Sept. 18, 1884] 



NATURE 



495 



now invite the Corporations of all the other Hampshire borough s 

 to join them in the application shortly to be made to the Govern- 

 ment on this subject. A large number of landowners and many 

 of the Members of Parliament and Peers connected with the 

 county have already expressed their interest in this matter. 



It is stated that Mr. Gamel of Copenhagen has offered to 

 send his steamship the Dijmphna on a second expedition to the 

 Arctic regions via Franz Josef Land, subject to the condition 

 that the Danish Government will, as a moral acknowledgment 

 of their interest in the Expedition, grant a certain sum of money, 

 however small, towards the Expedition, under Lieut. Hovgaard 

 of the Royal Danish Navy. 



The present number of the Proceedings of the Natural History 

 Society of Newport (R.I.) contains several papers on the geology 

 of Rhode Island, and one on its birds. There are, in addition, 

 papers on Mount Tacoma in Washington Territory, by Mr. 

 Bailey Willis ; on the migration of birds, by Mr. Taylor ; and 

 an account of a journey in North-Western Wyoming, by Mr. 

 Wilson. Several of these papers are accompanied by maps or 

 other illustrations ; but unfortunately in most cases only abstracts 

 of the papers are given, while in others we get only the titles. 



" Contributions to the Descriptive and Systematic Coleo- 

 pterology of North America," Part i., is the title of a paper of 

 60 pages with one plate of details, by Thos. L. Casey, Lieutenant 

 of Engineers, U.S.A. In it are described about sixty new 

 species and some new genera. Lieut. Casey is, we think, a 

 Mutant in North American systematic entomology, which 

 sustained so severe a loss lately in the death of LeConte ; his 

 descriptions appear to be carefully and minutely drawn up, and 

 from his few introductory remarks he seems to be animated by 

 the true scientific spirit, for he says of them : " If they even 

 serve to identify the species, they may be considered to have 

 done their duty." 



It is known that Clymenias, so widely spread in the Devonian 

 deposits of Western Europe, have not yet been found in Russia — 

 with the exception, perhaps, of the Clymcnia undldata in the 

 hills of Kielce in Poland. Now, Prof. Karpinsky has discovered 

 remains of this Cephalopod on the Asiatic slope of the Ural, 

 near Verkne-uralsk (Izveslia of the Russian Geological Com- 

 mittee, 1SS4, No. 4). The Uralian fossil is very much like 

 Clymenia annulate, Miinster, and the few differences render it 

 more like Clymenia nodosa, Miinster, which is considered by 

 Keyser and Giimbel merely as a variety of the foregoing. 

 Another Clymenia, also found in the same locality, but in a 

 worse state of preservation, seems to belong to C. striata. This 

 discovery, while establishing one more feature in common for 

 the Russian and West European Devonian, at the same time 

 widens very much the area of distribution of the Clymenias, 

 formerly so strictly limited to Western Europe. 



A note on a possible source of error in photographing blood 

 corpuscles, by Mr. G. St. Clair, F.G.S., communicated to the 

 Birmingham Philosophical Society, is a fruitless attempt to 

 explain as an optical illusion Dr. Norris's asserted discovery by 

 the aid of photography of a third kind of corpuscle in mam- 

 malian blood. The author invokes the principle of the forma- 

 tion of images by the passage of light through small apertures, 

 and conceives that Dr. Norris's "colourless disks " are merely 

 images of the end of the microscope tube or the aperture of the 

 eyepiece, and he seems to have taken some pains to obtain such 

 by placing under the microscope a slide thickly strewn 

 with small steel disks, and receiving the light on a screen beyond 

 the eyepiece. Had he attempted to focus these ghosts and the 

 real images of the disks at the same time, or considered a little 

 more closely the elementary optical principles involved, we 

 venture to say the note would never have been written. 



At the last meeting of the Asiatic Society of Japan a paper 

 was read by Mr. O. Korschelt on "The Tenken system of 

 Japanese fortune-telling." The Japanese calendar forms the 

 basis of the system, and by an application of certain rules to the 

 date of a man's birth, his character can be determined. The 

 qualities assigned to each year, month, and day, each of which 

 is represented by one of twelve letters of the syllabary, seem to 

 have some resemblance to the characters of the corresponding 

 calendar animals — tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, &c. From the 

 five syllabary letters corresponding to the year and month of 

 conception, and the year, month, and clay of birth, the chief 

 points of a person's character are made out — the most important 

 determining factors being the year of birth and month of con- 

 ception. Then come to be considered the effect of the stars 

 which are supposed to rule the years, months, and days. For 

 each year there are nine stars, which have their special quali- 

 ties ; and each man's life is to be ruled by one of them. From 

 the mutual relation of these stars, the life relations of two given 

 people can be made out. One very important application of the 

 system amongst the Japanese is the comparison of the ruling 

 stars of two who are contemplating marriage. Similarly, as each 

 instant of time is ruled by a star, it can be determined whether 

 a given year, month, or day will be lucky or unlucky to a certain 

 individual. The method of divination thus described was illus- 

 trated by examples, the author having worked out the horo- 

 scopes of Cromwell, Carlyle, Bismarck, Napoleon, and other 

 historical characters. From the discussion which followed, it 

 appears that this elaborate system can be traced back to the 

 earliest period of recorded time in China. It is the so-called 

 system of philosophy embodied in the " Yiking," the oldest of all 

 Chinese books, and if it should turn out, as is contended by some 

 eminent Chinese scholars, that this work is not Chinese in its 

 origin, but Accadian, then Japanese divination would be a 

 Western product. 



The jtapan Gazette reviews a publication by the native Professor 

 of Botany in the University of Tokio, entitled "Nomenclature 

 of Japanese Plants in Latin, Japanese, and Chinese." The list, 

 it appears, does not include all the plants indigenous to Japan, 

 while it includes many which are in no sense Japanese. It is 

 inferior to Franchet and Savatier's " Enumeratio Plantarum 

 Japonicarum," for while the latter gives more than 2700 distinct 

 species of indigenous flowering plants and ferns, the consecutive 

 numbering in the native work only runs up to 2406, and this 

 includes, besides many foreign plants, numerous mere varieties 

 of species, to each of which a separate number has been appro- 

 priated. The author, Mr. Matsumura, is said to contemplate 

 the publication of a more elaborate work. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Purple-faced Monkey [Semnopithecus leuco- 

 prymnus) from Ceylon, two Laughing Kingfishers (Dacelo 

 granted) from Australia, presented by Mr. D. Palgrave Turner ; 

 a Lesser White-nosed Monkey [Circopithecus petaurisld) from 

 West Africa, presented by Mrs. E. A. Alldridge ; a Cape 

 Hunting Dog (Lyeaon pictus) from the South- West Coast of 

 Africa, presented by Capt. J. Grant Elliott ; a Tigrine Cat 

 [felts tigrina), two Ring-tailed Coatis (Nasua rufa) from Brazil, 

 presented by Mr. James Meldrum ; a Herring Gull (Larits 

 argeiilatits), British, presented by Miss J. Dunford ; a Yellow- 

 fronted Amazon (Chrysotis ochrocephala) from Guiana, presented 

 by Mis. Frank Wilson ; three Violaceus Night Herons \X\cti- 

 corax violaceus) from South America, presented by Mr. A. Boon ; 

 two Yellow-winged Sugar Birds [Cavreba cyanea & &) from 

 Brazil, presented by Mr. P. A. Fraser ; a Tuberculated Iguana 

 [Iguana luberculatd) from Brazil, presented by Mr. J. H. Leech, ; 

 a Brown Capuchin [Cebus fatuellus), a Weeper Capuchin (Cebus 

 capucinus) from Brazil, a Malbrouck Monkey [Cercopithecus 



