512 
Tue U.S. Hydrographic Office has received a_ sufficient 
number of reports to enable it to lay down, with substantial 
accuracy, the track of the destructive West India hurricane 
referred to in our issue of August 17 (p. 374). It appears to 
have been first encountered on August 3, in lat. 11° 51’ N., long. 
35° 42’ W., further east than any tropical storm hitherto 
reported to that Office. At noon (Greenwich time) on the 7th, 
observations of barometers and winds between St. Kitts and 
Barbados showed unmistakably the presence of a hurricune to the 
eastward. The centre of the storm reached Porto Rico on the 
8th, Haiti on the 9th, Bahamas on the 12th, and Jupiter, on the 
Florida coast, on the 13th, and then continued its path parallel 
to the general trend of the U.S. coast, where vessels continued 
to report gales of hurricane force until the 19th. The lowest 
barometer reading, 28°35 inches, appears to have occurred off 
the Florida coast on August 14. When the hurricane was last 
reported, in the afternoon of the 21st, it was near lat. 40° N. 
and long. 60° W., much weakened in energy. The life of the 
storm is longer than any hitherto reperted to the Hydrographic 
Office. 
Tue thirty-sixth annual report of the Government Cinchona 
Plantation in Sikkim, by Surgeon-Major D. Prain, shows that 
the issues of quinine during the year 1897-98 amounted to 
10,939 Ibs., as against $482 lbs. in 1896-97. The medical 
depéts required 1710 Ibs. more than during the preceding year, 
and the sales to Government officers fcr distribution in their 
districts exceeded those of 1896-97 by 1986 lbs. As Sir George 
King feared, there has been a very marked decline in the 
demand for quinine for division into pice-packets for sale at 
Post-offices. The falling off in the demand, so far as Bengal is 
concerned, may be due to some special cause not active else- 
where ; at all events, 800 Ibs. have been asked for and supplied 
during the year for conversion into pice-packets in the North- 
western Provinces. 
DURING the year 1898-99 covered by the report of the Royal 
Botanic Garden, Calcutta, especial attention was given to the 
cultivation and distribution of plants of economic value. In 
connection with the question of rubber and gutta-percha, it has 
been ascertained, after examination of the milky juice of species 
of Sideroxylon belonging to the natural family Sapotaceze, that, 
though these species do not yield a true rubber, the material 
obtained from them might prove capable of being utilised for 
the various purposes for which gutta-percha or india-rubber is 
now employed. An interesting introduction to India during 
the year was Polygala butyracea, an African species, which 
yields an excellent vegetable oil. The cultivation and the 
identification of living plants yielding Indian products of hitherto 
doubtful origin were continued during the year with good 
results. 
We have received two papers on earthquakes registered at 
the observatory of Catania during the present year (So//. ae/l’ 
Accad. Gioenia di Sct. Nat. in Catania, 1899). Prof. Ricco 
describes the records of an earthquake in the Peloponnesus on 
January 22 made by the great seismometrograph, which is 
25°3 m. long and has a mass of 300 kg., and by the Brassart 
seismometrograph. Mr. Arcidiacono gives an account of three 
diagrams obtained by the former instrument between 7 and 10 
p-m. (G.M.T.) on May 3, the first being evidently made by a 
distant earthquake, which proved to be a strong shock in the 
Peloponnesus ; and the other two by local shocks originating 
below the south-west flank of Etna at the same spot as the 
destructive earthquake of May 14, 1898. The author suggests 
that the Sicilian focus was in a critical condition, and that the 
two movements there were precipitated by the earlier disturb-- 
ance in Greece. 
NO. 1560, VOL. 60] 
NATURE 
[SEPTEMBER 21, 1899 
THE Free Museum of Science and Art of the University of 
Pennsylvania issues an illustrated Bu//etéz, in the last number of 
which (vol. ii. No, 2) an account is given of the new museum 
buildings in which will be lodged the fine collections of Drs. 
W. H. Furness and H. M. Hiller and Mr. A. C. Harrison, 
jun., from Borneo and adjacent islands; the collection from 
Sarawak is second only to that in the Sarawak Museum at 
Kuching, and in some respects probably surpasses it. The 
Bulletin contains a report on the recent excavations of the 
University at Nippur, an account of the Rittenhouse Orrery, 
and a catalogue of the recent additions to the Museum, some of 
the more interesting specimens being figured. 
THE Dorset County Council has set a good example in 
arranging for a series of reports with analyses of the soils of the 
county. The work has been carried out in Reading College 
under the superintendence of Mr. Douglas A. Gilchrist, and the 
soils have been analysed by Mr. C. M. Luxmoore and Mr. 
A. M. Ryley. The first annual report has just reached us; it 
forms Supplement No. viii. to the Jornal of Reading College, 
August 1899. Soils have been taken from areas where different 
geological formations are developed from the Lower Lias of the 
Vale of Marshwood to the Reading Beds near Wimborne ; a few 
analyses are also given of soils from Berkshire, Hampshire, and 
Oxfordshire. The results so far obtained are full of interest, 
and are likely to prove of great practical importance. Sugges- 
tions are made for the manuring of the principal farm crops on 
the different classes of soils, as well as on the suitability of the 
soils for particular crops. 
AN excellent ‘‘Sketch of the Geology of the Lower 
Carboniferous Rocks of Derbyshire” has been contributed by 
Mr. H. HH. Arnold Bemrose to the August number of the 
Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association. The Mountain 
Limestone with its caverns and lead mines, the Yoredale Rocks 
and the Millstone Grit are duly described, and the leading 
fossils are noted. Mention is made of Dr. Wheelton Hind’s 
opinion that the Yoredale Rocks of Derbyshire are newer than 
those of the typical district in Wensleydale. Further research 
on this subject is needed. References are made to the Glacial 
Drift, the Pleistocene Mammalia, the Warm Springs, and other 
subjects. A more particular account is given of the igneous 
rocks generally known as Toadstones, and of the occurrence of 
volcanic vents, as well as tuffs, lavas and sills. There are notes 
also on marmorised, dolomitised and silicified limestones. The 
article is well illustrated with maps, sections, and pictorial 
views. 
MANy persons are under the impression that shore-nesting 
birds make no nest, but lay their eggs indiscriminately among 
the shingle. This Mr. Patten, in the September number of the 
Trish Naturalist, shows to be a complete misconception so far 
as the Little Tern is concerned. As a matter of fact, the bird 
excavates a conical pit in the sand about two inches deep. 
Immediately round the ‘‘crater” a narrow zone of sand is 
cleared from shingle; and when completed and containing its 
full clutch of two or three eggs, the deepest part of the nest is 
filled with broken shells, into which the eggs are wedged with 
their points downwards. As the eggs are disproportionately 
large in relation to the bird, it is manifest that the position in 
which they are placed renders them most easily covered by the 
brooding hen. It has been assumed that the “crater” is 
excavated by the hen-bird ‘ breasting”’ the sand in the manner 
that sparrows dust themselves by the road-side, but the author 
is of opinion that the work is done with the beak. 
THE discussion in regard to the Ground-sloth whose skin and 
other remains have been found in a cave in Patagonia has 
assumed a new phase. It will be remembered that in a recent 
