NATURE 
554 [Oct. 7, 1886 
f 
throwing several houses, forming fissures on roads and hill-sides, 
and causing severe damage to household property. The shock 
also stopped the flow of a hot spring at Nozawa. The part 
most severely shaken lies among the mountainous district some 
3000 feet above the sea, with the famous active volcano of 
Asama, besides many extinct ones—an interesting case in Japan, 
as most of the larger earthquakes extend along the sea-shores.” 
A RECENT number of the Fapan Weekly Mail contains a short 
account of a night ascent of the active volcano Asamayama. 
The party left Karnisawa in the afternoon, and commenced the 
ascent from the eastern side about sunset. The sky was per- 
fectly clear, and the summit was reached an hour before mid- 
night. The wind, blowing from the south, carried the sul- 
phurous vapour away to the northwards, and thus the ascent was 
made less uncomfortable. The party saw quite to the bottom of 
the crater, which presented the appearance of a furnace filled 
with glowing coals. The sound of the roaring, hissing, and 
bubbling is described as loud and awful, The walls of the crater 
are of a light-brown colour, and are composed of successive 
layers marked out with striking regularity like the seats in an 
amphitheatre. Allowing ten of these layers to each interval 
of 20 feet, the depth from the surface to the incandescent 
matter would appear to be 205 feet. The periphery of the 
crater is about half a mile, although the Japanese calculate it at 
two miles and a half. 
Mr. Percy SMITH, Assistant Surveyor-General of New | 
Zealand, has made an ascent of Tarawera, where the eruption | 
recently took place. He found the mountain split across, the 
crack in some places being 5 chains wide. Mr. Smith is now 
making a minute examination of the district. 
ACCORDING to intelligence received at Hamburg, advices 
from the waters of Spitzbergen now confirm the former news 
from Iceland and from the mouth of the Pechora, on the 
Siberian coast, to the effect that the ice in the Arctic Sea has 
this year extended unusually far southwards. Spitzbergen, the 
sealers report, was found to be surrounded with an ice-belt 5 to 
8 miles broad, and there was firm pack ice from Hope Island 
to Forland, about 56 miles. The great bays on the Storfjord, 
Hornsund, Bellsund, and Isfjord were quite inaccessible, and 
the sealers, after waiting all the spring and most of the summer, 
returned at the end of August, as there was no prospect of the 
Polar ice dividing. 
Pror. ALEXANDER, who has filled the Chair of Engineer- 
ing at the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokio, for a 
number of years past, and who is about to leave the country, has 
been presented by his colleagues, past and present, with a hand- 
some pair of bronze vases, inlaid with silver, and with an 
address. The graduates of the college on the same occasion 
presented him with four pieces of Japanese bronze work, The 
documents accompanying these presents show that the retiring 
Professor is much regretted by those whom he leaves behind— 
colleagues as well as pupils. 
ACCORDING to the Report of the Superintendent of the 
Government Museum at Madras for the past year, the interest 
of the people in that institution is on the increase. The 
number of visitors is considerably larger, this being especially 
noticeable in the case of women and girls, which probably indi- 
cates some relaxation of the custom of seclusion, and an increasing 
interest on the part of Indian women in things beyond, and dif- 
ferent from, their ordinary duties. In the work of the Museum 
there seems to have been an advance in almost every direction. 
The materials for catalogues of the departments of ethnology 
and antiquities were collected. Mr. Davison, the well-known 
Indian ornithologist, was engaged at the suggestion of the 
Governor for a period of six months to make a collection of 
South Indian birds for the Museum, and when this has been 
done a catalogue of the birds will be taken in hand. Similarly 
in other departments the work of the institution has been pro- 
gressing. The Superintendent notes that the native visitors 
object to the drinking-fountain in the grounds, owing to the 
resemblance that the discharge of water from the mouth of a 
stoneware lion’s head has to the act of vomiting ! 
THE total railway mileage of the United States is now 
130,334, of which 12,116, or 9'2 per cent., is narrow gauge, 
and 187 broad gauge (5 feet and over). In view of the numerous 
breaks of gauge, transfer-apparatus enabling quick and easy 
change wader car-bodies of trucks made for one gauge to trucks 
made for another is a desideratum. A committee of the Franklin 
Institute has just highly commended Ramsay’s system for the 
purpose. In this, when, ¢.g., a broad-gauge car is to be trans- 
ferred to a narrow-gauge line, the car is brought with the aid of 
side trucks and cross bars over a depressed piece of line having 
| both gauges, and an inclined approach and exit ; and it there 
exchanges one kind of truck for the other. It may be noted 
that the narrow-gauge system in the United States, far from 
having ‘‘seen its best days,” is constantly resorted to in the 
development of mountainous and sparsely populated districts, 
California taking the lead in this respect. 
WE learn from a French source that Prof. Place, of the 
Cavalry School of Saumur, has recently applied electricity with 
great success to horses which prove refractory while being 
shod. It is known that a vicious beast will often give much 
trouble in the operation of shoeing, and may even have to be 
bound and made to lie down. M. Place’s method renders it 
at once tractable, and permanently cures its aversion to the 
forge. The electric shock is given through a bridle of special 
form, from an induction-coil actuated by a dry pile. 
THE effect of muscular exercise on the temperature of the 
body has been recently engaging the attention of M. Mosso in 
Italy. In thermometrical relations the nerves, he con :ludes, 
have much greater action than the muscles. Strong emotion 
will raise the rectal temperature of a dog o°'5 to 2°, ani the 
same with man. Pain has the same effect. During a walk of 
two days, M. Mosso observed that his temperature was not in 
proportion to'the work done by his muscles. When dogs rest 
after long fatigue, one observes that their heat sinks below the 
normal level, though their muscular exertion has been great. 
Again, take the evidence of strychnine and curare ; the former 
of which affects the nerve-centres, while the latter paralyses the 
muscular system. A frog poisoned with curare falls into 
complete paralysis, with lowering of heat. If a few milli- 
grammes of strychnine be then injected, the paralysis does not 
cease, but the temperature immediately rises. Internal tem- 
perature, then, seems to depend chiefly on the nerve-centres and 
their greater or less excitation. 
WE have received the “‘ Proceedings and Addresses” at the 
Sanitary Convention held in March last in Howell, Michigan, 
under the direction of the State Board of Health. The various 
papers are of a very plain and practical character, free for the 
most part from technicalities. We have read with especial 
interest, in view of recent discussions in this country, Prof. 
Barnes’s address on the sanitary conditions and needs of 
American schools. Speaking of the complaint in England that 
owing to the requirements of the present code the children of 
the very poor whose food is bad and insufficient become afflicted 
with sundry dangerous nervous disorders, Prof. Barnes says that 
if this be true for England, it certainly is not for the United 
States. But there as well as here there are critics who hold the 
system of education to be responsible for all the ills of youth. 
Prof. Barnes shows that this is absurd. Adequate heating and 
ventilation he regards as the chief respects in which American 
