568 



NATURE 



[April 12, 1900 



side of the water who would be called a gamekeeper at 

 home? 



While we may regret the manner in which the author 

 has gained his information, we may concede that he has 

 written an interesting account of the animals he has 

 hunted, though always from the standpoint of a sports- 

 man. Of these the wapiti {Cervus canadense\ the ante- 

 lope-goat {Haplocerus monianus) and the bighorn {Ovis 

 montana) appear to have constituted his favourite prey, 

 and are consequently most fully described and illus- 

 trated. 



In the chapter on seals, Mr. Grohman condemns 

 pelagic hunting in unmeasured terms :— 



" Pelagic sealing is a cruel and most wasteful method 

 of obtaining peltry which can be secured by ' land killing' 

 -at the rookeries without inflicting suffering and without 

 any appreciable waste. Those who dispute this do so 

 either from ignorance of the true facts or from interested 

 motives " (p. 192). 



Regarding the salmon of the Pacific Slope, he has the 

 same black record to make of reckless waste and rapidly 

 diminishing resources, stating, on the authority of a 

 Canadian Blue Book, that at one of the Alaskan canneries 

 "in one day 20,000 fish, of an average weight of 10 lbs. 

 each, were thrown away because of the inadequate appur- 

 tenances of the establishment and the suddenness of the 

 run" (p. 222). 



In the later chapters of his book Mr. Baillie-Grohman 

 gives an entertaining account of his rough and varied 

 experiences as a pioneer in Kootenay, where, among 

 other matters, he was himself hunted and nearly shot by 

 a lawless prospector who had a grievance against him. 

 Mr. Baillie-Grohman took up from the Provincial Govern- 

 ment an extensive concession of lands subject to summer 

 floods in the Lower Kootenay valley, and his scheme for 

 the reclamation of these lands affords a striking commen- 

 tary on the abnormal relations which exist between the 

 main valley system and the present drainage of this 

 region. The physiography of the mountainous country 

 westward from the Rockies to the ocean abounds in 

 anomalous characters which are as yet for the most part 

 unexplained, offering many magnificent problems for the 

 student of the evolution of land-forms ; and of these 

 none is more remarkable than the case in question. 



The Columbia river, rising in Columbia Lake, flows 

 at first north-westward and afterwards southward, 

 throwing a loop of magnificent proportions northward 

 around the Selkirk Range ; while its great tributary, the 

 Kootenay, makes a similar but diametrically opposite loop 

 southward, crossing the United States boundary line into 

 Montana and Idaho, and then recrossing to reach its 

 confluence with the Columbia ; and the two rivers thus 

 encircle a huge oval tract of mountains over 300 miles 

 in length. Now, the Kootenay some 80 miles below its 

 source swings into the depression which contains the 

 Columbia Lake, only one mile distant from it, but flows 

 thence southward away from the lake. Mr. Baillie- 

 Grohman's plan was simply to make the circlet of waters 

 complete by turning the Kootenay into the lake. 



" The piece of land lying between the two waters was a 

 level stretch of gravel shelving from the river to the lake, 

 the latter being about 1 1 feet lower than the Kootenay. 

 With such a fall in less than a mile it practically needed 

 very little work, for, once a big ditch was cut, the rushing 

 Kootenay, at that point a rapid stream some 300 feet 

 wide, would do the rest. By turning off such a large 

 quantity of water it was expected that the overflow of the 

 bottom land 300 miles further down would be prevented. 

 It was really restoring things to their original condition, 

 for there is no doubt that a comparatively short time 

 back the Kootenay river forked at the Canal Flat, the 

 northern branch flowing over the flat where I proposed 

 to make the canal, while the southern occupied its 

 present bed" (p. 261). 



NO. 1589. VOL. 61] 



But rival interests were involved. The Canadian 

 Pacific Railway had been planned to run along part 

 of the Columbia valley just above high-water mark, 

 and its authorities took alarm at the possibility of 

 a vast increase in volume of the river, and prevailed upon 

 the Federal Government to stop the scheme. The 

 upshot, as told by Mr. Baillie-Grohman, is by no means 

 to the credit of the Dominion and Provincial Govern- 

 ments. And thus the waters of the Columbia and 

 Kootenay, after so nearly embracing in their youth, have 

 still to make their separated journey of, together, nearly 

 800 miles before they unite in full maturity. 



In his rendering of the colloquial slang of the West, 

 Mr. Baillie-Grohman is not particularly happy. The 

 examples he gives are generally overdone, the really 

 vigorous expressions being weakened by being crowded 

 in unwarranted sequence. When he defines a "rustler" 

 as being synonymous with a pilferer, he is dedidedly 

 mistaken (pp. 276-8). The " rustler " is a man of energy 

 and resource, one fit for any emergency — a man who, in 

 Western parlance, " could hang himself up on a nail to 

 sleep," and there is no opprobrium implied in the term. 

 The point is of some importance, as a stranger to the 

 country, following Mr. Baillie-Grohman's usage of the 

 word, might unwittingly give serious offence. 



The illustrations of the book, reproduced from excellent 

 photographs, deserve praise. They have been selected 

 to show the character and conditions of the country as 

 well as its animal life, and serve this purpose well, though 

 they are not always strictly applicable to the text. 



G. W. L. 



EUGENIO BELTRAMI. 

 "DY the death, on February 18, of Prof. Eugenio 

 -D Beltrami, after a long illness followed by an un- 

 successful surgical operation, Italy has lost a mathe- 

 matician who did much to bring his country to the fore- 

 front in the mathematical world almost simultaneously 

 with the ascendancy of Italy in the world of politics. 



Eugenio Beltrami was born at Cremona on November 

 16, 1835, of ^ well-known and highly-cultured Italian 

 family. After completing his school curriculum in his 

 native town, he went to Pavia, and then studied mathe- 

 matics for three years under Brioschi. For some years 

 Beltrami had to earn his own living, and an appointment 

 in the Administration pf the Italian Railways, which he 

 held first at Verona, and then at Milan, if it afforded him 

 no scope for his mathematical abilities, at any rate 

 furnished him with the means of subsistence. At Milan, 

 in i860, Beltrami became acquainted with Cremona, 

 whose influence, combined with a study of the works of 

 Gauss, Lagrange and Riemann, opened the way for his 

 development of higher geometry, in which branch of 

 mathematics Beltrami published his first papers, in 1862, 

 in the Annali di Matematica. 



In the same year he was appointed professor extra- 

 ordinarius in algebra and analytical geometry at 

 Bologna, and in the following year he became professor 

 ordinarius of geodesy at Pisa, where he enjoyed the 

 friendship of Riemann and Betti. In 1866, Beltrami 

 returned to Bologna, where he occupied the chair in 

 rational mechanics. Two years later appeared what has 

 been aptly regarded as Beltrami's masterpiece, the 

 " Saggio d'interpretazione della geometria non euclidea," 

 published in the Giornale niatematico di Napoli. We 

 learn that Beltrami's attention was first attracted to this 

 subject by an observation of Lagrange on maps, in which 

 geodesies are represented on a plane by straight lines, 

 and was thus led to consider the properties of surfaces on 

 which the geodesies are represented by linear equations 

 in curvilinear co-ordinates. Beltrami found that such 

 surfaces were the same as surfaces of constant curvature. 



