March 26, 1885] 



NA TURE 



493 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA FOR THE 

 WEEK, 1SS5, MARCH 29 TO APRIL 4 



he reckoning of time the civil day, commencing at 

 mean midnight, counting the hours on to 24, is here 



At Greenwich on March 29 

 Sun rises, 5I1. 44m. ; souths, 12'n. 4m. 447s. ; sets, iSh. 27m. ; 

 decl. on meridian, 3° 34' N. : Sidereal Time at Sunset, 

 6h. 56m. 

 Moon ^Full on March 30) rises, 17I1. 20m. ; souths, 23I1. 32m. ; 

 sets, 5h. 33m.* ; decl. on meridian, 0° 35' S. 

 Planet Rises Souths Sets Decl. on meridian 



Mercury ... 6 3 



Venus ... 5 37 



Mars ... 5 32 



lupiter ... 14 12 



Saturn ... 8 3S 



13 ° 



11 32 



11 30 



21 28 



16 43 



19 57 ... 10 27 N. 



17 28 ... 1 31 S. 



17 28 ... 1 10 s. 



4 44* ••• 13 49 N. 



o 48* ... 21 51 N. 



Indicates that the setting is that of the folio 

 Occultations of Stars by the Moon 



; day. 



March 30. — Partial eclipse of the Moon. The times of first 

 contact with the penumbra and shadow are 13I1. 49m. and 

 I4h. 58m. respectively ; the middle of the eclipse is at l6h. 34m. ; 

 the times of last contact with the shadow and penumbra are 

 i8h. 9m. and I9h. iSm. respectively. The Moon will rise at 

 Greenwich after having left the shadow but whilst still obscured 

 by the penumbra. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

 It seems probable that the Geographical Societies of Berlin 

 and Munich will join that of Vienna in sending Dr. Lenz to 

 Africa. 



Mi. O'NEILL, our Consul at Mozambique, who has done 

 some excellent exploring work in the Lake Nyassa region, has 

 just arrived in this country, and will shortly read a paper before 

 ! yal Geographical Society. 



meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday, 

 when a paper by Major Holdich was read on the geographical 

 work of the Afghan Frontier Commission, Sir Richard Temple 

 spoke in strong terms of the complete ignorance of geography in 

 this country and the consequent incompetency of the public to 

 judge of the true bearings of such a matter as that now pending 

 between Russia and England. The Society, he remarked, per- 

 forms a public service in bringing before the public such papers 

 as that of Mr. Holdich, and we hope they will si 

 obtaining for geography the position it ought to have in English 

 education. 



in from the Times Paris Correspondent that the War 

 of France, Germany, and Italy have recently been 

 examining attentively geographical maps in relief, constructed 

 on a system of which M. de Mendouca, a Portuguese Council- 

 lor of State, President of the Banco Lusitano, possesses the 

 patent, and is the promulgator. These relief maps are stated 

 to combine the advantages generally admitted to be possessed 



by relief maps and the convenience and accuracy of maps on flat 

 surfaces. The Correspondent states that this new method 

 rapidly reproduces, ly a 1 ical and mechanical process, plane 



maps with the curves and altitudes in relief, so represented as 

 to correspond absolutely with the elevations established by 

 accurate observations. These maps are drawn on paper, which 

 may be described as thin. They are not, however, put out of 

 shape even by being trodden upon. Yet they may be rolled 

 up and placed in the narrowest case, so that they are very 

 portable and light. They are not injured by water. The Cor- 

 respondent soaked one of them for forty-eight hours in water, 

 and, on taking it out, all the part which was in relief — that is 

 all the pait subjected to chemical processes — remained absolutely 

 intact. The relief, the Correspondent states, is produced on 

 them in such a manner that at a single glance one can take in 

 the whole topography of a district, its defiles and heights, its 

 water-courses, and all the lesser obstacles of the country in 

 which military operations have to be carried on. Of course 

 relief maps are well known and plentiful. The drawback to 

 those which include large areas is that the altitudinal scale has 

 to be greatly exaggerated. Both in Germany and Switzerland 

 beautiful reliefs of limited areas are made, not only in plaster, 

 but also in papier-mache, the horizontal and altitudinal scales 

 of which are the same. These new maps, however, seem to 

 possess many advantages over either plaster or papier-mache, 

 and we should like to know how large are the areas which 

 are contained in them. We are also curious to learn the 

 chemical process used, and whether embossing is not to some 

 extent employed. 



In the Mittheilungen of the Vienna Geographical Society for 

 February (Bd. xxviii. No. 2), Prof. Blumentritt describes the 

 states existing in the Philippine Islands at the time of the 

 Spanish Conquest. These were of two kinds : Mohammedan 

 principalities, which were the larger and more important, the 

 polity of which was based on the feudal system ; and a vast 

 number of small states, consisting of only a few villages each, in 

 which the Government was based on a complicated system of 

 slavery. The latter is described at considerable length, and is 

 exceedingly interesting. Heir Heller completes his paper on 

 the Rilo-Dagh ; while Baron Kaulbars translates from the 

 Russian the recent letters of Col. Prjevalsky from Central Asia. 

 The President, we are glad to observe, was able to announce 

 that the recent appeal of the Council for more members to 

 enable the Society to take a place worthy of the Austrian capital 

 in geographical science has been very successful, 402 new 

 members having joined up to February 24. At the meeting 

 held on that date the Librarian, Dr. Le Monnier, described Mr. 

 Thomson's recent journey into Eastern equatorial Africa ; and 

 Dr. Zehden read a paper on Shamanism in Upper Au-tria, 

 which will be printed in the next part of the Transactions. 



The last number of the China Review contains a lengthy 

 paper on Formosa by Messrs. Colquhoun and Stewart- Lockhart. 

 It professes to be based on all available sources of information, 

 and on the evidence of those who have resided and travelled in 

 the island. The most interesting section is one on the Dutch in 

 Formosa, which is followed by an account of the Chinese rule. 

 The physical geography, and the cities and communications, a. e 

 treated in some detail ; but the portion on the aborigines was 

 written without much reference to "available sources." The 

 precise position of these aborigines is one of the most curious 

 ptoblems in ethnology, and very much more has been written 

 about them than the authors of this paper seem to be aware of. 

 They note a very curious custom among the males. They are 

 deprived of their eye-teeth, which are knocked out when they 

 are quite young. By some it is thought that this improves the 

 wind for hunting, whilst others consider that it increases the 

 beauty of their appearance. 



ACCIDENTAL EXPLOSIONS PRODUCED BY 

 NON-EXPLOSIVE LIQUIDS 1 

 II. 

 HPHE disaster on board the Triumph, combined with the fact 

 ■*■ that this xerotine siccative had been issued to H.M.'s ships 

 generally, the authorities and officers of the navy having been in 

 ignorance as to its dangerous nature, re-directed official attention 



1 Address delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Friday 

 March 13. 1885, by Sir Frederick Abel, C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.I. 

 Continued from p. 472. 



