614 
NATURE 
| April 26, 1883 
to discover the law that bodies take a longer time to float | appearing in enlarged form with the commencement of 
in winter and the beginning of spring than in the summer 
and end of autumn. That a drowned man floats on his 
face and a woman on her back is mentioned, and it is 
left to be implied that in case of bodies having been 
thrown into the water after death this does not hold 
good. With the same minuteness every possible circum- 
stance connected with death by fire is gone into at length, 
the presence of traces of ashes in the mouth and nose 
being described as “a crucial test of death by burning.” 
The chapters on poison are, as might be expected in 
the absence of dissection, the most unsatisfactory in the 
book. Practically very little light is thrown on the dis- 
tinguishing sympto ns arising from the effects of different 
poisons. The common test applied to most is that of 
inserting a silver needle washed with a decoction of 
Gleditschia sinensis, into the mouth of the corpse. If, 
when after a time this is withdrawn, it should be stained 
a dark colour, and remain so stained after it has been 
again washed with the decoction, poison has been the 
cause of death. Another proof is furnished by the effect 
which a pellet of rice, after having been some time in the 
mouth of the corpse, bas on poultry who can be induced 
to swallow it. The commonest poisons are said to be 
opium, arsenic, and certain noxious essences derived 
from herbs. But besides these, other things are taken by 
suicides and given by murderers to causedeath. Insome 
of the southern previnces there exists a particular kind 
of silkworm, known as the Golden Silkworm, which is 
reared by miscreants to serve either pu. pose as occasion 
may require. Quicksilver, which is also used with fatal 
effect, is either swallowed, or, like the ‘‘juice of cursed 
hebenon” which sent Hamlet’s father to his account, is 
poured into the ear. The torture necessarily consequent 
on this last method of using it must be so excessive that 
it may safely be assumed that it finds favour only with 
murderers. Swallowing gold, on the other hand, seems 
to be the favourite way of seeking death with wealthy 
suicides. It has been held by some writers that the 
expression ‘swallowing gold’’ is but a metaphorical 
phrase meaning “swallowing poison,” just as when a 
notable culprit is ordered to strangle himself he is said to 
have had “a silken cord” sent to him. But the “ Coroners’ 
Manual” puts it beyond question that gold is actually 
swallowed, and it prescribes the remedies which should 
be adopted to effect a cure. Gold not being a poison, 
death is the result either of suffocation or laceration of 
the intestines. When suffocation is imminent, draughts 
of strained rice-water, we are told, should be given to 
wash the gold downwards, and when this object has been 
attained, the flesh of partridges, among other things, 
should be eaten by the patient to. “soften the gold” and 
thus prevent its doing injury. Silver is also taken in 
the same way. But though wealthy Chinamen thus find 
a pleasure in seeking extinction by means of the precious 
metals, they have never gone the length of pounding 
diamonds to get rid of either themselves or their enemies 
after the manner of Indian potentates. 
ROBERT K. DOUGLAS 
ZOOLOGY IN FAPAN 
CORRESPONDENT in Tokio sends us the follow- 
ing :—During the late summer and autumn some 
good work has been done in the ornithological way. Mr. 
P. L. Jouy, of the Smithsonian Institution, collected ex- 
tensively in the region of Mount Fujiyama, at Chiu-senji 
Lake, near the celebrated shrines of Nikko, and on Tate- 
yama Range, between the borders of the provinces of 
Shinshiu and Hida. A large number of beautifully pre- 
pared skins, with a good deal of information regarding 
the breeding habits of some of the rarer birds, is the 
result, which will be recorded in the February number of 
the Chrysanthemum, a magazine published at Yokohama, 
this year. An article contributed by Capt. Blakiston in 
the January number, follows up those of his for Septem- 
ber, October, and November, 1882, on ornithological work 
in Yezo during the past summer; in which is noticeable 
the occurrence of Locustella certhiola (Pall), and Phyllo- 
scopus borealis (Blasius) on that island ; and the discovery 
of a new species of J/otaci//a (probably described by 
Seebohm in the /ézs for January, 1883), allied to MW. 
ocularts (Swinhoe) and AZ. amurensis (Seebohm), which 
has hitherto somehow been mixed up with 47. dugens of 
the “ Fauna Japonica,” which latter is now found to be 
—to quote Capt. Blakiston’s words (Chrysanthemum, 
January, 1883, p. 31)--‘‘a species unique in its genus, 
having in the adult state the same appearance winter and 
summer, and in which the young pass at onze before their 
first winter into the adult dress.”’ 
Messrs. Owston, Snow, and Co.’s otter bunters at the 
Kuril Islands have also during the past season added 
some new localities for Japan birds. The specimens are 
in the hands of Capt. Blakiston, and will be duly men- 
tioned in the following number of the Chrysanthemum, as 
additional notes to the “ Birds of Japan,” /vams. As. Soc. 
Fapan, vol. x. part I (noticed in NATURE, vol. xxvi. 
p- 362). 
In the way of sammalia late investigation points to 
the distinctness of Yezo from Japan proper. The Rev. 
Pere Heude, who is now engaged upon a revision of the 
Cervide of Eastern Asia, has come to the conclusion 
that the common deer of Yezo is not C. szka of the 
“Fauna Japonica,’ but C. manchuricus-minor, or an un- 
described species. Two parts are already published— 
very creditably got up at the Mission Press at Sikawei, 
near Shanghai—cf. “ Mémoires concernant |’Histoire Na- 
aren de I Empire Chincis,’”’ others being promised to 
ollow. 
NOTES 
THE following is the list of fifteen candidates recommended 
for election by the Council of the Royal Society :—Surgeon- 
Major James Edward Tierney Aitchison, M.D., James Crichton 
Browne, M.D., LL.D., Surgeon-Major George Edward Dobson, 
M.B., James Matth-ws Duncan, M.D., Prof, George Francis 
Fitzgerald, M.A., Walter Flight, D.Sc., Rev. Percival Frost, 
M.A., David Gill, LL.D., Charles Edward Groves, F.C.S., 
Howard Grubb, F.R.A.S., John Newport Langley, M.A., 
Arnold Wiliam Reinold, M.A., Roland Trimen, F.L.S., 
F.Z.S., John Venn, M.A., John James Walker, M.A. 
THE loss sustained by mathematical science in the premature 
death of Henry Stephen Smith is still fresh in the minds of our 
readers. They will find their best consolation in the fact that 
his successor in Oxford may possibly be Prof. Sylvester. Such an 
opportunity of recovering for England the services of one of her 
two greatest mathematicians is not likely to recur, and will, we 
doubt not, be eagerly turned to advantage. It has been a 
humiliating thought to many to whom the highest interest of 
science is dearer than the prosperity of mere mediocrity that, of 
the two greatest mathematicians that ‘England has produced in 
the nineteenth century, one has altogether and another almost 
been obliged to seek for refuge in a foreign land. 
UNIVERSAL regret wi'l be felt at the sad intelligence which 
has just reached England by telegram, from Madeira, of the un- 
timely death of Mr. William Alexander Forbes, B.A., Fellow of 
St. John’s College, Cambridge, and Prosector to the Zoological 
Society of London, Mr, Forbes left England in July last, 
along with Mr. McIntosh and Mr, Ashbury, upon what was 
expected to be a three or four months’ expedition in a steam- 
yacht up the river Niger. He died of dysentery at Shonga on 
January 14, aged 28. 
