JULV lO, 1890] 



NATURE 



253 



I 



A TELEGRAM from Quilimane announces the departure of an 

 Expedition to Zumbo, under the command of Captain Soares 

 d'Andrea, overseer of the River Zambesi. Satisfactory news is 

 said to have been received of Senhor Joaquin Almeida's Ex- 

 pedition to Gungunghama, which landed at Chaichai, 30 miles 

 above the mouth of the River Limpopo, on its way to Gazaland. 

 Good news has also been received from Captain Cerales, in 

 Bilene. 



The latest information of the Russian Expedition to Tibet, 

 under the command of Colonel Pevtsoff, is contained in the 

 following letter from the mining engineer Bogdanovitch, pub- 

 lished by the Russian newspaper the Messenger of the Volga : — 

 " Having happily passed through the winter at Nia, the Ex- 

 pedition set out on April 24 to traverse the defile of Idjelik- 

 Khanoum, and thus reach Tibet. Colonel Pevtsoff had sent 

 half his camels, carrying 23 bales with his collections, to the 

 banks of the Cherchen River, where they could recover their 

 strength with the abundant pasture. These animals are intended 

 to facilitate our return to Russia. Our baggage will be carried 

 into Tibet on oxen hired for the purpose. We ourselves are 

 riding thither on horseback, carrying with us the light portion 

 of our effects. We left Nia with 30 horses. During the winter 

 M. Roborovsky made an excursion to Cherchen, and I made 

 one to the mountains of Karangon-Fag, south of Khoten. 

 During my tour I met Grombchevsky, who came with me to 

 Khoten in February, and thence returned for a short time to Nia. 

 The health of all the members of the Expedition is perfect, and 

 during the winter we have received all our letters and papers 

 from St. Petersburg, thanks to the good offices of M. Petrovsky, 

 our Consul at Kashgar. We shall send our collections to Russia 

 through his agency." M. Grombchevsky has informed the 

 military Governor of the Syr-Darya district that the time of his 

 journey has been extended until January 15, 1891. His Expedi- 

 tion has already traversed 5000 versts. M. Grombchevsky will 

 pass the summer in exploring Tibet between Polon- Lhasa and 

 Rudok. 



The July number of the Kew Bulletin contains further in- 

 formation on the cultivation and preparation of the colouring 

 substance known as annatto. The present instalment deals 

 with the West African seed, which does not appear to possess 

 the qualities of that from Jamaica. A new method of preserv- 

 ing grain from weevils is suggested, while there is a long corre- 

 spondence on Colombian india-rubber. The letters contain an 

 account of a tree which yields rubber, and which is known in 

 commerce as " Colombia Virgen." It has the peculiarity of 

 growing at high elevations, and therefore in a comparatively 

 cool climate. Another section deals with the fibre industry of 

 the Bahamas, and particulars are given of the establishment of 

 the botanical station at Lagos, the first of its kind on the West 

 Coast of Africa. A letter from the Curator, Mr. McNair, gives 

 interesting information respecting some of the plants under 

 experimental cultivation there. 



An appendix to the Bulletin contains a list of new garden 

 plants, including not only those brought into cultivation for 

 the first time during 1889, but the most noteworthy of those 

 which had been re-introduced after being lost from cultivation. 

 Other plants included in the lists have been in gardens for 

 several years, but either were not described or their names had 

 not been authenticated until recently. AH hybrids, whether in- 

 troduced or of garden origin, described for the first time in 1889, 

 are included. The list contains a reference to the place where 

 the plant is first described or figured, or where additional in- 

 formation is given ; besides the natural order and country, a 

 brief notice of the habit and most striking points of each plant 

 is given. 



NO. 1080, VOL. 42] 



The Lucayan Indians, who inhabited the islands now called 

 the Bahamas, were the first Indians seen by Columbus. In 

 less than twenty years this interesting people, numbering, ac- 

 cording to the estimate of the conquerors, 40,000 persons, was 

 wholly exterminated. The hammock was found among the 

 Lucayans, and both the word and the thing were adopted by 

 the Spaniards, through whom they were passed on to other 

 nations. Various skulls have been recovered from caves in the 

 Bahamas, and have been made the subject of a valuable paper 

 by Mr. W. K. Brooks. This paper was read some time ago 

 before the National Academy of Sciences, America, and has 

 now been reprinted as a separate memoir, with carefully 

 executed illustrations. Columbus testifies that the Lucayans 

 were "of good size, with large eyes and broader fore- 

 heads than he had ever seen in any other race of men " ; 

 and Mr. Brooks says this agrees perfectly with the re- 

 sults he has reached, the most conspicuous characteristics of 

 the skulls he has examined being the great breadth noted by 

 Columbus, and the massiveness and solidity of the head. "We 

 may, therefore, unhesitatingly decide," says Mr. Brooks, "that 

 they are the remains of the people who inhabited the islands at 

 the time of their discovery, and that these people were a well- 

 marked type of that North American Indian race which was at 

 that time distributed over the Bahama Islands, Hayti, and the 

 greater part of Cuba. As these islands are only a few miles 

 from the peninsula of Florida, this race must at some time have 

 inhabited at least the south-eastern extremity of the continent, 

 and it is therefore extremely interesting to note that the North 

 American crania which exhibit the closest resemblance to those 

 from the Bahama Islands have been obtained from Florida." 



The Times gives some details of the new expedition to the 

 North Pole, for which the Norwegian National Assembly voted 

 200,000 kroner on the 30th ult., and which will be under the 

 charge of M, Nansen. Hitherto, with one possible exception, 

 all attempts to reach the North Pole have been made in defiance 

 of the obstacles of Nature. It has been an open campaign 

 between the endurance of man and the icy barrier of the Arctis 

 Seas, in which Nature has always been triumphant. On this 

 occasion a systematic and well-organized attempt will be made 

 to ascertain if Nature herself has not supplied a means of solving 

 the difficulty, and if there is not, after all, a possibility of reach- 

 ing the North Pole by utilizing certain natural facilities in these 

 frozen seas of which all earlier explorers were ignorant. The 

 circumstances on which these new hopes are founded may be 

 thus summarized. The yeannette Expedition of 1879-81 and 

 the loss of that vessel seemed to sound the knell of all expedi- 

 tions to reach the Pole by Behring Straits ; but in the end the 

 results of that effort are shown to have been more satisfactory 

 and auspicious than any of the officers of the yeannette could 

 have hoped for when, with extreme difficulty, they succeeded in 

 reaching Siberia across the ice from their wrecked vessel. In 

 June 1884, exactly three years after the yeannette sank, there 

 were found near Julianshaab, in Greenland, several articles 

 which had belonged to the yeannette and been abandoned at the 

 time of its wreck by the crew, and which had been carried to 

 the coast of Greenland, from the opposite side of the Polar Sea, 

 on a piece of ice. This fact at once aroused curiosity as to how 

 it accomplished the journey across the Arctic Ocean, and as to 

 what unknown current had borne the message from Behring 

 Straits to Greenland. However these objects reached Julians- 

 haab, they could not have come in an eastern direction, through 

 Smith's Sound, for the only current which reaches Julianshaab 

 is that from the eastern coast of Greenland vid Cape Farewell 

 and the north. Nor is there much probability that they were 

 borne in a western direction from the place where the yeannette 

 sank, for all the currents round Nova Zembla, Franz-Josef 

 Land, and Spitzbergen are known, and it seems impossible for 



