May 14, 1874] 



NA TURE 



35 



carpus pinnahis Lem., belonging to the Rutacea;. It is stated 

 that this drug has been used with great success in France, and 

 that it is looked upon " as an incomparable diaphoretic and 

 sialogogue. " Dr. Gubler'expresses himself in the belief that it 

 "will be the first indisputable example of a diaphoretic truly 

 worthy of the name ; that is to say, a medicine having the 

 power of ]irovoking directly by an electric action the secretion of 

 perspiration." 



In the same manner as the lichen dves have been superseded 

 by those derived from coal tar, so the demand for madder roots 

 seems to be rapidly falling off, owing to the discovery of 

 alazarine. In a report on the trade of lieyrout, it is stated that 

 heavy losses have been incurred in the article, owing to iis great 

 fall in value in the EngHsh markets from the cause above stated; 

 indeed it is said that so far as England is concerned, the 

 trade in this article with Beyrout has almost, if not quite, 

 ceased. Its cultivation, however, in this neighbourhood, has 

 never been on a very extensive scale, being confined to a few 

 outlying districts; it is, moreover, very exhaustive to the soil. 

 Nevertlieless, in the early part of the year 1872, 2,300 cwt. of 

 the value of 5,728/. were shipped from Beyrout to English 

 ports. 



We have just received tlie publications of the " Bataviaasch 

 genootschap van Kunsten en Watenschappen " for 1873. In 

 the " Tijdschrift " is a short paper on Rotti, by Mr. Jackstein, 

 a missionary in the island, followed by another paper by him on 

 the Rotti words in use by the Malay-speaking people in the district 

 of Koepang. Several papers are devoted to the accounts of the 

 suppression of piracy, which has so long been a characteristic oi 

 the Malay race. Dr. Adolf Meijer has also communicated a 

 paper On the Language spoken in Mendanoa, Solog, &c. 



Prof. William M. Gaeb, of Philadelphia, who is atpresen' 

 engaged in an exhaustive geological exploration of Costa Rica, 

 has lately made a very important discovery in reference to the 

 sedimentary rock on the Atlantic slope of Costa Rica, namely, 

 that even such portions as are auriteroui are not earlier than the 

 Tertiary. Indeed, in Prof. Gabb's opinion, they are of Miocene 

 age, wbicli is, of course, strongly in contradiction of llie hypo- 

 thesis of Sir Roderick Murcliison, that gold is of Sdurian 

 origin. 



Tinc last part of the Transactions issued by the Geological 

 Society of Manchester contains a paper by Mr. S. Aitken, On the 

 Discovery of the new Fish of the Genus Acrolepis Ag. in the 

 millstone grit near Habden Bridge, Yorkshire. There is also a 

 paper On the Economic A'alue of Heat Fuels, by Mr. Plant. 



A cuKious phenomenon happened at Belfast recently while 

 some men were sinking a well. A light having been let fall, a 

 flash overspread the bottom of the well ; and a pipe about 60 ft. 

 long having been conveyed from the bottom of the well to the 

 second storey of a building, the gas was ignited, and 

 continued burning all day. The strata passed through 

 in digging the well were esturine, clay, gravel, boulder 

 clay, and New Red sandstone. The gas has been proved 

 to be marsh gas (carburetted hydrogen) probably generated 

 in the decomposed vegetable matter, which abounds in the 

 lower stratum of the esturine clay, in which were also vast 

 numbers of fossil shells. 



One of the most elaborate mineralogical papers that has 



appeared for some time in the United .States, with the exception 



of Dr. Genih's on corundum, is that by Prof. Josiah P. Cooke, 



jun., upon the vermiculite.«, and their crystallographic and 



1 chemical relations to the micas, together with a consideration of 



I the variation of the optical angle in these minerals. This 



I appears in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts 



and Sciences, and is to be considered as a very valuable contri- 

 bution to the science of mineralogy. 



We have received a very interesting map of Victoria showing 

 the distribution of forest trees in that colony by an ingenious 

 an-angement of different colours. It is compiled by Mr. Arthur 

 Everett from the Record Maps in the Office of the Surveyor- 

 General, under the direction of Mr. R. Brough Smith. The 

 map is accompanied by notes on the various trees by Dr. F. von 

 Mueller, Government Botanist. 



A Madeir,\ correspondent writes us concerning the danoage 

 caused to objects of natural history from cedar-wood cases. A 

 naturalist in Madeira, to do his collection of the remarkable land 

 shells of the island more honour, had made for them a case of 

 this wood. Unobserved for a month, the shells were found 

 drenched with the turpentiny resin exhaling from the wood. 

 Shells covered with a rough epidermis seemed to have at- 

 tracted the oil less. Craspt-dopoina, and the smooth fresh-water 

 shells had specially suffered ; semi-fossils full of sand had 

 escaped ; all others, whether recent or semi-fossil, had sufi'ered 

 to such an extent that the cardboard to which they were attached 

 was in many cases soaked. This occurred, however, only when 

 the affixed shells offered the needful point of attraction and con- 

 densation. 



We have received an appendix to the Annual Report for 

 1873 upon the Survey of the (U. S. ) Northern and North-western 

 Lakes in charge of Major C. B. Comstock. Notwithstanding 

 much unfavourable weather, a great deal of work has been done. 

 It was expected that a continuous chain of triangulation, reach- 

 ing from St. Ignace Island, on the north shore of Lake Superior 

 to the southern end of Lake Michigan, a distance of 500 miles, 

 would be completed during 1S73. It has been measured with 

 sufficient precision to give an arc of the meridian 7° in length. 

 This is the longest arc measured on the American continent, and 

 it is hoped to extend it further south. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 last week include a Capybara {Hyi-ochxrus capybara] and a Coypu 

 [Myopotanuts coypiis) from S. America, presented by Dr. H. 

 Young; a Garnett's Galago (Galago ^ariu-t/i) from E. Africa, 

 presented by Mr. R. H. Cusack ; an African Civet Cat ( Vivcira 

 civdla) from the Gold Coast, presented by Mr. W. B. Ramsay ; 

 a Grey Ichneumon {Hctpalcs gihais) from India, presented by 

 Mr. H. Plumphry ; a Sun Bittern {Eurypy^a Itelias) and seven 

 Upland Geese {Chloiphaga inagcUnuica] hatched in the gardens ; 

 a Black Saki (Piihecia sataaas) and a Red-backed Saki (P. chi- 

 fopolcs) from S. America, deposited ; a Blue-faced Green 

 Amazon (C/uysolis Iwitqtieii) from Flor.duras, purchased. Of 

 this last-named bird Dr. Finsch, in his monograph on the 

 parrots, remarks that he has never been able to find a skin in 

 any of the many museums to which he has had access. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 

 The Journal of the Chemical Socidy for(March contains the fol- 

 lowing papers read before the Society : — On the preparation of 

 standard trial plates to be used in verifying the composition of 

 coinage, by W. Chandler Roberts, chemist of the Mint. The 

 author had been instructed by the Lords of the Treasury to pre- 

 pare new plates of gold and silver for comparing annually with 

 the coinage being issued, in order to guarantee the fineness of the 

 latter. The gold plate consists of an alloy of copper and gold 

 ranging in composition in its different parts from 9i6'5to 916 7 

 parts ol fine gold in 1,000 (ihe standard is 9l6'66). This plate 

 did not present much difficulty in its preparation, since the two 

 metals were obtained in a state of perfectly homogeneous mix- 

 ture after repeated meltings. The silver plate presented much 

 greater difficulty owing to tlie tendency of the silver to concen- 

 trate itself in the centre of the ma^s. The difficulty was over- 

 come by casting the alloy into a plate, which was then planed 

 down on both surfaces and afterwards greatly extended by roll- 



