272 



NA TURE 



[Jan. 17, I < 



it possible to make voyages and to avoid typhoons or bad 

 weather. The vahie of such a service is not measurable by mere 

 money ; it means greater tecurity to life and property, fewer 

 risks to shipowners, and a diminution of loss to underwriters. 

 It would, in short, have an appreciable effect on commerce 

 generally, and the business of this great shipping port in par- 

 ticular." We trust that this just and accurate view will prevail 

 among those in a position substantially to help Dr. Doberck in 

 his valuable work. 



Professor Forel (Morges) writes in the Gazette de Lausanne: 

 — We are again passing through an earthquake period. On 

 December 18, 1883, at 6.25 a.m., a shock was observed at 

 Neufchatel ; on December 22, at 3 a.m., another one at Cor- 

 taillod, and at 4 a.m. at Neufchatel and Cortaillod. On 

 December 17 and 18 earthquakes were noticed in various parts 

 of Italy, and on December 22, at 3.39 a.m., one at Lisbon. — A 

 rather violent shock, followed by another an hour afterwards, 

 was noticed at L.iibach on December 31 at 3.30 a.m. — At 

 Sadikli, near Brussa, an earthquake caused some destruction on 

 January 3, fortunately unattended by loss of life. — The Siberian 

 newspaper Ssibir reports that at Korssa Kowskoje .Sjelo on Lake 

 Baikal no less than nine earthquakes occurred during the month 

 of September last, i.e. on the 3rd, yih, 12th, 14th, 17th, 20th, 

 24th, 27lh, and 30th of that month (old stylt;)-^A sharp shock, 

 causing some alarm, was also felt at Messina at 11.30 on the 

 night of the 13th inst., but no damage was done. 



At 5.25 p.m. on January 11, at Fort William, a ball of 

 light, shaped like a pear, with the broad end downwards, was 

 seen as if suspended midway between Ben Nevis and the Cale- 

 donian Valley. It descended till near the surface of the earth, 

 and then it burst, lighting the whole valley. In colour it 

 resembled the electric light. Mr. W. Gunn writes from Berwick- 

 on-Tweed : — "On January II, at 5.33-34 p.m., I saw a remark- 

 ably brilliant white meteor — certainly as bright as Venus — rather 

 low down in the sky to north-north-west. Apparent motion about 

 in a line from Vega towards a point in the horizon nearly verti- 

 cally below the end of the tail in Ursa Major ; seen for two or 

 three seconds moving slowly ; seemed to largely and suddenly 

 increase in size and brightness just as it was lost to view behind 

 some trees. Perhaps this was the bursting seen at Fort William. " 



The list of lectures to be delivered before the Association 

 Scientifique de France has been published. They will be de- 

 livered as usual at the Sorbonne, under the control of M. Milne 

 Edwards, president of this association. Some of them will be 

 delivered by members of the council of the Association Fraiiijaise, 

 a rival institution, and it is pretty certain that the two societies 

 will be incorporated into one single body. The Association 

 Scientifique is the older of the two, and was created by 

 Leverrier about twenty years ago. 



We learn from Science that Mr. H. M. Wilson, in charge of 

 one of the topographical parties in Prof. A. H. Thompson's 

 Wingate division of the U.S. Geological Survey, surveyed, during 

 the season of 1883, about ten thousand square miles in North- 

 western New Mexico and North-Eastern Arizona. The area 

 covered by his work lies between parallels of latitude 36° and 

 37°, and extends from meridian 109° to 111°. He also worked 

 some smaller detached areas outside of the limits thus indicated. 

 This region has hitherto remained a terra incogtiita, partly on 

 account of its aridity and barren condition, and partly on account 

 of the difficulty of traversing it. So little has been known of it 

 that within the area surveyed by Mr. Wilson a small mountain 

 range has been indicated as occupying two places on the same 

 map. On the engineer's map of 1879 it is called Calabesa 

 Mountains in the northern place, and Squash Mountains in the 

 southern ; and on the Land-Office Map for 1882 both are it di- 



cated without names. Mr. Wilson's work proves that they are 

 one and the same, occupying a position very close to that assigned 

 to the Squash Mountains. 



News has been received in Berlin from the African traveller. 

 Dr. Richard Bohm, dated July, 1883, from Qua Mpar.i, on the 

 western shore of Lake Tanganyika, near the estuary of the 

 Lufuku River. Dr. Bohm and his companion, Paul Reichardt, 

 seem to have settled there for some time. Before reaching Qua 

 Mpara they met with considerable difficulties, having to combat 

 the natives, by whom Dr. Bohm was seriously wounded. He 

 left the Belgian station Karema at the end of June, and reached 

 Qua Mpara on July 8. There he was seized by a fever, yet he 

 retained sufficient energy to complete his zoological investigations 

 (principally ornithological) and to forward the results to Europe. 

 All his collections and his scientific instruments were unfor- 

 tunately destroyed by fire on the Mto ja Ugalla. Dr. Ebhm, 

 however, set to work again and commenced making new collec- 

 tions, which he left at Karema in safe keeping. Amongst other 

 things he is reported to have discovered a beautiful freshwater 

 Medusa, with a broad, umbrella-shaped body and numerous long 

 and short prehensile filaments ; he found it in Lake Tanganyika. 

 At the same time a report from Herr Paul Reichardt was received 

 describing in detail the Soko so well known to readers of Living- 

 stone. The animals live together in herds of from six to twenty 

 individuals, and build nests on trees at an elevation of 8-19 m., 

 the nests measuring from I- 1 •2 m. in diameter. Reichardt found 

 groups of nests in which he counted over fifty separate nests. 

 Up to the time of sending the report Reichardt had not succeeded 

 in securing a speciiien. 



In the Bolletino of the Italian Geographical Society for 

 December, 1S83, Sig. Colini continues his valuable notes on the 

 information supplied by Cavaliere Lucioli on the topography and 

 ethnography of the Upper Amazons regions. The paper is 

 accompanied by a large map of the lluallaga and Ucayali river 

 basins, based on Petermann's South America, but corrected and 

 supplemented by fresh data furnished by Lucioli. The position 

 of a large number of tribe-;, many hitherto unknown, is deter- 

 mined along the banks of the head waters of the Amazons, and 

 to these is added a list of about sixty others, supplied by Dr. 

 Colini from the old records and the writings of recent explorers. 

 But it is obvious that many of these are mere duplicates or even 

 triplicates of the same tribes due to careless transcription, ignor" 

 ance, change of tribal designations, and other sources of con- 

 fusion. Thus Carapacho and Picambio are only older names of 

 the present Caribis and Remos of the Middle Ucayali. So with 

 the Amalmaca=, Chuntagurus, and Tambas of the older writers, 

 who may be safely identified with the modern Amahuacs, Chon- 

 taguiros, and Campas respectively. Nor, as Colini rightly 

 remarks, are these names always distinctly tribal, but the desig- 

 nations of mere clans, or small family groups, or members of 

 larger divi.-ions. These are continually shifting their locality, 

 disappearing, or becoming absorbed in more powerful groups, 

 another fruitful source of perplexity in the ethnical terminology 

 of the Amazons regions. But, after m.aking all due allowance 

 for this uncertain nomenclature, there still remains a surprising 

 number of really distinct tribal groups scattered along the banks 

 of the Huallaga, Napo, Ucayali, and other Amazonian streams, 

 groups differing from each other always in speech and frequently 

 in habits, usages, and physical type. 



On January 26 the Berlin Wissenschaftliche Central Verein 

 and Humboldt Academy will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary 

 of its foundation. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Bonnet Monkey (Macaciis sinicus 6 ] from 

 India, presented by Mr. C. .S. Norman ; two Great Kangaroos 

 {Macrofus gigatileus S 9 ) from New South Wales, presented 



