42 



NATURE 



[May io, 1883 



The first eclipse news comes from Lima, under date May 7 ; 

 the sky was overcast on the 6th, preventing any observation of 

 the eclipse. It is to be hoped the conditions were more favour- 

 able on the other side of the Pacific. 



The proposal to open museums and galleries on Sundays was, 

 we regret to say, lost in favour of Lord Shaftesbury's compro- 

 mise to keep them open in the evenings on two or three nights a 

 week, which does not in the least meet the case of the working 

 classes. 



M. RlCHl, Professor in the Paris School of Medicine, was 

 nominated Member of the Academy of Sciences on Monday, to 

 fill the place vacated by the death of M. Sedillot. Another 

 election will soon take place in the same section of medicine and 

 surgery. 



Mr. A. H. Keane proposes, as soon as he obtains a sufficient 

 number of subscribers, to begin the publication of " A Classifi- 

 cation of the Races of Mankind," copious materials for which 

 have now been collected. It will form two large octavo volumes 

 of about six hundred pages each. The publication will probably 

 extend over two years, and at least five hundred names will be 

 required to justify the undertaking, although subscribers to the 

 first need not be committed to purchase the second part also. 

 Subscriptions will be received by Mr. Edward Stanford, 55, 

 Charing Cross, or by Mr. Keane, at University College, London. 

 With regard to the scope and contents of the work, it may be 

 briefly stated that its aim will be to place in the hands of the 

 ethnological student a comprehensive treatise on the races of 

 mankind harmonising with the present state of anthropological 

 inquiry. In the general introduction such broad questions will 

 be dealt with as the evolution of man, the antiquity and specific 

 unity of the species, the present varieties of mankind, the 

 physical and moral criteria of race, the fundamental human types, 

 their evolution and dispersion, the peopling of the continents, 

 the origin of articulate speech, the morphological orders and 

 families of speech, the problem of specific linguistic diversity 

 within the same ethnical group. The great physical divisions 

 of the human family will then be dealt with seriatim, and here 

 the same arrangement will be adhered to as that observed in Mr. 

 Keane's ethnological appendices to the Stanford Geographical 

 Series. Each of the main sections of mankind will thus be 

 treated in three separate parts. In the first the salient physical 

 and moral characteristics of the type will be discussed. The 

 second will be occupied with thejseveral main branches of each, 

 and here the proper work of classification will be carried out in 

 detail. Lastly, the third part will consist of an alphabetical 

 index, comprising, as far as Mr. Keane has been able to collect 

 them, all the known races, tribes, and languages of each main 

 division, briefly described, and with copious references to 

 authorities. The price of the work will be 16s. per volume to 

 subscribers. 



THEDutch Polar ship Willem Barents started again on Saturday 

 from Amsterdam, under the command of Capt. Dalen, for the Arctic 

 regions, to try to discover the Dutch expedition in the Varna. 

 Mr. Leigh Smith was present, as well as Mr. Clements Markham, 

 to wish the Willem Barents "God speed." Sir Allen Young 

 went over to express his best wishes to the crew of the Dutch 

 ship. Mr. Leigh Smith presented to Capt. Dalen two magni- 

 ficent silver cups, bearing as an inscription the following words, 

 taken from his journal : "August 3d, 1882 ; Matotchkin Skarr_ 

 Nova Zembla, 10.0 a.m. A sail ! A sail ! The Willem 

 Barents." 



The Danish expedition to Greenland left Copenhagen on 

 Wednesday last week. Its purpose is to explore the east coast 

 of Greenland ; and it will probably be away for two years. 



The Sanitary Institute of Great Britain held its annual 

 meeting at 9, Conduit Street, on Monday, Prof, de Chaumont, 

 M.D., F.R.S., in the chair. A report was presented by the 

 Council on the progress of the Institute and on the work at the 

 Congress and Exhibition held by the Institute at Newcastle last 

 autumn. The Chairman gave an address, and the officers for 

 the ensuing year were elected, the President being the Duke of 

 Northumberland, and the trustees Sir John Lubbock, Bart., 

 Mr. Thomas Salt, M.P., and Dr. B. W. Richardson. 



The Prince of Wales opened the Indian Institute at Oxford 

 last week. 



Two divisions of the pupils of Sainte Barbe left Paris on 

 May 4, one for London, and the other for Germany, where they 

 are to stay for three months under the care of their professors, 

 for the purpose of obtaining practical knowledge of the English 

 and German languages. 



Rear- Admiral Mouchez is leaving Paris within a few days, 

 for Algiers, where he will establish an observatory at Coubar. 

 This site is deemed excellent for observations. 



We have received the announcement of an aeronautical 

 exhibition, to be held from June 5 to 15 at the Trocadero, Paris. 

 The Whit Monday excursion of the Geologists' Association 

 will be to Hunstanton ; and on May 26 to Ealing and Perivale. 



The well-known explorer of the fauna and depths of Lake 

 Baikal, Dr. Godlevsky, who is now in Kamchatka, writes to 

 the East Siberian Geographical Society, from Petropavlovsk, that 

 last summer he transported on board of a steamer of the company 

 Hutchinson, Kool, and Co., fifteen reindeer, of which eleven 

 were males and four females, to Behring's Island. The reindeer 

 were brought to Petropavlovsk from the west coast of Kam- 

 chatka in a flock of 150, and the journey took no less than two 

 and a half months, as it was made across the mountains in order 

 to avoid the mosquitos of the valleys. On board the steamer 

 the reindeer were fed with stems and leaves of birch, as also 

 with fresh gras? kept in casks with water. Afterwards they also 

 ate hay, and even bread, contrary to the affirmations of the 

 Lamuts, who said that reindeer never eat grass that has been 

 gathered by man. The steamer-journey was made in two 

 days, and the reindeer arrived in good health. 



When leaving Yakutsk for the mouth of the Lena, M. 

 Yurgens distributed a number of thermometers to different 

 persons. The Izvestia of the East Siberian branch of the 

 Russian Geographical Society now publish the meteorological 

 observations made at Markha, in the province of Yakutsk, 

 district of Viluisk, during the four months of August to November 

 last, by an exile, M. Pavloff. The rapidity with which the cold 

 weather sets in in those latitudes is very interesting. In August 

 the thermometer rose at I p.m. as high as 31° Cels. (on 

 August I), and reached 14 to 20° during the second half of the 

 month. The first frosts were experienced (at 7 a.m.) in Sep- 

 tember, and already in the first days of October the thermometer 

 sunk (at 7 a.m.) as low as - n c to - 20° ; and as low as -30 

 to - 35 , and even - 39°, during the second half of October. In 

 November it never rose above - 32 , and usually stood at seven 

 o'clock in the morning between - 39° to - 50° ; even at 1 p.m. 

 it did not rise, during the whole of the month, above - 31°, and 

 usually stood between -33° to -42°, occasionally sinking to 

 - 48° and - 50° Cels. The underground thermometer, placed at 

 I '5 feet below the surface, decreased with a remarkable regu 

 larity, from 6° # 8, on August I, to 0° on September 12 to 

 17, to - 2° on October 17, to - 6° on November 1, and to - 17° 

 on November 30. 



A CORRESPONDENT points out that at the conclusion of the 

 address by Prof. Du BoisReymond on "Darwin and Copernicus'' 





