May 9, 1 90 1 J 



NA TURE 



41 



weak to drive away." They sent some ships to Fairhaven, and 

 probably settled on Amsterdam Island on the flat ground at its 

 south-east angle, the site of the future Smeerenburg, or Blubber- 

 town. Sir Martin Conway traces, so far as they can be traced, 

 the fortunes of Smeerenburg, from its rise in the manner 

 described, to its fall, or rather through its decline, when the 

 whales began to find Fairhaven too dangerous for them. They 

 " began to be shy of the Cookeries and anchorages of the ships, 

 shallops, and what pertained to them ; next of the bays, and 

 then of the shallows along the coast, where they were con- 

 stantly pursued," apparently about 1639; in 1646 " the season 

 was only opened off Smeerenburg, and the whales were then 

 followed to sea or along the north coast." By 1650 the whales 

 had abandoned the banks and Smeerenburg became valueless 

 as a place for trying-out the train-oil. As late as 1^71 it re- 

 mained a place of refuge for refitting ships, but twenty years 

 later nothing was left but the foundations of a few houses. Sir 

 Martin Conway gives many useful references to cartographical 

 and other authorities, and adds a section on the topography 

 and nomenclature of Fairhaven and its neighbourhood. 



The Geological Survey of India has attached to its staff as 

 " Mining Specialist" Dr. F. H. Hatch, who has lately reported 

 on the Kolar gold-field in Mysore (Memoirs, vol. xxxiii. part I, 

 1901). The auriferous lodes consist of a series of parallel 

 quartz veins in the Dharwar schists, and they conform generally 

 to the direction of the foliation planes of these rocks. They are 

 therefore regarded as "bedded veins," formed by the deposition 

 of quartz and other minerals from solution along open channels 

 or planes of weakness which in general coincided with the 

 foliation of the schists. To this fact is ascribed their lenticular 

 character ; they swell and pinch at irregular intervals. As a 

 rule, gold is not visible in the hand-specimens of quartz, which 

 is of a dark bluish-grey colour. In places the quartz has been 

 subject to great stress consequent on the bending of the vein 

 into acute folds, and there it has a well-developed banded or 

 laminated structure. Along the axes of the folds, where the 

 vein is doubled back on itself, large and valuable bodies of ore 

 are found : and where slickensides have been formed by differ 

 ential movements in the vein, the gold sometimes occurs as .' 

 tine film on the smoothed and polished surface. Dr. Hatch 

 deals exhaustively with the methods of working and production 

 of this gold-field. 



Thk two leading formula at present in use in performing inter- 

 polations by central difl''erences are due to Newton. In a note 

 reprinted from \he. Journal o{ the Institute of Actuaries, xxxv. 

 p. 452, Prof. Everett proposes a new formula containing only 

 even differences, which appears to be very simple and convenient, 



M. Pellat contributes to ihe Journal de Physique (April) a 

 short note on the laws of nature in which he points out, as a 

 consequence of the principle of degradation of energy, that, as 

 applied to the universe, the notion of infinite time necessitates 

 that of infinite space. 



Mr. J. A. Third contributes to Mathesis, 1900, a short note 

 on trihomologous triangles. Such triangles have three centres 

 of homology, in each of which the lines joining the vertices of 

 one triangle to those of the other are concurrent, the three 

 centres being got by joining different vertices taken in order. 

 They therefore have three axes of homology, on each of which 

 lie the three points of intersection of three sides of the one with 

 three sides of the other. The theorems now proved relate to 

 certain conies connected with the two triangles and lead to a 

 number of particular cases including certain properties of 

 Steiner's ellipse. 



To the May issue of the Entomologisls' Monthly Magazine 

 Sir George Hampson contributes a long list of abnormalities 

 NO. 1645, VOL. 64] 



among Lepidoptera, as illustrated by a series of specimens re- 

 cently presented to the British Museum by Mr. South, who 

 had spent many years in collecting them. 



Dr. C. S. Minot sends us a copy of " Notes on Anopheles," 

 which recently appeared in the Journal of the Boston Society 

 of Medical Science (vol. v. p. 325). They are based upon ob- 

 servations made upon the larv.-e of these mosquitoes by the 

 author so long ago as 1879, and are illustrated by excellent 

 figures of the larv« and pupae of Anopheles and Culex. These 

 observations, it is believed, are the earliest which have been 

 made on the first stages of the life-history of the two insects, 

 and accord well with those recently recorded by other writers. 



To the same author we are indebted for a report (from 5 •««(«). 

 of his Middleton Goldsmith lecture delivered before the New 

 York Pathological Society on March 25. The subject is the 

 embryological basis of pathology, the lecturer claiming that a 

 scientific study of pathological phenomena is in a greater degree 

 a superstructure upon embryology than it is upon anatomy. 

 " The fundamental problems of pathology and embryology are," 

 it is urged, " alike, not only in being problems of cell life, but 

 also in being similar and even identical problems of cell life. 

 Widely as the two sciences differ, they rest on a common 

 foundation." 



We have received information of the occurrence of a consider 

 able landslip in Danby Dale, a deep valley drained by a tributary 

 of the Esk in the moorlands of East Yorkshire, about seven 

 miles west of Egton. The region is one in which many land- 

 slips have from time to time occurred, owing to the undermining 



and breaking away of the Dogger and Lower Estuarine Sand- 

 stones and Shales which overlie the Alum Shale. In the present 

 instance, the slip appears to have affectedj about sixty acres of 

 ground, while the fissure along which the subsidence took place 

 extended for a distance of more than half a mile. The fall 

 represented in the accompanying picture, reproduced from a 

 photograph taken by Mr. George A. Macmillan, is about ten or 

 twelve feet high. The fissure at the foot was filled with snow 

 when the photograph was obtained. 



A BEAUTIFUL Coloured plate illustrating the remarkable 

 resemblance presented to their inanimate surroundings by 

 certain spiders forms the most attractive feature of vol. xxxi. 

 part 2 of the Travaux of the Imperial Society of Naturalists 

 of St. Petersburg. It accompanies an article, by Dr. VV. A. 

 Wagner, on colouring and mimicry among animals, of which 

 there is a summary in German, the full text being in Russian. 

 In several instances the spiders are represented on lichen- 

 clad bark, the resemblance being most remarkable in the 

 case of a species of Epeira on very dark bark shown in 

 Fig. 7. Still more curious is a blue spider of the same 



