82 



NA TURE 



[November 2^, 189; 



August last, west of longitude 50° W, During this period two 

 severe storms occurred ; the first struck the coast in the vicinity 

 of New Yorl<, where much damage was done to shipping, the 

 second struck the coast near Savannah, and occasioned frightful 

 loss of life along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, the 

 barometer falling to 28 29 inches at 6 a.m. on August 28. This 

 was the storm referred to in our issues of 51st August and 

 7th September. 



Tke annual meeting of the Royal Geological Society of 

 Cornwall was held at Penzance on November 10, when the 

 president, Mr. Howard Fox, delivered an address, in which he 

 reviewed the past history of the society. In the course of his 

 remarks, he said that the rocks of West Cornwall had been 

 subjected to precisely the same conditions as those of Moffat 

 and Girvan, in South Scotland, described by Prof Lapworlh. 

 They show, in fact, a repetition of the same phenomena, 

 except that as yet no band of fossiliferous rock characteristic of 

 a special geological zone has been discovered as a horizon of 

 reference. It is, therefore, worth consideration whether the radio- 

 larian cherts of Mullion Island, described in the Quai terly y our. 

 iial of the Geological Society for this year, will not answer the same 

 purpose. The Mullion Island cherts consist of easily-recog- 

 nised bands of mostly black flint-like rock, generally reticulated 

 with thin but conspicuous white quartz veins. They are 

 extremely hard and resistant of both atmospheric and subter- 

 ranean agents of destruction. They are of sufficient thick- 

 ness to form a distinctly marked feature in the ascending 

 sequence, and having been originally deposited on the floor of 

 a deep ocean as radiolarian ooze, they necessarily occupy a 

 wide horizontal extent of country. They occur in distinct 

 bands, mostly in shales or crushed dark slates ; they break with 

 a conchoiilal fracture, and when sheared or impure the micro- 

 scope can generally determine their nature. The fossils are 

 radiolarian dee|)-sea forms like those of the present day. 

 Messrs. Teall and Lapworth have traced these cherts with Mr. 

 Fox for 800 yards in the cliffs and on the foreshore north of 

 Porthallow in-Meni.age, and during the past summer they 

 have been traced at intervals through the parishes of 

 Veryan, Gorran, and Caerhayes. Pebbles have been found on 

 the north coast, which under the microscope show radiolaria 

 with their structure still visible, but the parent rock has not 

 yet been found in situ. It will therefore be agreed that 

 these cherts most certainly should be traced wherever they 

 appear in Cornwall. Their age is undoubtedly Ordovician, 

 yet the precise zone to which they belong can only be 

 determined by discovering some typical fossils in the shales 

 and slates associated with them. In South Scotland officers of 

 the geological survey have recently traced such cherts with 

 radiolaria from sea to sea just beneath the Llandeilo rocks, 

 fixing horizons exactly. The cherts in Cornwall, possibly of 

 the same age, and certainly of the same character, are equally 

 promising in the midst of the entangled rocks around, to form 

 the datum line, or clue to the succession. 



A COLLECTION of land and marine shells of the Gala pago 

 Islands was made during the voyage of the U.S. Fish Com- 

 mission steamer Albatross in i8g7-88. A report on this 

 mollusc fauna, prepared by Dr. R. E. C. Stearns, has recently 

 been issued from the U.S. National Museum. It is not an | 

 exhaustive review of the collection, but includes the principal 

 collections previously made, and also a few notes of interest. 

 The extreme tenacity of life of land snails in every stage of 

 growth is well known. Dr. Stearns gives the following instances 

 that came under his own observation :— " In December, 1865, 

 the Stearns collection, now in the National Museum, was en- 

 riched by the acquisition of several examples of Helix Veatchii, 

 Newcomb, now regarded as a variety oi H. areolala, that were 

 NO. 1256, VOL. 4q] 



collected by Dr. Veafch on Cerros or Cedros Island off the 

 coast of Lower California in 1859. The specimens were given 

 by Dr. Veatch to Thomas Bridges, and upon the death of the 

 latter came into my possession with the remainder of the 

 Bridges shells. One day, upon a careful examination, I 

 discovered that one of the specimens was apparently still alive, 

 and placed it in a box of moist earth ; after a while it protruded 

 its body from the shell and commenced moving about, and 

 seemed to be no worse for its long fast of at least six years. H. 

 Veatchii, it will be observed, beat the time of the famous British 

 Museum example of H. desertortim, which lived without food 

 within a few days oi four years. In March, 1S73, Prof. George 

 Davidson, of the United States Coast Survey, while at San Jose 

 del Cabo, Lower California, collected a number of specimens of 

 Bulimus pallidior, and subsequently gave me a part of them, 

 which I put in a box, where they remained undistuibed until 

 June 23, 1875, when they were placed in a glass jar with some 

 chick-weed and a small quantity of tepid water. They soon 

 woke up and began to move about apparently as vigorous as 

 ever after their long nap of t^oo years, two months, atid sixteen 

 days. '' 



The delicacy of the sense of taste among Indians has been 

 tested by Mr. E. II. S. Bailey, and the results compared with 

 those obtained from whites {Kansas University Quarterly). 

 The method of testing was by solutions of different strengths, 

 the substances quinine sulphate (bitter), sulphuric acid (sour), 

 bicarbonate of soda (alkaline), cane sugar (sweet), and common 

 salt (salt) being selected as representing classes of the common 

 familiar substances most likely to be recognised. The only one 

 of these that experience has shown is not familiar is the alkaline 

 taste. From an examination of the results it appears that the 

 order of delicacy is about the same for the two races. By this 

 it is meant that the smallest proportion of quinine was detected ; 

 acid solutions come next in the order of action upon the organ 

 of taste, and then salt. In the case of whites, sweet solutions 

 were more detectable than alkaline ones, but the reverse was 

 the case with the Indians. This does not count for much, how- 

 ever, as the Indians had great difficulty in distinguishing 

 between the alkaline and salt solutions. As might have been 

 expected, the ability to detect the different substances when 

 they are in very dilute solution is less in the Indians than in the 

 whites. The males of both races are able to detect a smaller 

 quantity of salt than the females, but in all other cases the 

 females appear to have the more delicate organ of taste. 



The question as to whether gases are capable of emitting heat 

 has been investigated by many physicists, most of whom have 

 come to the conclusion that the characteristic spectra of glow- 

 ing gases are chiefly, if not solely, due to some chemical action 

 going on within the gas. Hiitorf heated air in platinum tubes 

 a few centimetres long over a Bunsen, and Siemens treated air, 

 carbonic acid, and steam in a similar manner, using longer 

 tubes and higher temperatures. Both were unable to discover 

 any radiation by the gases when thus simply heated, and 

 Pringsheim, after more recent work, came to the conclusion that 

 emission spectra cannot be obtained by simple heating. Mr. F. 

 Paschen has, however, quiet recently (iVied. Ann. No. Il) 

 succeeded in discovering and mapping such spectra by a modi- 

 fication of Tyndall's experiment with gases rising from an in- 

 candescent body, substituting the bolometer for Tyndall's 

 thermopile. The hot body employed was a spiral band of 

 platinum forming a narrow tube, which was heated by pa- sing 

 an electric current through the platinum. The gases were sent 

 through this spiral, and thus acquired a temperature of about 

 1000° C. The temperature was measured by means of a 

 platinum : platinum-rhodium thermocouple with an excessively 

 small j unction. The spectrum was formed by a fluorspar prism 



