NATURE 
. 
. o  /. ee . 
_ made interesting ethnographical observations. 
experiences in the Merv region at the Geographical Society’s 
. meeting on March 27. 
Dr. A. E. REGEL, well-known through his travels, under- 
took a new journey to Central Asiatic districts which have 
never been visited by a European before, and has now returned 
richly laden with scientific treasures. He began his work with 
an investigation of the Matchi Valley near the Zarawshan 
glaciers, crossed the mountain pas:es of Pakchif and Sagridetch, 
and reached the towns of Kala and Chumba, which stand upon 
the high plateau of the Amu Daria. Concerning this part he 
The type of the 
population of these districts is a mixed one; in Darwas the type 
of Aryans Eas remained pure, yet the hair is not always black, 
lighter shades being frequently met with ; sometimes the head is 
con pletely shaved. The women do not cover their faces and 
marry according to their choice ; their faces are almost European 
in appearance, sometimes gipsy like. The language at Darwas 
varies but little from that spoken at Bokhara and Samarkand. 
Quite another language is found at Shugnan, which sounds 
almost like a European language, as do also the national songs 
of these people. 
A RussIAN staff-officer, who is said to have followed Col. C. 
E. Stewart’s example by disguising himself as a merchant, and 
appears to have been recently travelling about in Khorassan, has 
published in the Mouveaze Temps some interesting papers on the 
country and its Kurdish inhabitants. 
CAPTAIN VON WOHLGEMUTH, of the Austrian Navy, has 
been appointed leader of the Austrian Polar expedition to es- 
tablish an observing station at Jan Mayen. The steamer, which 
will leave Pola early in April next, is now be'ng fitted out most 
energetically. 
THE Geographical Society of the Pacific, founded at San 
Francisco last summer, have just issued the first number of their 
Procecdings, which is entirely occupied by a paper prepared for 
the Society by Capt. Hooper, on the recent cruise of the Corwix 
in the Arctic Sea, In addition to the account of his visit to 
Wrangel Land, &c., Capt. Hooper gives some details as to the 
manners and customs of the Chukches. Capt. Hooper proposes 
to deal with the very important subject of currents in another 
paper, but he makes a few remarks on the influence of the Kuro- 
siwo or Japanese warm stream on the waters of Behring Strait, 
&c. ; and he also furnishes a table showing his determination 
of the magnetic declination and dip in the Arctic regions, from 
the end of May to the beginning of October, 1881. 
THE new number of the American Geographical Society’s 
Bulletin contains an account by Commander H. H. Gorringe 
U.S.N., on a cruise along the northern coast of Africa, and a 
paper by Mr, Jas. Douglas, jun., on the Geography, People, and 
Institutions of Chile, 
ON THE SENSE OF COLOUR AMONG SOME 
OF THE LOWER ANIMALS} 
S I have already mentioned in a previous communication 
(Journ, Linn. Soc. vol. xv. p. 376 (Part No. 87), M. Paul 
Bert (Archiv. de Physiol. 1869, p. 547) has made some very in- 
teresting experiments on a small freshwater crustacean belonging 
to the genus Daffnia, from which he concludes that they perceive 
all the colours known to us, being, however, especially sensitive 
to the yellow and green ; and that their limits of vision are the 
same as ours, 
Nay, he even goes further than this, and feels justified in con- 
cluding, from the experience of two species—Man and Daphnia 
—that the limits of vision would be the same in all cases. 
His words are :— 
A. “ Tous les animaux voient les rayons spectraux que nous 
voyons.” 
B. ‘Ils ne voient aucun de ceux que nous ne voyons pas.’ 
C. “Dans I'étendue de la région visible, les difiérences entre 
les pouvoirs éclairants des différents rayons colorés sont les mémes 
pour eux et pour nous.” 
He also adds that, ‘‘ puisque les limites de visibilité semblent 
étre les mémes peur les animaux et pour nous, ne trouvons-nous 
as :& sne raison de plus pour supposer que le réle des milieux 
de l’ceil est tout-A-fait secondaire, et que la vivibilité tient a 
Vimpressionnabilité de l’appareil nerveux lui-méme.” 
* Paper read at the Linnean Society on November 17, 1881, by Sir John 
Lubbock, Bart, M.P., F.R S., President. 
These generalisations would seem to rest on a very narrov 
foundation. I have already attempted to show that the conclu- 
sion does not appear to hold good in the case of ants, and I 
determined therefore to make some experiments myself on 
Daphnias, the results of which are embodied in the present 
communication, be 
Prof, Dewar was kind enough again to arrange for me a spec- 
trum, which, by means of a mirror, was thrown on to the floor. 
I then placed some Daphnias in a wooden trough 14 inches by _ 
4 inches, and divided by cross partitions of glass into divisions, 
so that I could isolate the parts illuminated by the different-— 
coloured rays. The two ends of the trough extended somewhat 
beyond the visible spectium. I then placed fifty specimens of 
Daphnia pulex in the trough, removing the glass partitions so 
that they could circulate freely from one end of the trough to the 
other. Then, after scattering them equally through the water, I 
exposed them to the light for ten minutes, after which I inserted 
the glass partitions, and then counted the Daphnias in each 
division. The results were as follows :— 
Number of Daphnias 
In the 
Beyond Inthered greenish Inthe Inthe Beyond 
the blue. and yellow. yellow blue. violet. the violet. 
and green, 
Obs, keene, 20 28 Zz ° oF 
Pe era 21 25 3 ° ° 
Pit cheate 21 24 3 fo) ° 
a Feet 19 29 I ° ° 
fos acre aes 20 27 3 ° ° 
4 IOI 133 12 ° ° 
I may add that the blue and violet divisions were naturally 
longer than the red and green. 
May 25.—Tried again the same arrangement, but separating 
the yellow, and giving the Daphnias the choice between red, _ 
yellow, green, blue, violet and dark :— ; - 
Dark, Violet. Blue. Green. Yellow. Red.- — 
EXPT) <<. 0 fo) 3 39 5 3 : 
2+ O 2 37 7 3 
Spi teeceeet! ° 4 31 10 5 
nae nO I 5 30 8 6 : 
Pp eS ee I 4 33 6 6 ; 
neds — = ee = =. : 
fo) ig 18 170 36 23 
Of course it must be remembered that the yellow band is much 
narrower than the green. I reckoned as yellow a width of finch, _ 
and that of the green 2 inches. : 
Again, ‘ ’ 
Dark. Violet. Blue. Green. Yellow. Red, : 
Exp:ut.e.o 0 oO 4 30 6 10 ) 
sHuezae- a O I 3 25 8 13] 
Pees, ° 2 24 9 15 
Py oo ey fo) 3 25 8 13 
59 ASO, I 2 24 7 16 : 
I 2 14 128 38 67 
M. Paul Bert cbserves (/. c.) that in his experiments the 
Daphnias followed exactly the brilliancy of the light. It will 
be observed, however, that in my experiments this was not the 
case; as there were more Daphnias in proportion, as well as 
abrolutely, in the green, although the yellow is the brightest 
portion of the spectrum. 
May 18.—The same arrangement as before. In order to test 
the limits of vision at the red end of the spectrum, I used the 
trough so that the extreme division was in the ultra-red and the 
second in the red, I then placed 60 Daphnias in the ultra-red. 
After five minutes’ exposure I counted them. There were 
in the 
Red. Ultra-red. 
RP ais aac tere Woes eas eh: 5 
TT eye Ce ee 4 
8 fe) 9 ~ 
I now gave them four divisions—dark, red, ultra-red, and dark 
again. ‘The numbers were :— 
Dark. Red. Ultra-red. Dark. 
Expeily: fi “as 1S 47 6 2 
99 2 ee ee Y 4t rf 3 
14 88 13 5 
