March 



;ij 



NATURE 



419 



understood by those who have been called upon to perform 

 similar literary work. But tliis is not all. Admiral Smythe's 

 observations having been made in England, his labours only 

 extended to those stars and nebulae which were visible in Eng- 

 land ; but Mr. Chamber.";, by means of materials gathered from 

 various sources, has extended the book to the whole of the 

 southern hemisphere, and has thus made it an observer's hand- 

 book for the large English-speaking populations of India and 

 the Australian and American continents. The New "Cycle" 

 will be found to contain a great number of double-star measures 

 by Burnham and others, many of them as recent as 1880. The 

 places of the objects have been uniformly set out for the epoch 

 of 1890, so that in this respect the book will be up to date for 

 many years to come. A chromolithograph of twenty four typical 

 star disks in different shades of colour intended for the methodical 

 record of star colours forms an appropriate frontispiece. 



We have received a very satisfactory report from the Sunday 

 Lecture Society. It refers to an interesting experiment in Edin- 

 burgh of a Sunday Science School, in which ninety-two pupils 

 were enrolled, with an average attendance from November to 

 July of sixty. The pupils were mostly of the artisan class and 

 youths who, owing to late business hours, could not avail them- 

 selves of evening classes. 



Measurements of the "Midgets "who have lately been to 

 Buckingham Palace and Marlborough House are being taken by 

 Quarter-Master Sergeant Riordan, under the direction of the 

 Anthropological Society. Succe-sful casts of the mouths, 

 showing an apparently abnormal dentition, have been obtained 

 by Mr. F. S. Mosely, and were exhibited in the library of the 

 Royal Institution last Friday evening. 



At a meeting of the Electricity Exhibition Commission in 

 Paris on Monday, M. Berger announced that arrangements had 

 been made for the Palace of Industry being lighted up during 

 the exliibition by all the French and foreign systems concurrently. 

 This will involve 800 horsepon er, and more than 50 kilometres 

 length of wire. There will be six classes, viz. : — 1. Production 

 de I'electricite ; 2. transmission de I'electricJte ; 3. electro-m.etrie ; 

 4. applications de I'electricite ; 5. mecanique generale dans ses 

 applications aux industries electriques ; 6. bibliographic et his- 

 toire. A proposal will be made to the Municipal Council of 

 Paris to grant to Herr W. Siemens the concession of an elec- 

 trical railway to the Hippodrome, in the Bois de Boulogne, 

 in consideration of the expenses incurred by the construction 

 of the railway from Place de la Concorde to the Exhibition 

 Palace. The railway being constructed on a viaduct, ^the 

 expense is estimated at 300,000 francs, and it is impossible to 

 expect it will be recovered during the 107 days of the exhibition. 

 The transmission of force at a distance by electricity will be 

 tried in the Palais de I'lndustrie during the Electrical Exhibition. 

 Currents generated in the ground-floor will be utilised to work 

 electro-magnetic machines, which will do various kinds of work. 

 The Publishers' Union, under the direction of MM. Hachette, 

 will establish an exhibition of electrical publications, and a 

 reading-room, into which will be admitted all the scientific 

 papers of the world, irrespective of their language. 



The difiiculties in the way of taking the census of our vast 

 and heterogeneous Indian Emj ire have been sometimes very 

 curious. In Burmah the census operations in the interior created 

 no little consternation among the Karens, who were doing all 

 they could to evade enumeration. The native officials employed 

 to collect statistics seem to have shown their zeal in a curious 

 way. The Ptoneer declares that a census enumerator in the 

 Central Provinces put down in his book a certain old tomb as a 

 "house with one inhabitant." The phrase "to be numbered 

 with the dead " will henceforward bear a new and vital meaning; 

 and death will be robbed of his majority. Another anecdote 



states that when the census commissioner entered a certain com- 

 pound with the forces of enumeration in his train, an ayah who 

 had been taken account of by enumerator and supervisor both, 

 ran excitedly to her mistress and warned her that there would be 

 certainly some mistake in the hisab, for that the sirkar had 

 counted her twice already and was going to count her again ! 



In a note on the Russian and Siberian varieties of the 

 Gaunnanis pulex [Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Society of 

 Naturalists, vol. xi. fasc. i) M. Semenovsky shows -that the 

 representatives of this species in Lake Baikal and in Lake 

 Gokcha of High Armenia, 6400 feet above the sea-level, 

 are quite identical, and most akin to the Norwegian typical 

 representative of this species, described by Prof. Sars. On the 

 contrary, the C. pulex, which inhabits the lakes of the Taimyr 

 tundras of Northern Siberia, that of the Baraba Steppe in 

 Western Siberia and of the Ural region, belongs to another 

 variety. A second variety, very different from the two pre- 

 ceding, was discovered in two salt lakes of the Government 

 of Orenburg, notwithstanding the close proximity of one of 

 these lakes to those of the Ural region. A third variety inhabits 

 the northern lakes of European Russia and those of the Valdai 

 Hills, whilst a fourth variety, being most like to that w hich is 

 known from the lakes of Savoy, was discovered in the lakes 

 near St. Petersburg. 



It is known that the young horns of the Cennis maral 

 (Severtzoff), when they are filled with blood and not yet ossified, 

 are very much prized by the Chinese, who purchase them at the 

 Siberian frontier, paying as much as six to twenty pounds the 

 pair. A very active chase of the maral has therefore always 

 been carried on in Siberia, and since it became rather rare, the 

 Cossacks in the neighbourhood of Kiakhta have domesticated 

 this stag. Now we learn from a communication by M. Polakoft 

 that its domestication has greatly extended in Western Siberia, 

 so that there are herds of seventy head ; but the horns of the 

 domesticated deer, as might be expected, have lost a good many 

 of their original qualities. 



In a recently-discovered stalactite cave at Kirchberg, near 

 Kremsmiinster (Austria), a jaw-bone of a man with well-preserved 

 teeth was found among numerous remains of Unus sfeleeus. 



It is reported from Stuttgart (Wirtemberg) that bones of 

 mammoth and rhinoceros have been brought to light by digging 

 in a cellar on loamy ground. Dr. Fraas has recognised, besides 

 tusks (60 cm. and 200 cm. long), two pieces of a jaw-bone 

 belonging to a mammoth, and parts of mandibles, scapula, and 

 maxilla of a rhinoceros. 



The Mineralogical Museum at Breslau University has received 

 a large number of bones belonging to the woolly-haired Rhino- 

 ceros (-Rhinoceros tiihorhinus). They were found near Skarsine 

 in Silesia. The teomplete^- skeleton was found in a marl-pit at 

 a depth of sixteen feet. Unfortunately the skull and several 

 bones were broken through inattention on the part of the 

 workmen. This is the fifth skeleton of the kind found in 

 Silesia. 



On February 20 a slight shock of earthquake occurred at 

 Agram at 2h. 15m. a.m., and a more severe one at 6h. 15m. a.m., 

 accompanied by a subterranean noise. During the last week 

 wave-like motions were also felt. 



The Daily Nt-ivs Lisbon correspondent, telegraphing on 

 February 23, states that thirty-six successive shocks of earth- 

 quake have been experienced at St. Michael's in the Azores. 

 "The church and 200 houses fell in. Several people were 

 killed. A religious and penitential procession had taken place, 

 the Civil Governor at the head. A volcanic island has been 

 formed. At latest advices slight shocks continued. Many 

 people were in tents outside the town." 



