40 



NA TURE 



[November 12, 1908 



the second species of Cunninghamia, and the genus 

 Taiwania, fully described elsewhere. The list contains 

 several species, some new, under the genera Quercus, 

 Gentiana, Rhododendron, Hydrangea, and Clematis. The 

 ■discovery of a species of the American genus Oreopanax 

 is extraordinary. The general affinities lie with the flora 

 of southern and central China, and even more closely 

 with the flora of Japan. 



The report on rainfall registration in Mysore for 1907 

 lias been sent to us by Mr. N. V. Iyengar, chief observer 

 in charge. The average rainfall over the whole of the 

 province during 1907 was 6-6 per cent, in excess of the 

 mean for the last thirty-eight years ; this result was chiefly 

 •due to excessive rainfall in the Shimoga and Kadur dis- 

 tricts. The actual rainfall of the year 1907 and the 

 average for 1870-1907 are exhibited cartographically, and 

 the whole work gives evidence of careful preparation. 



We have received the Bulletins of the Philippine Weather 

 Bureau for September and October, 1907, prepared under 

 the direction of the Rev. Father .Algu^. In addition to 

 daily and monthly means, earthquake reports, and agri- 

 cultural notes for a number of stations in the archipelago, 

 they contain much useful information relating to the 

 meteorology of a large portion of the North Pacific, for 

 the net-work of the service includes stations far to the 

 east, in the W. Caroline and Ladrone Islands. These out- 

 lying stations make it possible to announce the existence 

 of typhoons in the Pacific long before their influence is 

 felt to any extent in the Philippines, and to send useful 

 warnings to other organisations in the Far East. Tracks 

 of four* such cyclonic storms which occurred in September 

 are plotted, all of which re-curved at great distances from 

 the Philippines. The disastrous typhoon which visited 

 Hong Kong on the morning of September 18, 1906, with- 

 out having given on the previous evening indication of its 

 approach, has led the watchful observers at Manila to 

 add an electrical alarm attachment to their mercurial baro- 

 graph. This invention is fully described, with illustra- 

 tions, in the October bulletin. At the close of the day the 

 attachment is so adjusted that " the forecaster may retire 

 • for the night with the assurance that he will be warned 

 ■faithfully in case the barometer should take a sudden 

 plunge downward." 



In Nature of July 16 we reviewed the report of the 

 Japanese Earthquake Investigation Committee on the 

 secondary oscillations of oceanic tides. The last number 

 of the BoIIeitino della Societa Sismologica I.taliana (vol. 

 xii.. No. 11) contains a memoir on the same subject, by 

 Dr. E. Oddone, whose researches had been carried out 

 independently, and communicated to the society before the 

 publication of the Japanese report. Dr. Oddone recog- 

 nises the fact that these secondary oscillations, as well as 

 the seiches of lakes, can only exist when they synchronise 

 with the natural period of vibration of the water contained 

 in the bay or lake, but points out that if this were the 

 only controlling factor, and the phenomenon merely one of 

 resonance and the selection of vibrations, we should find 

 seiches and secondary tidal oscillations of every period. 

 He asserts that this is not the case in nature, and that on 

 tabulating all the periods which have been observed they 

 are found grouped in the neighbourhood of a period of 

 sixty-six minutes or of its harmonics ; as sixty-six minutes 

 Is the calculated period of elastic vibration of the earth as 

 a whole, and the periods most frequently observed in the 

 secondary tidal undulations and seiches agree with those 

 -svhich, in another memoir, Dr. Oddone had indicated as 

 NO. 2037, VOL. 79] 



seismic constants, lie comes to the conclusion that the 

 exciting cause of both seiches and of the secondary un- 

 dulations of the tides is to be found in the deformation 

 of the earth as a whole, which, acted on by some internal 

 or external force, tends to take on an elastic vibration of 

 a constant period uninfluenced by the nature of the exciting 

 cause. These vibrations are communicated to bodies of 

 water, and reinforced when the natural period of oscilla- 

 tion of one or more sections of the basin corresponds to 

 generating rhythm or one of its harmonics. Whether this 

 conclusion is accepted or no, the paper is a suggestive 

 one and useful, if only for its summary of the published 

 researches and observations on the subject with which it 

 deals. 



The most important contribution to the second issue of 

 the Bulletins and Memoirs of the Soci^t^ d'Anthropologie 

 of Paris for the current year is an elaborate paper by Dr. 

 Rivet, in which he sums up the results of the discussions 

 on the remains of primitive man discovered in 1843 in a 

 cave near Lagoa Santa, Minas-G^raes province, in the 

 upper San Francisco basin of Brazil. In all eighteen 

 skulls, the majority of which are in the Copenhagen 

 Museum, are available for examination. Unhappily the 

 age of the remains discovered by Lund cannot be clearly 

 fixed ; but from the associated fauna they may be assigned 

 to the Pliocene or post-Pliocene period. In general, the 

 skull form is dolichocephalic. Dr. Rivet enters upon an 

 elaborate comparison of these specimens with those of the 

 allied Paltacalo group. He attempts to show, with some 

 measure of success, that these remains represent the primi- 

 tive inhabitants of Southern and Central .America, these 

 having been dispersed by an intruding race into the outlying 

 districts in Brazil, Patagonia, Chili, and California, where 

 their physique was to some extent modified by their later 

 environment. There is, perhaps, no part of the world 

 where our information regarding primitive man is more 

 deficient than in the region covered by this contribution ; 

 and it can hardly be said that the skulls available for 

 examination are suft'icient to support far-reaching specula- 

 tions. It may be hoped that further craniometrical evidence 

 will soon become available to supplement the material which 

 the writer has collected with such devoted labour. 



The Government Museum and Connemara Library at 

 Madras, under the management of Mr. E. Thurston, con- 

 tinues to make satisfactory progress. One of the most 

 interesting features of the museum is the extensive ethno- 

 graphical collections which have been made by the curator 

 in the course of his annual tours. Southern India is par- 

 ticularly rich in examples of demon-worship, sorcery, and 

 magic. Among recent acquisitions is a remarkable ex- 

 ample of sympathetic magic in the shape of a wooden 

 representation of a human being which was washed ashore 

 on the coast near Calicut. The figure is made of soft wood, 

 and is eleven inches in height. The arms are bent on 

 the chest, and the palms of the hands are placed together, 

 as in the act of saluting. A square cavity, closed by a 

 wooden lid, has been cut out of the middle of the abdomen, 

 and contains tobacco, narcotic hemp, and hair. An iron 

 bar has been driven through the body, and terminates in 

 the abdominal cavity. A sharp cutting instrument has 

 been driven into the chest and back in twelve places. A 

 similar figure, life-size, was washed up on the same coast 

 some years ago, and is figured in Mr. Thurston's " Ethno- 

 graphic Notes in Southern India " (plate xix.). These 

 figures seem to be peculiar to the Laccadive Islands, the 

 people of which are notorious sorcerers. They apparently 

 represent persons possessed by an e\ il spirit, which is 



