Feb. 1 8, 1886] 



NATURE 



375 



This really forms a part of the much wider question of the duty 

 of the State to science ; though with our officials 'spread every- 

 where over our world-wide possessions, it ought to be an easy 

 matter to collect abundance of data with which the ethnologist 

 could deal. 



M. Granet, the French Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, is 

 connecting telephonically Paris and Brussels. When the con- 

 nection has been completed he will a'so connect Lille and 

 Paris. 



It is satisfactoiy to learn that success has attended the 

 attempts lately made by the eminent Norwegian naturalist, 

 Herr Bock, and his coadjutor, Herr Schwabe-Hanssen, to 

 introduce a new form of industry into their native land, by 

 utilising some of its numerous beautiful native minerals for the 

 fabrication of various objects of ait. For this purpose they have 

 made use of the light-green so-called " precious " serpentine, 

 which, although generally scarce, occurs in abundance at Modum, 

 ivhere ophite and magnetite are also found in sufficient quanti- 

 ties to warrant the hope that the supply will repay the necessary 

 cost of raising and working these decorative minerals. Equally 

 valuable for ornamental purposes are the iridescent, or Labrador, 

 feldspar of Fredriksvjern, the avanturine of Tvedestrand, and 

 the tulite of Leksvik, near Trondhjem, but hitherto these 

 minerals have not l>een found in sufficient quantities to admit of 

 including theui among the genuine Norwegian materials of 

 decorative industry. 



Herr Werexskjold reports in .Valitren tliat on January 5, 

 at 5.20 p.m., he noticed a so-called fire-ball, which wasobserved 

 in the district of Aas to be moving in a south-westerly direction 

 near Orion's Belt, till it disappeared behind a bank of clouds in 

 the neighbourhood of ;3 Ceti. Its motion was iindulatory and 

 slow, and in size and brightness it resembled Venus on an 

 ordinarily clear evening, while it was surrounded by a luminous 

 circle, whose diameter seemed to the observer to be about 2 

 metres. It continued visible for fully 20 seconds. 



In an interesting paper on the Bushmen and their language, 

 by Mr. Berlin, published in the last number (vol. xviii. part i) 

 cf the yournal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the writer discusses 

 the ethnological position of this people. He agrees with Dr. 

 Fritsch in thinking that they have none of the characteristics 

 which would warrant either of the suppositions that they are the 

 result of a mixture of all the runaway slaves, or that they are 

 the broken remnants of a degraded and decayed population. 

 They can only be said to have decayed when they have accepted 

 a certain measure of civilisation. The area formerly covered by 

 them was much larger, and extended over regions now exclu- 

 sively occupied by Hottentots and Bantu ; but there is no means 

 of knowing how far they extended into the interior, although 

 there is some reason to suppose that at one time they occupied 

 the central part of the African continent. Anthropologically, 

 the Bushmen, Mr. Bertin states, offer all the characteristics of 

 the Negritos, especially of those of the Andaman Islands. The 

 similarity is not confined to the skull, as noticed by Prof 

 Flower, but extends to the colour of the skin, formation and 

 tint of the hair, absence of hair on the body, proportion of the 

 limbs, smallness of the extremities, and reduced size of the 

 stature. The central part of Africa is not yet sufficiently known 

 to enable us to say with certainty whether the Bushmen may be 

 connected with any other African population ; but there was, 

 the writer says, a race, now nearly extinct or obliterated, which 

 shows many of the same characteristics, namely, the Egyptian 

 race of the first dynasties. He thinks it safe to say that both 

 populations came from the same primitive stock, and have been 

 modified by crossing with other races, and many other causes. 

 This stock was a kind of Negritoid race ; the ancestors of the 



Bushmen were thrown on the Hottentot population, whether or 

 not this was indigenous or extraneous — in their tales the Bush- 

 men always speak of a previous population inhabiting the 

 country— and it is no doubt the inevitable infusion of Hottentot 

 blood which has given the m the few characteristics they have in 

 common. 



Herr L. Rutenberg, of Bremen, the father of the well- 

 known traveller recently murdered in Madagascar, has prehcnted 

 the Bremen Natural History Society with the sum of 2500/. for 

 a Rutenberg Fund in commemoration of the services his son 

 rendered to science. 



Two moderately violent shocks of earthquake are reported to 

 have occurred in Rockland County, N.Y., on January 16 about 

 midnight. They were noticed in various localities, such as 

 Haverstraw, Rockland Lake, Spring Valley, Piermont, Sparkill, 

 Nyack, and Suftern ; no damage was done. 



An East Greenland Exhibition at Copenhagen, consisting 

 principally of ethnographical objects brought home by the Danish 

 East Greenland Expedition under Lieut. Holm, is attracting 

 much attention in the Danish capital. 



The proprietors of the Ostrau Karwin mines in Silesia have 

 offered, through the Minister of Agriculture, a prize of 1000 

 ducats to any one who shall discover a method for extracting 

 coal from pits without occasioning accidents by explosions of 

 fire-damp or combustion of coal-dust. 



The will of the late Prof. Henri Milne-Edwards, F.R.S., has 

 been proved in England, the personalty in this country being 

 over 8000.'. 



The temperature of German Alpine lakes has been recently 

 studied by Ilerr Geistbeck. It is shown, inter alia, that some 

 lakes have a much wider annual variation of temperature than 

 others. Small depth and large affluent streams are causes of a 

 higher temperature in summer and a lower in winter. The cool- 

 ing in autumn, it is noted, goes on much more rapidly than the 

 heating in spring ; for in autumn the upper layers of water, 

 getting heavier through cooling, sink and give place to others, 

 causing a strong and continuous vertical circulation till the whole 

 mass reaches the temperature of greatest density ; but in spring 

 this circulation fails. Large affluents, too, by promoting mixture, 

 cau.e rapid heating. Herr Geistbeck distinguishes three or four 

 zones in these lakes in midsummer. Down to about 6 to 8 

 metres the fall of temperature is very slight, only a few tenths of 

 a degree. Then, to about 18 metres, there is a rapid fall, from 

 about i4°-20° C. to 8^ The fall continues to about 50 metres, 

 but is now very slow (3^° to 4°). Below 50 metres the tempera- 

 ture is about constant and 4-2°-4-5°. The daily variation disap- 

 pears within the highest zone. 



From a simple experiment with a small ballistic pendulum 

 (Wied. Ann. 36), Prof Mach estimates the velocity of the wave 

 of explosion of 002 gr. fulminating silver to be about 1750 metres 

 (say 5833 feet) per second, and so, very much greater than that 

 of ordinaiy projectiles. Thus is readily explained how a little 

 of the substance exploded electrically on a glass or metal plate, 

 or a card, fixed in a free position, makes a hole through it. The 

 resistance of the air would appear to have nothing to do with it, 

 for explosion in vacuo penetrated a card quite similarly, though 

 with less noise. The gases of explosion acquire, in an im- 

 measurably short time, and with nearly the same density as the 

 solid body, the whole high velocity imparted by the work of 

 explosion. As this is of the order of projectile-velocities, the 

 plate is shot through, the lower half of the exploding mass acting 

 against the upper, and the two acquiring equal and opposite 

 velocities. With paper or tinfoil on a table, explosion produced 

 (by reaction, no doubt) an upward convexity, sometimes with 

 rupture. 



