370 



NA TURE 



[February 15, 1894 



available in the new number of the Bulletin of the American 

 Geographical Society. A quotation from a letter written by 

 Prof. George Davidson, of San Francisco, runs : "The captain 

 has been in to see me, and has given me some graphic descrip- 

 tions of his actual experience in those waters. . . . But he reached 

 only 73°, and is dreadfully annoyed that the newspaper reporter 

 made such an erroneous statement when he had the truth be- 

 fore him." It is unfortunate that the news agency which cabled 

 the invention to this country did not consider it worth while to 

 give notice of the correction, for the record of farthest north 

 has been altered in some books of reference, and there is now 

 no chance for the sober truth being accorded a tithe of the pub- 

 licity given to the sensational report. 



At the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, on Mon- 

 day evening, a paper on Johore was read by Mr. Harry Lake, 

 who for three years has been engaged in exploring and survey- 

 ing the interior of this little-known State. Johore occupies the 

 southern extremity of the Malay peninsula, and the interior con- 

 sists of low tropical jungle and swamp, diversified occasionally 

 by undulating or mountainous country. The rainfall is 

 excessive, but the great lake of Bera or Tasek, which was 

 represented in former maps, turned out to be merely a vast 

 swamp. The Blumut Mountains in the interior formed one of 

 the most interesting features of the exploration, and the primi- 

 tive people of the interior, the Jakuns, have been studied 

 with some care. Under its present Sultan, Johore has made 

 great strides in political and economic progress. The chief 

 exports are gambier and pepper, which are cultivated by Chinese 

 labour. 



The question whether "beats" due to the interference of 

 two nearly equal sounds can originate in the brain instead of in 

 the air outside, is discussed by Karl L. Schaefer in the Zeitschrift 

 Jiir Psychologic iind Pliysiologie der Sinnesorgane. It is well 

 known that two tuning-forks producing beats continue to produce 

 them when one fork is held to the right, and the other to the 

 left ear, in such a manner that the sound cannot reach the other 

 ear through the air. Wundt himself, in his Philosophische 

 Studien, declared the direct cerebral origin of beats to be 

 possible, and connected it with the recently proved possibility 

 of a direct stimulation of the auditory nerve-trunk. Herr 

 Schaefer, on the other hand, does not think that such an origin 

 of beats can be deduced from the experiment quoted. He looks 

 upon conduction by the bones of the skull as the cause of the 

 phenomenon observed. This is confirmed by the fact that 

 even the faintest sounds are capable of propagation from one 

 ear to the other by conduction through the bones. It is 

 generally acknowledged that this is the explanation of beats pro- 

 duced by strong notes. Whether the same applies to faint notes 

 can only be finally decided by determining, with more delicate 

 instruments than any hitherto used, whether beats continue to 

 be heard after conduction through the bones has ceased. 



At a recent meeting of the Societe Francaise de Physique, M. 

 Hurmuzescu showed several instruments which he has employed 

 in his experiments on static electricity, the insulating medium 

 being a new material to which he has given the name dielectrine. 

 This substance consists of a mixture of paraffin and sulphur, and 

 is preferable to either of these insulators, as it is harder and has 

 a higher melting-point than pure paraffin, and is less hygroscopic 

 and brittle than sulphur. By means of a special method it is 

 possible to obtain dielectrine in homogeneous masses which are 

 very hard, and can be easily worked either in the lathe or with 

 a file. One of the instruments shown was an electrophorus, the 

 handle of the metallic plate and the disc which is electrified 

 being composed of dielectrine. "With this instrument sparks 

 2 cm. long were obtained even when the air was moist, while 

 NO. 1268, VOL. 49] 



the charge was retained for a very long time. This new sub- 

 stance, which experiment has shown to be very unalterable, will 

 be of great use as an insulator, particularly in damp situations. 



Having carried on an elaborate series of experiments on the 

 rotary dispersion of quartz in the infra-red part of the spectrum, 

 M. G. Moreau is now investigating the magnetic rotary dispersion 

 of carbon bisulphide for the same part of the spectrum. He has 

 also measured the refractive index of carbon bisulphide for the 

 infra-red rays, so that he may be able to compare his experi- 

 mental values for the magnetic rotary dispersion with those 

 obtained by the formula deduced by Maxwell's electro-magnetic 

 theory. The magnetic field used in the experiments was pro- 

 duced by the large coil which Verdet used in his classic re- 

 searches in this subject, its intensity being measured by the 

 rotation produced in carbon bisulphide for sodium light. In 

 the infra-red observations a thermopile and delicate galvano- 

 meter were employed. The author has succeeded in measuring 

 the rotation for wave-lengths between 0'8 and i'4 fifx. ; the 

 absorption of the CS2 preventing any measurements being made 

 for greater wave-lengths. The paper in which the above 

 results are given will be found in the Annates de Chimie et de 

 Physique for February. 



The annual report of Prof. Alexander Agassiz, as director of 

 the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, for 

 1892-93 has just been received ; from it, amid many other 

 interesting details, we learn that Prof. A. Milne-Edwards has in 

 hand a final memoir on the Crustacea of the Blake, that 

 Prof. Ludwig's monograph on the holothurians of the Blake 

 will soon be published, the last plate of the nineteen being in 

 the hands of Werner and Winter. As to Prof. Agassiz's own 

 work we read : " For nearly thirty years since the publication 

 of the catalogue of North American acalephs I have every 

 summer, and irequently during the winter months, also, paid a 

 good deal of attention to the jelly-fishes of our coast. An im- 

 mense amount of drawings and of notes have thus been accumu- 

 lated," and we have the hope expressed that during the coming 

 year he may be enabled to arrange this valuable material for 

 publication. We would join our hopes to his, and sincerely 

 trust that the fascinations of fresh voyages of discovery may be 

 for a time resisted, in order that the scientific world may not 

 lose the record of so much important work, a record which 

 Prof. Agassiz alone can give. Ttie various reports of the various 

 assistants are interesting, and show the large resources of the 

 museum, which, large though the building is which contains it, 

 now urgently calls for more space. 



The February number of iVa/M?'^ Notes, with which is now 

 incorporated The Field Club, contains a note by Mr. W. M. E. 

 Flower, on a tortoise or " gopher " that he brought over from 

 Florida, last July, in a case of palmettoes and other plants. 

 When the cold weather set in, the gopher made a burrow, in 

 which it has lived until now, but whether it will survive the 

 winter remains to be seen. It will be just as well perhaps if the 

 English climate proves to be unfavourable to the animal, for in 

 Florida gophers do an immense amount of damage to plants 

 and crops, and thousands of pounds have been spent in destroy- 

 ing the pest. 



Prof. Byron Halsted describes in the Bulletin of the 

 Torrey Botanical Club for December 1893, the Solandi process 

 of sun-printing and its application to botanical technique. The 

 process consists briefly in exposing the subject, necessarily some- 

 what translucent, to the sunlight in a printing-frame in common 

 use by photographers, with a sheet of sensitised paper at the 

 back of the subject, in the same manner as a print is taken 

 from a ^negative of the ordinary sort. The sun-print thus 

 obtained becomes, after it has been toned, the negative from 



