September 21, 1905] 



NA TURE 



515 



September 18. — Sharp earthquake shocks were felt at 

 3 a.m. and 11.15 "•"^' ^' Reggio (Calabria). Further 

 damage was done in the provinces of Catanzaro and 

 Cosenza. A severe shock was fflt at Monlelconc. 



The deaths of two well known explorers were 

 announced in the Times of .Saturday last. M. do Brazza 

 died at Dakar on .September 14 in his fifty-third year, and 

 Captain J. Wiggins at Harrogate on September 13 in his 

 seventy-fourth year. I)e Brazza was sent in 1875, accom- 

 panied by Dr. Ballay and M. March, naturalist, to explore 

 the Ogowe, the great river in Gabun in Equatorial West 

 Africa. During the succeeding eight years he laid the 

 foundations of the French Congo Protectorate. A second 

 visit to West Africa, which lasted for three years, was 

 made in 1879, and during this time de Brazza persuaded 

 King Makoko to place himself under the protection of 

 the French (lag. Successive journeys were made to the 

 same regions in 1883 and 1887. After an expedition in 

 1891-2 from Brazzaville to the Upper Sungha with the 

 view of opening up a route to (he Shari and Lake Chad, 

 de Brazza settled down in France. Last April he was sent 

 out as commissioner to inquire into the charges of 

 malnd[iiinistration in French Congo territory, but the hard- 

 ships incident to travel in the malarial tropics of Africa 

 this time proved fatal. To Captain Joseph Wiggins 

 belongs the credit of having discovered, or at least re- 

 discovered, thirty years ago a new ocean highway within 

 the Arctic circle by which the trade of European Russia 

 obtained for the first lime direct maritime access to the 

 navigable rivers of Siberia. Captain Wiggins was a 

 Fellow of Ih.- Kov.il (.eogr;ipliic.-,l Socirlv. 



Tin; thirtfcnlh annual exhibllion of llie I'lioUjgr.iphic 

 Salon is now open at the Gallery of the Royal Society of 

 Painters in Water Colours, Pall Mall East. It contains 

 many very fine examples of photography which will interest 

 the scientific student in showing what can be done by 

 means of modern methods. The aim of the promoters of 

 thi- exhibition is purely pictorial, and although presumably 

 all the works shown are produced by photographic means, 

 il is obvious that there is some, ami in a few cases prob- 

 ;iljly a great deal of hand-work in addition. This dc- 

 Ir.icts to a certain extent from the value of the repre- 

 sentations of the various phases of nature, of which there 

 ari' several interesting exainples. The methods employed 

 are quite outside the consideration of the society re- 

 sponsible for the show ; we can therefore only surmise 

 that the majority of the multi-coloured pictures, and there 

 are about a dozen of them, are made by the gum- 

 bichromate process, applying from two to five coatings ot 

 different colours as desired. But the portrait of Frederick 

 Ilollvpr liv Mr. I". T. Ilollyer is probably printed on 

 plalinum paper, the colours being obtained by modifications 

 in I he method of development or by subsequent treatment 

 of I he print, A picture so made is obviously not a platinum 

 print, and its permanency and other characteristics must 

 depend entirely upon the nature of the pigmentary materials 

 present. We do not notice any example of " photography 

 in natural colours " as this phrase is commonly under- 

 stood. 



The greater part of the Nalurwissenschtiftliche Woclicn- 

 sclnift for August 27 is devoted to a review, by Dr. 

 Thesing, of the pathogenic protozoa, dealing particularly 

 with the subject of syphilis. 



The Popular Science Monthly for September contains 

 many interesting articles. Messrs. Foulk and Karhart 

 NO. 1873, VOL. 72] 



discuss State university salaries, and deplore the meagre 

 remuneration of university teachers. If this be the case 

 in America, how much more so is it in this country? 



With reference to the article on " The Sterilisation of 

 Water in the Field" (August 31, p. 431), the Lawrence 

 Patent Water Softener and Steriliser Company writes to 

 say that a mistake was made in the records of the official 

 trials of water sterilisers, and tli.it the Lawrence steriliser 

 never consumes more than ij pi ills of kerosinc per hour, 

 not 2 pints as stated. 



The Psychological Bulletin for August (ii., No. 8) con- 

 tains an important review by Dr. Meyer of Prof. 

 Wernicke's monograph on aphasia, together with an 

 obituary notice of Prof. Wernicke, who was killed on 

 June 15 in a bicycle accident. We would suggest that the 

 Bulletin be issued with cut pages in future. 



The Pevue de I'ltcole d'Anthropolcifiie de Paris for 

 August contains an article by MM. Capitan and Papillault 

 on the identification of the body of Paul Jones 113 years 

 after death. This was based partly on general characters, 

 colour of the hair, &c., partly on mcasuremenis compared 

 with those of certain contemporary busts, between which 

 there was an extraordinary agreement, and partly on 

 pathological details. There were clear indications of 

 broncho-pneumonia, of tuberculosis, and of renal disease, 

 and from contemporary records it is known I lint Paul 

 Jones suffered from all of these. 



LhvUT. Christophers, LM.S., records a discovery of 

 considerable interest, viz. the presen<e of a parasite 

 belonging to the haemogregarines in blood of the Indian 

 field rat (Gerbitlus indicus). liilherto it has been believed 

 that these parasites are confined to <old-blooded verte- 

 brates. The parasite occurs as a motionless vermicule in 

 the red blood cells, and as an actively motile vermicule 

 in the plasma. Infection of the rat was proved to take 

 place through its parasitic louse, a new species of ILcmato- 

 pinus, in which a developmental cycle is passed {Sc. Mem. 

 0/ the Gov. 0/ India, No. i8). 



We have received from the director of the Government 

 Zoological Gardens at Giza, near Cairo, a list of a collec- 

 tion of animals obtained by the members of the staff during 

 a collecting trip to the Sudan, which lasted from May 10 

 until August- 10. The list comprises 129 animals referable 

 to 46 species, among which a pair of .Senegal storks are 

 perhaps the most notable. It should be added that several 

 of the specimens are the gifts of ofiTicials in the Sudan, 

 and that a giraffe was confided to the care of the director 

 by Ihe Khedive. 



To the first part of vol. ix. of llu: lliohifiiciil ISulletin 

 Or. J. i:. Duerden contributes a sixth inslalment of his 

 account of the morphology of the Madreporaria, dealing 

 in this instance with the " fossula " of the extinct rugose 

 corals. The fossula (of which there may be several), we 

 may remind our readers, is a very characteristic feature of 

 the Rugosa, and consists of a pit in the calice due to the 

 smaller size of the vertical septa in that particular area. 

 In this communication the author endeavours to explain 

 the structure of this pit from the changes which take place 

 in the corallite during development. 



In the August number of Naturen Mr. IL Schetelig 

 describes, with illustrations, certain very interesting re- 

 mains of buildings of Neolithic age which have recently 

 been opened up in Scandinavia. The building takes the 

 form of a portion of a curved wall situated in a stratum 

 below the peat, which is itself overlain by a considerable 



