ie) 
NATURE 
[| NovEMBER 26, 1896 
een otherwise than a melancholy spectacle. . The proceed- 
ngs only further illustrated what was pretty well known before 
—that at present the science of designing mechanical road 
carriages isin a very elementary stage, and much remains to be 
done before it can be claimed that a motor car has been pro- 
duced fit to take its place on the highway as a commercially 
successful carriage, and one which can be relied upon to do 
general work in competition with horse-drawn vehicles.” The 
Electrician yemarks: ‘‘The adaption of electricity to the 
requirements of vehicular traffic is, in our opinion, still in the 
embryonic stage ; and that being so, it is decidedly premature to 
float public companies on the basis of mere estimated profits. 
There is so very little to go upon, electrically speaking, and 
that little is so very discouraging, that no sober-minded engineer 
would care to countenance an appeal for funds at the present 
juncture, and pledge his reputation that with ordinary care the 
investment would, within a reasonable period, prove sufficiently 
renumerative to compensate for the risk run.” The Zéectrécal 
Review holds the same opinion, and shows that the scheme for 
using accumulator-driven cabs in London cannot be a success 
even with the accumulators of ‘special patented design” 
referred to by company promoters. ‘‘It behoves electrical 
engineers to seriously and conscientiously study the question,” 
says our contemporary, ‘‘in hopes of some day finding the 
requisite and proper electric vehicle, as distinguished from the 
mere car of the promoting ‘ Juggernaut’ whose pathway is 
strewed with the wasted gold of a confiding and credulous 
public.” 
TAILED men have again turned up. Six years ago, in the 
course of a visit to the Indo-Chinese region, between 11° and 
12° lat. and 104° and 106° long., M. Paul d’Enjoy captured an 
individual of the Moi race, who had climbed a large tree to 
gather honey. In descending, he applied the sole of his feet to 
the bark ; in fact, he climbed like a monkey. To the surprise 
of the author and his Annamite companions, their prisoner had 
a caudal appendage. He conversed with them, swaggered in 
his savage pride, and showed that he was more wily than a 
Mongolian, which, as the author adds, is, however, a very diffi- 
cult matter. M. d’Enjoy saw the common dwelling of the tribe 
to which this man belonged, but the other people had fled ; it 
consisted of a long, narrow, tunnel-like hut made of dry leaves. 
Several polished stones, bamboo pipes, copper bracelets and bead 
necklaces were found inside ; these had doubtless been obtained 
from the Annamites of the frontier. The Moi used barbed 
arrows which are anointed with a black sirupy violent poison. 
The tail is not their only peculiarity. All the Mois whom M. 
(Enjoy has seen in the settlements have very accentuated ankle- 
bones, looking like the spurs of a cock. All the neighbouring 
nations treat them as brutes, and destroy these remarkable 
people, who, the author believes, to have occupied primitively 
the whole Indo-Chinese Peninsula. The Moi skulls described 
by MM. Verneau and Zaborowski were certainly by no means 
those of pure natives: they were taken from graves ; but the 
settled Moi burn their dead, and place the ashes in bamboo pots, 
or in ratan baskets, considering their spirits as protective divini- 
ties. As this somewhat sensational account has been published 
by our esteemed contemporary ? Anthropologie Tome vii., No. 5), 
we must treat it with respect ; and we hope it will not be long 
before these tailed men are carefully described by a trained scien- 
tific observer. 
A VERY remarkable archeological find was made this summer 
near Perm, on the hilly left bank of the Kama, at the village 
Glyadenovo, In June last, M. Sergueeff, a member of the 
Perm Archives Committee, discovered at that spot traces of 
an earthen fort and of an extensive burial-place of the old, 
still problematic inhabitants of old Russia, the so-called Chuds. 
NOMA TS VOR 55) 
Systematic excavations having now been made in the five feet 
thick layer of bone-ashes of that burial-place, perhaps the 
richest known collection of Chud implements was unearthed. 
No less than 100 earthenware vessels, and cart-loads of broken 
pieces of earthenware were found. These broken pieces are 
ornamented with all sorts of figures, giving a full insight into the 
life of the inhabitants. Men sitting on horseback and in small 
boats, nine engravings of bees and flies, fifty-nine engravings of 
birds, 102 of different mammals, ten of snakes, were found 
on that earthenware, besides three masks and one head of 
mammals, one big silver plate representing a man who 
stands on some animal, and eight smaller silver plates, 141 
bronze plates, several bronze statuettes, and an immense number 
of rings, stars, bells, small models of sledges, thimbles, arrow- 
heads, hatches, knives, 390 gilded bronze pearls, fishing hooks, 
skulls of stags, various carnivorous animals, &c., were dis- 
covered. In short, a full picture of the life of the Chud is 
given by this unique collection ; the only difficulty being now to 
find where to house it, as the Perm ‘‘ Museum ”’ is nothing but 
a small apartment, hired for the exhibition of some antiquities 
of this extremely interesting region. j 
THE increasing part played by reading in the life of civilised 
man has resulted in the wide prevalence of myopia, astigmatism, 
and kindred disorders. Myopia would, however, be rare if the 
eye were never fatigued ; soa paper by Harold Grifhng and S. I. 
Franz, in the Psychodogécal Review, on the physical conditions 
of fatigue in reading, and the best means of avoiding it, should 
be of service. From their experiments the authors conclude 
that the size of type is the all-important condition of visual 
fatigue. No type less than 1°5 mm. in height should be used, 
the fatigue increasing rapidly even before the size becomes as 
small as this. The intensity of illumination is apparently of 
little consequence within the limits of daylight in well-lighted 
rooms. Very low intensities, less than from 3 to 1o candle- 
metres, are sources of even greater fatigue than small type, and 
100 c.m. may be considered a safe limit. White light rather 
than yellow light should be used for artificial illumination. The 
form of-the type is of less importance than the thickness of the 
letters. White paper should be used, though it is possible that 
the greater amount of light reflected from pure white paper may 
cause some fatigue. Additional ‘* leading” or spacing between 
the lines is also recommended. These conclusions should be 
especially known to publishers of school books. 
From the Tokys Mathematico-Physical Society we have 
received a copy of their Az (Proceedings), including papers by 
Prof. D. Kikuchi, on Agima’s method of finding the length 
of an arc of a circle, and by K. Tsuruta, on the magnetisation 
of iron wires traversed by electric currents. The latter paper is 
illustrated by diagrams showing the changes which take place in 
the curves of magnetisation, of susceptibility and of cyclic 
magnetisation when currents of different strength are passed 
through the wire. 
same in whatever direction the current is passed through the 
| Wire, in this respect differing from a result previously obtained 
by Prof. C. G. Knott. 
THE revival of an old controversy in a new form, in connection 
with the application of corpuscular and undulatory theories to 
kathodic rays, has led to a rather interesting mathematical 
investigation by Dr. A. Garbasso, published in the Adz dee 
Lincet. The author's object was to determine whether the well- 
known effects of an electric or magnetic field in deflecting these 
rays could be accounted for on the undulatory theory, and he 
considers particularly the effect of a uniform magnetic field in 
imparting to these rays a helicoidal form. The equations 
obtained by Dr. Garbasso seem to show that the latter 
phenomenon cannot be accounted for on the hypothesis of trans- 
The author finds that the effects are the’ 
ae. 
