J my 13, 1882] 



NATURE 



257 



AN interesting telephonic experiment was made on Tuesday at 

 Malta, during the bombardment of the Forts at Alexandria. A 

 t-lephone was attached at Malta to the Alexandria cable, and con- 

 nection was made with the other end of the cable on board the 

 C> Utern, off Alexandria. It was found that, owing either to the 

 distance, or to the vibration caused by the firing, it was imprac- 

 ticable to send a verbal message, but the firing at Alexandria 

 was distinctly heard, through the telephone, at Malta— a distance 

 of more than a thousand miles. 



A VISIT was paid on Tuesday to the School of Military Engi- 

 neering and the Royal Engineer establishment at Chatham by 

 the members of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Elec- 

 tricians. Over 500 of the members, associates, and friends of 

 the society accepted the invitation of the president, Col. Webber, 

 R. E. , and were entertained by him at luncheon at the Royal 

 Engineers officers' mess. The guests were shown over the 

 schools, following a programme arranged by the Acting Com- 

 mandant, and conducted by the officers of the Royal Engineers, 

 who were indefatigable in providing for the entertainment of all. 

 A lecture on torpedo warfare was delivered in the theatre by 

 Major Armstrong, R.E., and the guests visited amongst other 

 sights in the Royal Engineer Institution the schools of electricity, 

 photography, chemistry, architecture, and surveying. Outside, 

 the Engineers' Field Park, the mechanical workshops, the con- 

 struction of military bridges, use of brushwood for military pur- 

 poses, siege batteries, earthworks, demolition of railways and 

 stockades, also submarine mine explosions, afforded a most in- 

 teresting programme, especially so at a moment when all these 

 appliances may be at any moment brought ] into practical 

 use. 



The Rector of a small parish in Warwickshire is endeavouring 

 to protect and preserve a fine granite boulder, identified as having 

 been floated from Mount Sorrel in Leicestershire, a distance of 

 sixty miles, and now exposed to danger of destruction. To rail 

 it in and record its history by a permanent inscription will cost 

 about \2l. The parish is a poor one, and the Rector crippled 

 by an unlet glebe ; but 5/. has been promised in the village, and 

 1/. has been given by the Boulder Committee of the British 

 Association through its Secretary, Rev. H. W. Crosskey, who 

 has seen the boulder, and will vouch for its scientific in'erest and 

 value. If any reader of Nature is good enough to send a small 

 contribution towards the 61. still wanted, to the address of 

 " Rector — care of Editor of Nature," it will be acknowledged 

 in these columns. 



We regret to announce the sudden death of M. Antoine 

 Breguet, at the early age of thirty years. He was the son of M. 

 Breguet, the member of the Institute, one of the directors of the 

 International Exhibition of Electricity in Paris, and had had for 

 two years the editorship of the Rtvut Scitntifique, and the 

 direction of the well-known Breguet optical and horological 

 workshop. 



There is now at Gresham College, in Basinghall Street, an 

 interesting collection of objects which have been sent over from 

 the Technical School at Iserlohn, in Westphalia. They com- 

 prise examples in wax, plaster, wood, and metal, the works 

 executed by students in the special trade-school which was 

 founded by the Prussian Government, and which is said to have 

 rendered important service to the manufactures of the district. 

 The collection has been sent over in response to the application 

 of Mr. Philip Magnus, one of the Royal Commissioners on 

 Technical Education, and inspection will be permitted on appli- 

 cation to that gentleman during this week. 



By last advices from Manila (May 17), according to the 

 London and China Telegraph, two German naturalists, Messrs. 



Schadenburg and Koch, had just arrived there from Mindanao, 

 where they had recently successfully ascended a volcano called 

 Apo, the highest mountain in the Philippines, a feat only once 

 before achieved by Europeans, this being in October, 1880. 

 After several vain attempts, Senor Rajal, in 18S0, a few months 

 after assuming the governorship of the district, determined to 

 ascend the volcano, notwithstanding the opposition of the Bagobo 

 savages, who assured him that a human sacrifice was essential 

 for success. His influence over them was, however, so great 

 that he prevailed on fifty of the savages to accompany him as 

 guides and porters, and was thus enabled to set out on the expe- 

 dition in October that year with several Spaniards and Dr. 

 Montano, a French naturalist. The ascent proved so dangerous 

 and difficult that only Dr. Montano and Senor Martinez reached 

 the top on the north-east side of the volcano, its height being 

 determined by them at 3130 metres above the sea. The safe 

 return of this expedition after nine days' absence without the 

 human sacrifice required by the savages resulted in lessening 

 their superstitious dread of the Apo. The Diario states that 

 Messrs. Koch and Schadenburg made two ascents of the Apo in 

 February and March last, under the guidance of several savages, 

 during which they ascertained the height of its south-west peak 

 to be 3000 metres (10,824 Eng. feet) above sea level. 



In the July number of the American Naturalist is a paper of 

 much value by Mr. Ivan Petroff on the Limit of the Innuit 

 Tribes on the Alaska Coast, in which the writer combats some 

 of the conclusions come to by Mr. Dall. Mr. Petroff has been 

 familiar for years with these coasts, and his conjectures as to the 

 origin and migration of the Innuits and other tribes will interest 

 ethnologists. In this connection Mr. Petroff has some important 

 observations on the rate of accumulation of shell-heaps. He 

 sa y S: — "The time required for the formation of a so-called 

 layer of ' kitchen refuse ' found under the sites of Aleutian or 

 Innuit dwellings, I am inclined to think less than indicated 

 by Mr. Dall's calculations. Anybody who has watched a healthy 

 Innuit family in the process of making a meal on the luscious 

 echinus or sea urchin, -would naturally imagine that in the course 

 of a month they might pile up a great quantity of spinous debris. 

 Both hands are kept busy conveying the sea fruit to the capacious 

 mouth ; with a skilful combined action of teeth and tongue, the 

 shell is cracked, the rich contents extracted, and the former falls 

 rattling to the ground in a continuous shower of fragments until 

 the meal is concluded. A family of three or four adults, and 

 perhaps an equal number of children, will leave behind them a 

 shell monument of their voracity a foot or eighteen inches in 

 height after a single meal. In localities in Prince William Sound 

 I had an opportunity to examine the camp-sites of sea-otter 

 hunters on the coast contiguous to their hunting-grounds. Here 

 they live almost exclusively upon echinus, clams, and mussels, 

 which are consumed raw in order to avoid building fires and 

 making smoke, and thereby driving the sensitive sea-otter from 

 the vicinity. The heaps of refuse created under such circum- 

 stances during a single season were truly astonishing in size. 

 They will surely mislead the ingenious calculator of the antiquities 

 of shell heaps a thousand years hence." 



In the same article Mr. Petroff has also some interesting obser- 

 vations on the action of tides on the coast :— "As an instance of 

 the rapidity with which the tides of this region u ill change out- 

 lines of coast and other land marks, I may cite an observation 

 made by me during my stay on Nuchek island last summer. At 

 a short distance from the settlement there was a cave in a rocky 

 cliff situated about three or four feet above high water mark. I 

 visited the place frequently, as it afforded a view over the ap- 

 proaches to the harbour. About the middle of June an eclipse 

 of the moon occurred when it was full or nearly so, causing tidr 1 

 commotion of unusual extent and violence. When I visited my 



