October 30, 1890] 



NA TURE 



645 



THE CINQUEMANI " CHRONOLOGE:' 

 T^ HIS is a very singular and interesting contrivance. It 

 -*■ is a clock with only one toothed wheel, yet it shows 

 the hours, minutes, days of the week, &c., and strikes the 

 hours and quarters at each quarter of an hour. Moreover, 

 there is an arrangement for repeating the hours and 

 quarters at will. The single toothed wheel spoken of is 

 the escape-wheel, and this propels a pair of pallets and 

 pendulum in the ordinary way. The rest of the work is 

 done in the fall of a small leaden ball, a long chain of 

 these balls being intermittingly elevated, and one of them 

 discharged over a revolving drum each quarter of an 

 hour. We will follow one of these balls through the 

 course of its multifarious duties. It first enters a sling in 

 a tape wound over the escape-wheel axle, and we notice 

 that it is the weight of this and three other balls (which 

 have been previously deposited in preceding slings) which 

 is keeping the escape-wheel going. As the wheel turns 

 round, the balls descend, and after a quarter of an hour 

 the lowest will have arrived at a funnel-shaped opening, 

 where it will get liberated from its sling, and fall. It 

 first strikes a lever which enables the drum to move on 

 and discharge another ball into a sling upon the escape- 

 wheel tape. Then rushing down a tube it enters a zigzag. 

 It is within this zigzag that the striking of the quarters is 

 performed, for at each of its angles a bell is placed, against 

 which the ball strikes sharply as it passes them. After 

 leaving this zigzag, the ball is projected down another, 

 where it strikes the hours. As the number of blows to be 

 struck is regulated by a similar contrivance at each zig- 

 zag, we will confine our attention to that for the hours. 

 The channel down which the ball passes is vertical to the 

 face of the zigzag. Now the front or zigzag side of this 

 channel is a moving tape, which carries a little trap. As 

 the tape is always moving, the position of the trap depends 

 upon the time, and the position of the trap also determines 

 the stage of the zigzag upon which the ball will be pro- 

 jected. Thus, when the trap is opposite the sixth stage 

 of the zigzag, the ball will encounter six corners upon its 

 way down, and consequently six blows will be sounded. 

 When the trap is at the top, twelve blows are sounded ; 

 and when the trap is at the bottom, no blows are sounded. 

 When the ball leaves the zigzag, it enters a sling at the 

 lowest part of the chain first spoken of, and is intermittingly 

 carried up again to begin its work over again. For re- 

 peating the hours and quarters at will, there is a separate 

 reservoir of smaller balls ; and by pulling a handle one of 

 these can be discharged above the first zigzag, and when 

 it has done its work it disappears through a hole, which 

 the regular balls cannot penetrate, back to its own 

 reservoir. It may be mentioned that, in lieu of bells, the 

 hour zigzag has a single vertical sonorous tube for each 

 set of corners. The time, days of the week, &c., are 

 shown by means of tapes carrying pointers suspended 

 over the escape-wheel and another axle. The inventor, 

 the Rev. Canon Cinquemani, maintains that the simplicity 

 and precision, by reason of the constant force on the es- 

 capement of his "chronologe" (which he has patented), 

 render it peculiarly advantageous for missionary and 

 other distant stations, where the assistance of professional 

 clockmakers is not readily procurable. H. D. G. 



THE NEW AUSTRALIAN MAMMAL. 

 T N vol. xxxviii. of NATURE (p. 588), Dr. E. C. Stirling, 

 of Adelaide University, described as a " new Aus- 

 tralian mammal" a small mole-like animal which had 

 been obtained in Central Australia near the telegraph 

 line between Adelaide and Port Darwin. The same 

 description, with some additions, was afterwards pub- 

 lished in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society of South Australia, vol. x. p. 21. But no decision 

 was arrived at as to the exact affinities of this animal—not 

 even whether it is a Marsupial or a Monotreme— nor has 

 NO. 1096, VOL. 42] 



any name been given to it. On behalf of the zoologists 

 of this country, who have waited patiently two years for 

 further information, I now venture to urge Dr. Stirling to 

 send one of his specimens of this extraordinary creature 

 (in a letter subsequently addressed to me he speaks of 

 having received two additional examples) to London, and 

 allow us to endeavour to decide what it really is. I need 

 not point out the extraordinary interest of this discovery. 

 If a Monotreme, as seems probable, it will be the third 

 known form of this very peculiar type of mammal-life ; if 

 a Marsupial, it is quite dilTerent from all known members 

 of that group ; and if it turns out to be a Placental 

 Mammal, it will revolutionize our canons of zoological 

 geography. On behalf of the Zoological Society of Lon- 

 don, I think I may promise that the specimen, if for- 

 warded, shall be submitted for examination to our very- 

 best authorities on the subject, and shall be fully de- 

 scribed and illustrated in our scientific publications. 

 Such a grand discovery should certainly not be concealed 

 from the world's knowledge any longer. 



P. L. SCLATER. 



RICHARD BURTON. 

 "XIZE have already announced the not unexpected death, 



^^ at the age of 69, of Sir Richard Burton, one of 

 the most versatile geniuses and extensive explorers of any 

 time, and one who, so far as Africa is concerned, deserves 

 to be ranked with Stanley and Livingstone. He was born 

 on March 19, 1821, at Barham House, Herts, of old fami- 

 lies on both bides, and with a heritage of fighting and 

 wandering propensities. It is curious now to think that 

 Burton was sent to Oxford with a view to taking orders. 

 He soon destroyed all prospects of any such career by 

 getting himself rusticated. He succeeded in obtaining an 

 appointment in an Indian regiment, and, while yet little 

 more than a boy, his restless wanderings began. For 

 half a century Burton lived a life of the fiercest intensity 

 — equal to the lives of three ordinary men. Before his 

 famous journey to Mecca he had published more than 

 one book on his travels in India and neighbouring coun- 

 tries. Before attempting the hazardous enterprise to the 

 holy city of the Moslems, in 1852, he took every precau- 

 tion to delude his fellow-pilgrims into the belief that he 

 was one of the faithful. His extraordinary gift of picking 

 up languages made this easy ; and whether his disguise 

 was or was not penetrated, he succeeded in getting inside, 

 and, better still, outside Mecca, to tell an expectant world 

 of mysteries practically unrevealed before. This journey 

 would certainly have made his name famous ; but he 

 meant to do even greater things. At that time it was as 

 dangerous to attempt to enter fanatical Harrar as it was 

 for a Christian to join the Haj. But Burton did it, and 

 lived to tell the world the story of it; though he and 

 Speke had a narrow escape when, the following year 

 (1855), they attempted to reach the Nile through the 

 Somali country. 



A preliminary trip to Zanzibar produced a learned 

 and interesting book on that island and its people. We 

 say preliminary, because by this time, 1856, Burton had 

 something much more important in view. Livingstone, 

 it should be remembered, had been at work in Africa for 

 many years ; in 1856 he returned to England to tell the 

 full story of his crossing of the continent. Through 

 Livingstone, through Krapf and Rebmann, and others, 

 rumours had been for a long time coming out of great lakes 

 in the interior. Before D'Anville, in the end of last cen- 

 tury, made a clean sweep of all the crowded features on 

 the map of Central Africa which had accumulated since the 

 end of the sixteenth century, there were lakes in plenty, 

 scattered over the centre of the continent, and great 

 rivers and mountain ranges, some of them an inheritance 

 from the days of Ptolemy. But no one knew how these 

 features ever came there. The hydrography they in- 



