3IO 



NA TURE 



\yan. 27, I J 



the Eskimo in an exaggerated degree, so that there can be no 

 doubt about their being derived from the same stock. It has 

 also been shown that these special characteristics gradually in- 

 crease from west to east, and are seen in their greatest perfection 

 in the inhabitants of Greenland, at all events in those where no 

 crossings with the Danes have taken place." 



The Aleutians would thus help to bridge over the somewhat 

 abrupt gap still undoubtedly separating the Eskimo and Japanese 

 groups. At the same time this view suggests a primasval line of 

 migration from Japan through the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka 

 to the Aleutian chain and Alaska, which again presents other 

 difficulties of a somewhat formidable character. In the first 

 place, the Japanese appear to be themselves only comparatively 

 recent intruders in Niphon, whose primitive inhabitants were the 

 Ainos, a people of totally different physical type. Hence it is 

 not easy to understand how they could have thrown off an 

 easterly branch, which has had time to devel )p into the Eskimo, 

 probably the most specialised of all existing races. In the 

 second place, in his " Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, "/Dr. 

 Rink himself advances some solid reasons for bringing the 

 Eskimo, not from Asia at all, or at least not in the first instance, 

 but from the interior of the North American continent. He 

 holds in fact, with some other ethnologists, that they were 

 originally inlanders, who, under pressure from the American 

 Indians, gradually advanced along the course of the Yukon, 

 Mackenzie, and other great rivers, to their present homes on the 

 Bering Sea and Frozen Ocean. — But a discussion of these con- 

 tradictory theories, for which a solution may yet be found, must 

 be deferred to another occasion. Meantime enough has probably 

 been said to show the highly suggestive character of the paper 

 under review. A. H. Keane 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



V Astronomie : Re-jne mensuelle d' Astronomie poptilairc^ de 

 Meteorologie, et de Physique dii Globe, January 1887. — We have 

 received the January number of the above periodical, edited by 

 Camille Flammarion. M. Flammarion has done a great w ork 

 in popularising astronomy in France, and the success which has 

 attended this review — for it is entering on its sixth year — 

 proves how widespread an interest is now taken in the science in 

 that country. The present number contains an " Annuaire 

 astronomique pour 1S87," by the editor, a series of descriptive 

 notes of a general character on the principal objects of astro- 

 nomical observation for the current year, the sun, moon, 

 eclipses, occultations, and the planets. M. Daubree follows 

 with a paper on some recent meteorites. M. Flammarion gives 

 an account of the storms of October 16 and December S, and of 

 the general principles of weather prophecy. The notes chiefly 

 relate to the two comets of the season, those of Barnard and 

 Finlay, three diagrams being given of the first, showing the posi- 

 tion and character of the two tails, and one of the second. A 

 sort of general observing ephemeris for the month January 15 to 

 February 15, of a popular rather than of a scientific character, 

 concludes the number, M. tlammarion and his co-workers 

 frequently aflect a somewhat magniloquent and sensational style, 

 and deal principally with the more popular, easy, and interesting 

 aspects of astronomy ; the wonders of our own globe, earth- 

 quakes, volcanoes, &c. , receive much attention, so that the field 

 embraced is not confined to pure astronomy alone. But after 

 every allowance is made and every drawback admitted, L'Astro- 

 nomie hasdone much good in circulating astronomical informa- 

 tion and in arousing and fostering scientific tastes, and it must 

 be confessed that for an astronomical journal containing forty 

 well-printed imperial octavo pages and, as in this case, more 

 than thirty illustrations, to command a remunerative circulation 

 at the price of a franc a number is highly creditable alike to 

 editor, to publishers, and to the public which supports it. It 

 may well be doubted whether such an enterprise would meet 

 with the same success either here or in America. 



Biillciin de I' Academic des Sciences de St. Petersboiu-g, tome 

 XXX., No. 4. — The appearance of Encke's comet in 1885 com- 

 pared with its previous appearances, by O. Backlund. The 

 paper is the first of a series, and contains, besides the numerical 

 data of the observations made in 1885, an inquiry into the dis- 

 turbances due to the attraction of the earth. The summer 

 parallax of the earth is taken to be 8" 'So, and the elements of the 

 comet are determined accordingly. — On the formation of buds 

 among the Phanerogams, by A. Famintzin. — The period of the 



rotation of the sun, according to the magnetic disturbances, as 

 observed at Pawlowsk, by P. A. Miiller. The average value of 

 25 '66 is deduced from observations made from August I, 1882, 

 to August 31, 1S83. — Photography applied to astronomy; ab- 

 stract of a lecture by Otto Struve. — On several new Trilobites 

 and kindred forms from East Siberia, by Fr. Schmidt. The 

 following species (nearly all new) are described, with plates : — 

 From the Cambrian, on the Vilui River, Anomocare pawlmmkii 

 and Liostraci4s (?) maydeli ; from the Cambrian on the Olenek, 

 Agnosttts czekancni<skii ; from the Lower Silurian of the Middle 

 Tunguska, P/mcops lopalini and P. sibiricus ; from the Devo- 

 nian limestone at Krasnoyarsk, Proetns slatkcnvskii, Cyphaspis 

 sibirica ; Eurypterus (?) czckanowskii , and E. fiinc/atus from the 

 Devonian on the Angara at Padun. — A new form of Opalina 

 (sficidata), by Warpachowsky. — On a new Otomela {bof^daitcwi), 

 by V. Bianchi. — Remarkable hail at Bobruisk, by H. Wild (with 

 plates). On November 28, 1885, with an absolutely clear sky, 

 not a cloud being visible, hail fell for five minutes. The fall 

 was quite local, and did not extend farther than five miles from 

 Bobruisk. Many pieces were like broken pieces of ice, others 

 apple-shaped, with conical depressions [at the poles. — On the 

 electromotory difference and the polarisation of electrodes on 

 telegra]ihic lines, by P. Miiller. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



"On the Crimson Line of 

 William Crookes, F.R.S., 



Royal Society, January 13.— 

 Phosphorescent Alumina." By 

 V.P.C.S. 



In a paper \\hich I had the honour of communicating 

 to the Royal Society in March 1879 (Phil. Trans., Part 

 2, 1S79, pp. 660, 661), I described the phosphorescence 

 of alumina and its various forms when under the influence of the 

 electrical discharge in vacuo, in the following words : — " Next to 

 the diamond, alumina in the form of ruby is perhaps the most 

 strikingly phosphorescent stone I have examined. It glows 

 with a rich full red ; and a remarkable feature is that it is of 

 little consequence what degree of colour the earth or stone pos- 

 sesses naturally, the colour of the phosphorescence is nearly the 

 same in all cates ; chemically precipitated amorphous alumina, 

 rubies of a pale reddish yellow, and gems of the prized ' pigeon's 

 blood ' colour, glowing alike in the vacuum, thus corroborating 

 E. Becquerel's (Anna/es de Chimie et de Physique, vol. Ivii. 

 1859, p. 50) results on the action of light on alumina and its 

 compounds in the phosphoroscope. . . . The appearance of the 

 alumina glow in the spectroscope is remarkable. There is a 

 faint continuous spectrum ending in the red somewhere near 

 the line B ; then a black space, and next an intensely brilliant 

 and sharp red line to which nearly the whole of the intensity of 

 the coloured glow is due. . . . This line coincides with the one 

 described by E. Becquerel as being the most brilliant of the 

 lines in the spectrum of the light of alumina, in its various forms, 

 when glowing in the phosphoroscope." 



In the Comptes rendus for December 6 last (vol. cii. p. 1 107) 

 appears a brief note by M. de Boisbaudran, in which he an- 

 nounces, "to that date, that alumina, calcined and submitted to 

 the electrical discharge in a vacuum, has not given him a trace 

 of red fluorescence. This fluorescence, as well as its special 

 spectrum, shows itself brilliantly when the alumina contains 

 i/ioo and even i/iioo of Cr.jOj. With the 1/10,000 part of 

 Cr„03 we still obtain very visible rose colour. . . . From 

 these observations the presence of chromium appears to be 

 indispensable to the production of the red fluorescence of 

 alumina." 



This statement being opposed to all my experience, I imme- 

 diately instituted experiments with a view, if possible, to clear 

 up the mystery. I started with aluminium sulphate which I 

 knew to be tolerably pure, and in which ordinary tests failed to 

 detect chromium. On ignition and testing in the usual manner 

 in a radiant-matter tube the alumina line was brightly visible in 

 the spectrum of the emitted light. Different portions of this 

 aluminium sulphate were now purified by various processes for 

 the separation of chromium. All gave as a result the absence of 

 this impurity. The most trustworthy process being that devised 

 by Wohler (" Select Methods in Chemical Analysis," second edi- 

 tion, p. 1241, I used it to purify the bulk. The salt was dissolved in 

 water, and excess of caustic potash added till the precipitate 

 first formed re-dissolved. Chlorine was now passed through till no 



