Lcc. 



[880] 



NATURE 



107 



fir.e canoe in a perfect state of preservaiion, II metres 16 centi- 

 metres long, and flightly more than a metre broad. It was dug 

 out and drawn from the marsh by sixty men and eight oxen, 

 under the superintendence of the director of the Museum of 

 Lausanne, and has been placed in the court of the Liusanne 

 Academy, where it is destined to remain. 



We have before us the reports for last year of the two clubs 

 which have for their object the furtherance of the special study 

 of Britiih plants and their distribution over the surface of the 

 islands. The Botanical Exchange Club has been in existence 

 about twenty-five years, and was a continuation of the London 

 Botanical Society. The Secretaiy sends out each spring a list 

 of the plants that are wanted, and the members, who are atout 

 thirty in number, at Christmas send in their parcels and lists of 

 desiderata. All doubtful specimens are submitted to competent 

 referees, and after the distribution is made a report is published 

 on critical forms and extensions of distribution. The most 

 interesting find noticed this year is the discovery of Hirniaria 

 /lirsitta, a plant spread widely through the southern half of 

 Europe, by Mr. FreJ. Townsend at Cliristchurcli, in Hamp- 

 shire. Dr. Boswell identifies the prickly comfrey, which has 

 been so much talked about lately as a forage plant, with the 

 Symphytum uplandicutn of Nyman. Probably it is really a 

 hybrid between S. officinale and S. aspcrrimum, as was suggested 

 lately when it was figured by Sir Joseph Hooker in the Botanical 

 Magazine. Some curious observations have been made lately 

 tending to show that our wild docks hybridise naturally 

 not unfrequently, like verbascums, geums, primulas, thistles, 

 and epilobia. There is a curious form of Ophioglossitm [0. vul- 

 gattim, var. amUgiuim of Cosson and Germain), which till now 

 has been known in Britain only in the Orkney and Scilly 

 Islands. This year Mr. Chas. Bailey has found it on the Welsh 

 coast between Harlech and Barmouth. The Botanical Record 

 Cub has for its object the filling up of the blanks left by Mr. 

 Watson when he traced out in detail the home-distribution of 

 British plants in his " Cybele Britannica." In the report for 

 this year detailed lists are given for Cardiganshire and Peebles- 

 shire, and the only counties for which lists of flowering plants 

 now remain to be drawn up are Flintshu-e, Wigton^hire, and West 

 Ross. Fourteen pages of the present report are occupied by 

 fresh records for counties aheady worked up, and the Club is 

 now turning its attention to the distribution of the lower crypto- 

 gamia, especially mosses. The registration of flowering plants 

 is in the hands of Dr. F. A. Lees of Wetherby, and of mosses in 

 that of Mr. H. Boswell of Oxford ; and the Secretary of both 

 the Clubs is Mr. Chas. Bailey, F.L.S., of Manchester. 



Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, F.R.S., has just pre- 

 sented to the Anthropological Institute a valuable portfolio of 

 drawings illustrative of the E.istern Himalayas and Tibet. The 

 drawings have been made by the same jS'epalese draughtsman 

 as delineated the zoological drawings which have been presented 

 to the Zoological Society, and this ethnological series comprises 

 and contains in all 521 subjects, including duplicates. A series 

 of crania have been drawn by aid of the camera, Mr, Hodgson 

 remarking "native patience, hand and eye being peculiarly 

 fitted to work that instrument." 



Etienne Mulsant, one of the most prominent of French 

 entomologists, and librarian to the city of Lyons, died on 

 November 4 at the great age of eighty-four. His earliest publi- 

 cation was the " Lettres .a Julie siu: I'Entomologie (en prose et 

 en verse)," published in 1S30, but for the most part consisting 

 of real love-letters to the lady he afterwards married, and written 

 before he was out of his teens. His writings are most volu- 

 minous ; but he was best known as the author of a work 

 extending over nearly forty years, on the Cokoptera of France, 

 and published (chiefly) in the Annahs of the Llnnean Society of 



Lyons. He was also the author of a magnificently illustrated 

 work on Humming Birds, in connection with which he visited 

 London about five years ago. 



We learn that Messrs. Williams and Norgate are about to 

 issue an important work on tlie Fishes of Great Britain and Ire- 

 land by Dr. Francis Day, late Inspector-General of the Fisheries 

 of India. This work deals with their economic uses, modes of 

 capture, diseases, breeding, life-history, &c., with an introduction 

 on the structure of fishes generally, their functions and geo- 

 graphical distribution. The first part appears this month, and is 

 illustrated by twenty-seven plates. The whole will form a work 

 of 700 pages royal octavo, with over 200 plates. 



The exploration of the remains of prehistoric man is being 

 actively carried out in Russia. We have already briefly noticed a 

 contribution to this subject by M. Mereshkovsky, published in the 

 Itveitia of the Russian Geographical Society (voh xvi. No. 2), 

 being a report upon the exploration of caverns and rock-shelters 

 in the Crimea, in the neighbourhood of the Tchatyrdagh Moun- 

 tain. A great cavern, 145 feet wide and 58 feet deep, was 

 explored close by the Suren town, and M. Mereshkovsky found 

 there the remains of a prehistoric workshop for the manufacture 

 of stone implements, the whole belonging to two distinct periods. 

 The paper by M. Mereshkovsky, published in the Izvcitia, is 

 accompanied with four tables of drawings of stone implements. 



We notice the following interesting communications which 

 were made at the last meeting of the St. Petersburg Geological 

 Society : — On the motion of downs ne.ar Sestroretsk, by Til. 

 Sokoloff. The velocity of these downs is about one foot per 

 month. — On the excavations made by water in rivers and springs 

 of Northern Esthonia, especially by the waterfalls near Reval, 

 Yagowal, and Fal ; and on the Devonian clays discovered by 

 Prof. Inostrantseff in the cuttings of the new Ladoga canal. The 

 upper parts of the beds of these clays are bent by the action of 

 the ice of the ice period, as has been observed at many places in 

 Great Britain ; the peats which cover the glacial formations are 

 full of remains of prehistoric man. 



We can state that the Observatory of Algiers will not remain 

 longer without an astronomical observer. M. Tripier, who has 

 been appointed director, as has been announced in the French 

 papers, will leave in time for installation at the meeting'of the 

 French Association for the Progress of Science in April, iSSi. 



The purchaser of the French Siemens patent is preparing to 

 send a tender for establishing an electric railway from the Exhi- 

 bition to the central parts of Paris. 



ABNORMAL VARIATIONS OF BAROMETRIC 

 PRESSURE IN THE TROPICS, AND THEIR 

 RELATION TO SUN-SPOTS, RAINFALL, AND 

 FAMINES^ 



II. 



Comparison of the Abnormal Barometric Variations with the 



Sun-Spots 



A GLANCE at the barometric and sun-spot curves is sufficient to 

 show that the irregular and frequent fluctuations of pressure 

 are relatively much larger than those of the sun-spots. In order 

 therefore to compare the general course of the barometric curves 

 with that of the sun-spot curve the numbers of Table I. have 

 been further smoothed by taking the means of every nine conse- 

 cutive quarterly values of the nine-monthly means. The results 

 of this operation are given in the following table, and graphically 

 represented by the dotted curves which are drawn through the 

 continuous ones. All these dotted barometer curves closely re- 

 semble each other, except that portion of the Mauritius curve 

 after the year 1S65 which shows a tendency to assume an opposite 

 character. They are also very similar to the sun-spot curve, but 

 all of them lag very persistently behind the latter, as will be seen 

 by comparing the points marked with the same capital letters i— 

 » Continued from p. gi. 



