Feb. 23, 1871) 
NATURE 
333 

THE offer to build a Museum at Hereford in connection with 
the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club has been very gratefully 
accepted by the Corporation of that town, and there is every 
prospect of Mr. Rankine’s generous scheme being fully carried 
out. 
Tue British Museum has lately acquired two fine specimens 
of the most gigantic of known crabs. This species measures 
To feet between the tips of the claws, but has a comparatively 
small body, triangular in shape, somewhat convex. The claws 
are thin, and about 6 feet in length, including the pincers. Its 
habitat is Japan, where it is, we believe, eaten for food, and it 
seems strange that specimens should be so scarce in Europe. It 
was described and figured by Kzempfer, in 1763, in his account 
of Japan, and is now named Macrochira Kempferi (Dettaan) in 
commemoration of that eminent naturalist. One specimen has 
also been acquired for the Edinburgh Museum. 
AT the sitting of the 30th January the French Academy 
learned the death of M. Gustav Lambert, who was engaged in 
preparing an expedition to the North Pole when war broke out, 
and who had been badly wounded at Montrelaut when fighting 
/ at the head of a company of National Guards which he com- 
manded. M. Elie de Beaumont read a memoir sent four years 
ago by the enterprising intended explorer. Before leaving Paris 
for his last fight, he had sent to the Défense Nationale a 
memoir on the means of communication between Paris and 
the Provinces. This memoir will be published when peace 
shall be restored. 
THE large series of fossils in the Oxford Museum is in pro- 
cess of re-arrangement, and the space formerly occupied by the 
Physical Science Apparatus, removed into the Physical Labora- 
tory, is now devoted to large collections of fossils hitherto undis- 
played for want of room. Chief among these is to be noticed 
the magnificent series of Ceteosaurian remains from Enslow 
Bridge, which is the finest collection of gigantic reptilian remains 
to be seen in any museum in the world. The greatest care and 
ingenuity have been displayed in reconstructing these immense 
bones, many 4ft. or 5ft. long, from the broken and fragmentary 
state in which they were originally found. 
THE splendid meteor noticed by Mr. Wilson, in our last 
number, as having been observed at Rugby, was also very clearly 
seen in the neighbourhood of Worcester a few minutes past nine 
o’clock, It is described as falling towards the S.W., and burst- 
ing like a rocket, when it left a trail of light behind it for some 
time after its disappearance. No audible explosion was heard. 
The atmosphere was clear, and there were only a few clouds in 
the sky. 
M. BrenayME has published in the Comptes Rendus a rectifica- 
tion of a catalogue of the articles written by Cauchy, the 
celebrated mathematician, formerly a member of the French 
Institute. Some of the articles attributed to Cauchy were 
written by Cournot. This list is of some importance, as 
Cauchy’s works are under publication at the expense of the 
French Academy, according to a vote which was taken a few 
months before the war broke out. 
WE have received the first report of the Cheltenham College 
Natural History Society, which we commend to the notice of 
similar youthful societies, for the modest earnestness that 
pervades it, The achievements of the society for the first year 
of its existence are summed up as follows :—‘“‘ Botany— Decidedly 
well worked ; best point of the Society. Entomology—Also 
well worked ; sadly deficient in Coleoptera. Zoology—Prac- 
tically reduced to Ornithology ; so far, so good. Geology— 
Little attempted ; less done.’ In so rich and interesting a 
county, geologically speaking, as Gloucestershire, we hope the 
Society will have next year a very different tale to tell. We 

notice that in order to encourage the pursuit, the Council offers 
a prize for the best original collection of local fossils ; but trust 
this will not tend to promote the habit of collecting for mere 
collecting’s sake—the bane of young naturalists. From the 
general tone of the pursuit of Natural History in the College, 
however, we hope for better things. It is interesting to find 
that such subjects are discussed at their meetings as the theories 
respecting the Aurora, and the causes of the November Showers 
of Meteors; and although the papers on ‘‘ The Flowers of 
Virgil’s Eclogues” and ‘The Flowers of Virgil’s Georgics " 
are stated to have been “‘scarcely suited to the require- 
ments of a scientific meeting,’ we doubt not they will 
have invested the old poems with a new interest in the 
eyes of both the writer and his hearers. Some of the papers 
are, as might be expected, crude and inaccurate ; the one on 
“Butterflies at Home and Abroad” requires revision ; and the 
statement that the Killarney bristle-fern, 7 richomanes radicans, 
has been gathered by one of the members in Cornwall, must be 
received with caution. Although this would not be ‘ the only 
spot in England where that fern has yet been found ” (there being 
old records of its having been gathered in Derbyshire, and it 
having recently been unquestionably met with in North Wales), 
and there is no inherent improbability in its growing in Cornwall, 
yet the specimen stated to have been gathered ‘not half an inch 
high,” can scarcely have been satisfactorily determined to be this 
rare fern, Seedling ferns of all kinds are extremely difficult to 
distinguish, and when growing in damp places, frequently simu- 
late the filmy appearance of the Irish fern. We shall watch with 
great interest the progress of the Cheltenham College Natural 
History Society. 
Dr. C. L. SprrGev’s “ Cultur-historische Tafeln,” published at 
St. Petersburg, gives in parallel columns the men distinguished 
in each epoch from the earliest times to the present in politics 
and war, technical or mechanical discoveries, medicine, divinity, 
natural science and mathematics, philosophy, law, history, belles- 
lettres, and the fine arts ; in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, 
France, Great Britain, America, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 
Holland, Germany, Russia and Turkey, Asia and Africa. It is 
printed in German. 
THE register taken by M. Renan at Montsouris Observatory 
shows that the minimum temperature in December was—11°7° C, 
in the garden, and — 12°8° on the roof. This minimum is not 
exceptionally low for the district. The feature of the tempera- 
ture for the month was not so much the number of degrees under 
freezing-point as the continuity of cold. Nine days only ex- 
hibited a mean temperature above the freezing-point. The tem- 
perature for the whole month was about 8° F. lower than the 
mean temperature of Paris for December. 
WILLKOMM AND LANGE’s “ Prodromus Flore Hispanicze,” 
published at Stuttgart, is now brought down to the third part of 
the second volume, including the natural orders to the end of the 
Gamopetalze or Corolliflorze. 
FREIHERR LUDWIG VON HOHENBUHEL-HEUFLER has 
reprinted from the Proceedings of the Zoological and Botani- 
cal Society of Vienna an interesting contribution to botanical 
history, ‘‘ Franz von Mygind, der Freund Jacquins.” Mygind 
was born at Broust, in Jutland, in 1710, and after his education 
at the University of Copenhagen, and a short stay at St. Peters- 
burg, took up his residence at Vienna, and devoted his attention 
to botany. He speedily became an intimate friend of Jacquin’s, and 
corresponded with the most eminent scientific men of the day, 
including Priestley, Sir Joseph Banks, L’Heritier, and Gmelin. 
He did great service in investigating the flora of Austria, paying 
the expense of two Alpine expeditions by Wulfen. He died in 
1789. 
