4o; 



NA TURE 



\_August 23. 1883 



death of M. Lagournerie, we may note M. BischofTsheiin and Col. 

 Laussedat, Director of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. 



M. DE Fonvielle, writing from Ann may, informs us that 

 at the unveiling of the Montgolfier statue Col. Perier, who was 

 the official representative of the Government of the Republic] 

 was in the chair, and spoke in praise of Montgolfier in the 

 name of the French army. M. Dupuy de Lome delivered a 

 written address, extending over two hours, being a detailed 

 prods-verbal of our actual knowledge of aeronautics. Like other 

 speeches delivered on the occasion it will be printed in full in 

 the Journal OJficiel. M. Tisserand, the astronouer, spoke during 

 a very few minutes, admitting that it would be possible to see 

 celestial Indies better if the observer were carried away from the 

 earth nearer to the limits of the atmosphere. The effect of 

 the statue, which has been cist in bronze, is very happy, M. 

 Cordier having repre ented the Montgolfiers in the act of inflating 

 a MontJOlfiere — Joseph is presenting the object to his brother 

 Slephan, who 0:1 his knees has in his hand a bundle of burning 

 straw and presents it under the hole. In t lie evening a banquet 

 took place at the Hotel de Ville, Col. Perier being in the chair. 



The last number (the 2SU1) of the MUtheilun^en dtr diutsehen 

 Gesellschaft fur Natur und Vblkcrkande Ostasiens contains the 

 first instalment of a paper by Dr. Bael-, of Tokio, on the 

 " Physical Charactcri-tics of the Japanese." The writer refers 

 to the extraordinary contradictions on this subject in the ordinary 

 works on Japan. Thus Miss Bird says of the Japanese : " Their 

 physique is wretched, leanness without mu cle being the general 

 rule; " while Consul General Van Buren speaks of ihem in his 

 reports to the Department of State at Washington as "a race of 

 people of good physique, of stalwart and well- proportioned 

 frames." And so with other writers. This is the more sur- 

 prising that life in Japan is very public, and the opportunities 

 for accurate observation are accordingly very numerous. In 

 fact, Dr. Baels says, a study of the literature on the subject 

 shows thai we know nothing certain about the physical qualities 

 of this people. This is probably to be attributed lo the fact 

 that detailed and accurate observations and anthrop imetrical 

 measurements have not been made; and this defect Dr. Rack's 

 posi ton as professor and surveyor in the principal Japanese 

 hospital gave him ample opportunity for supplying. Accord- 

 ingly we find that his conclusions are supp irted by large numbers 

 of statistics. In some cases 1200 persons were measured, and as 

 a rule at least 100 measurements and obseivations were taken. 

 The whole paper is divided into two sections, the anatomical 

 and physiological, of which we have only the first in the 

 present number. In examining the interesting question as to 

 the origin and position of the Japanese lace, the auth r finds 

 himself confronted with the most perplexing and contradictory 

 assertions respecting the Ainos. In two columns, side by side, 

 he places the statements of two c luntiymen of his own — Drs. 

 Doeoits and Scheube — as to the Aino characteristics, with the 

 result that one is in ilat contradiction to the other, in such appa- 

 rently simple matters as the hair, its growth and quality, the 

 shape of the nose, &c. After a long examination of the 

 authorities, however, he comes to the fol'owing conclusions : — 

 (1) The Ainos were the original inhabitants of Central and 

 Northern lapan, and their influence onthe modern Japanese race 

 is small ; (2) a Mongoloid tribe, similar to the better class of the 

 Chinese and Coreans, emigrated from the manland through 

 Corea, and settled the sourh-western part of the main island, 

 and from tin nee spread themselves over that i-land ; (3) another 

 Mongol tribe, bearing a resemblance to the Malays, first settled 

 in the south in Kiushiu, and gradually conquered the whole 

 country. This stem is represented now in its purest form in 

 Satsuma, and gave Japan its Imperial House. It also forms the 

 largi mass of the Japane-e of today. He further surmises that 



ihe second factor, namely tho>e Mongols with the fine feature--, 

 came from far to the south and west, and were perha ps related 

 to the Akkadians ; but he finds no direct connection whatever 

 between the Japanese and any Semitic race. The remainder of 

 the paper is occupied with statistics respecting the size and pro- 

 portion of the body and its single parts. 



We have received from the director of the Meteorological 

 Observatory of T0U0 some of the daily weather maps issued by 

 that institution. The observatory, which is attached to the 

 geographical bureau of the Home Department, is not new, 

 although it was not till 1S81 that a plan for a telegraphic weather 

 service was suggested to the Government. From July I, 1882, the 

 introduction of millimetres and degrees Centigrade, and of three 

 equidistant, simultaneous meteorological observations at 6 a.m., 

 2 p.m., and 10 p.m. Kioto time were sanctioned. Twenty-two 

 stations were established from Kagoshiina and Nagasaki in the 

 south to Hakodate and Sapporo in the north. Each morning 

 one telegram recording the observations of the previous day is 

 despatched to Tokio, and appears in three weather maps. These 

 latter are both in English and Japanese, and are printed with 

 great clearness. It is intended, as soon as sufficiect experience 

 has been acquired, to supplement the reports and maps by the 

 issue of warnings and indications. 



Those interested in the origin and history of the telephone 

 should read Prof. Silvanus P. Thompson's "Philipp Reiss, 

 Inventor of the Telephone," a biographical sketch, with docu- 

 mentary testimony, translations of the original papers of the 

 inventor, and contemporary publications. E. and F. N. Spon 

 are the publi-hers. 



We have received the last volume of the Memoirs 0/ the Kiejf 

 Society of Naturalists (vol. vii.), which contains, besides the pro- 

 ceedings and a note on chemical analyses of the Kieff clays, 

 an elaborate memoir by M. Armashevsky, on the geology of 

 the province of Chernigoff, with a ge logical map of the province. 

 It is covered with Upper Chilk, mire than a hundred feet 

 thick, quite like that of the neighbouring provinces, and the 

 fo sils of which prove to be intermedial between the Senonian 

 and Turanian. The chalk appears, however, only in the deeper 

 excavations of the Desna and Sudo t Rivers, as it is covered 

 with a thick ;heet of Tertiary deposits, which are found through- 

 out the north-eastern pait of the province, disappearing towards 

 the south-west under the b mlder clay. The Tertiary consists 

 of two parts— the Glauconite sands and sandstones, and the 

 quartz sands with intermediate beds of sandstones. It is 

 most varied in colour and composition, and contains phos- 

 phorite, caolin, brown-coal, and boulders of chalk. It is 

 a part of the immense Tertiary hasin that covers Southern 

 Russia from Kherson and Kieff to Saratoff and Simbirsk, 

 and bears the characters of shallow-sea dep isils, with banks 

 of oysters. The fossils discovered by M. Armashevsky leave 

 no doubt as to its belonging to the Lower Eocene, It is 

 covered in its turn with Post-Pliocene pottery clays, and these 

 last with an immense sheet of boulder clay, which is widely 

 spread throughout the province, as well as throughout the whole 

 of middle Russia. It is an un-tratified and unwashed mixture 

 of clay, sand, and boulders, partly of Scandinavian origin and 

 partly brought from all those formation ; that are met with to the 

 north of Chernigoff; that is, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboni- 

 ferous. Huge masses of chalk and Cretaceous sands are also 

 met with in it. The boulders reach sometimes the size of ten 

 feet, and are sometimes polished and striated — the local ones as 

 well as those brought from the north. The author, who is well 

 acquainted with the recent literature of the subject, and espe- 

 cially with the numerous researches of German glacialists, does 

 not hesitate to recognise that the province of Chernigoff, as far 

 as Kiefl, was covered by the ice-sheet that extended throughout 



