3 eo 
nm. 16, 1873] 
 lestor and receiver, detachable from each other, but it is poised on 
a pivot projecting from the floor below, into a conical cavity in 
the bottom of the receiver. It is also enclosed in a square box, 
from which, in each case, the cylinder is removeable entire for 
emptying the contents, and the rainfall admits of being estimated 
in the same way by scales or glass vessels. 
A full-sized model of this instrument has been made, and was 
exhibited at the annual meeting of the Scottish Meteorological 
Society in July last, and a notice of it appeared in the account 
of the proceedings of the meeting in the Edinburgh.papers of 
July 4, 1872. It has likewise been exhibited at the Meteoro- 
logical Office, Victoria Street, London, and its construction has 
been approved of by several naval officers, and others specially 
interested in rainfall. me 
T may add that some gauges are being constructed, with the 
view of beingused on board such steamers as would permit of 
1eir being placed under the superintendence of interested and 
scientific officers. 
I hope by-and-by to be enabled to present to the readers of 
NATURE some results of the observations made by these gauges, 
which may lead to an introduction of such instruments as part 
of a ship’s equipment, and so to put them in possession of some 
trustworthy observations of the rainfall at sea. 
' W. J. Brack 
Fe 
£Star Shower in 1838% 
" I am not sure that the following extract from my note-book 
may not have been printed by the British Association ; but even 
in that case it may be thought suitable for reproduction at the 
present juncture. 
*€1838. Dec. 7.—A great number of falling stars were ob- 
served between 62 and 7h, In about half-an-hour 40 were 
counted, sometimes by one, sometimes two, sometimes three 
observers—two at a medium. They were of all magnitudes up 
to the first : the larger dissolved into a train of light, but left no 
train behind them: the S. and W. quarters were chiefly observed, 
but their prevalence seemed to be universal : they all fell in 
nearly a vertical direction, but those in the N.W. and S.I. 
quarters inclined towards the S.W. The colour of the more 
conspicuous ones seemed to verge towards orange. Their 
courses were of no great length. There was at the same time a 
pale auroral light along the N. horizon from N.W. to N.E., 
apparently equally extended on each side of the true meridian. 
The Meteors were not watched after 74, but about 11 upon 
looking out again I saw one, the only one in several minutes, ,in 
the S.W. ; but it had no longer a vertical direction, its course 
pointing now to the N. W. 
‘*For account of this phenomenon as observed by Mr. Maverly 
at Gosport, see ‘Proceedings ot the Meteorological Society 
during the session 1838-1839,’ p. 9.” 
T. W. Wess 
Salmonide of Great Britain 
IN reply tothe Rev, W.S. Symonds’s questions (NATURE, Vol, 
vil. p. 162) regarding the occurrence of certain salmonoids in Welsh 
and non-glacial lakes, I beg to draw his attention to the sixth 
volume of the “Catalogue of Fishes,” published by the trustees 
of the British Museum, which, I believe, contains the informa- 
tion for which he asks. I would with pleasure extract this in- 
formation for him if I were not ignorant as regards the glacial 
or non glacial character of some of the lakes. The geographical 
_ distribution of the various kinds of Charr is given in detail on 
pp- 125-154, and that of the Coregoni on pp. 172-199. The 
group of Charr and that of Covegoni are by no means limited to 
lakes, many true charr, like Sa/mo, fluviatilis, fontinalis, &c., 
eing more or less exclusively river-fish; and Coregonus 
oxyrhynchus being common in salt water on the coasts of 
Holland at certain seasons of the year. In addition to Sir 
Philip Egerton’s observation that he has taken Sa/mo ferox in 
Lake Bala, I may mention that the British Museum possesses an 
example [from the Lake of Llanberis, presented by S. P. W. 
Ellis, Esq. (Catal. Fish, p. 93.) ALBERT GUNTHER 
British Museum, Jan. 6 
M. Figuier and the Origin of American Indians 
ON page 484 of Figuier’s work, ‘‘The Human Race,” the 
author speaks of the Mohawk Indians of the Rio Colorado, and 
ahead St 
NATURE 
203 
on the opposite page reproduces M,. Mollhausen’s drawing of two 
Mojave Indians, as described in vol. iji. of Pacific R. R. 
Reports, by Messrs. Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner. As the 
Mohawk Indians of New, York and the North-west are so totally 
distinct from the Colorado Mojaves, I thought it desirable to 
call attention to the error. 
M. Figuier, I notice, in other portions of his work, finds the 
origin of the original peoples of America a difficult problem to 
solve, and I think contradicts himself, He states, on page 16, 
that, ‘‘unless we regard men as a solitary exception among all 
living beings, unless we withdraw them from the operation of the 
universal laws of nature, we must come to the conclusion that 
they do but form a certain number of races of one and the same 
species, and all descend from one primitive unique species.” 
I do grant that it must have been a very unique species, 
whose descendants could have varied to the extent that man has. 
But it is not the question of variation of species that I wish to 
allude to, but the geography of the question. In speaking of 
what M. Figuier calls ‘‘ the red race,”’ pp. 404-406, he states— 
‘*The Indians cannot be accurately brought into connection with 
either the white, yellow, or brown race ;” and again, “ Probably 
the population which existed in the new world before the arrival of 
the Europeans was made up of several types different from those 
that are extant at present in the other regions of the globes, types 
having a great tendency to modify themselves, and which were ob- 
literated whenever they came in contact with the races of Europe, 
But to re-ascend back to this primordial population would 
now be impossible.” There is here a plain acknowledg- 
ment of a strictly autochthonic American people, modi- 
fied since by contact with European races. This latter 
contact we believe, of course, to be purely imaginative ; 
but if there was an autochthonous people in America, as 
the ‘‘primordial population” of Figuier is supposed to 
be, how then can ‘‘all (men) descend from one primitive 
unique species?’’ M. Figuier does not believe in the evolution 
of man from some pithecoid creature; he claims to have ‘‘shown 
. ... that man is not derived . . . . from any animal.” How 
this stand can be taken, and still the unity of the race asserted 
to be true, we cannot understand ; for surely it cannot be denied 
now, that man was once lower than the lowest savage, although 
different from modern savages ; and, as in America, there have 
been found traces of man’s presence, as old geologically as 
those found in Europe ; as fossil men have been found in Cali- 
fornia ; and drift implements in the river gravels of the Delaware 
Valley, on the opposite side of the Continent ; and as these 
implements, in part, show that their fashioners were little, if 
any, in advance of the beings first worthy to be called men, 
how could they have descended from a stock in common with 
the European and Asiatic races? It must have been, indeed, 
a unique species, whose nearest relations spread over the whole 
continent of North America; or starting somewhere on the 
Pacific coast, finally reached the Atlantic, yet made no advance— 
learned nothing in a slow overland journey of three thousand 
miles. The ‘‘ primordial population,” of which M. Figuier 
speaks, we doubt not originated in America; its pithecoid 
ancestry may have been European or Asiatic, but if so, the ‘‘old 
world” monkey was somewhat Americanised before it evolved 
that peculiar red-race which we call the Indians, If there 
ever was land communication between South America and the 
‘*old world ” tropics, this pithecoid man may have reached the 
shores of the Southern Continent, and lost the ape-like charac- 
ters after his arrival. Either evolved thus, or created de novo, 
as M. Figuier claims, the American savage is purely an 
American institution, and upsets that unity which M. Figuier 
claims for every race, tongue and condition, savage and civilised, 
throughout the world. Cuares C, Absort, M.D. 
Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A., Dec, 23, 1872 
THE ZODIACAL LIGHT 
Po several nights lately the zodiacal light has been 
exceedingly bright and well-defined, and more par- 
ticularly on the nights of November 24 and 27 ; on the 
evening of the 24th I found an explanation of what had 
often perplexed. me before, viz, the existence of a faint, 
