May 3, 1877] 



jVA TURE 



two other war-maps, one on a smaller scale and at a cheaper 

 price than the above, and Jankowsky's Russo-Turkish war-map, 

 a picture or bird's-eye map of Turkey and the Black Sea. A 

 very fine and moderate-priced map comes to us from Perthes, of 

 Gotha. It is prepared by Dr. Petermann, and is evidently a 

 compilation from several of the maps in Stieler's Atlas. It 

 embraces all the country in Europe and Asia likely to be in- 

 cluded in the theatre of war, so long at least as it is confined to 

 the two combatants now in the field. This map, sold at a very 

 moderate price, may be had in London from Mr. Stanford. 



The war just begun will in no way interfere, we believe, with 

 the forthcoming Paris Exhibition. The works are progressing 

 with such activity that everything but the Trocadero palace will 

 be ready at an earUer date than was anticipated. The Troca- 

 dero building has been delayed by legislative difficulties, which, 

 however, have been overcome, and that building will not te 

 behind its time. 



M. IIe.nry Gifkard is constructing, near the Champ de 

 Mars at Paris, a workshop for the preparation of sulphate of 

 iron. The apparatus was tried for the first time last P'riday, 

 when the balloon EoU was inflated in an hour and a half, and 

 was sent up with an aeronaut. The capacity of the balloon being 

 220 cubic metres, the rate of production is very satisfactory. It 

 is expected that the sale of sulphate will cover almost all the ex- 

 penses, so that numerous scientific ascents may be made in the 

 ensuing summer. The monster captive balloon of 20,000 cubic 

 meters will be inflated by the same process. 



The annual meeting of the Royal Institution was held on 

 Tuesday. The Annual Report of the Committee of Visitors 

 for the year 1876, testifying to the continued prosperity and 

 efticient management of the Institution was read and adopted. 

 The real and funded property now amounts to above 84,000/. 

 entirely derived from the contributions and donations of the 

 members. Seventy-two new members paid their admission fees 

 in-iS76. 



The forty-eighth anniversary of the Zoological Society was 

 held on Monday. The number of fellows, fellows-elect, and 

 annual subscribers at the close of the year 1876 amounted to 

 3,311, showing an addition to the strength of the society of 

 seventy members during the year 1876. The number of honorary 

 members at the same date was fourteen, of foreign members 

 twenty-five, and of corresponding members 199. The total 

 income of the society in 1876 was 34,955''., e.xceeding that of ihe 

 year 1S75 by 6,216/. The total expenditure of the society in 

 1876 was 31,635/. The total assets of the society on December 

 31, 1876, were calculated to be 15,516/., while the liabilities 

 were reckoned at 4,430/. The total number of visitors to the 

 society's gardens in 1876 had been 915,764, the corresponding 

 number in 1S73 (hitherto the most successful > ear in this res- 

 pect) having been 713,048. The number of visitors in 1876 had 

 therefore exceeded that of any other previous year since the 

 0]jening of the garden?, by more than 200,000. The report 

 staled that the tcital number of animals in the collection on 

 December 31, 1S76, had been 2,265. 



In the May part of Petermann's Mittheilungen. Herr K. 

 Zopi ritz has a critical paper on Watson and Chippendall's 

 Survey of the White Nile and Junker's Survey of the Sobat. 

 Herr Zoppritz expresses some dissatisfaction with the observa- 

 tions of the former as being vague and careless and difficult to 

 reconcile with data already obtained. A valuable paper by Dr. 

 Dorst describes and discusses the movements of the ice between 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen as observed by him in the steamer 

 BLiiciikarb in 1S69. It is an important contribution to our 

 knowledge of the currents of this region. 



The examination for the Sheepshanks Astronomical Exhibi- 

 ti m, which is of the annual value oi 50/. and tenable for three 



years, will be held on May 21 in Trinity College Lecture-room 

 No. 4. All undergraduates of the University are eligible, but 

 in the event of a candidate who is not a member of Trinity Col- 

 lege being elected, he must become a member of Trinity. Can- 

 didates are required to send their names, and, if not members of 

 Trinity, certificates of moral character and good conduct to one 

 of the tutors of Trinity on or before May 19. 



A DET.^iLED account of Father Cecchi's remarkable seismo- 

 graph to which we recently referred will be found in the January 

 number (1877) of Eldtricista. The Cecchi seismograph has been 

 adopted with good success at several of the larger Italian obser- 

 vatories and meteorological stations. In order to enable also 

 smaller establishments to obtain a similar apparatus at much less 

 cost, Prof Cecchi has lately constructed .a simpler one on the 

 same principle, which meets all the requirements for seismical 

 observations and gives nearly as many and as exact data as the 

 larger instrument. A full description of this is now being pub- 

 lished in the Eletlricista, and the adoption of it for meteoro- 

 logical stations may be strongly recommended. The whole cost 

 will not exceed 4/. or 5/. 



M. SiCARD, member of the Italian Anthropological Society, 

 on making excavations on his property near Kischeneff, in 

 Bessarabia, at a'place called Moguil Liondia, discovered a very 

 large tumulus of earch, with human skeletons, remains of iron 

 objects, and an amulet of cirved bone. One of the corpses 

 appeared to have been interred with a horse, much in the same 

 way as the tribes of the Tehuelches and Pehuelches still bury 

 their fellow-men. Unfortunately the skulls were dispersed, but 

 M. Sicard is going to continue his excavations, and will give a 

 detailed account of his highly interesting discovery in the Riv'utx 

 di Antropologia e Etnologia, published by Prof. Mantegozia. 



At the last meeting of the Ethnographical Section of the 

 Russian Geographical Society, M. Poliakof, referring to the 

 results of his last journey on the Obi, pointed out the remarkable 

 similarity between the present state of civilisation of the Osliaks 

 and that of the prehistoric inhabitants of the reindeer period of 

 France and Middle Europe. After a description of the features 

 which the present flora and fauna of the banks of the Obi have 

 in common with those of Europe at tint period, M. Poliakof 

 described the primitive mode of life of the Ostiaks. Their 

 utensils and implements almost exactly resemble those of the 

 ttone period and the islands of the Pacific, being made exclu- 

 sively of stone, of teeth and claws of bears, and of bone, and 

 their clo'.hes being either furs or woven from nettle filaments. 

 M. Poliakof descrrbed at length their mode of life, their wretched 

 homes, their cuitoms, their family relations, and their religion, 

 the latter being a mixture of the rudest fetishism with the 

 strangest superstitions. This people are rapidly fading away 

 before the advance of European civilisation. 



During the diluvial epoch, the Danube entering into the 

 Vienna Basin, formed an inland sea, and covered the Tertiary 

 formations with deep layers of so-called loess, a mixture of loam, 

 lime, sand, and fuliaceous mica. The Imperial Academy of 

 Sciences at Vienna has lately set in operation an extensive series 

 of excavations with the view of uncovering the secrets hidden 

 beneath this thick coating of alluvium, and has already been 

 rewarded by interesting discoveries. The excavations in the 

 neighbourhood of Zeiselberg have disclosed a widespread 

 deposit of bones mingled with numerous evidences of the pre- 

 sence of mankind. These consist in quantities of charcoal, 

 bones which have been worked, artificially prepared tlints, tS;c. 

 The bones among which these prehistoric remains were found, 

 are those of the bear, horse, -mammoth, ox, reindeer, rhinoceros, 

 and wolf, all belonging to the diluvial fauna, and all apparently 

 inhabiting the Vienna Basin at that distant epoch iir the com- 



