August 14, 1890] 



NATURE 



375 



Dr. St. George Mivart, F.R.S., has been appointed 

 Professor of the Philosophy of Natural History at the University 

 of Louvain. The professorship is one of those included in the 

 Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. 



This week the Royal Archaeological Institute has been 

 holding its annual Congress at Gloucester. The first meeting 

 took place on Monday, when the chair was taken by Sir John 

 Dorington, in succession to Lord Percy. In his presidential 

 address, Sir John described the neighbourhood of Gleva as it 

 was under Roman civilization in contrast with its later condition 

 in the time of the Saxon invasion. 



On Tuesday the Royal Horticultural Society held a meeting 

 and show in the Drill Hall, and certificates were distributed by 

 the Committee. A paper by Mr. Badger, on fruit-drying by 

 evaporation, as practised in America, was read by Mr. Wilkes, 

 the Secretary, Little fruit, it is said, will be preserved in Eng- 

 land this year by the processes described, a worse season 

 generally for plums and apples having seldom been known. 



On Monday the Fellows of the Royal Botanic Society held 

 their fifty-first anniversary meeting. The Council, in their 

 report, congratulated the Fellows upon the firm position held by 

 the Society in the year of its jubilee, and thanked them for their 

 actio n in response to which 109 new names were added to the 

 list. The result was a permanent growth of prosperity, as shown 

 by the total subscriptions for the year— ^^3568— which had not 

 been reached since 1885. 



The Knv Bulletin for August opens with some interesting 

 notes on Natal aloes, by Mr. J. Medley Wood, the curator of 

 the Natal Botanic Gardens. There are also sections on Gambia 

 mahogany, Ceylon cacao, chestnut flour, wine production in 

 France, and ramie as food for silkworms. The number closes 

 with a list of the staffs of the Royal Gardens, Kew, and of 

 botanical departments and establishments at home, and in India 

 and the colonies, in correspondence with Kew. 



In the new number of \}ci& Internationales Archiv fiir Ethno- 

 graphie (Band iii., Heft 3), there is an article (in German) by 

 Dr. Richard Andree, of Heidelberg, on the Stone Age of Africa. 

 Dr. J. D. E, Schmeltz contributes a finely-illustrated and 

 valuable study (also in German) of decorated weapons used in 

 the East Indies. There is also a short English paper on Zuni 

 fetiches, by Dr. H. Ten Kate, of the Hague. 



The Japanese collections of Heinrich von Siebold were 

 lately presented to the Hofmuseum of Vienna. They consist of 

 about 5200 specimens, many of which are of great value. In 

 recognition of the donor's generosity, the Austrian Emperor has 

 raised him to the rank of Freiherr. 



In the museum of the Industrial Society of Miihlhausen, there 

 is an interesting ethnographical collection, including a number 

 of fine American antiquities. The objects are being rearranged 

 by Herr E. Grosse. 



A WORK on Hindoo folk-lore has just been issued from the 

 London Printing Press at Lucknow, the author being Rai Baha- 

 dur Mai Manucha, chairman of the Fyzabad Municipal Board, 

 and well known in Oudh as a legal practitioner. In the preface 

 he says that while he was enjoying the vacation at Hardwar on 

 the Ganges, it occurred to him that if a few notes on religious 

 beliefs, social customs, superstition and folk-lore, proverbs and 

 sayings, puns, riddles, aphorisms, and other miscellaneous matters 

 In common vogue among the Hindoo community generally, and 

 among the country people especially, were brought together, 

 they would "aid a great deal in throwing light upon the hither- 

 to partially explored regions of the mode of life led by the 

 common people." In a lengthy article on the little book the 

 NO. 1085, VOL. 42I 



Times of India szys t\iQ author has gathered tc^ether a little 

 of everything that his preface promises. We learn, for instance, 

 that if a person is drowned, struck by lightning, bitten by a 

 snake, or poisoned, or loses his life by any kind of accident, or 

 by suicide, then he goes usually to hell. If he die naturally on 

 a bed or a roof, he becomes a "Bhut," or evil spirit, and with 

 this belief care is taken on the approach of death to move the 

 person carefully on to the floor. The earth is believed to be 

 resting on the horn of a cow and the raised trunks of eight 

 elephants, called "Diggai," or "elephants supporting the 

 regions," and each of the cardinal and sub-cardinal points of 

 the compass has its appropriate guardian. An eclipse is pro- 

 duced by the occasional swallowing up of the sun or moon by 

 the severed head of Rahu, son of a demon family, who was de- 

 capitated by Vishnu for disguising himself as a god and drinking 

 nectar. 



In the thirteenth of his "Res Ligustica;," recently published. 

 Count Salvadori announces the occurrence of Cypselus affinis in 

 Liguria on May 14 last. The Count gives full synonymy of the 

 species, and an interesting account of the species on this its first 

 visit to Europe. 



It has been known for some time that Dr. Loria was engaged 

 in prosecuting zoological researches in the Papuan sub-region, 

 and now two instalments of his collection have been described 

 by Count Salvadori. The localities visited by the Loria ex- 

 pedition have been Pulo Penang, Timor Cupang, Pulo Semau, 

 Port Darwin, and Port Moresby in South-Eastem New Guinea. 

 Three new species have been discovered in the latter locality, 

 and have been named by the author, yEgotheles loricr, Arses 

 orientalis, and Pitta lorice, the last-named being the only species 

 collected on the island of Su-a-u, a small islet near South Cape. 



Prof. Giglioli has ju-t issued the second part of his 

 " Primo Resoconto dei risultati della inchiesta ornitologica in 

 Italia," the first portion of which we noticed last year. This 

 second instalment is in the form of a goodly octavo volume of 

 nearly seven hundred pages, and is entitled "Avifauna Locale." 

 It consists of reports from the various provinces of Italy, 

 furnished by different observers, with remarks as to the nidifi- 

 cation, distribution, and migration of the various species. As 

 to the value of these»local lists there can be no question, and 

 Prof. Giglioli may be trusted to choose men with a thorough 

 knowledge of local ornithology to record the observations. As 

 far as we can judge, Prof. Giglioli has been fortunate in his 

 coadjutors. 



The problem as to the origin of the nephrite of which the 

 tombstone of Tamerlane, at Samarcand, is made— a question 

 which has interested a good many mineralogists— seems to have 

 been definitely solved by M. Grombchevsky's visit to the 

 nephrite-mines on the Raskem-daria, on the eastern slope of 

 the Pamir. M. Grombchevsky found there a big dyke of 

 nephrite, of extreme hardness, embedded in the rocky banks 

 of the Raskem-daria, which consist in that place of white 

 jadite. The Chinese used to extract the nephrite by lighting 

 great fires on the rock, and afterwards throwing water on it 

 when it was heated. They stopped these operations in the 

 course of the present century, when the heir to the throne, after 

 having slept in a bed made of Raskem nephrite, fell ill. A 

 large piece of the stone, so much liked by the Chinese, which 

 was on its way to Peking, was put in chains (like Yakoob-Beg's 

 guns, which are still kept in chains at Yanghi-ghissar) and 

 thrown on the road-side at Kutcha, where it remains. After a 

 careful analysis of the samples brought by M. Grombchevsky, 

 Prof. Mushketoff (in the Izvestia of the Russian Geographical 

 Society, xxv., 6) comes to the conclusion that the Raskem 

 nephrite and that of Tamerlane's tombstone are identical. 



