134 



NATURE 



[June 7, 1883 



■■ 



and Co.) very useful. So far as it has gone, indeed, it is the 

 best book on the subject in the English language. Part xiii., 

 just published, brings the work dow.i to the larger Fritillaries, 

 and is one of the most satisfactory so far as the plates are 

 concerned. 



The Russian Chemical Society having established a compe- 

 tition for the best lamps for burning the intermediate oils of the 

 Caucasian naphth 1 , which have a density from 0S60 to o'875> 

 has found that the four competing lamps satisfy the required 

 conditions, the best of them being that of M. Kumberg. Ac- 

 cording to experiments made by Prof. Mendeleeff, the new lamps 

 burn not only the intermediate oils but also a purified mixture of 

 all distillations, the heavy greasy oils which have a density of 

 o'Qio at 15' included. Like the American naphtha, the Baku 

 naphtha would thus yield more than two-thirds (nearly three- 

 quarters) uf its weight of oils available fur lamps, the oils from 

 tbis last being far less dangerous than those of the former. It 

 yields, besides, nearly 30 per cent, of greasy oils of great value. 



M. Yankovsky mentions the disappearance of the spotted deer 

 from the neighbourhood of Vladivostok. Before 1877 they were 

 so numerous that flocks numbering forty and fifty were often seen, 

 and their meat was cheaper than beef. Since the snowy winters 

 of 1S77 and 1878, however, during which they were hunted on 

 a great scale, they have become very rare. It seems that other 

 causes too have contributed towards diminishing their number. 

 In 187S. after a great fire which consumed the whole of the 

 degression around the lake of the Slavyansky peninsula, JVI. 

 Yankovsky saw the valley doited with the bodies of detr and 

 antelopes. It will be a pity if a succe-sion of mild winters 

 does not give an opportunity to the spotted deer of multiplying 

 again, as their number is already very limited, and the region 

 they inhabit is very restricted, as it comprises only the sea-coast 

 from Corea to the Bay of Olga. 



Notwithstanding the active pursuit of the tigers in the 

 South Usuri region, their number does not much diminish. In 

 a communication to the Irkutsk branch of the Russian Geo- 

 graphical Society it is stated that in 1880 and 1881 no le.-s than 

 nine tigers were killed on the small space of thirty-five miles 

 long, on the western coast of the Bay of Amur; and at the head 

 of tbis bay five tigers were perceived at one time. The zoologist 

 of the Society, M. Yankovsky, writes alo that the South Usuri 

 tigers d 1 not seem to abstain from eating corpses and digging 

 out graves as is gen rally believed. 



On May 19, at about 10 p.m., a remarkable aurora borealis 

 was observed at Ludvika, in Sweden. It began as a faint band 

 of light parallel with the horizon, which gradually grew broader 

 and broader. The extraordinary feature of the phenomenon 

 was, however, that this band had the appearance of an ice- 

 covered lake on which the moon was shining. Promontories 

 and shores covered with trees were seen, and also the faint 

 outlines of farms. This phenomenon lasted about ten minutes, 

 when the aurora change 1 into a suffused pink luminosity, like that 

 of clouds near the setting sun. 



A strong earthquake was felt throughout the state of Antio. 

 quoia at 6 p.m. on the 8th ult. Little damage was done in 

 Medellin, although much alarm was caused and the walls cf the 

 cathedral were injured. In the town of Antioquoia the facade of 

 the cathedral was thrown out of plumb, many of its columns 

 were thrown down, and all the houses suffered more or less. In 

 Santa Rosa the church steeple was injured and a number of 

 houses rendered uninhabitable. In Aquadas the town hall 

 was destroyed, and at Abejirral the church and a number 

 of houses were injured. It was feared more disasters had 

 occurred in districts which had not been heard from. The 



shock lasted more than two minutes, and appeared to move from 

 the north to the south. This same shock was felt all over the 

 isthmus, all along the Atlantic coast of Columbia, doing damage 

 only at the mou'h of the Atrato, si far as reported up to the 

 present, and in the Magdalena Valley. It appears to have 

 been the sharpest and most widely experienced since the great 

 one of September 7 last year. 



Telegrams from Batavia state that Mount Karang in the 

 Straits of Sunda is in full eruption. The shocks are heard 

 several hundred miles away. It is now two hundred years since 

 the last eruption of this volcano. The mountain is situated on 

 the island of Krakatoa, near Anjer in the Straits of Sunda, and 

 as it is in the path of sailing vessels from Europe to the East, 

 which generally call at Anjer point for provisions and o-ders, 

 we may shorily expect details of the eruption. 



A correspondent writes : — During the last ten years much 

 has been written on the origin of the jade objects found in America 

 an 1 Europe, no raw materials of the stone having yet been dis- 

 covered out of which the articles could have been manufactured. 

 Prof. H. Fischer of Freiburg in liaden therefore I irought forward 

 the hypothesis, supported by several of his scientific brethren, 

 that the jade objects of America had been transported thither from 

 A-ia in prehistoric times, when Mongolian tribes settled in the New 

 World, and that the intercourse of trade had later acted in the 

 same manner. For Europe, where thousands of those objects 

 have been found, the Aryans had done this service, when wan- 

 dering from the very heart of Asia to the west, the source of the 

 jade objects of both continents being Asia, where deposits of 

 the mineral are known to occur in Siberia, Turkestan, and 

 Burrnah. Recently Dr. Meyer of Dresden has energetically op- 

 posed these views in a large folio work containing many plates, 

 and has come forward with the opinion that the jade sources of 

 Europe and America yet remain to be discovered. As to 

 America we are glad to hear that this much simpler and more 

 reasonable explanation of the problem has now been verified, the 

 Smithsonian Institution of Washington lately having received 

 from Louisiana an immense number of objects of jade, among 

 them implements, knives, and other articles, many having an 

 admirably high finish, and with them a considerable quantity of 

 the .-tone of which the objects were made. We d 1 not doubt 

 that similar discoveries may soon be expected in Europe* 

 especially in Switzerland, and that we shall succeed in ascertain- 

 ing the exact districts where the mineral is to be found. 



We are glad to see that there is at last some prospect of the 

 immediate publication of Mr. W. Colons >'s Maori-English 

 Lexicon, which was submitted to the New Zealand Government 

 nearly eight years ago. A specimen sheet of twenty folio pages 

 has recently been printed and presented to both Houses of the 

 General Assembly by command of the executive authorities. 

 From this specimen it is evident that the work is of an encyclo- 

 pedic character, embodying a vast amount of information col- 

 lected from original sources on the languages, ethnology, 

 traditions, religions, habits, and customs of the Polynesian races. 

 The plan is at once simple and comprehensive. The vari ms 

 meanings of each word are first given in large type, and each 

 meaning is then illustrated by one or more passages in small 

 type from the native poems, myths, legends, proverbs, and col- 

 loquial usage. Thus nearly four pages are devoted to the 

 different significations and grammatical applications of the single 

 word i), wdiich plays such an important part in all the Polynesian 

 dialects. To the particle atu as many as thirly distinct meanings 

 are assigned, and these meanings are illustrated by n 1 less than 

 seventy-two quotations from the various sources above indicated. 

 In some cases the quotations are Englished, and it would certainly 

 be satisfactory if this could be done uniformly. In the English'-. 

 Maori part the same plan is adhered to, only here quotations 



