Oct. 25, 1883 j 



NATURE 



611 



The Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland. Being a 

 Natural History of such as are known to inhabit the 

 Seas and Fresh Waters of the British Isles, with remarks 

 on their Economic Uses, and Various Modes of 

 Capture. By Francis Day, F.L.S., &c. (London: 

 Williams and Norgate, 1880-1SS3.) 



This new work on the " Fishes of Great Britain and 

 Ireland " is to consist of nine parts and about 200 plates. 

 Of these the first six parts, bringing the pages to 176, 

 and the plates to 132, have already appeared. Not only 

 is the natural history of the marine and freshwater fishes 

 given with very copious synonymy, but we find in addition 

 the habits of the fish detailed, the means of their capture, 

 the artificial breeding, the use for food, and the best 

 methods of cooking given. The scientific merits of the 

 book are such as we might expect from the author of 

 " The Fishes of India," and from one who occupied the 

 important post of Inspector General of Fisheries in India, 

 while there is further, in the accounts of the habits of the 

 fish and of their means of capture, an amount of most 

 interesting details to the general reader and sportsman. 

 The plates are from drawings by the author, and though 

 uncoloured are very effective. In most cases where 

 desirable the stomach and pyloric appendages, the air 

 bladder or the mouth with the teeth are added to the 

 portrait of the species. When completed the work will 

 form a handsome royal octavo volume. 



Parrots in Captivity. By W. T. Greene, M.A., M.D., 

 and with Notes on several of the Species by the Hon. 

 and Rev. F. G. Dutton. Coloured Plates. (London : 

 George Bell and Sons, 1883.) 



Three parts of this well-ilustrated work on parrots kept 

 in captivity have already been published, and considering 

 the extent to which these splendidly coloured and in- 

 teresting birds are to be found domesticated in our 

 country, this treatise on their habits will no doubt be 

 very acceptable to many of our readers. The directions 

 given as to their food seem based on practical experience, 

 and will be welcome to some who in this respect may 

 have wrongly treated some favourite bird. The author 

 insists pretty strongly on not characterising a species by the 

 behaviour of an individual, fairly arguing that it is just as 

 wrong to declare that all the cockatoos are noisy and 

 spiteful or that all the lories are amiable and well- 

 behaved as it would be to declare that all Englishmen are 

 lively or all Frenchmen sad because persons of these 

 nations had been met with having these characteristics. 



Voyages of G. S. Karelin on the Caspian Sea. Memoirs 

 of the Russian Geographical Society ; Section of 

 Physical Geography, vol. x. 497 pp. (St. Peters- 

 burg, 1883.) 



M. Karelin, who died in 1872, in the province of 

 Orenburg, to which he was exiled in 1824, was well known 

 to naturalists in Russia and Western Europe as an inde- 

 fatigable collector in mineralogy, botany, and zoology, 

 who supplied Russian and foreign museums with rich 

 collections from Eastern Russia and Siberia. But, with 

 the exception of a few papers in botany and zoology, none 

 of his most valuable works have appeared in print. Most 

 of his manuscripts are lost, and of his remarkable 

 journey to the Altai and Sayan, where he spent several 

 years making his richest collections, only a few frag- 

 ments of diaries have been discovered. Prof. Bogdanoff 

 publishes now the two diaries that Karelin kept during 

 his journeys to the eastern coasts of the Caspian Sea, 

 performed in small vessels in 1S32 and 1836. During the 

 fiist of these voyages Karelin visited the north-eastern 

 coast and the Gulf of Mertvyi Kultuk; four years later 

 he visited the Gulfs of Astrabad, Krasnovodsk, Kara- 

 Bugaz, &c, and penetrated also into the country, making 

 an excursion into the Astrabad province, and another to 

 the great Balkhan Mountains, where he entered into 



communication with the Turkomans. All these tracts 

 have been visited and described since, but still the 

 reading of Karelin's diary, which shows a fine observer 

 of the physical characters of the countries visited, and of 

 the people met with, is a real pleasure ; while numerous 

 remarks on the flora and fauna, scattered in the diaries, 

 have lost very little, or nothing, of their interest from the 

 more recent descriptions. Both diaries are followed by 

 most valuable general descriptions of the flora and fauna of 

 the shores ol the Caspian; the lists of species met with, 

 altogether ex ictly determined, have been revised by Prof. 

 Strauch .and VI. Gobi, thanks to the numerous collections 

 he made during his journeys. His remarks on the old 

 bed of the A m-daria, which he visited and mapped in 

 1836 as far as 37 E. long., are fully confirmed by recent 

 researches: hilst his descriptions of the nature and in- 

 habitants of he province of Astrabad and of the Turko- 

 man coast, ami li is remarks on the falling of level of the 

 Caspian, are still as valuable as if they were written to- 

 day. The « irk is accompanied with maps of the Gulfs 

 of Astrabad, Hassankuli, and Krasnovodsk, and of the 

 Balkhan Mountains, which enable us to conclude as to 

 the changes in the configuration of the coast line during 

 the last fifty years. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts, 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



[The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it ii impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 

 of communications containing interesting and novel facts.\ 



The Green Sun 



For two or three days we have been having a modified 

 repetition of the phenomena respecting which I wrote you at 

 some length by the last mail ; while, curiously enough, if there 

 is no connection between them, the telegraph announces fresh 

 eruptions in Java on the 16th inst. This time, however, while 

 there is apparently about the same smoky haze in the sky, it is 

 much thinner, showing very plainly after the sun has set, but 

 invisible while the sun is much above the horizon. There is 

 aUo very li tie of the refracting medium to which I referred in 

 my last, as there is only a slight discolouration of the sun before 

 setting, and scarcely anything of the succession of colours after- 

 ward as compared with what we had two weeks ago. I send 

 herewith a few clippings from Indian papers in regard to the 

 matter. The curious appearance of two weeks ago, so far as t 

 can learn, was not seen north of Masulipatam on this side, or 

 Calicut on the ive-t coast. W. R. Manley 



Ongole, Ih<tia, September 24 



The foil. win: cutting, sent us by Mr. Manley, is from the 

 Englishman s Overland Mail of September 23 : — 



bo iie c in- at has been caused in Madras lately by the fact 

 that many per 1 have observed that both the sun and the moon 

 presented a g 1 appearance when near setting. Prof. Michie 

 Smith thus e lains the phenomenon in the Madras Mail: — 

 The appearan of a green sun is very uncommon so far as I 

 can discover, fortunately there is one recorded observation 



which throws ich light on the subject. Lockyer once ob- 

 served the su be of a vivid green when seen through the 

 steam of a h paddle boat on Windermere. This at once 

 points to the ■ lution of the difficulty, and shows us that the 

 cause of the a arance is due to water vapour in the atmosphere. 

 That it is e :ly due to this I am not prepared to affirm, for 

 some observat is of Dr. Schuster point to an influence produced 

 by su pended ter in the air. This, however, I think we 



may neglect . resent, and consider why the vapour which 

 usually gives 1 ;e red sunset tints should at present give green 

 colours. To tie this point I have made careful spectro- 

 scopic observ us, and, though I have not yet reduced 

 theui, I find ti they indicate a very marked absorption in the 

 red end of th pectrum extending nearly to B, with a great 

 devel ipment 1 Be "rain band " near D on the red side accom- 



