622 

NATURE 
[AUGUST 5, 1915 

Institution’s work. Among the subjects of those 
which have lately been sent to us may be men- 
tioned: “Orchids,” “Stegosaurus,” ‘‘ Whet- 
stones,” ‘‘American History,’’ “Fashions,” 
“Gerenuk Gazelle,’ ‘Printing for the Blind,” 
‘‘Relics of the Grinnell Expedition,’’ ‘‘ Spectro- 
scopic Determination of Minerals,” “Gypsum,” 
and ‘‘ Printing Ink.’’ Some of these deal with 
publications, others with accessions to the collec- 
tion or with special exhibitions. Newspaper 
editors are at liberty to make what use they please 
of these articles, condensing or embroidering at 
their fancy. But the result, it is doubtless hoped, 
is that readers of the newspapers will either send 
for the publications referred to or visit the exhibi- 
tion. The Press statements are distributed a few 
days before it is intended that they shall appear, 
and editors are requested to return a card of 
acknowledgment that they have been so used. 
We shall probably learn the result of the experi- 
ment in some future report of the Smithsonian 
Institution, to which museum curators in this 
country will look forward with much interest. 
Although some of our museums, both national and 
provincial, already utilise the Press in this direct 
official manner, we are under the impression that 
their communications are neither so frequent nor 
so freely distributed as those of the United States 
National Museum appear to be; neither are they 
written with quite the same obvious intention of 
furnishing easy reading for the average citizen. 

EXPLORATION IN THE KARAKORUM. 
JDE FILIPPO DI FILIPPI’S paper to the 
Royal Geographical Society on June 14 is 
the record of an expedition more thoroughly 
equipped, from a purely scientific point of view, 
than any that has yet attacked the many problems 
still awaiting solution in the dreary solitudes that 
lie beyond the valley of the upper Indus. To one 
who knows by experience the labour involved in 
transferring himself for a few months only, with 
no more elaborate outfit than a single tent, a 
geological hammer, and a camera, to the higher 
regions of the Himalaya, it seems almost in- 
credible that such items should be included in the 
impedimenta as a complete wireless installation ; 
pilot balloons, with the hydrogen for their infla- 
tion carried in sixteen steel cylinders; and other 
scientific gear; to say nothing of tents for a party 
numbering one hundred and fifty persons, and the 
provisions, amounting to some forty-six tons, re- 
quisite for a sojourn of many months in that most 
inhospitable country. Yet the task was brought 
to a successful conclusion, in the face of every 
obstacle that Nature in her most inclement mood 
could oppose to it. We are left to imagine with 
how great an expenditure of patience and energy, 
for the modest narrative of the leader of the ex- 
pedition, Signor Filippo di Filippi, makes light of 
- this aspect of the achievement. 
The programme was certainly ambitious. It 
included a topographical survey of the Karakoram 
east of the Siachen glacier, where the great Remo 
NO. 2388, VOL. 95] 



glacier was found to possess some of the features 
of an ice-cap, its upper basin being described as 
a vast circus filled to the brim with ice, which 
overflows between the surrounding peaks, while 
one of its branches sends its waters down the Yar- 
kand river into Central Asia, and another feeds 
the Shyok, a tributary of the Indus: a series of 
gravimetric observations designed to connect the 
work of the survey of India along the southern 
flanks of the Himalaya with that of the Russians 
in Turkestan: determinations of longitude by 
means of wireless time signals transmitted from 
Lahore: a comprehensive study of the geology, 
not confined to the main route traversed by the 
expedition, combined with a collection of anthropo- 
logical data: and lastly, astronomical and 
meteorological observations, with complete photo- 
graphic and cinematographic records. 
Leaving Skardu, where it had passed the winter, 
in February, 1914, the expedition, making its way 
over passes deep in snow, arrived in the beginning 
of June on the Depsang plateau, a desolate ex- 
panse of minute detritus, at an altitude of 
17,400 ft. above the sea, “‘entirely devoid of vege- 
tation except for occasional patches of a yellowish- 
green plant which at first view suggests, more 
than anything else, some malignant disease of the 
soil.” On this plateau, constantly swept by an 
icy wind, and deluged with storms of hail and 
sleet, the scientific work of the expedition was 
carried on until late in August, when the journey 
to the plains of Russian Turkestan was resumed 
and successfully accomplished early in November. 
The scientific results of this expedition will be 
awaited with eager interest. They cannot fail to 
throw light upon the geodetic aspects of the Hima- 
layan problem, which have recently been the sub- 
ject of much discussion, and on meteorological 
questions of great moment in India. It will be 
interesting also to compare the geological results 
with the observations of Stoliczka, who traversed 
the same route more than forty years ago, and 
whose classification of the formations met with in 
the N.W. Himalaya remains practically un- 
impaired to the present day. 
AtouetG 1B); IL; 

NOTES. 
Tue Moxon gold medal of the Royal College 
of Physicians has been awarded to Prof. J. J. Déjerine, 
of Paris, and the Baly gold medal to Dr. F. Gowland 
Hopkins. 
We learn from Science that the Board of Estimate 
and Apportionment of New York City has passed a 
resolution authorising the issue of 20,0001. corporate 
stock of the City of New York to provide means for 
permanent improvements at the Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden, including the completion of the laboratory 
building and plant houses. This action was taken 
following the generous offer of Mr. A. T. White, 
chairman of the Botanic Garden Committee of the 
Brooklyn Institute trustees, to secure a like sum by 
private subscription. The amount was subscribed by 
