"Jan. 29, 1885] 



NA TURE 



299 



a material support to the earth, there must be another upholder 

 of that, and again another of this, and so on ; then there will 

 be no limit, and if, ultimately, self-support must be assumed, 

 why not assume it in the first instance ? Is not the earth one of 

 the forms of Siva? As by nature heat is in the sun and fire, 

 coldness in the moon, fluidity in water, hardness in stone, so 

 mobility is in the air, and immobility in the earth. Each 

 object has its own faculty, and "wonderful indeed are the facul- 

 ties implanted in objects." As to the attraction of the earth, 

 Bhaskara observes that the earth, possessing an attractive force, 

 •draws towards itself any heavy substance situated in the sur- 

 rounding atmosphere, and that substance appears as if it falls. 

 But whither, he asks, can the earth fall in ethereal space, which 

 is equal and alike on every side ? He ridicules the Buddhists for 

 holding that the earth descends in unbounded space. An astro- 

 nomical work anterior to Bhaskara's time says the terrestrial 

 globe possesses Brahma's most excellent power of steadiness, 

 and remains in space. The succession of day and night is 

 said to be caused by the rising and setting of stars, the planet, 

 and the zodiac. Arya Bhatta, in the sixth century, maintained 

 the existence of a diurnal rotation of the earth round its own 

 axis. The sphere of the stars, he states, is stationary, and the 

 earth itself, making a revolution, produces the daily rising and 

 setting of stars and planets. 



Mr. HOFFMANN, of Washington, has addressed a letter to 

 the Anthropological Society of Paris stating that in various 

 ancient burial places in Southern California, and in the islands 

 of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, he has found 

 instruments which he believes to be those employed in tattooing. 

 I he natives here do not tattoo themselves now, with the excep- 

 tion of the Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte's Island ; they 

 only paint their faces, but still many individuals bear traces of 

 tattooing. Mr. Hoffmann found vessels containing red ochre 

 and cakes of a black substance, composed apparently of the 

 hydro-oxide of manganese, as well as some very sharp needles of 

 bone, wood, and the fins offish. These needles aie still preferred, 

 by tribes which practise tattooing, to those of steel, which they 

 could procure easily. 



The publications of the Russian Geological Commission 

 1 one another rapidly, each of them containing some 

 important contribution to the geology of Russia. The third 

 fasciculus of its Memoirs, just published, contains a monograph 

 by M. Tschernyschen, on the Devonian deposits of Russia. 

 The interest awakened by the recent explorations in the Ural 

 Mountains, where deposits quite analogous to those of the Hartz 

 and the Eifel have been discovered, induced the author to 

 describe some of the old collections of the Palfeonlological 

 Museum at the Mining Insti'ute at St. Petersburg, namely, that 

 ol Meglitzky and Antonoff, from the shores of Lake Kotluban, 

 in the Southern Ural. These fossils proved to be Upper 

 Devonian, and many of them quite new for the Ural region ; 

 they also enabled the author to give the following scheme of the 

 Devonian deposits of the Ural mountains : — The Lower Devonian 

 is represented by schists and sandstones, with numerous remains 

 of At'ypa kalilingius, Schmer, and by the limestones of Nyaze- 

 I'etrovsk and Vurezan (upper part of the Lower Devonian), which 

 are akin to the Greifenstein limestones and the Wissenbicher schists 

 of Germany. The M iddle Devonian consists of sandy limestones 

 and unfossiliferous marls, which appear on the Ay and Yurezan 

 rivers from beneath dolomites. The rich fauna of the former 

 corresponds to that of the Eifel. And, finally, the Upper 

 Devonian is represented by the limestones of Lake Kotluban, 

 of Murzataeva, River Vilva, the mouth of Sulema, &c. ; it 

 corresponds to the Cuboides and Goniatites schists of the Eifel 

 and Hartz, and is covered by the Clymenia limestones of 

 Verkhneuralsk, which appear, in the Hartz, above the so-called 

 Intumensccns-stufe. Comparing further the Devonian deposits 



of the Ural with those of the Petchora, as described by Keyser- 

 ling, of the Government of Orel, according to his own observa- 

 tions, and of North- Western Russia, the author arrives at the 

 following interesting conclusions : —On the Petchora we have 

 Lower Devonian deposits of the Vol and Ukhta rivers, akin to 

 the Middle Devonian of the Ural and Western Europe ; and 

 an upper layer (on the Middle and Lower Ukhta) which corre- 

 sponds to the Goniatite schists of the Ural and the Goniatites 

 inluniescens deposits of the Rhine. The Middle Devonian of 

 the Ural and Petchora correspond to the dolomitic limestones of 

 Livonia and to the lower deposits of the south-east, which are 

 rich in corals and tentaculites. For several interesting details 

 we must refer, however, to the paper itself, which is followed 

 by a rhund in German (twenty-four quarto pages), and is ac- 

 companied by three plates representing Devonian fossils. 



The geological map of Russia, prepared by the Geological 

 Commission, is well advanced, and during this year we expect the 

 appearance of three sheets including a part of the Ural Moun- 

 tains, the government of Kostroma, and the Volga-and-Don 

 region. As to the last issue of the Izvestia of the Commission, 

 we notice in it a paper by M. Mikhalsky on the structure of the 

 Kielce Mountains and the surrounding region. Its chief features 

 were already known from the explorations of Pusch and Rcemer, 

 but the very age of the deposits of this region (Devonian, Trias, 

 Jura, and Chalk) had to be determined with more precision. The 

 Trias reaches a great development, and M. Mikhalsky confirms 

 Prof. Kcemer's affirmation that all three chief subdivisions of the 

 German Trias are found in Poland. The Jurassic formation is 

 also represented by three different deposits : one of them closely 

 corresponds to the Jurassic deposits of Southern Germany, 

 namely, to those of Bavaria, as already indicated by Ludwig 

 Amnion. Another, which contains the E.xogyra virgula, 

 together with Gryphcca dila'ata and Pecten iiuzquicostatus, 

 seems to be an intermediate deposit between the Oxfordian 

 and Kimmeridge deposits of England. As to the Oolite, 

 its fossils are more like those of France and Middle Ger- 

 many, but substantially differ from those of South Germany. 

 A series of Jurassic deposits at the Peklo village is in- 

 teresting, as it affords a remarkable mixture of the Upper 

 Jurassic fauna of Middle Europe with the Jurassic fauna of 

 Russia. It contains the ammonite Perisphinctes virgatus, 

 which has been found only in the Russian Jurassic formation. 

 As to the Chalk, it is represented in the south-west by much 

 dislocated deposits containing Inoceramus Crispii and /. stri- 

 atus, both characteristic of the Senonian subdivision. The whole 

 is covered with thick deposits of Boulder Clay, containing Scan- 

 dinavian and local bonders ; one boulder of granite has been 

 observed on the summit of the northern chain of the Kielce 

 ridges, and, judging from the general character of the glacial 

 deposits, the author believes in the extension of the Scandinavian 

 ice-sheet as far as the Kielce ridge. 



Science states that the U.S. Bureau of Navigation of the Navy 

 Department reports that 145 compasses with the four-needle 

 card have been issued to ships during the past year, and that 

 they have given general satisfaction, the behaviour of the im- 

 proved compasses used by the Greeley relief expedition in high 

 latitudes being especially commended. This expedition gathered 

 considerable data concerning the variation of the compass in 

 high latitudes, but, owing to its speedy return, none were ob- 

 tained concerning the magnetic force and dip. The data con- 

 cerning compass variations, collected by the Department during 

 the past year, are in course of preparation for publication. 

 Professional paper No. 17, entitled the " Magnetism of Iron and 

 Steel Ships," is in the press ; and No. 18, on " Deviations of 

 the Compass in U S. Naval Vessels," is nearly ready. Prepara- 

 tions have been made for a careful examination of the magnetic 

 character of the new steel vessels, and a compass station is to be 



