DECEMBER 3, 1896] 
NATURE 
105 
skill and strength of his guide, Mattias Zurbriggen, and by 
his own readiness of resource. The accident was caused 
by the wholly unexpected fall of a great block of stone. 
Notwithstanding all difficulties, Mr. FitzGerald made the 
ascent of four peaks hitherto unclimbed—Mount Tasman 
(11,475 feet), Mount Sefton (10,350 feet), Mount Haidinger 
(10,054 feet), and Mount Sealy (8,631 feet), and crossed 
three new glacier passes. One of these, though it hardly 
deserves the name of a glacier pass, is a discovery of 
importance to the colony. Till this time the great moun- 
tain wall had prevented any communication between the 
eastern and western coasts except by sea, so that a direct 
route across this barrier anywhere near the middle of 
the island was much desired. Mr. FitzGerald discovered 
a pass, which now bears his name, leading direct from 
one of the branches of the Tasman valley to the west 
coast. There is a very small glacier on the east side, 
and none at all on the other. It is, as he says, a pass 
comparable with the Monte Moro in Switzerland, and so, 
with some expenditure on making the track, may be 
easily crossed by packhorses and cattle, at any rate 
during the summer season. His own experience was the 
reverse of agreeable. Preliminary explorations with 
Zurbriggen showed them that the eastern side presented 
no difficulty, and suggested that the descent on the 
western would ‘be easy. So it was for a while; then 
they found themselves confronted with an impenetrable 
“scrub ” at a place where the river entereda gorge. After 
attempting the former, they were forced to follow the 
latter as the less evilway. But the result was that, instead 
of reaching the west coast in about twenty-four hours from 
the starting-point, they were out for two nights and nearly 
three days, having taken provisions for one day only! 
This difficulty of course will not recur, for a road can be 
easily cut through the scrub. The book is well written 
and illustrated, though perhaps one or two of the pictures 
—wot made from sketches taken on the spot—are slightly 
sensational. Some appendices contain details of interest 
as to geology and natural history. It tells unaffectedly 
and most attractively a tale of careful preparation, bold 
climbing, and wonderful endurance. 
Mr. Weston, while British chaplain at Kobe, spent his 
holidays for four years in wandering about the mountain 
regions of Central Japan. Of course he was often far 
away from beaten tracks, and saw much of the native life 
in its original simplicity. His experiences are described 
in the brightly and pleasantly written volume before us, 
which also contains some curious information as to the 
customs and the religious beliefs cf the people, demon- 
ology, the “possession” of human beings by animals, 
ghosts, rites of incantation, such as those for affecting the 
weather, and the like. He seems to have found no 
special difficulties in travel, and generally met with a 
kindly reception from this quaint and courteous people, 
except once or twice when impediments were caused in 
regard to passports, or from a belief like that which for- 
merly kept the Swiss away from Pilatus ; but he had often 
to rough it, for the accommodation frequently is very 
primitive, and food is scanty. But there is one set-off in 
Japanese travel, that the “honourable hot-bath,” as it is 
politely called, is a general institution. As, however, this 
serves many bathers without change of the water, it is 
well to secure an early turn. 
The backbone of the Japanese Alps consists of granitic 
rocks with crystalline schists, through which igneous 
masses have been extruded. Thus some peaks are of 
granite, others are of felstone or old volcanic rocks, others 
are cones whichrstill retain their craters. Hence the rocks 
are of very different ages, and some of the older exhibit 
marked indications of mechanical disturbances. The 
higher summits seem very commonly just to overtop 
10,000 feet. Thus Hodakadake, the highest granitic peak 
in Japan, is 10,150 feet ; Yarigatake, the boldest in out- 
NO. 1414, VOL. 55 | 
line and a “brecciated porphyry,” is 10,300 feet ; while 
Fuji-san, which exceeds all the rest by 2000 feet, being 
12,400 feet, is a crater. This indicates considerable 
difference in age, and the chain very probably is of a 
complex character. Mr. Gowland, who contributes a few 
remarks on the geology, thinks its beginning was in 
Paleeozoic times, when it consisted chiefly of granite and 
schists. All the above-named peaks and sundry others 
were ascended by Mr. Weston, who also crossed several 
passes. These generally range from about 5000 to rather 
more than 7000 feet. In fine weather the climbing does 
not seem to present many serious difficulties, but the 
great rock slabs are apt to be slippery in wet, and the 
distances traversed on foot are sometimes rather great. 
His verdict is that while these mountains do not display 
the glory of glacier-shrouded peaks, and are on a scale 
only two-thirds of the Alps of Switzerland, they surpass 
anything he has met with among the latter in “the 
picturesqueness of their valleys and the magnificence of 
the dark and silent forests that clothe their massive 
flanks.” The larger illustrations show that this praise is 
not exaggerated ; two of the most striking represent the 
granitic pinnacles of Hodakadate and the singular cone 
of Fuji-san capped by a “bonnet cloud.” For the use 
of the latter illustration (Fig. 3) we are indebted to the 
publishers. The smaller cuts also, which represent a 
variety of subjects, and are in several cases excellent, 
add to the value of this attractive work. 
T. G. BONNEY. 
OYSTER CULTURE IN RELATION TO 
DISEASE. 
|) Miers the above title the Medical Officer of the 
Local Government Board has just issued a sup- 
plement to his report for 1894-95, dealing with reports 
and papers on the cultivation and storage of oysters and 
certain other edible molluscs in relation to the occurrence 
of disease inman. An inquiry on this subject was bound 
to be instituted sooner or later. There has been an 
uneasy feeling for many years past that the infection of 
enteric or typhoid fever is at times due to the consump- 
tion of uncooked oysters ; and in his report on cholera 
in England in 1893, Dr. Thorne Thorne expressed his 
conviction that the distribution of shell-fish from Clee- 
thorpes and Grimsby, as a centre, had been concerned 
in the diffusion of scattered cases of cholera over a some- 
what wide area of England, owing to the fact that oysters 
and other molluscs at these ports were so deposited and 
stored as to be almost necessarily bathed each tide with 
the effluent of sewers at that time receiving cholera dis- 
charges. In the early part of 1895, Sir Willian Broad- 
bent also publicly announced his conviction that oysters 
were occasionally capable of transmitting the infection 
of typhoid fever, and the fact received startling con- 
firmation from a report to the State Board of Health of 
Connecticut, U,S.A., by Prof. Conn, on an oyster epi- 
demic of typhoid at Wesleyan University, Middletown, 
Connecticut, in which some twenty-six cases of that 
disease were indisputably traced to the consumption of 
raw oysters, which had the opportunity of becoming 
specifically contaminated by sewage delivering at the 
time the discharges of typhoid patients. A similar out- 
break of Saint-André de Sangoins, in the Mediterranean 
Department of Herault, was investigated by Dr. Chante- 
messe, and traced to oysters received from Cette, on the 
coast of the same Department, where, according to a 
Commission subsequently appointed, the oysters had 
been stored in waters highly contaminated with sewage. 
Under these circumstances, the Local Government 
Board determined to institute a searching inquiry into 
the conditions of oyster cultivation and storage along the 
coasts of England and Wales, and to cause bacterio- 
logical investigations to be made as to the power of the 
