FEBRUARY 12, 1914] 
NATURE 
671 
22. The following is the portion of the four-day 
ephemeris for the rest of the present month :— 
oh. M.T. Berlin. 
aah (true) Dec. (true) Mag. 
. mM. Ss. ° G 
Feb: 13° ..2 2: 3859 . +0 48-7 10:8 
Ai yl POR ee E TPZ1-0 :.. rs 
eet: FOw EL erie 5. » 
are ry neal Poe Oeste aa ne gpl, (5% 5 a 
March’) 1%,  ...,2' 42).22 - +3 407 a ito-8 
The brightness is calculated on the assumption that 
on December 17 the comet was of magnitude 11-0. 
Dark REGIONS IN THE Sky.—Prof. Barnard contri- 
butes some valuable observations regarding the appear- 
ance of the very dark areas in star clouds and nebulze 
which have attracted attention from time to time. The 
number of such areas is quite considerable, and he 
promises at some future time to make a catalogue of 
them. In his paper to the current number of The 
Astrophysical Journal (vol. xxxviii., No. 5) he describes 
two of these remarkable areas, namely, one in the star 
cloud of Sagittarius, and another in the nebulous 
stream south of p Orionis. While photographs of the 
Sagittarius star cloud show a small and definite spot, 
Prof. Barnard has made numerous visual observa- 
tions and has been led to the result that the object is 
not a vacancy among stars, but a more or less opaque 
body. With regard to the second dark area, the dark 
notch in the nebulous stream is, as he says, ‘‘ clearly 
a dark body projected against and breaking the con- 
tinuity of, the brighter nebulosity.”’ He further 
states :—'‘ Possibly this is a portion of the nebula 
itself nearer to us, but dark and opaque, that cuts 
out the light from the rest of the nebula against which 
it is projected.’’ Visual observations by him with the 
4o0-in. refractor confirmed his view that an obscuring 
medium was the origin. It is interesting to direct 
attention to the photographs of some spiral nebulz 
seen edgewise as photographed by Dr. Isaac Roberts, 
such as HIV 24 Comz Berenicis, where it is stated, 
“the photograph shows the nebula to be, almost 
certainly, a spiral viewed edgewise, the dark line 
across it being caused by the fainter portion of the 
nebulous convolutions being now turned towards the 
earth; they would thus be dense enough to obscure 
the nucleus and its surroundings, but not bright 
enough to impress the film, they thus appear as a 
dark line.”” Markings somewhat analogous to that 
described by Prof. Barnard in the nebulous stream 
of p Orionis are illustrated in Roberts’s nebulous 
region round the cluster N.G.C., Nos. 2237-39 Mono- 
cerotis, in which ‘black tortuous rifts meander 
through the nebulosity . .. margins are sharp and 
well defined . . . like cleanly-cut cafions.”’ 
A REVIEW OF GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS. 
BY means of a brief survey of some of the more 
important articles which have appeared in recent 
issues of leading foreign geographical periodicals, it 
is possible to compare and in a measure contrast 
the trend of geographical study in different countries. 
We may broadly classify such articles mainly under 
the departments of (1) travel and exploration, wherein 
travellers present general accounts of their observations 
and experiences, (2) physical geography, (3) human 
geography, and (4) cartography and geography. It is 
to be expected that at the present stage of the world’s 
progress the department of travel should be finding 
a place of lower importance relatively to the rest than 
that which it formerly occupied; it is also natural 
that this tendency should be more clearly remarked 
NO. 2311, VOL. 92| 
in foreign publications even than in our own Geo- 
graphical Journal, in view of our wide territorial 
interests. 
During the past year, however, we find evidence 
in all the geographical publications under notice of 
the international character of the interest in Arctic 
and Antarctic research, with especial reference to the 
work of Filchner in Petermanns Mitteilungen, and of 
V. Stefansson in the Bulletin of the American Geo- 
graphical Society, together with universal apprecia- 
tion of the results of Scott’s expedition. For the rest, 
Dr. F. Kihn dealt at some length in the Mitteil- 
ungen of July with his visit to the Cordillera of San 
Juan, Argentina, and in La Géographie (the bulletin 
of the French Geographical Society) we have a steady 
record of French activities in Africa, such as the 
account of the Mission Rohan-Chabot in Angola 
(January), Capt. Niéger’s ‘‘ Mission d’études du trans- 
africain”’ (February), M. le Terrier on the lakes of 
the Lower Ogowe (June), and H. Roussilhe’s account 
of the ‘‘ Mission hydrographique Congo-Oubangui- 
Sangi” (August). 
Physical geography shares with travel the pages of 
the French publication almost exclusively (so far as 
concerns leading articles); the direction of this branch 
of study is in general towards detailed work in limited 
areas, a tendency which is also very clearly marked 
in the Bolletino della Reale Societa Geographica 
(Italy) and the American Bulletin, for in both these 
countries this department of geographical study 
stands, as in France, in an eminent position. In all 
three thé limitations of geomorphology appear to be 
clearly recognised; the land-form, not its geological 
composition (at least not primarily) is the subject of 
investigation. Examples are Sumner Cushing’s study 
of the east coast of India (Bulletin, February), the 
Ohio floods of 1913, by Robert M. Brown (ibid., July), 
Etienne Clouzot’s ‘‘ Modifications littorales de l’ile de 
Noirmoutier” (La Géographie, January), P. 
Lemoine’s ‘‘Régions naturelles du département du 
Gard’’ (ibid., March), R. Blanchard’s ‘‘ Morphologie 
du Caucase”’ (ibid., June), while in all three countries 
it is clear that growing importance is attached to 
the branch of potamology; while climate, vegetation, 
and (in France) glaciers, also provide material for 
study. 
The department of human geography holds a 
markedly more prominent place in the Mitteilungen 
than in other journals; perhaps the most important 
contribution to it has been Dr. L. Weise’s notice and 
map of the distribution of population in Europe 
(January); the recent census (as in other countries) 
has been made the basis of other geographical studies, 
such as Prof. F. Auerbach’s ‘“‘Gesetz der Bevolker- 
ungskonzentration”’ (February), and Dr. Olbricht’s 
“Die deutschen Gross-Stadte”’ (August), while among 
other studies mention is due of Prof. Cvijic’s close, 
and at the present moment of history peculiarly valu- 
able, survey of the ethnographical boundaries in the 
Balkan peninsula (March ef seq.) From the American 
Bulletin may be quoted Mark Jefferson’s ‘‘ Anthropo- 
geography of North America” (March), and Mary 
Dopp’s ‘‘Geographical Influences in the Development 
‘of Wisconsin” (June et seq.). In Germany and 
America this department is clearly more strongly 
developed than elsewhere. 
In the department of cartography we turn natur- 
ally for guidance to Germany; it is perhaps a sign 
of grace that a writer in the American Bulletin, 
Martha K. Genthe, has done the same by contributing 
a “Note on the History of Gotha Cartography”’; 
American. cartographers, at any rate on the commer- 
cial side, have notoriously much to learn and to un- 
learn, while A. Briesemeister’s large map of the 
