4i8 



NATURE 



YMarch 3, 1881 



trustworthy signs of bedding in these rocks. Cropping 

 out in the lower third of the hills — from the cliffs and the 

 slopes immediately above them — are beds of a highly 

 micaceous rock — greisen — and a gneissose rock some- 

 times approaching in its characters the typical gneiss ; 

 these beds are inclined at an angle of 15° to the east- 

 north-east Veins of quartz are observed to traverse 

 both these rocks, whilst occasionally a layer of quartz — 

 an inch in thickness — separates contiguous beds. 



I had no opportunity of landing on any other islands of 

 the archipelago, many of which in tlieir general appear- 

 ance resemble that of the Island of Mackau. 



H. B. GUPPY 



NOTES 



The International Medical Congress which it is proposed to 

 hold in London in the beginning of August will be the seventh of 

 its kind. The previous meetings have been held biennially in the 

 principal university towns of the Continent. At the last meeting 

 in Amsterdam in 1879, a general \\ish was expressed that the 

 next should be in England, and the wish having been informally 

 communicated to the Presidents of the College of Physicians and 

 the College of Surgeons, they called a meeting of presidents or 

 other delegates of all the Univerities, Medical Corporations, 

 Public Medical Services, and the Medical Societies. The jiro- 

 posal to hold the Congress in London was heartily agreed to, 

 and an Executive Committee was appointed under whose direc- 

 tion, and, especially, by the energy of the General Secretary, 

 Mr. MacCormack, a very large scheme has been arranged for 

 the discussion of the most interesting questions in all the 

 divisions of the Medical Sciences. The Meetings will be 

 held in fifteen sections, in rooms of most of which the 

 use has been granted by the University of London, the Royal 

 Academy, and all the learned Societies at Burlington House. 

 Others have been engaged at Willis's Rooms. The officers 

 and councils of the several sections include, with very few 

 exceptions, all the chief and most active teachers and workers in 

 the several subjects of medical science and practice, not in 

 London alone, but in all the universities and great towns in the 

 United Kingdom. In so far as general consent to the design 

 of the Congress may be regarded as a promise of success, 

 all looks well, and the agreement of our own countrymen is well 

 matched by the assurances of co-operation already received from 

 a large' number of the most distinguished medical investigators 

 and practitioners in both the Old World and the New. About 

 4000 invitations were issued, and it is expected that the \A\ of 

 members will include at least 2000 names. Of course there are 

 large arrangements for receptions and various hospitalities, and 

 for making London as agreeable and instructive as may be in 

 August ; but if the design in the programme of the Congress be 

 fairly fulfilled, a great quantity of hard and useful scientific work 

 will be well done. 



At a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 

 held in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 12, the Rumf.jrd 

 medal was conferred on Prof. Josiah Millard Gibbs, of Vale 

 College, for his researches on Thermodynamics. 



We regret to hear of the death of Prof. James Tennant, 

 F.G.S., the well-known mineralogist. Mr. Tennant was the 

 assistant and afterwards the successor of Mr. Mawe, author of 

 " Travels in Brazil," and of a " Treatise on Diamonds,'' and by 

 adding to the series obtained by Mr. Mawe many fine specimens 

 from every part of the globe, succeeded in thus forming a very 

 large and valuable collection of minerals. Mr. Tennant vas an 

 excellent authority on gems, and his advice was taken by the 

 Government with respect to the cutting of the Koh-i-Noor and 

 other crown jewels. Besides holding the office of " Mineralogist 

 to the Queen," Mr. Tennant was for many years Professor of 



Geology and Mineralogy in King's College, London, an:l after he 

 resigned the professorship of the former science, still retained 

 the post of Professor of Mineralogy, which he held at the time 

 of his death. Mr. Tennant, in conjunction with the late Prof. 

 Ansted and the Rev. W. O. Mitchell, wrote the treatise .on 

 Geology, Mineralogy, and Crystallography for Orr's "Circle of 

 the Sciences," and he was also the author of some smaller 

 educational works. Mr. Teimant did much useful work in 

 preparing collections of minerals and fossils suitable for educa- 

 tional purposes ; and by popular lectures and in other ways he 

 aided in disseminating a knowledge of those sciences in which 

 he was so greatly interested. Mr. Tennant had reached the age 

 of seventy-three at the time of his death. 



Prof. JNIartin Duncan, F.R.S., has been elected president 

 of the Royal Microscopical ijociety. 



The Daily News Naples correspondent writes with reference 

 to the Zoological Station at Naples that the average number of 

 naturalists working in the laboratory was formerly about twenty- 

 five, but this year it will be above thirty, adding to which the 

 permanent staff of the station, there are altogether nearly forty 

 naturalists bent [upon promoting original research into marine 

 zoology and botany, while enjoying the most unusual facilities 

 and elaborate technical arrangements that have ever yet been 

 contrived. The use of the diving apparatus has enabled the 

 naturali ts to find marine plants hidden in cracks and crevices 

 and on the undersides of overhanging rocks, which otherwise would 

 never have been brought to light, for the ground-net cannot reach 

 them. By this means many interesting botanical problems have 

 been brought nearer to a solution. 



Colonel Prejewalski has just returned to St. Petersburg 

 with a fine botanical collection he has made in Kansu. Dr. 

 Maximowicz states that upon a cursory examination his previous 

 impression is strengthened that we have to do here not with the 

 flora of China, but with an altogether different one, belonging to 

 the border of the great Central Asiatic plateau. There are no 

 Chinese forms of trees or shrubs whatever, not even an Acer. 

 The general character is entirely high alpine and cold. Dr. 

 Maximowicz thinks that this Central Asiatic plateau has a flora 

 with a distinct individuality of its own, and proposes to call it 

 the Tangut flora, from the name applied by its first European 

 explorer, Marco Polo, to the people inhabiting this inclement 

 and inaccessible region. 



The arrangements for the international medical and sanitary 

 exhibition of the Parkes Museum of Hygiene, which is to be 

 held at South Kensington from July 16 to August 13, are now 

 complete. The exhibition is to comprise everything that is of 

 service for the prevention, detection, cure, and alleviation of 

 disease. 



The Clarendon Press is about to i^sue a new edition of the 

 late Admiral W. H. Smythe's " Cycle of Celestial Objects," a 

 book which by universal consent has done more to promote 

 popular astronomy in England than any other work of the kind. 

 The new edition has been edited by Mr. G. F. Chambers, 

 F.R.A.S., whose "Handbook of Astronomy," another Claren- 

 don Press book, is well known. This volume, though professedly 

 only a new edition, may be regarded as almost a new work. 

 Whereas the original edition comprised only 850 objects, the 

 new one comprises no fewer than 1604. But it is not merely in 

 the number of the objects dealt with that the usefulness of the new 

 edition will consist. It will be found that Mr. Chambers has cut 

 down here, expanded there, and revised everywhere, Admiral 

 Smythe's printed matter, so as to embody the progress of the 

 science down to the year 18S0. What this means in the ca=e of 

 hundreds of double-stars annually undergoing re-measurement, 

 and many of them annually undergoing change, can only be 



