March i8, 1886] 



NA TURE 



465 



the thermometer going down to - lo° or - 15°. In the cold 

 winter of 1879 the arm of the lake never became unnavigable 

 from ice, and the robust exotic plants in the open gardens were 

 scarcely damaged at all. The vegetation of Lucerne is much 

 more southerly than the mean annual temperature of 8'''284 

 would lead one to expect. It is an interesting fact that as early 

 as 1598 there was in Lucerne a small botanic garden (formed by 

 Renward Cysat), where many exotic plants, such as tobacco, 

 were grown, .and from which issued the beit methods for culti- 

 vating fruit-trees, &c. 



The curious phenomenon of " lake-balls " is to be met with 

 on the Sils Lalce and others in the Upper Engadine. They are 

 composed of larch-leaves felted together. Three samples (the 

 largest over a foot in diameter) were recently e,xhibited by Herr 

 Coaz at the Berne Naturalists' Society, and he stated that these 

 balls are formed in small bays into which the prevailing south- 

 west winds blow. The water acquires a whirling motion, and 

 the larch-leaves involved in it, together with pieces of moss, 

 &c., are worked into balls. There is no cementing with mud. 

 Sometimes, on shallow banks — not in bays — sausaije-like forms 

 are met with. Prof. Fischer made reference to another kind of 

 lake-balls formed of a filamentous alga in the lakes of Sweden and 

 other countries ; also to the marine balls, formed of fragments 

 of phanerogamic sea-plants (Zostera, Cymodocea, &c.) which 

 were at onetime used medicinally. 



At the last meeting of the Seismological Society of Tokio, 

 Prof. Milne read a paper describing the rejults obtained from a 

 seismic survey of the ground in the neighbourhood of his house. 

 By the seismic suivey of a district he meant an examination of 

 the different parts of that district with regard to the effects which 

 were produced upon them by earthquakes. After describing 

 local peculiarities of the ground, he said that he placed at dif- 

 ferent places, but in similar positions, similarly constructed 

 seismographs. These had been proved to give diagrams which 

 were practically absolute measures of the movements of the 

 ground, and, when any of these instruments were placed side by 

 side, they gave similar results. The result of observing many 

 earthquakes was that all the instruments, the positions of which 

 would be included in a triangle the sides of which were 800 or 

 900 feet in length, gave difierent indications as to direction, 

 amplitude, maximum velocity, and intensity. So that, had these 

 instruments been in the hands of different observers, each ob- 

 server would have given a different account of the same earth- 

 quake. Thus, comparing the average maximum velocities at a 

 station, C, on hard ground, with that at a station, E, on soft 

 ground, they were found to be I : 5. The maximum accelera- 

 tions at these two stations were i : 2^4. It might therefore be 

 concluded that a building at C would withstand a disturbance 

 which would be sufficient to shatter a similar building placed at 

 E. Prof. Milne also described further experiments made with 

 a seismograph placed in a pit 10 feet deep, and with a wooden 

 building the foundations of which at first rested on lo-inch 

 cannon-balls, and subsequently on cast-iron shot 6 mm. in 

 diameter. 



All these experiments were made with a view to discover 

 the best method of constructing buildings which would stand 

 earthquake shocks with least damage. The practical conclusion 

 of the investigation was that there were three ways by which 

 residents could escape from very much of the motion which 

 disturbs an ordinary building. These were (i) by a seismic 

 survey they might select a site where there was relatively little 

 motion ; (2) they might build up from the bottom of a pit, 

 which might be utilised as a cellar, the walls of the houses not 

 touching the sides of the pit ; (3) when obliged to build on soft 

 ground, when a pit could not be excavated, a light one-storied 



building of wood or iron might be rested on a layer of cast-iron 

 shot. 



We have received from Dr. D. J. Macgowan, whose name 

 has for many years been well known to all students of China, 

 a copy of a curious paper by him on the movement cure in 

 China, contributed to the Medical Reports of the Chinese Cus- 

 toms. In form the paper (which contains several interesting 

 illustrations of the modus operandi of the cure) is a notice of 

 successive writers on the system of therapeutics, which was 

 actually practised on the late Empress by a high official who 

 was supposed to be an adept in the art. The notion that super- 

 natural power was imparted to the human frame, and that the 

 latter was rendered invulnerable to disease and death, by breath- 

 swallowing, or accumulations of air in the system, is a very old 

 one. About the sixth century before our era a celebrated 

 writer recommended a mild form of exercise to effect this, and 

 this exercise, with breath-gulping, now constitutes the Chinese 

 movement cure. After tracing the fluctuations of the practice 

 and their causes. Dr. Macgowan comes to a work published in 

 1858 by the high official already mentioned. Life, it is taught, 

 depends on the existence of a primary aura ; so long as a par- 

 ticle of it is retained in the system, death cannot occur. A 

 deficient supply is the cause of disease ; and when it duly per- 

 meates the system, every ailment is averted. The object of the 

 postures, motions, and frictions is to promote the due circula- 

 tion of that vital air. One writer illustrates the state of the 

 system that is thoroughly saturated with air by that of a dranken 

 man who falls from a cart without sustaining injury, because of 

 into.xication ; so a man permeated with the vital aura is invul- 

 nerable. Disease appears only when the vitiated air can find 

 entrance, when the circulation of the vital air is defective. The 

 air starts in its circulatory movement from the "little heart," 

 « hich is situated in the pubic region ; air-vessels convey it 

 thence upward anteriorly to the forehead, where these vessels 

 become continuous with a similar system that returns the air 

 posteriorly to the "little heart." Without fire this aura is the 

 source of animal heat ; without water it lubricates the viscera. 

 Fate, indeed, determines longevity as it does birth, yet disease 

 miy be averted by employing the movement cure, which is 

 preferable to delaying until disease sets in, when the art is com- 

 paratively useless. These are the principles on which the care 

 rests. 



These curious searchings into the mysteries of life and death 

 are followed by a description of the details of the process. 

 These are too numerous and complicated to be mentioned at 

 length. They deal with the periods of air-swallowing and 

 friction, the time for inhaling the sun's air and the moon's air, 

 the time and modes of friction, the implements for shampooing 

 (amongst them being a bag filled with water-worn pebbles, and 

 a pestle or round bat for pounding the abdomen), and the 

 various muscular movements, many of which are exceedingly 

 comical. In gulping air the cast should be faced, and twelve of 

 the various operations described should be gone through each 

 forty-nine times. In going through the exercises there is to be 

 no thinking, for the mind must be absolutely quiescent. Refer- 

 ence to this air-swallowing is made in the earliest extant Chinese 

 medical treatises, but regular practitioners have always regarded 

 the exercises as charlatanism. 



Mr. Howard Grubb, F.R.S., will give the first of two lec- 

 tures on the Astronomical Telescope on Saturday (March 27), 

 at the Royal Institution ; and on Friday (April 2) he will give 

 a discourse on Telescopic Objectives and Mirrors : their Pre- 

 paration and Testing. 



M. Gaston Tissandier has issued the prospectus of a large 

 work which he is preparing on the great aeronauts. The work 



