362 
NATURE 
| Mar. 13, 1873 
| Se ee 
Brighton Aquarium 
I ADDRESSED a letter some weeks ago to the chairman of the 
Brighton Aquarium Company, in which, amongst other matters, 
I suggested that a stand with a few microscopes exhibited there- 
in, which had been offered by a London maker, would be a 
source of great additional attraction, without being any expense 
to the company. 
T also suggested that it might very likely be the nucleus of a 
school of marine zoology, if for a separate subscription the 
directors could set aside a room to be used by students, who 
might form themselves into a kind of club, and work with their 
miscroscopes and tanks.in quiet. The nearness to London of 
the Brighton Aquarium might, I remarked, prove the induce- 
ment to many non-residents to join ; whilst a library, and a few 
demonstrations, would give increased means of gaining in- 
formation. 
I think, sir, that the importance of my suggestions warrants 
my requesting you to make them public, since other aquaria 
might also take the matter up, without damage to the Brighton 
Company, in the success of which I take the warmest interest. 
MARSHALL HALL 
New University Club, March 7 
General Travelling Notes 
I petirve F.G. S. P. would find some of the information he 
wishes, in a small pamphlet which is to be obtained at the Royal 
Geographical Society, 1, Savile Row, price 1s. There is also 
an excellent little work (very portable) which has been recently 
published by some Fellows of the Anthropological Institute for 
the use of travellers, which would be found useful ; price Is. 
J. RAE 
New Guinea 
Tur Academy for July 15, 1872, contains a note on New 
Guinea, from Petermann’s Mittheilungen in which there are 
two slight mistakes. Perhaps you will allow me to correct them 
in your journal. 
It is said, ‘‘ The London Missionary Society founded a number 
of stations on the south-eastern peninsula” in 1871, and that 
these stations were ‘‘in charge of educated natives of the Tongan 
Archipelago.” . 
The stations founded by the agents of the London Missionary 
Society in 1871 were not on the large island of New Guinea, 
but on the small islands of Erub, Tauan, and Saibai in Torres 
Straits. The Society’s vessel has, however, sailed this year with 
a staff of English and Polynesian missionaries on board, who 
hope to be able to occupy stations on New Guinea itself. 
The “educated natives” placed as pioneers in the first settle- 
ments are not ‘‘ natives of the Tongan Archipelago,” but of the 
Loyalty Islands near to New Caledonia, and they belong to the 
black Polynesian, or Papuan race. The Tongan Islands are 
entirely under the care of the Wesleyan Missionary Society. 
The missionaries who touched at New Guinea in 1871 believe 
they saw people similar to the brown Polynesians as well as_the 
black frizzly haired Papuans proper. 
both races of Polynesians have been sent to New Guinea this 
year. h S. J. WHITMEE 
‘Samoa, Noy. 6, 1872 
Flight of Projectiles 
Your correspondent, “Robert Reid,” asks for an impossi- 
bility. There is no impossibility in calculating the theoretical 
deflection in the flight of a bullet due to a theoretical wind 
pressure, but the formula could not be ‘‘simple.” However, 
Mr. Reid need not be distressed, for it is difficult to conceive 
any intellectual occupation which would be a more complete 
waste of ingenuity. Let us consider the real conditions of the 
problem. 
Mr. Reid has not stated them with completeness. It is not 
sufficient to know the time of flight of the bullet, its size, and 
weight, the theoretical pressure of the wind, and the angle at 
which that pressure is exerted. It would be necessary, also, to 
know the angle at which the rifle is fired, the initial velocity of 
the bullet, and the space travelied over in its flight. It is obvious 
at once that the vertical line of flight, if I may be permitted the 
expression, is not a straight line, but a curve, rapidly accele- 
rating towards the end. If we assume certain arbitrary theo- 
retical figures for initial. velocity and strength of wind, there 
would be no great difficulty in calculating the curve, but it would 
Hence, evangelists from | 
be a purely imaginary curve, and an utterly useless and deluding 
calculation. Let us consider the disturbing elements. First, 
the powder. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to get two 
charges of precisely and absolutely the same strength. Then the 
state of foulness would vary. Then the pressure of the wind 
would always vary in a distance of 500, or 1,000, or 1,500 yards, 
and ina flight of several seconds ; even its very direction would 
vary at different points in the line of flight, unless in the case 
of a perfectly open exposed plain. 
To all soldiers tempted to indulge in calculations of this na- 
ture I would venture to say that there is nothing so likely to 
mislead. 
thing. If what professes to be science cannot be carried out in 
practice, it is not true science but bastard science, or pedantry, 
and the unpractical pedant is even more mischievous in war than 
the so-called ‘* practical man” in matters of civil life. . 
Army and Navy Club, March 10 W. Hope 
Glacial Action 
In Nature of vol. vii. p. 241, you say, ‘‘Dr. Dawson 
thinks that the fiords on coasts, like the deep lateral yalleys of 
mountains, are evidences of the action of waves, rather than that 
ofice. No glacialist, as far as we know, holds the extravagant 
belief that fiords have been cut out by ice. They are undoubt- 
edly submerged valleys, and were hollowed out by streams and 
other atmospheric influences in ages long anterior to the glacial 
epoch.’ 
A true fiord, like those of Norway, Scotland, and, we may 
add, the west of Ireland, is nothing but a mountain val- 
ley sufficiently depressed for the sea to enter it. Iam nota 
practical geologist, but I have read what appeared to be strong 
arguments in favour of the belief that the valleys of the Alps 
have been hollowed out by glaciers. I do not see how any one 
who sees the quantity of mud that glacier streams bring down, 
can doubt the great power of glaciers as excavating agents ; and 
the argument is strengthened by the vast moraines, thousands of 
feet below the present lower limit of the glaciers, and now oyer- 
grown with trees, which are to be observed throughout the Alps. 
If mountain valleys have not been, in at least a great propor- 
tion of cases, excavated by glaciers, how are we to account for 
the fact that fiords and mountain lakes are almost, if not quite, 
confined to the higher latitudes? This is especially observable 
on the west coast of America, which is remarkably unbroken 
from Vancouver’s Island to Chiloe, but broken into fiords from 
Vancouver's Island northward, and from Chiloe southward. 
This observation throws no light on the very different ques- 
tion of the origin of great lowland lakes like those of North 
America and Africa. JosErH JOHN MuRPHY 
Old Forge, Dunmurry, Co. Antrim 
The Feeding Habits of the Belted Kingfisher 
On page 48 of Mr. Darwin’s ‘‘ Expression of the Emotions,” I 
find the assertion, ‘* Kingfishers when they catch a fish always beat 
it untilit is killed.” We have, in New Jersey, one species of king- 
fisher, the Cele alcyon, which is exceedingly abundant for about 
seven months of the year. For several years I have observed 
them carefully, both feeding and breeding about the banks of 
Crossweeksen Creek, and I feel certain that I am correct in 
saying that I have never seen a kingfisher take its food otherwise 
than by swallowing it whole, while yet upon the wing. The fish 
having been swallowed, or at least, having disappeared, the 
kingfisher will then alight upon the branch of a tree, and will 
then, frequently, stretch out its neck, and go through a ‘* gulpin 
motion,” as though the fish was not entirely in the bird’s 
stomach, or perhaps was only in the zsophagus. In the thou- 
sands of instances that I have witnessed, of these birds catchii 
small fish, I never once saw a fish taken from the water, ani 
killed, before being devoured. 
So far as my recollection serves me, in the large majority 
of instances, the kingfisher, after darting into the water and 
securing a small cyprinoid, will emerge from the stream, uttering 
its shrill cacophonous scream, as if rejoicing over the delicate 
morsel it had captured and not scolding at its ill-success, as 
has been thought ; for we have frequently shot them as they rose 
from the water, and zzzvaviab/y found a fish, still alive, in the 
stomach or cesophagus. Indeed, I cannot see how this eharac- 
teristic cry of the kingfisher could be accomplished with a fish 
struggling in its beak. When the fish, fromits size or other — 
cause, is retained in the cesophagus until the bird alights, the 
moyements of the bird, to effect the swallowing, are very 
Science and practice should be one and the same | 
