395 
-2°6g ; A 
Observed rate in 81*5 = —1‘°55. Computed rate in 81°5 
= —2°64. The losing rate at T must therefore be diminished 
by 109, making the newly found R = —o’79 instead of — 1°88. 
‘e 
_ lating the correction due to imperfect thermal adjustment. 
THE WHITWORTH SCHOLARSHIPS 
THE following Memorandum on the Whitworth Scholarships, 
prepared by Sir Joseph Whitworth, has been approved by 
the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education, South 
Kensington :— 
1. The experience of the past competitions for my scholar- 
ships has proved to me the necessity of establishing rules 
which shall insure that the holders of scholarships shall devote 
themselves to the studies and practice necessary for mechanical 
ineering during the tenure of the scholarships. 
2. To effect this I propose to the Lords of the Committee of 
Council on Education that as soon as possible, ze. in the 
competition of 1875, every candidate for a scholarship should 
as ae a certificate that he has worked in a mechanical engi- 
neer’s shop, or in the drawing office of a mechanical engineer’s 
shop, for two years consecutively. In 1874 six months’ consecu- 
tive work only in the engineer’s shop will be required. The 
candidate must be under 22 years of age. 
3. The candidate for the scholarship will be examined in the 
appointed sciences ; in smith’s work, turning, filing, and fitting, 
pattern making and moulding, as already established, and the 
same marks will be awarded as at present. 
4. In 1875 and the following years each holder of a scholar- 
ship appointed under these new rules will be required to produce 
satisfactory evidence at the termination of every year that he has 
made proper advances in the sciences and practice of mechanical 
ineering by coming up for an examination similar to that 
which is prescribed for the competition both in theory and 
practice. 
5. The scholarships may be held for three years, but may be 
withdrawn at the end of each year if the scholar has not made 
satisfactory progress. 
6. The number of scholarships in the competition of 1874 
will be reduced from ten to six. Each scholarship will be of a 
fixed annual value of 100/., together with an additional annual 
sum determined by the results of the progress made in the pre- 
ear. 
¥, At the end of each year’s tenure of the scholarship, the 
scholars appointed under these new rules will, as before stated, 
be examined in theory and in practice in the same manner as in 
the competition for the scholarships. On the results of this 
examination the following payments, in addition to the 100/. be- 
fore mentioned, will be made among each year’s set or batch of 
scholars :—To the scholar who does best in the examination, 
too/, ; to the second, 60/. ; to the third, 50/. ; to the fourth, 
4o/. ; to the fifth, 30/. ; and to the sixth, 20/ ; provided that 
each scholar has made such a progress as is satisfactory to the 
Department of Science and Art, which will determine if the sum 
named, or any other sum, shall be awarded. 
8. At the expiration of the three years’ tenure of the scholar- 
ships under these new regulations a further sum of 3o00/. will be 
awarded in sums of 200/. and 100/. to the two scholars of each 
year’s set or batch who have done best during their tenure of 
scholarship. 
In this way it will be possible for the best of the scholars at 
the end of his period of tenure of the scholarship to have ob- 
tained Soo/., and the others in proportion. 
9. The prizes under paragraph 7 will be awarded according to 
the total number of marks obtained by the students in practice 
and theory in the examination at the end of the year. The 
prizes under paragraph 8 will be awarded by adding together the 
marks obtained by the students at the end of each of the three 
years. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
THE current number of the Zoo/ogist commences with a notice 
by the editor, of Mr, Lloyd’s ‘Official Handbook to the 
Crystal Palace Aquarium.” In an interesting historical sketch 
-Sessors. 
of the growth of aquaria, he divides its development during 
the last forty years into three eras, the earliest being the in- 
structive, the second the poetic and fashionable, and the pre- 
sent the commercial, The early development of the aquarium 
is then entered into, the work done by Bowerbank, Dau- 
beny, and Warington being’ fully described. This is followed 
by a review of Mr. T. J. Moggridge’s work on Harvest- 
idea that these insects do accumulate seeds in store-houses for 
winter consumption is correct, contrary to the assertions of 
Kirby, Latreille, and other high authorities. What is very pecu- 
liar is that these seeds scarcely ever show any tendency to ger- ° 
ing Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, in which the author, from a 
careful and painstaking series of excellent observations on the 
habits of ants, which are described in detail, shows that the old 
minate, though under apparently very favourable circumstances, 
—Mr. Cornish notes the occurrence of the following fish at 
Penzance :—The Black Fish (Centrolophus pompilus), the Sole- 
nette (Monochirus linguatulus), the Braize (Pagrus vulgaris), 
Bloch’s Gurnard ( 7yig/a d/ochii), and the Torpedo (Raia torpedo).~ 
—Mr. F. H. Balkwill, in reply to a critical note which appeared 
in this journal (NATURE, July 24, p: 252) on a paper by him 
in the Zoo/ogist for July last, objects to his remarks being thrown 
into the general form ; the fact that the forms and arrangements 
of teeth in vertebrates is practically infinite, being assumed by 
him. But that such is very far from being the case will be 
agreed to by all zoologists ; the types and arrangements of teeth 
being extremely few in comparison to what they might be. The 
argument does not require, as Mr. Balkwill thinks, the proof of 
the statement that the teeth of the wombat, dog, &c., should 
be of low type and simple development, which they are not; 
and he may be assured that all ‘“‘genuine Darwinists” are of 
opinion that when two not distant types of animal life are in a 
position to occupy new and separate regions, the fact that their 
food can only be obtained from two sources, namely, animal and 
vegetable tissues, invariably leads to their divergence in two 
directions only, that is, towards a carnivorous and a herbivorous 
conformation. Therefore the non-placental type, on occupying 
Australasia, as well as the placentalia in the rest of the world, 
have differentiated into flesh-eaters and vegetable-eaters, each 
having developed, by natural selection, organs suitable for pro- 
curing their accustomed diet. It is not therefore to be wondered 
at that these organs should present many points of similarity in 
the two main divisions of the M i 
BARON VON MALTZAN gives in the second number of the Ze7¢- 
schrift fiir Ethnologie for 1873, an account of his travels in 
Arabia, and points out the various causes which have opposed 
the advance of our knowledge of its interior. Amongst these 
religion has acted as the most powerful obstacle, the exclusive. 
ness of the Islam faith having, in fact, so effectually closed the 
country to modern research, that there are still many spots of 
which nothing is known beyond what Ptolemy was able 
to tell us. Baron von Maltzan selected the most southern 
extremity of the peninsula, which is as yet a ‘abula rasa 
on our maps, for the scene of his explorations, He 
draws attention to the artistic skill exhibited by these 
people in statuary and carving, before they fell under the rule of 
their Mahomedan conquerors from Central Arabia, when all their 
earlier, civilisation was rudely checked and their language supers 
seded, while they were then also first driven to adopt a monadic 
mode of life. In spite, however, of amalgamation with central 
Arabian elements, the population of South Arabia still admits of 
division into two distinct peoples, the Sabaer and the Himyarites, 
the former of whom have light yellow skins, while the latter, 
whose name he derives from //amr, red, are so dark-skinned as 
to be genrally classed amongst the black races. Baron Maltzan 
observed a curious physical character in the family of the Him- 
yarite rulers of the Fodli, or Ozmani-State, many of whom, both 
males and females, had six fingers and six toes on both hands and 
feet. This peculiarity is looked upon by the peopleat large asa 
special mark of blue blood, and prized accordingly by the pos- 
Tt would seem that the practice of forming consan- 
guineous marriages, which prevails in the Fodli, as in other 
ruling houses, may of itself explain, as a mere case of hereditary 
recurrence, the appearance of this physiological character in nu- 
merous and remote members of the family. The author concludes 
his paper with an appeal to men of Science to turn their attention 
to a region which is at once so little known and so rich in materials 
of interest for physiologists, ethnologists, and geographers.— 
Herr von Martens, in a critique on Prof. Strobel’s paper on the 
appearance of U/nzo shells in the pile-dwellings of Upper Italy 
