Jan. 22, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



231 



Society of Italy has received from Alexandria, with the news 

 of the death of the explorer Miani, and various ethnological 

 objects, two living indi\-iduals whom he had forwarded of the 

 tribes of the Akka or Tikku-Tikki, and whom the learned 

 traveller had bought of the King Munza. These individuals — of 

 whom one is eighteen years old, and forty inches in height, and 

 the other sixteen and thirty-one inches high— are stated by 

 Miani to belong to the race of dwarfs described by Herodotus, 

 and recently re-discovered by the German explorer Schweinfurth, 

 who described them carefully. They are pot-bellied, very thin- 

 limbed, and knock-kneed, spherical and prognathous crania, 

 vei-y long limbs, copper skins, and crisp, tow-like hair. 



" Extra No. 14 " (Scientific Series) of the Neiu York Tri- 

 bune is devoted to accounts of three scientific expeditions. The 

 first the Hayden Expedition of 1873, an account of which is 

 given in a letter from Prof. W. D. Whitney, and in a review by 

 Dr. F. V. Hayden ; of the progi'ess of this expedition we liave 

 at various times given news. A " New Route to Yellowstone 

 Park " is described in the account of Captain Jones's Expedition 

 of 1873. The third expedition is that of the late Professor 

 Agassiz to Brazil, the Tril'tine reproducing the six lectures 

 ielivered by Agassiz after his return^in February 1S67. 



We have received in a separate form two papers communi- 

 cated to the French Academy by M. A. Poey — one on the 

 " Connection between Solar Spots .ind the Hurricanes of the 

 Antilles, of the North Atlantic and the Southern Indian Ocean," 

 and the other on the " Connection between the Solar Spots, the 

 Storms at Paris and Fecamp, the Tempests and Sudden Storms 

 in the North Atlantic." 



We have received from Quebec the " Transactions of the 

 Literary and Historical Society " of that city, for session 1872-3, 

 the longest paper in which is an interesting diary of " A Whaling 

 Voyage to Spitzbergen in 1818," kept by Dr. James Douglas. 

 Another paper, by Dr. H. H. Mills, contains some observations 

 on Canadian Chorography and Topography, and on the meri- 

 torious services of Jean Baptiste Duberger, sen., who died in 

 1821, and who seems to have been an excellent surveyor and 

 map-maker. The Society appears to have been in existence for 

 many years, is in a flourishing condition as to members and 

 income, and possesses a good Natural History Museum. We are 

 glad to see that the Society's programme includes scientific as 

 well as literary and historical subjects. 



The Bulletin of the French Geographical Society, for De- 

 cember, contains an account of a voyage made last autumn by 

 M. A. Pinart along the south coast of the Aleutian Isles and 

 the Peninsula of Alaska, illustrated by a good map ; the con- 

 tinuation of M. J. Halevy's Journey to Nedjrin ; and a very 

 long paper by M. Dournaux-Dupere, on the part which France 

 ought to play in Northern Africa, advocating the complete 

 subjection of the Sahara by France. 



"On the Geology of Western Wyoming, " is a paper by Mr. 

 T. B. Comstock, reprinted from the American Journal of 

 Science and Arts, 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include two Cinereous Sie3.'E3.g\es[HaHai:'tiis alliicilla), 

 European, presented by Sir Victor Brooke, Bart. ; a pair of 

 Pmk-headed Ducks {Anas caryothyllaita) from India, new to the 

 collection; a Nicobar Pigeon {Calccnas nicobarica), from thg 

 Indian Archipelago ; a Cheetah {Felis jiibata) from Africa ; a 

 White-lipped Peccary {Dicotyles labiatus), from South America ; 

 a Sooty Mangabey (Ccrcocebus fuliginosus), from West Africa ; 

 a Verreux's Guinea fowl (Niiinida cristata), Irom East Africa ; a 

 Masked Weaver Bird {Hyphantornis personata), from West 

 Africa ; and four Grenadier Weaver Birds (Euplectes oryx), from 

 Abyssinia, purchased, or received in exchange, 



NEW REMARKS ON THE NATURE OF THE 

 CHEMICAL ELEMENTS, BY M.BERTHELOT* 

 "T^HERE will be no necessity for me to remind the Academy 

 of the gieat importance of the question raised at the last 

 meeting. Between our illustrious master, M. Dumas, and the 

 author of these lines, there should not be any difference of opinion 

 neither on the principles of a science which he himself has taught 

 us, nor as to the originality of his ideas with regard to the chemi- 

 cal element?, theii- relation to each other or to the organic radicles. 



It is therefore more for the purpose of avoiding the reproach 

 of an incomplete knowledge of the science than for further in- 

 sisting on what I have before advanced, that I ask his permission to 

 quote in thisplace, p. 280 of his " Le9ons de Philosophie Chimique" 

 a passage in which he has approached my own remarks : — 



" Before commencing with any confidence to build a system 

 upon this foundation," says M. Dumas, " it is necessary that a 

 great number of exact experiments should increase our knowledge 

 of it. It will therefore be of the greatest importance to study 

 compounds in relation to their capacities for heat, for it cannot 

 be supposed that the relation of the specific heat to the weight 

 of the atom holds only for elementary bodies ; it is also 

 found in compounds of the same order. It would therefore be 

 wrong to seek in this dii'ection lor a proof of the truth of the 

 ideas which we have imagined of the bodies which appear to us 

 to be elements, and we ought to say that the capacity of their 

 chemical atoms tends towards equality because they are bodies 

 of the same order, without their elementary nature necessarily 

 following from it." 



In support of these opinions M. Dumas cites the then recent 

 experiments of Naumann on the specific heats of the carbonates 

 of barium, strontium, calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium, which, 

 multiplied by their corresponding atomic weights, give a constant 

 product of 131 ; while the sulphates of baiium, strontium, cal- 

 cium, and lead give the product 155. M. Dumas adds with 

 reason — " For the otlier compounds we are in want of data 

 sufficiently precise to enable us to make similar comparisons. " 



It will be seen then that in 1836 the point in question is no 

 longer the relation between the specific heats of compounds 

 and that of their elements, but entirely between compounds of 

 the same order, d fortiori the possibility of distinguishing ele- 

 ments from compound bodies in general by means of specific 

 heats was expressly discarded. 



Although the specific heats of compound bodies were for- 

 merly but little known, the gap was being filled for many series 

 by the researches of M. Regnault. But Regnault, like Naumann, 

 confined himself to the determination of the specific heats of 

 compounds the constitution of which was similar, without seek- 

 ing to establish any more remote relation. 



Wcestyn in 184S was, I believe, the first to announce the ap- 

 proximate relation between the specific atomic heat of a com- 

 pound and those of its elements, and the partial relations 

 discovered by Naumann and Regnault then became a conse- 

 quence of this more general law. 



In applying it in my turn to the org.inic radicles and especially 

 to the carbides of hydrogen, I have been led to put in evidence 

 the difference which distinguishes their specific heats from those 

 of the elements, whether taken individually or together, as mem- 

 bers of a group of bodies of the same order. The carbides of the 

 ethylene series are bodies of the same order, and present quite as 

 many analogies amongst themselves as simple radicles such as 

 calcium, barium, strontium, iron, zinc, and magnesium do, and 

 the same may be said of tlie combination formed by these radi- 

 cles. I repeat, therefore, that as the specific atomic heats of 

 the simple radicles have the same value, and this value being 

 known and considered in connection with their atomic weights, 

 the simplicity of their composition results of necessity therefrom 

 almost always, as I have already established in my preceding 

 note. At tlie same time the specific atomic heats of the com- 



* Translated from the Cowptes Kcfidiis of December 15, 1873. At the 

 preceding meeting M Bcrthelot read a note on. the same subject, in 

 which he gave a more detailed description of the observed differences be- 

 tween the speciiic at jmic heals of elements and compounds. The principal 

 points were, that whilst the specific atomic heats of elemenu whose atomic 

 weights are multiples of the same number, such as the S, Se, Te group, are 

 identical, the specific atomic heats of compounds whose atomic weights are 

 multiples of some common number, as in the group of polymerised hydro- 

 carbons, ethylene, amylene, caprylene, &c., are multiples of each other, 

 being proportional to their atomic weights. He concludes : " This ditference 

 is important, inasmuch as the notiin of specific heat is a representation of 

 the general molecularwork by which bodies are maintained in an equilibrium 

 of temperature with each other andt would also indicate'that the decomposi- 

 tion of our elements, if possible, ought to be accompanied by phenomena of 

 another kind than those which determine the decomposition of our com- 

 pounds." 



