NA TURE 



[Jan. i, 1885 



The intersection of the two circles of figures serves the 

 purpose of giving day hours inside and night hours out- 

 side. 



NOTES 



The Congress of the United States some time ago appointed 

 a joint committee of senators and representatives to consider the 

 organisation of the different bureaux of the Government. This 

 special commission is now hearing the depositions of wit- 

 nesses. The evidence of Major Powell, Director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey, has just been published. The principal 

 feature of this document is the proposal to give the adminis- 

 tration of the different bureaux to the Smithsonian Institution. 

 It should be noted that the National Academy of Sciences 

 passed some time back a resolution asking that a special adminis- 

 tration should be created for the purpose. The Committee of 

 the Academy recommended the establishment of a physical 

 observatory to investigate the laws of solar and terrestrial radia- 

 tion, and their application to meteorology, with such other inves- 

 tigations in exact science as the Government might assign to it ; 

 and they also recommended that the functions of the Bureau of 

 Weights and Measures, now performed by the Coast Survey, be 

 extended so as to include electrical measures. 



The Bureau of Navigation of the U.S. Navy Department 

 announces that the computations and discussions of the obser- 

 vations and experiments for determining the velocity of light 

 have been completed, and are being prepared for publication. 



The Fourth Circular of Information of the United States 

 Bureau of Education reports the meeting of the Superintendents 

 of National Education at Washington in February last, one of 

 the largest of such meetings ever held. The principal papers 

 read were on the subjects of Indian and Negro education. One 

 speaker, who reported the former of these races to trust too much 

 to memory and direct observation and too little to reasoning, 

 nevertheless considered them worthy to be absorbed into the 

 white population, though as an inferior element. This may be 

 the best for the Indians, for the most hopeful view of another 

 speaker who upheld the return of their educated youth to their 

 old homes as a civilising power to the whole body, was tint 

 "not more than five out of thirty were given up as hopeless" ! 

 But as eminently qualified and well-paid men are required for 

 even this result, and nature will probably protest strongly against 

 the deterioration of a higher race by a lower one, the most satis- 

 factory consideration seems that the Indian population is de- 

 creasing. But not so the Negro ; and the inability of the 

 Southern States to overcome the rapidly increasing mass of 

 ignorance now cast upon them has led to the drawing up of a 

 very cautious Act for the supply of national assistance to this 

 necessary work during the next five years only. It is interesting 

 to note that the Peabody Trustees are becoming quite an autho- 

 rity in educational matters. Another subject fully discussed, 

 but, like the above, requiring little discussion in our country, 

 was the advantage or disadvantage of a ten minutes recess during 

 a three hours' school sitting ; the objections to it, some of them 

 social, would not be felt here. Out of our reach also, we fear, 

 is the pleasanter matter of the plantation of trees as memorials 

 of each great man or event at an annual school holiday. An 

 interesting account given of the composition of those touching 

 lines, " Woodman, spare that tree," concluded an eloquent 

 paper on behalf of the practice. In an account of European 

 technical education a very high place is awarded to the Swedes, 

 who want nothing but qualified teachers. While one speaker 

 urged that technical training should be the groundwork of edu- 

 cation, and not a branch of fact-knowledge, another thought, 

 that looking on at various manufactories and writing an account 

 of what had been shown and explained to them, was of more 



general value. The immense increase of crime in the United 

 States among educated young men was cited by one who ex- 

 pressed an enthusiastic belief that the greatest check to it would 

 be the organisation among children of societies for the prevention 

 of cruelty to animals. Dr. B. Joy Jeffries read a paper on 

 colour-blindness, urging that the three primaries are red, green, 

 and violet : that blindness to the latter is so rare that practically 

 colour-blindness means blindness to red or green ; urging also 

 the danger of persons with such deficiency being employed in 

 many occupations, and the necessity of an experimental method 

 of finding it out. The Fifth Circular of Information consists of 

 information and suggestions with regard to the great educational' 

 department of the New Orleans Exposition now opening, at 

 which gathering the Superintendents of Education are to meet 

 in the ensuing year. 



Herr Jadrintsow of St. Petersburg is about to publish, in 

 Russian and German, a work on the Uralo-Altai, and Ugro- 

 Turanian tribes of Siberia. 



According to the Colonial Mail a statement comes from the 

 Cape Colony which is deserving the attention of botanists. It 

 is alleged that insects shun the land on which tomatoes are 

 grown ; and the cultivation of the Lycoperskon csculentum is 

 accordingly recommended in all cases where it is possible to 

 grow it — under fruit-trees, for instance, since the tomato will 

 thrive in the shade of other trees, which few other plants will 

 do — for the sake of the virtues attributed to it as a prophylactic 

 against the inroads of insect pests. It would be interesting to 

 know whether the tomato has been observed to exercise any 

 such effect on insects elsewhere — in Canada, for instance, where 

 the fruit is so popular — or whether it is only in warmer climates, 

 like that of the Cape, that its peculiar powers are brought into 

 play. 



M. Marcei Deprez, the well-known electrician, is not con- 

 fining his labours exclusively to the transmission of electrical 

 force to distant places. In conjunction with others he has 

 patented a new telephone based on anew principle of vibration, 

 and dispensing with the use of voltaic elements. The lease of 

 the Compagnie generale des Telephones being about to expire, 

 the Municipal Council of Paris have held a protracted sitting on 

 the question whether the lease should be renewed or not. In 

 the course of the discussion it was proposed to grant the renewal 

 of the lease provisionally for a month, in order to give the new 

 apparatus a fair trial. The further discussion of the question 

 has been postponed to the next meeting. 



The last number of the Mittheilungen da- deutschen Gesell- 

 schaft fiir Natur und l r olkerkunde Ostasiens, Heft 31, contains 

 a paper by Mr. Knipping, on weather telegraphy in Japan, 

 which has already been referred to in Nature. Besides de- 

 scribing the agencies at present at work in connection with the 

 Central Meteorological Observatory, Mr. Knipping suggests a 

 reorganisation of service, especially as regards the lighthouses ; 

 the number of stations would then be eighty in place of twenty- 

 four, and the increased value of the service for practical as well 

 as for scientific climatological purposes would be proportionate. 

 Herr Mayet gives the first part of a full and interesting descrip- 

 tion of his visit to Corea with the German mission which went 

 there last year fir the purpose of making a treaty. If continued 

 on the same scale, it will be the most comprehensive and accu- 

 rate account of Corea, its Government, people, laws, &c, yet 

 published. When at the capital, Seoul, the members of 

 the mission noticed, from a hill in the grounds of their 

 residence, the extraordinary sunsets of October in that 

 year ; but no special observations were made, because 

 they believed that the beautiful phenomenon was the usual 

 accompaniment of fine weather sunsets in Corea. It is described 

 a netimes resembling the aurora borealis. Frequently it was 



