59^ 



NA TURE 



[Oct. 1 6, 1884 



utterances in mind when as a legislator he has to consider the 

 relation ofscience and of scientific workers to the Government 

 and the country. 



Prof. Hugo Gylden, Director of the Observatory at Stock- 

 holm, and well known for his studies during recent years of the 

 eight great planets, has been offered and has accepted the Pro- 

 fessorship of Astronomy at the Gottingen University. 



His Majesty the King of ftaly has conferred the decoration 

 of Knight of the Crown of Italy upon Deputy-Surgeon-General 

 Francis Day, formerly Inspector-General of Fisheries in India, 

 and lately Commissioner of the Indian Section in the great Inter- 

 national Fisheries Exhibition. 



Dr. Sophus Tkomholt having returned to Bergen after a 

 lengthened sojourn in Iceland, whence we have from time to 

 time received accounts of his researches, intends for the next few 

 years to devote his time to the production of a great catalogue of 

 all the aurora; seen in Northern Europe from the earliest times. 

 The Norwegian Government have granted a not inconsiderable 

 sum towards this gigantic undertaking. As this labour and the 

 imminent production of his new work, " Under the Rays of the 

 Aurora Borealis," will occupy all his time for some while, the dis- 

 tinguished savant announces his inability to issue for the coming 

 winter such sheets for the recording of auroras as he has for some 

 years been in the habit of distributing over all parts of Northern 

 Europe. He trusts, however, that observers may continue to 

 note the phenomena as heretofore on the lines laid down by 

 him, and forward the same to him with as little delay as possible. 

 His address is Bergen. 



Chanda Singh, a blind student of St. Stephen's College, 

 Delhi, is, according to the account given in Allen 's Indian Mai', 

 a prodigy. He cannot read or write, but possesses such a strong 

 memory as to be able to repeat all his text-books, English, 

 Persian, or Urdu, by rote, and to work out sums in arithmetic 

 with remarkable rapidity. The unusual intensity of his mental 

 powers is shown by his ability to multiply any number of figures 

 by another equally large. At the last University examination 

 he was examined viva voce by order of the Director of Public 

 Instruction of the Punjaub, and he stood twenty-seventh in the 

 list of successful candidates. On the recommendation of the 

 same official, the judges of the local court have allowed him to 

 appear at its law examination. Memory, as is well known, is 

 wonderfully developed in Orientals, owing to the system of 

 education which has obtained amongst them ; but cases like 

 Chanda Singli must be very rare even in the East. 



During the last week of September the Thiiringo- Saxon 

 Verein fur Erdkunde held its annual meeting at Kosen under 

 the presidency of Herr Dunker (Halle). Amongst a number of 

 interesting papers read we note the following : — On Baku and 

 its naphtha and petroleum wells, by Herr Eberius (Dollnitz) ; 

 on the scientific and economical importance of Cameroon, by 

 Prof. Kirchhoff; on the limits between the High and Low 

 German on the eastern side of the Elbe, by Dr. Haushalter 

 (Rudolstadt) ; on the salt and fresh-water lakes between Halle 

 and Eisleben, by Prof. Kirchhoff ; on ancient places of worship 

 in Northern Thiiringia, by Dr. Rackwitz (Nordhausen). 



The thirty-second annual meeting of the German Geological 

 Society took place at Hanover in the last week of September 

 under the presidency of Herr von der Decken. Among the 

 papers read we note the following : — On the limits of the Dyas 

 formation, by Prof. Geinitz (Dresden) ; on the geology of North- 

 Western America, by Prof, vom Rath (Bonn) ; on the Brachio- 

 saurus occurring in the Hessian limestone, by Prof. Credner 

 Leipzig) ; on the geology of the Harz Mountains, by Herr 

 Langsdorff (Klausthal) ; on the occurrence of dolerite in the 



Vogelsberg, by Prof. Streng (Giessen) ; on Tasmanian tin ores, 

 by Herr Gordaek (Klausthal) ; on new Devonian Bryozoa, by 

 Dr. Bornemann (Eisenach). The next place of meeting will be 

 Darmstadt. 



Writing on a subject of some interest at the present time, 

 viz. the orthography of the names of the better known Chinese 

 places, a correspondent of the Tableltes ties deux Charcntcs says 

 that Tonquin is more correct than Tonkin (and we presume also 

 than Tongking, Tanking; &c), for this is how the name is pro- 

 nounced. He thinks that French pronunciation generally 

 approaches that of the Chinese more than the English. Thus 

 the Chinese have the nasal sound of n and a sound of u which 

 we in England do not possess. We cannot always reproduce 

 these Chinese sounds, while the French can do so easily. To 

 represent the nasal sound the English add a g to the n, but they 

 do not always pronounce it. The French borrow the English 

 orthography, but they pronounce the g which the former have 

 added, and thus completely disfigure the names. Thus (the 

 correspondent goes on) the French pronounce Shangat instead 

 of Shanhai, and Ilonguc-Kongue in place of Hon-Kon. The 

 most curious instance is that of Canton. The English call the 

 province A'laang-toung ; all the French journals follow this 

 orthography, and yet it is Canton pure and simple. If the /• is 

 to be employed at all it should be written Ton-Kien, for we 

 write Fo-Kien as the name of the province in which Foochow 

 is situated, and the Kien is the same in each instance. The 

 truth appears to be that all Far Eastern names have been trans- 

 literated haphazard, and almost in every case by people who 

 knew nothing of the native languages. The older orthographies, 

 such as Canton, Whampoa, &c. , we owe to masters of ships, 

 supercargoes, and the like, who visited the place in the last or 

 beginning of the present century. In some cases they are not 

 good attempts at reproduction, but little practical inconvenience 

 has ever been found in adhering to them. According to the 

 writer whom we have quoted the French are in a worse plight 

 than ourselves ; our orthography was at least an honest attempt 

 to reproduce the names as they sounded to Englishmen. The 

 French adopt this orthography, and then give the letters their 

 French pronunciation ; in other words the transmutation is (1) 

 Chinese as it sounded to an Englishman ; (2) that Englishman's 

 Chinese as it sounded to a Frenchman ! Little wonder then 

 that there are hopelessly irreconcilable methods of spelling 

 Chinese names of places. 



The Japanese Commissioner to the Health Exhibition writes 

 that the omission of the names of the foreign authors of certain 

 scientific works in the Japanese Section was quite unintentional. 

 He adds that three of these works are by Japanese assistant 

 professors. The omission, on which we commented last week 

 in noticing the Catalogue, coupled with the statement that the 

 English volumes were translations, was certainly calculated to 

 leave an erroneous impression as to the authorship of the works 

 in question. 



The second document just issued (Brockhaus, Leipzig) in con- 

 nection with the " Riebeck'sche Niger Expedition," is like the 

 first, which dealt with the Fulah language, mainly philological. 

 The chief contents are : " Specimens of the Language of Ghat 

 in the Sahara, with Haussa and German Translations," by the 

 learned leader of the expedition, Herr Gottlob Adolf Krause. 

 The Ghat being merely a variety of the Mashagh (Berber, or 

 Western Hauiitic), no special grammar was needed of a lan- 

 guage which has already been somewhat fully elucidated by 

 Barth, Hanoteau, Prof. Newman, and Stanhope Freeman. But 

 these texts in the Arabic and Roman characters with interlinear 

 German translations, and free Haussa and German versions, will 

 be accepted as a boon by students of the languages of Sudan 

 and North Africa. The accompanying " Anmerkungen " throw 



