NATURE 
(Dec. 8, 1881 
have to be bought at Nishni-Novgorod, as this light is yet 
little used in Siberia. Besides the building of the houses, 
the food of the expedition, &c., all will be more difficult to 
obtain than the same articles wanted by an expedition sailing in 
ships. The sum of 42,000 roubles has been granted by the Russian 
Government. The idea of establishing a second station had to be 
abandoned, the money being barely sufficient for onestation. If 
the Russian Government should give another sum for observa- 
tions in high latitudes, a statioa will probably be established at 
Moller Bay, on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, This station 
would be less expensive, there being always a possibility of 
reaching the place by ship. The expedition starting now takes 
two sets of meteorological instruments for establishing additional 
stations at Irkutsk and some point north of it. The chief of 
the expedition is Lieut. Jurgens, I.R.N. ; he is well qualified to 
fulfil the arduous duties assigned to him. He will be accom- 
panied by Dr, Bruge, medical assistant, and a meteorological 
assistant. 
WE direct the attention of our readers to the letter of the Rev. 
A. E. Eaton in to-day’s Nature, which has so important a 
bearing on the probable condition of Mr. Leigh Smith’s expedi- 
tion in the Hira. From Mr. Eaton’s letter it is evident that 
Mr. Smith deliberately intended to winter at Franz-Josef Land ; 
and to those who know him it is not surprising that he said litde 
about it to his friends. This is also essentially the drift of a 
short notice on the subject ia yesterday’s Zzmes, where, however, 
the very iaconsequent conclusion is drawn ‘‘ that a relief vessel 
should be sent out in the course of next summer by either Mr. 
Leigh Smith’s relatives or the Government.” There can be no 
objection to the relatives sending out an expedition, but so far 
as present evidence goes, a Government expedition does not 
seem to be called for. 
THE news lately received from the Behring Strait whalers 
discloses a very remarkable condition of things in the Arctic 
Sea this season. Capt. Williams, of the Frances Palmer, reports 
clear water in N, lat. 73° 30’ to the east of Herald Shoal, and 
the U.S. Relief-ship Rodgers got as far north as 73° 44’ on the 
west side of Wrangel Land. Other whaling captains assert 
that this year they went fully two degrees further north than 
their charts extended, and every one agrees that both the early 
and latter parts of the season have been open to a degree un- 
paralleled in Arctic records. The Arctic basin has been found 
to be comparatively shallow, the depth being about twenty three 
fathoms. The gales which prevailed when the Zhomas Corwin 
left the Arctic Sea in the early part of September broke up the ice 
further north, and the prevalence of r orthern winds no doubt accu- 
mulated it about the north coast of Wrangel Land, and prevented 
the boats of the Rodgers from actually circumnavigating the island. 
This year’s exploring cruise of the U.S. steamer Zhomas Corwin 
has been a very remarkable one. The most important event was 
the linding on, and partial exploration of, Wrangel Land, which 
Capt. Hooper renamed New Columbia, He discovered there a 
tolerably large river, which he named the Clarke River, and the 
course of which a party who landed at its mouth assert that they 
were able to trace for some forty miles into the interior. The 
Thomas Corwin appears to haye had no difficulty in moving to 
and fro in the Arctic Sea, except early in September, when a 
second attempt was made to reach Wrangel Land, but failed 
through fogs and strong gales. Capt. Hooper visited Point 
Barrow, on the northern coast of Alaska, and found the ice 
some twenty miles off the shore. 
Mr. W. H. Dat, of the U.S. Coast Survey, contributes to 
the American Naturalist for November a paper on the Chukchi 
and Namollo people of Eastern Siberia, which seems to have 
heen called forth by some criticisms on the part of Lieut. 
Nordquist in a com nunieation to the St. Petersburg Geosraphical 
Society, afterwards reproduced in our Geographical Society’s 
Proceedings, 1f Mr. Dall replies to all his critics, he will next 
have to take up the subject of the currents of Behring Strait, for 
the American whaling captains assert that what he has written 
on this point is incorrect. Capt. Fisher, of the Legal Tender, 
indeed, says that Mr, Dall’s observations extended only over a 
few days, and were made in an eddy current under the lee of the 
Diomede Islands. 
News has been received by the Bremen Geographical Society 
that two walrus hunters have returned to Tromsé from Spitz- 
bergen, who report that early in September they were fifteen 
miles north of the Seven Islands (north of Spitzbergen), and 
that they found the sea quite free from ice in a northerly 
direction, 
ON Monday next Mr. Clements R. Markham, C.B., will read 
a paper before the Geographical ae on the Arctic work of 
the present year. 
ZOOLOGISTS are indebted to Dr. R. W. Skufeldt, First Lieu- 
tenant, Medical Department, U.S. Army, for a highly valuable 
contribution to the study of the osteology of birds. He has 
written two essays in the United States Geological and Geo- 
graphical Survey Bud/letin of September, 1881—one on the 
“*Osteology of the North American 7étraontle” (pp. 309-350), 
and the other entitled ‘‘ Osteology of Lanius ludovicianus excu- 
bitorides (pp. 351-359), both illustrated by several plates; and 
we can only wish that every monographic essay which treats of 
the anatomical structure of a limited group of birds were written 
in such a careful and exhaustive manner. There is scarcely a 
bone which is not correctly figured, most of them life-size, al- 
though some might be a trifle more plastic. All of them are 
treated of separately, and an exact description is given of 
the general Zetraonine feature of the bones, and in instances 
where the representatives of the genera under notice are 
aberrant due attention is drawn to the fact. The author fre- 
quently refers to allied families, such as the Partridges and 
others, and throughout the whole paper we see that the work of 
previous anatomical writers is carefully taken into considera- 
tion; and as Dr. Shufeldt had a Iarge series of specimens 
before him he was enabled to exclude any peculiarities which 
might have been attributable to malformation of the bones. 
So far so good; but descriptive anatomy is one thing, and 
comparative anatomy another. Whenever the author discusses 
some of the difficult questions of comparative anatomy, as he 
does more than once, being well aware of the points where there 
is still a problem to be solved, we are afraid we cannot follow 
his deductions. One of the figures in the first plate in the paper 
on the Z:traonide, and part of the letterpress, is devoted to a 
demonstration of the ‘‘four cranial vertebrae” with all their 
appendages and derivatives; but although the disarticulated 
segments are nicely grouped together on the plate, the conclu- 
sions he arrives at certainly contain some obvious mistakes. 
At p. 328, to the ribs generally known as ‘‘sterno-costal” the term 
‘‘haemal ” ribs is applied. Again we are glad to find that the 
author admits the theory which considers the limbs with their 
girdles to be transformed and translcated gill-branch ele- 
ments, but he goes too far. He seems to believe that the 
scapular arch originally belonged to and constituted the hzmal 
arches of the occipital vertebra. Further on we are informed 
that we may consider the bones of the pelvic girdle to be the 
pleur- and hemapophyses of some of the sacral vertebra—verdum 
sat. We therefore regret that this essay on the Zéraonide, 
valuable as it is as a contribution to ornithotomy, should be 
handicapped by speculations so wild and so dangerous to the 
credit of comparative anatomy. 
In his ‘*Zur Aetiologie der Infectionskrankheiten,” A. Weil 
states the cause of the decay of teeth, whether external or 
