August 21, 1884] 



NA TURE 



395 



Canton of Glaris, at Kandersteg in the Canton of Berne, and at 

 Charmey in the lower Valais. On the same day M. Auguste 

 Arcimis noted crepuscular glows at Madrid analogous to those 

 of last winter. He remarked in particular a bright corona 

 around the sun, of a silvery white and with a diameter of about 

 48°. On the Alps the display remained more or less visible 

 every day ; but since his return to the plains on August 8, M. 

 Forel lost all traces of it. He was assured by several observers 

 that the phenomenon had been constantly noticed in Valais 

 during the spring and summer of the present year. M. Forel 

 asks whether it is to be regarded as a sequel to the surprising 

 series of optical effects successively observed in the various re- 

 gions of the globe since the tremendous eruption of Krakatoa 

 on August 27, 1883, effects which in Europe reached their cul- 

 minating point in the crepuscular glows and auroral displays of 

 last November, December, and January. In connection witli 

 the same subject M. Jamin remarked that similar phenomena 

 have been observed at Paris and in various parts of France 

 during the exceptional heats of the last few weeks. 



Lieutenant Greely has published further details respecting 

 his three years' residence in the Arctic regions. He says the 

 extremes of temperature at the camp on Discoveiy Bay, which 

 they had named Fort Conger, was from 52 above freezing-point to 

 66° below. In February 1SS3 the mercury was frozen into a 

 solid mass, and continued in that state for fifteen days. The 

 ordinary outdoor clothing of heavy flannels was found to be quite 

 sufficient even on the coldest days. The extreme range of the 

 barometer was from 29 in. to 31 in. The electrometer registered 

 nothing. The aurora was noiseless, which is contrary to Sir 

 George Nares's experience in 1S76, but it was sufficiently bright 

 to cast a shadow. The tide at their most northern settlement 

 flowed from the north ; that at Cape Sabine came from the south. 

 The northern tide was two degrees warmer than that from the 

 south. In Lady Franklin Bay it rose eight feet, and the Cape 

 Sabine tide twelve feet. Surf was seen twice. The temperature 

 of the water at the earlier camp averaged three degrees below 

 freezing-point. During two years only two small sea fish were 

 caught ; but in Lake Alexander fine salmon were taken. 

 Between Capes Bryant and Britannia Lieut. Lockwood found 

 no bottom with a line of 155 fathoms. At the furthest point 

 north which Lieut. Lockwood reached there was no Polar cur- 

 rent, nor did he discover any open sea. The only sea animals 

 met with were the walrus and different species of seal. The 

 vegetation was similar to that seen all over the extreme north. 

 At Lady Franklin Bay the deflection of the magnetic needle 

 was 104 west. The coast of Greenland trended in a north- 

 easterly direction as far as it could be traced. Lieut. Greely 

 thinks the Pole will never be reached, unless every condition 

 which has hitherto been unfavourable should be simultaneously 

 favourable. The only route at all likely to prove suc- 

 cessful is, he thinks, by Franz Josef Land. The Polar pack 

 generally, which was reported by Dr. Pavy and Lieut. Lock- 

 wood to have been seen by them, almost certainly, Greely 

 considers, proves the existence of an open Polar sea. No 

 hardship was experienced by the explorers while they remained 

 at Fort Conger ; and if their physical condition had not de- 

 generated the survivors believe they could have remained there 

 ten years. 



Under the title of " Bosquejos Ethnologicos," S. Carlos von 

 Koseritz has just published in collective form a series of papers 

 contributed by him during the last three years to the Gazeta de 

 Porto Alegre on anthropological subjects in the province of Rio 

 Grande do Sul and other parts of Brazil. A chief object of 

 these papers is to place on permanent record the general conclu- 

 sions based on a comparative study of the extensive ethnological 

 collection to the formation of which the writer had devoted 

 fifteen years' patient labour, but which was unfortunately com- 



pletely destroyed in the disastrous fire at the Brazilian German 

 Exhibition of Porto Alegre last year. The collection comprised 

 over 2000 objects of all sorts, but chiefly rude and polished stone 

 implements brought together from various parts of Rio Grande, 

 and generally corresponding to those of the stone epochs in 

 Europe. But those of a strictly Palaeolithic type appear to be 

 very rare, and as they occur promiscuously with Neolithic objects, 

 the author infers that it is impossible to determine a Palaeolithic 

 antecedent to a Neolithic age in Brazil. A few rudely wrought 

 diorite or nephrite weapons occur, as well as some quartz arrow- 

 heads fashioned witli great labour. But the great majority of the 

 arms and utensils are of more or less polished diorite. Many 

 were found associated with the remains of the Megatherium, of 

 the Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, and the cave bear, thus confirming 

 the conclusions already deduced from the discovery of the fossil 

 man of Lagoa Santa in Minas Geraes, and arguing as great an 

 antiquity for the homo Americanus as for the River Drift men of 

 the Old World. At the same time the writer considers that 

 the earliest inhabitants of South Brazil were quite distinct from, 

 and of a much lower type than, the Charruas and other tribes in 

 possession of that region during the historic period. This con- 

 clusion is based especially on the evidence afforded by the 

 skeleton recently found in a shell-mound on the banks of a fresh- 

 water lagoon near Cidreira, within three miles of the present coast 

 of Rio Grande. During its removal to Porto Alegre, this skele- 

 ton, which must have been many thousand years old, got broken, 

 but the skull has been carefully restored by Theodore Bischoff, 

 and presents the same remarkable characteristics as two others of 

 uncertain origin preserved in the National Museum of Porto 

 Alegre. It is even of a more decidedly bestial type, with 

 excessive prognathism of the upper jaw, extremely long and high 

 cranium (hypsistenocephaly), depressed brow, prominent super- 

 ciliary arches, imparting altogether a most ferocious expression 

 to this specimen, which from the worn state of the teeth seems 

 to have belonged to a very old man. Altogether the Cidreira 

 skull completely confirms the views of Lacerda regarding the 

 prehistoric race associated with the shell-mounds of South Brazil, 

 a race which appears to be at present best represented, at least in 

 some of its salient features, by the fierce Botocudos of the 

 Aimores Mountains further north. It seems to have come 

 originally from those highlands, and the author thinks it probable 

 that the men of the Santa Catharina and Rio Grande refuse- 

 heaps all belonged to the same aboriginal stock. 



The glaciers of the province of Terek, in the Caucasus, are 

 the subject of a vivid description by M. Dinnik, in the last 

 number of the Memoirs of the Caucasian Geographical Society 

 (vol. xiii.) With the exception of the Adyl glacier, all those 

 visited by M. Dinnik have been rapidly decreasing during this 

 century. The great glacier of Bizinghi, one of the largest in 

 the Caucasus (it is nine miles long, and one mile wide about 

 the middle), has two great terminal moraines, one mile below its 

 present end, and several lateral moraines, some 5°° yards dis- 

 tant from its present borders, some of which still conceal masses 

 of ice under the boulders and mud. On its western border 

 an old moraine rises at least 200 feet above its surface. The 

 same is true with regard to the great Azaou glacier of the 

 Elbrus. Even the inhabitants have witnessed the retreat of 

 glaciers, and they remember the time when the Bizinghi and 

 Mijirghi glaciers, now one mile distant from one another, were 

 connected together at their ends. Besides these relatively recent 

 moraines, there are around the glaciers several others the boulders 

 of which are much more worn out and more rounded, which 

 testify to a former still greater extension of glaciers. As to the 

 Adyl glacier, it was also decreasing when a formidable mass of 

 mountain above it fell into the valley some eighteen years ago. 

 It was broken to pieces, and its debris thickly covered the 

 glacier for some five miles. The debris, which have still at 



