marks. In examining the shore of Hobson’s Bay, 
Victoria, between Brighton and Mordiallac, I found recent 
shells in a ferruginous rock several feet above high-water 
mark, and exposed for more than a mile along the shore. 
This formation then gave place toa deposit of the same 
species of shells in a black sandy soil of the same 
character as those matrices mentioned as occurring here. 
I am thus able to add my humble testimony to the truth 
of the statements made by those geologists mentioned by 
Mr. Howorth. Not only do Tasmanian post-pliocene 
marine deposits find their analogues in New South 
Wales, Victoria, and other parts of the Australian main- 
land, but also the Miocene territory formations have their 
representatives there. For instance; at the East coast of 
this island seventy miles distant from Hobart Town, exist 
some very fine Miocene shell beds reposing on Silurian 
strata. These beds have their analogues in Victoria, at 
Schnapper point, where they also repose on Silurian 
strata. Again the somewhat celebrated Travertin deposit 
on the eastern bank of the Derwent, mentioned by Mr. 
Darwin, is completely represented at Geelong in that 
colony. I mention these last somewhat irrelevant features 
to shaw the analogy of physical conditions which existed 
in distant parts of Australasia from the middle Tertiary 
epoch down to the post-pliocene. 
The oscillation of the land towards the Polar Regions 
is a question that demands strict and patient inquiry. 
That such a mutation is going on in this part of the 
globe, every intelligent geological observer is conscious of, 
and that at a computed rate of ten feet in the century. 
This is a fact which involves a variety of considerations 
with respect to past geological operations, and the popular 
theories propounded to explain them. 
Although the land in this part of the globe is rapidly 
rising as wellas according to published observations, that, 
in the Arctic regions, still I am in a position to show that 
an opposite movement took place during the clese of the 
Tertiary or the dawn of the Pleistocene epochs by a 
sinking of certain tracts of land whereby Tasmania and 
New Zealand were isolated from the Australian mainland, 
I cannot do more at the present time than allude ev 
passant to the important fact, and which must form the 
subject of a future communication. 
Since writing the above I have examined a raised 
beach in the district of Sorrel, of many hundreds of 
acres in extent, composed of shells, having a mean thick- 
ness of five feet. The deposit is overgrown with trees 
and scrub. The trees are chiefly the Casuarina, or 
she-oak of the colonists, and it evidently flourishes on a 
soil of little else than shells. Although years ago lime 
burning was carried on for some years, so enormous is the 
deposit that there is scarcely a perceptible diminution. 
Hobart Town, Oct. 1 S. H. WINTLE 
THE COLOURED STARS ABOUT KAPPA 
CRUCIS 
R. H. C. RUSSELL, of the Sydney Observatory, 
sends us an account of some observations he has 
recently made on the above small but beautiful cluster 
of stars. He believes his researches probably point it out 
as one of the stations from which astronomers will gain 
fresh knowledge of the starry heavens. He gives a history 
of the cluster from its first recorded observation by La- 
caille in 1750. Dunlop, about 1828, puts two stars in 
the place now occupied by @, which has con- 
siderably altered its place since Herschel made his 
map im 1835. The star No. 87, Dunlop does 
not represent at all, and says nothing of colour, 
though fond of recording coloured stars. In 1835 
Herschel wrete a monograph on Kappa Crucis, and 
placed all the stars (110) on his map, but saw no nebulous 
NATURE 
< 
[Dec. 19, 1872 3 
light. Abbott of Tasmania, in 1862, laid down 75 stars, 
and noted colours, remarking that certain changes were 
apparently taking place in the number, position, and 
colour of the component stars of the cluster. Nothing 
has been done since Abbott, till Mr. Russell determined 
to test for himself the latter’s statement. He made a 
catalogue of all the stars (130) seen with the Sydney equa- 
torial, a coloured map showing all’ the stars, and notes. 
His map takes in as much space as Herschel’s, but is four 
times as large. A close inspection shows a great many 
changes since Herschel observed, of which the most con- 
spicuous of all is in the change between the present and 
past position of three stars, Nos, 11, 21, and 28, which 
have all moved from 4 to 6 seconds; and the star d has 
also moved half a second in an opposite direction, and 
come nearly, but not quite, in a straight line with 6 and e, 
which line, if produced, passes, not through ¢, as in 
Abbott’s observations, but half way between y and ¢. 
Considerable change has also taken place in Nos. 100, 
106, 120, 122, 126, and some others ; and it is remarkable 
that the changes in the south preceding line are nearly all 
in R. A., while in those near 8 and in the following side they 
are in declination, as if the cluster were made up of three 
sets of stars, two of which drift from the third in different 
directions. Five of Herschel’s stars he could not see, but 
found 25 Herschel did not see; stars which, though all 
small, are yet in most cases brighter than some of those 
which Herschel recognised, and if there when Herschel 
examined, the cluster would not have been omitted ; they 
are all well within the limits of his map, and several in 
parts of it wnich must have been most carefully examined. 
Two of them are near a, one near the string of stars 
south following it, one between 8 and 6, and two in the 
triangle 50s. after a, where Herschel shows 3 stars; of 
the others 5 precede a from 18 to 25s.; 5 follow it from 
15 to 25s. and on the south side; 8 are on the north 
following side, and 1 on the south following. Their — 
numbers in my list are 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 16, 19, 31, 60, 69, 73, 
76, 79, 86, I10, 116, I17, 120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 
and 130. In Mr. Russell’s list there are 24 stars about 
the roth magnitude, while in Herschel’s there are only 7 ; 
and the mean magnitude of Herschel’s 130is 13, while the 
mean of Russell’s 130 is 12. oh 
These facts prove beyond all question, Mr. Russell 
thinks, that from some cause there has, as in the nebula 
of n Argus, been here a considerable increase in brilliancy. 
Mr. Russell thinks that we must either give up analogy, 
our safest guide, in such reasoning, or admit the gradual 
extinction of light in its passage through space, with 
its millions of meteor streams cutting the ecliptic at 
all angles, its thousands of comets, its meteoric dust, its 
zodiacal light, its solar corona, its material atmosphere, so 
to speak, occupying not only all the interplanetary space, 
but more or less to the limit of the sun’s attractive force. 
“ And if we are to take our sun as a type of other suns, 
and in the mind’s eye see all surrounded by such an at- 
mosphere, and people all the interspaces with myriads of 
myriads of comets—nay more, if we accept the view held 
to be most probable by many astronomers, that it is by 
the deposition of this material atmosphere on the sun and 
planets that they are hourly growing and finding those 
stores of light and heat by which all things live, it is be- 
yond question that there must have been a time when this 
material atmosphere was far more dense than it is at the 
present moment, and that there must be in every direc- 
tion other suns in all stages of the process from the great 
nebulosity ‘ without form and void, to the Finished Sun, 
whatever that may be ; or, in other words, amidst the in- 
finitude of such systems with which we are surrounded, — 
there are places where probably a sensible amount of — 
clearing up has taken place within the last 35 years. 3 
“ And I think in this view we find a rational explana- — 
tion of the appearance of new stars in this cluster, more 
| especially since it has been shown by others, as well as — 
