March 25, 1886] 



NA TURE 



495 



placing its control in the hands of those who have made 

 astronomy their life-work. The Navy will be provided, 

 if the recommendations are carried out, with an Obser- 

 vatory well suited to its special needs, and would be 

 relieved from the task of supervising work in which it 

 has no interest aside from that felt in scientific work in 

 general. 



NOTES 

 We learn with much regret of the death of Dr. Spencer 

 Cobbold, F. R. S., the well-known authority on parasites and 

 parasitic diseases, at the age of fifty-seven years. 



We understand that it is proposed to award the Founder's 

 Medal of the Royal Geographical Society to Major Greely, the 

 leader of the late United States Aictic Expedition to Grinnell 

 Land, and the Patron's Medal to Cavaiiere Guido Coia, Professor 

 of Geography at tile University of Turin, and founder and con- 

 ductor of the geographical journal known as Cosmos. The Back 

 Grant will probably go to Sergeant Brainard, who did such 

 admirable work on the Greely Expedition. 



Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, who is in charge of the Buccaneer^ 

 telegraph surveying ship for the India-rubber Construction 

 Company, writes home from St. Thomas, under date February 

 I, giving some account of his doings up to that time. When the 

 survey to Loanda was completed, Mr. Buchanan was to be free 

 to take any soundings he pleased and any route he pleased 

 through the Atlantic, so long as he is home by the beginning of 

 April. He has reached Loanda and visited Ascension, and 

 expected to be at the ^Vzores on the 24th. The following was 

 to be Mr. Buchanan's programme after leaving Loanda : — 

 " Stop at 6 a.m. Sound, then take temperatures, water-bottles, 

 tow-net, and possibly dredge. This will take till noon, or per- 

 haps longer ; then on again. Next day stop and sound at noon, 

 and take any observations which can be made during the 

 sounding. This may detain us two hours ; then on again, and 

 next morning stop at 6 a.m., and make a station again. In this 

 w ay the time divides itself into periods of 48 hours. Say from 

 4 p.m., when we set on after finishing a station, we run till 

 II a.m. next day; this is 19 hours, or 200 miles; then stop 

 2 hours; then on again till 6 a.m. of next day, making 17 hours, 

 or 175 miles ; then stop till 4 p.m. In this way we get 36 

 hours' steaming and 12 hours' work in the 48, and cover 375 

 miles." " We have got very interesting results so far," he goes 

 on, "and a perfect plethora of material. We made a most 

 delightful excursion yesterday," he continues, "to a cinchona 

 plantation up in the high ground in the interior of this island 

 (St. Thomas). They grow very good coffee, and there is no 

 leaf-disease, and they are planting everything up with cacao, 

 which at present prices pays enormously. The island lies only 

 twenty miles north of the equator, and both St. Thomas and 

 Principe are perfect examples of the luxuriance of equatorial 

 vegetation. In Principe the jungle is more dense ; in St. 

 Thomas the trees are on a larger scale, and there is magnificent 

 timber. With the exception of Accra and Gaboon, these two 

 islands are the only places where we have landed. All along 

 the so-called West Coast the surf is at all times bad and frequently 

 dangerous, so that communication is only kept up by native 

 surf- boats, and Europeans pass through it as rarely as possible. 

 . . . The African rivers are quite stupendous, and have much 

 to do in giving the Gulf of Guinea its peculiar char.icter. The 

 drainage of quite 90 per cent, of the whole continent empties 

 itself into a very restricted area of the sea, the formation and 

 the conditions of which it has profoundly modified." 



The Colonial and Indian Exhibition, which opens in May, 

 besides its wide general interest, will evidently have many points 

 of special interest to men of science. The flora and fauna of 



almost all the colonies will be represented more or less com- 

 pletely. Thus, Mrs. Blake, the wife of the Governor of the 

 Bahamas, has sent a series of beautiful paintings of the flora of 

 that archipelago for the West Indian section ; British Guiana 

 sends specimens of all its woods, to the number of 74. Each 

 block is about 34 inches wide, 15 inches long, and 3 inches deep. 

 The several pieces are labelled with the colonial name of the 

 wood, its botanical name wherever possible, the height to which 

 the tree grows, and its use. Dr. Schomburgk, the Director of 

 the Botanic Gardens of South Australia, is sending a very com- 

 prehensive dried collection of the flora of that colony. It consists 

 of four volumes, and contains iioo different specimens. A 

 similar collection was sent to the last French Exhibition, and is 

 now in the Paris Herbarium. It is proposed after the Exhibition 

 is over to present this collection to Kew Gardens, or to one of 

 the Universities. Visitors to the South Australian Court will 

 also have an opportunity of examining the magnificent fern-trees 

 of the colony, four of them having been despatched to London 

 for the Exhibition. The trunk of one of these weighed 500 lbs. 

 The Canadian Geological Survey will send a large collection of 

 the minerals of the Dominion ; while there will also be collec- 

 tions of Canadian fauna and flora. The animal kingdom of 

 Manitoba and the North- West Territoi7 will be represented with 

 particular care ; while the entomological collection will be very 

 comprehensive. Indeed, mineralogy and natural history will 

 form two of the four main departments of the Canadian section. 

 Similarly the mines and the flora of New South Wales will be 

 amply represented. From Victoria comes a large natural history 

 collection, including two young Australian aborigines, and a 

 number of specimens of ferns, which will be arranged in a kind 

 of natural fern-tree gully. The tropical and sub-tropical flora of 

 Queensland will be shown, as will also specimens of the mineral 

 wealth of the colony. From New Zealand comes a large collec- 

 tion of mineialogical and geological specimens, including castings 

 of gigantic fossil reptiles. There will be about 500 speci- 

 mens of the forest woods of South Africa, and the medical, 

 meteorological, and natural history departments of the Straits 

 Settlements section are receiving special attention from Dr. 

 RovvelL In the West Indian section will be collections o 

 tropical plants from the various islands — pine plants from Antigua, 

 cabbage palms from St. Kitt's, lime-trees from Montserrat, and 

 tree-ferns from Dominica. The process of hatching the ova of 

 turtle will be displayed in this section, which, in addition, will 

 contain a collection of stone implements and relics of the Carib 

 race. There will therefore be no lack in the forthcoming Exhi- 

 bition of objects deserving of the attention of students in most 

 branches of science. 



The new aquarium which is now being constructed for colonial 

 and Indian fishes, to be shown at the forthcoming Exhibition at 

 South Kensington, is rapidly approaching completion. The 

 building contains twelve tanks in addition to a colossal habitat 

 for turtles, capable of accommodating fifty specimens. In juxta- 

 position to the latter a hatchery has been erected for incubating 

 the ova of turtle, which will be effected through the medium of 

 heated sand. The hatchery is formed of glass, and contains a 

 grotto arranged in an attractive manner by means of rockwork, 

 over which water will flow into a pool beneath, forming a cas- 

 cade. The entire aquarium will be heated according to the 

 climatic exigencies of the various fish. Those of India require 

 a temperature of 92°, which is the normal state of their native 

 waters. All the fish will be fresh-water specimens, and on this 

 account great difficulty will attend their transmission to this 

 country. The turtles, however, will be those indigenous to the 

 sea, and comprise chiefly the green turtle {Chdonia iiiidas), 

 which will be sent by the West Indian Commissioners in large 

 numbers. The Australian, New Zealand, and Victorian authori- 

 ties have announced their inability to forward specimens from 



