Fan. 20, 1882] 
NATURE 
301 
result in diminishing the number of experiments in which animalS 
are subjected to great and lingering agony. In this earnest hope 
we respectfully request all humanely disposed scientific men 
of every country in the world, kindly to comply with our 
invitation.” - 
THE Russian representative at Peking is said to be urging on 
the Chinese Government the construction of a line of telegraph 
across Mongolia, to connect the Shanghai line with the Russian 
land-lines of Siberia. Should this line be carried out Peking 
will be in telegraphic communication by two separate routes 
with Europe ; but it is said that the Chinese do not view the 
project with very favourable eyes. The new Chinese telegraphs 
seem to be doing their work very well. The people living along 
the route have abandoned their hostility, which has given way 
before feelings of wonder and admiration. The common people 
call the telegraphs ‘‘letter-poles,” and think that the letters 
are despatched through the wires, which are believed to be 
hollow. 
THE popular belief that the present Japanese are iconoclastic 
in their zeal for removing the ancient monuments of the country 
would seem to be a mistake. We read in the Japan Guzette 
that a society, composed of the Prime Minister, the Assistant 
Prime Minister, and other high officials and nobles, has just 
been formed for the protection of old temples, shrines, and 
other remnants of antiquity, A sum of two millions of yew, or 
about 400,000/, sterling, has been collected, and it is intended 
to devote the interest of this amount to the purposes of the 
Association. Not long since we read of a large collection—the 
present Minister for Foreign Affairs being among the principal 
subscribers—being made for the maintenance and repair of the 
Temple of Hachiman, or the Genius of War, at Kamakura, 
which contains many ancient and interesting relics. Indeed the 
work of destruction seems to have been confined to feudal 
castles, fortifications, &c. The former residences, or yashikis, 
of the nobles have been dismantled and converted into schools, 
hospitals, barracks, public offices, &c. Many picturesque struc- 
tures throughout the country have thus been removed ; but the 
Government deemed this absolutely necessary in order to eradi- 
eate feudal feeling, as well as to destroy strongholds for possible 
malcontents. The beautiful temples and shrines of old Japan 
still remain, and are, we see, to be maintained unimpaired. 
THE Chinese authorities of Shanghai recently issued a quaint 
decree respecting the neglect of physicians to attend at once on 
their patients, and the high fees which they charge. They give 
notice that it is the duty of all physicians to use their knowledge 
for the benefit of the people ; when people are sick they must 
be ready to attend upon them whenever they are sent for, without 
regarding the hour of the night or day, or the state of the 
weather. When people are ill they long for the presence of the 
doctor as the grain of seed longs for the rains. Instead of doing 
this, however, the physicians now think that they possess great 
skill, and not only charge high fees, but insist on being paid ful] 
hire for their chair coolies, and they do not care what becomes 
of the patient so that they get their fees. If these were only 
charged to the wealthy it would not so much matter ; but the 
poor have to pay them also. An evil practice (the decree goes 
on) also exists by which doctors will not visit their patients 
before one o’clock in the afternoon; some will even smoke 
opium and drink tea until late in the evening. These are 
abuses, the magistrates say, which they will on no account 
permit. Doctors must attend their patients at all times; they 
must, if necessary, visit them several times daily; they must 
think more of them and less of their fees. Notice, therefore, is 
given to all officials and people that a physician who does not 
attend when he is called must only receive half his fees and half 
hs-chair hire. ‘‘If you physicians delay your visits you show 
your wickedness, and sin against yourselves.” The decree is a 
model one for a paternal government ; argument, entreaty, objur- 
gation, exposition, threats, are all mingled in due proportions. 
WHILST smaller glaciers leave only shallow grooves and 
scratches on the surface of the rocks, it is easy to see that the 
mighty glaciers of the Glacial period must have covered all the 
surface of the wide track they moved upon with deeper grooves 
and with low elongated ridges. Finland displays at every step 
an illustration of this activity of glaciers, which one of the 
Russian explorers of that country has described as a ‘‘tele- 
scopic glacier-scratching.” Now, M. Koudravtseff, the geo” 
logist of the Russian White Sea Expedition, gives, in the Pro- 
ceedings of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, a descrip- 
tion of the same phenomenon on the Kola Peninsula and on the 
west coast of the White Sea. All these scratches, troughs, and 
elongated embossments have the direction from west to east, 
showing thus that in the neighbourhoods of the White Sea the 
great Scandinavian and Finnish ice-covering moved towards the 
east. 
Mr. PENGELLY, F.R.S., was presented with an admirable 
portrait of himself at Torquay on Thursday last, as a mark of 
the admiration, respect, and regard in which he is held by his 
fellow-townsmen and friends elsewhere. 
Pror. ALBERT GAuDRY, the eminent palzontologist, has 
been elected to the place in the Paris Academy of Sciences 
rendered vacant by the death of the late M. H. Sainte-Claire 
Deville. 
THE Commission appointed by the French Chamber of 
Deputies to deliberate on the sale of the jewels of the French 
Crown has interrogated the Professor of Mineralogy of the 
Museum, requesting him to mark those stones which it would be 
desirable to send to the collection of that establishment. 
Srr ERAsMuS WILSON has presented a sum of ten thousand 
pounds to found and endow a chair of Pathological Anatomy in 
Aberdeen, ‘‘ as an expression of my regard for an institution in 
which my father, a native of Aberdeen, received his medical 
education, and as a recognition of the honour which the Uni- 
versity has been pleased to confer on me by granting me the 
distinguished degree of LL.D,” : 
THE Etna Observatory, erected on a small mount near the 
crater, and so placed that a current of lava would probably 
divide in two and avoid it, has been completed. It is 2943 
metres above the sea ; the Great St. Bernard Monastery is 2491, 
and the St. Gothard 2075 metres. 
THE Thirty-fifth Annual General Meeting of the Institution of 
Mechanical Engineers will be held to-day and to-morrow, at 25, 
Great George Street, Westminster. The chair will be taken by 
the President at half-past seven p.m. each evening. ‘The fol- 
lowing papers will be read and discussed :—On meters for regis- 
tering small flows of water, by Mr. J. J. Tylor, of London; on 
the Bazin system of dredging, by Mr. A. A. Langley, of London; 
on hydraulic lifts for passengers and goods, by Mr. Edward 
Bayzand Ellington, of London; on improved appliances for 
working under water, or in irrespirable gases, by Mr. W. A. 
Gorman, of London ; on power hammers with a movable fulcrum, 
by Mr. Daniel Longworth, of London. 
From the Prospectus of Lectures and Classes for the second 
term of the present session of University College, Nottingham, 
we are pleased to see that the institution is in full working 
order. Both day and evening classes and lectures are well pro- 
vided for, science occupying a prominent place. 
THREE out of the eight articles in the new number of the 
Quarterly Review are scientific:—An article on Sir Charles 
Lyell, 2 profos of his recently published Life and Letters 5 
