the year April 1894- 

 March 1895, together with the corresponding values for a single 

 day, selected at random, and the investigation points out this 

 important result, that " from these curves it appears that the 

 retardation of the morning maximum is at least, in part, a 

 function of the altitude." The diagram shows that the time of 

 maximum near the sea-level is 9 a.m. ; at 4000 feet, about 

 9h. 20m. ; at 8000 feet, about 9h. 40m., while at the Misti 

 summit the maximum pressure is near noon. 



The Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for the current 

 month contains a chart showing the tracks of the storms during 

 March for the six years 1890-95, north of the 35th parallel and 

 west of the 30th meridian. The diagram shows that the 

 portions of the North Atlantic within the prescribed limits in 

 which storms are most frequent during March are (i) the 

 region immediately to the east of Cape Hatteras and the New 

 Jersey coast, and (2) the area included between the parallels of 

 45" and 50°, and the meridians of 30^ and 40'. Each track 

 bears a number, by which the date of the appearance of the 

 storm may be obtained by reference to a table. The inform- 

 ation is both interesting and useful, and no doubt similar tracks 

 will be given for other month.s. 



The Zi-ka-wei Observatory has published the first of a pro- 

 posed series of papers entitled " Typhoon Highways in the Far 

 East." The present paper is by the Rev. L. Froc, S.J.,and 

 refers to the storms which have occurred near the south end of 

 Formosa Strait, between 1877 and 1895, and especially to the 

 typhoon of September 19 last. The principal conclusions arrived 

 at are ( i ) that a violent typhoon may be expected to traverse the 

 south end of the Formosa Channel at least once a year ; (2) the 

 direction from the South Cape varies between N. 20° W. and 

 N. 85° W., the ensemble of the storms forms a kind of fan, 

 whose point lies upon the south end of Formosa Ishnd, and 

 which thence spreads out to the coast of China ; (3) the period 

 of occurrence is from the middle of July to the beginning of 



