56o 



NA TURE 



{^April 15, 1886 



N.CH. Many chemists prefer "grouping," a safer word 

 often used by Prof Odling in his lectures. 



After all, the question is really a gnat amongst the camels of 

 our present nomenclature in organic chemistry. The sooner the 

 last straw comes the better. What would Morveau or 

 Lavoisier say, for instance, to " dimethyldiethylhydro.vytri- 

 methylenecarboxylic acid (i, 3, 2, 3, 2, i)," in Dr. Parkin, 

 Junr's., paper, Joui-nal Chem. Soc, 1S85, p. 807? Chemists 

 who doubt the propriety of spelling a word in two ways must 

 have e.xces^ive sympathy with the geographers who are trying 

 to get their brethren to select one of over forty different 

 "spellings" of Fuchau or Foo-Chow. J. F. Heyes 



12, Merton Street, O.vford, April 12 



Square Bamboo 



Nature was so good as to publish (August 27, 1885), a 

 communication from Mr. W. T. Thiselton Dyer in relation to 

 my discovei-y of the square bamboo. Supplementary to the in- 

 formation therein given I send the following which I have just 

 met with in a Chinese work: — " It grows wild in the north- 

 eastern portion of Yunnan on the sequestered mountains of 

 Takuan-ting and Chenhsing-Chou, to which in spring men, 

 women, and children resort for cutting its shoots, which they tie 

 in bundles and send to market. It is prized above all other 

 bamboo shoots as an esculent." D. J. Macgowan 



Wenchau, Febraary 8 



Ferocity of Animals 



Although the animals in question are not rats, it may in- 

 terest Mr. Romanes to hear that some years since a friend was 

 on a railway journey in the north, having with him two large 

 dogs. These were confined together in the brake-van. During 

 the journey one of these dogs {a bull-dog) attacked and seriously 

 injured the other (a retriever, if I remember rightly), although 

 ordinarily they were very much attached to one another. Jly 

 friend's idea was that the bull-dog became frightened at the 

 motion of the train, which oscillated considerably, and imagined 

 that the other dog was the malefactor. This may be merely 

 theory, but the case perhaps is worth noting. Unu.s 



Birkbeck Institute, April 6 



MR. rSRBEEK ON KRAKATAO 



T\ T R. Yerbeek's work on the Krakatab eruption has 

 ^'-'- now been completed. The first part, which deals 

 principally with the history of the great eruption, came 

 out more than a year ago, and has been made accessible 

 to English readers in a French translation. It was de- 

 sirable, says Mr. Verbeek, in his introduction to the 

 second part, of which an abstract is given here, that 

 that portion of the work should appear as soon as pos- 

 sible, to contradict the many untrue statements that had 

 found their way into the newspapers, and even been 

 partially adopted in scientific magazines. 



The second part, a quarto volume of some 500 pages, 

 with additional drawings and maps, which will likewise 

 shortly appear in French, gives an account of the pheno- 

 mena observed both during and after the eruption, besides 

 a description of the old Krakatab. Mr. Verbeek's task 

 has been a very laborious and comprehensive one, for 

 while the consecjuences of most eruptions are confined to 

 the immediate neighbourhood of the volcano, those which 

 followed the great Krakatao eruption have been observed 

 all over the earth, and have as much interest for the 

 hydrographer, the meteorologist, and the astronomer, as 

 for the geologist. 



It may be said without exaggeration that the Krakatab 

 eruption has been the most remarkable catastrophe of 

 the kind of which the human race has kept a record, for, 

 though other eruptions, such as that of the Tomboro in 

 181 5, no doubt caused important atmospheric disturb- 

 ances, there were no instruments at that time to make 

 accurate observations, and thus they were lost for 

 science. 



How invaluable the self-recording barometers and tide- 



gauges have been on this occasion has been conclusively 

 shown, but the number of these instruments is compara- 

 tively small, and Mr. Verbeek hopes that his work may 

 lead to an increase of the number of barographs which 

 mark the atmospheric pressure as an unbroken curved 

 line, and especially of self-registering tide-gauges at 

 favourable points on the coasts, and on various islands in 

 the ocean. 



In spite of the assistance Mr. Verbeek gratefully 

 acknowledges to have received from innumerable per- 

 sons in obtaining accurate information, he has had much 

 difficulty in sifting the often conflicting evidence. Even 

 now a few data are wanting, which will probably make an 

 appendix necessary. 



As the work with which the Dutch Indian Government 

 had intrusted him would take a considerable time, they 

 wished him to issue a preliminary report ' which had 

 necessarily to be drawn up in a limited period before the 

 close examination of the volcanic substances could have 

 taken place. Mr. Verbeek had in consequence to modify 

 some of the views he expressed there. For instance, he 

 no longer considers the balls of marl to have been pro- 

 duced by a rapid revoh-ing motion of marl, mud, or sand, 

 because at a later period similar balls were found in clay- 

 stones, and thus were shown to have already existed 

 before the eruption. He was also obliged to give up the 

 notion that the dust found in snow and rain in various 

 parts of Europe was derived from Krakatab. A slight 

 inodification had to be made in the time when the four 

 greatest explosions occurred, and a more considerable 

 one in the time of the rising of the greatest wave. Hence 

 also the figures given for the medium depths of the sea 

 had to undergo an alteration. Finally, the composition 

 of some of the volcanic products was accurately deter- 

 mined by a later and more elaborate chemical analysis, 

 and it was proved that the percentage of silica given in 

 the short report is generally too large. Those are the 

 only modifications of any importance which Mr. Verbeek 

 says he had to make in the preliminary report. 



The book — which he has spared no pains to make as com- 

 plete as possible, and which is indeed the most complete 

 work of the kind ever written — will, he hopes, serve as a 

 standard guide for any future eruption of the same magni- 

 tude that might still occur in this century. In such an 

 undesirable but not iinprobable contingency a great deal 

 of trouble will be saved by referring to its pages, where 

 information laboriously collected from innumerable sources 

 may be found, as well as elaborate calculations which 

 will not require to be repeated. 



No hypotheses are oflered for explaining the unusual 

 number of volcanic phenomena in 1883, because every 

 certain foundation is wanting. If the cause of eruptions 

 is to be found in the first place in the water penetrating 

 from the surface into the interior of the earth, and if their 

 multiplicity must therefore be traced to the formation or 

 opening up of lines of dislocation, or to subterranean sub- 

 sidences, which both facilitate the access of water and 

 increase the pressure in the subterranean regions, there 

 still remains the question what specially produced these 

 I altered conditions in 1S83. 



A connection has been supposed to exist between the 

 volcanic phenomena on the earth and the intense activity 

 of the sun in that year. The maximum of the sunspot 

 period seems to fall on i8S4'o, thus a few months only 

 after the eruption. The interesting researches of Prof. 

 R. Wolf at Zurich have shown a connection between the 

 number of sunspots and the daily variation of the mag- 

 netic declination. At a maximum of the spots, therefore, 

 strong terrestrial magnetic currents might arise which 

 might produce chemical disturbances in the interior of 

 the earth that would be favourable to earthquakes or 

 eruptions ; but it must not be forgotten that at the 

 periods iS29'9, 1837 2, i848'i, iS6o'i, and iS70'6 maxima 



^ This report appeared in Nature, vol. x.\x. p. 10. 



