16 
NATURE 
[May 7, 1885 
sacred book of the Chinese, the ‘‘ Chou-king,” which was col- 
lected in the sixth century before our era by Confucius from the 
remnants of still earlier works, refers to a tribe south of the 
Chinese frontier as the Giao-chi, which means ‘‘ toes spread out,” 
or ‘‘far apart,” a term which points toa wide separation between 
the great toe and the others. This curious distinctive racial 
mark exists to-day, notwithstanding the lapse of time and the 
social revolutions of twenty-five or thir'y centuries amongst the 
Annamites. We might therefore adopt the native distinctions 
as stated by Abbé Launay ew é/oc, and call the whole region 
Annam, with sub-divisions Tonquin and Cochin-China; or, 
making a sacrifice of strict accuracy to long habit, we mighl call 
the whole Cochin-China, with sub-divisions Tonquin and 
Annam. But it is probably as hopeless at present to expect 
strict uniformity in these names as it is to expect it in the 
orthography of Tonquin, although uniformity even in doing 
wrong would be better here than the present confusion. 
AT the meeting of the Dutch Geographical Society on April 
18, Mr. Robidée Van der Aa delivered a lecture on ‘‘ Papuans 
and Melanesians, and their Relation to the Malay-Polynesian 
Race.” Succinctly stated, the opinions expressed in the lecture 
were these :—The opinion once prevailed that the Papuans were 
the autocthones of the Malayan Archipelago, but that they were 
conquered by the Malays. There is, however, no support for 
this supposition, since in the interior of none of the Sunda 
Islands has a tribe been found bearing any resemblance to the 
Papuans. Since the researches and discoveries of Miklucho- 
Maclay we may not consider their hair or their dark skin as a 
decisive distinction with regard to other tribes. Moreover, it is 
now stated that their language is related to the Malayan tongue ; 
there are still many customs and usages found amongst them 
similar to those met with among Malays. From all this Mr. 
Van der Aa concludes that the Papuans are one of five families, 
all of which have descended from one “insular race,” and were 
separated from each other at an early date. 
THOUGH nothing was said at the Dutch Geographical Society 
on April 18 about the expedition undertaken to the West Indies 
by Prof. Martin and Prof. Suringar, we now learn that tirey left 
Curacoa in March. The former, accompanied by Mr. Van de 
Poel, arrived at Paramaribo and intended to make an excursion 
to the ‘‘ Boven Suriname” on March 30; the latter intends to 
go to Venezuela, and after that to some of the Windward Islands, 
viz. St. Martin’s, St. Eustathius, and Saba. 
WE take from the Annual Report of the Russian Geographical 
Society the following figures giving the average temperatures for 
twenty-two months at the Sagastyr Polar Station at the mouth 
ofthe Lena. The following figures are on the Centigrade scale, 
and the first of them gives the average of the corresponding 
month for the year 1882-1883, while the second is the average 
of the same month for the year 1883-1884 :—September, o°'1 
and 0°°6 ; October, —15°*1 and 14°"1 ; November, — 27°-9 and 
—25°'7; December, — 33°°5 and — 33°°3 ; January, — 37°°2 and 
— 35°83; February, — 41°°3 and —34°°0; March, —31°"5 and 
—35 2; April, 20°°7 and —21°°8; May, —8°1 and —9°7; 
June, o°*9 and —o0°'2; July, 5°-1; August, 3°°8. Average of 
the first year. —17°'1 ; of the second (incomplete), — 16°°7.. As 
seen, both years are closely similar ; the exceedingly low tem- 
peratures of February, 1883, are most remarkable, the average 
of the month being only —41°°3, and the lowest temperature 
observed having been —52°°3 for the first year and —48°'o 
during the second. ‘The auroras were also less frequent, and the 
magnetic perturbances feebler. The number of hours. during 
which auroras were observed is seen from the following figures :— 
September, 13 hours in 1882-1883, and 23 hours in 1883-1884 ; 
October, 87 and 69; November, 179 and 83; December, 191 
and 178; January, 194 and 151; February, 197 and 126; 
March, 137 and 118 ; April, ro and 8; none in May to August. 
Total for the first year, 1008 ; for the second, 756. 
Ir results from the same report that the delta of the Lena 
extends, by nearly one-half a degree, further north than on our 
best maps. The northern cape of the Danube (Dounay) Island 
is under 73° 55’ north latitude. This determination does not 
correspond with the Vega map, where Sagastyr, being under 
73. 21, the northern extremity of the island is under 73° 27’, 
and the course of the Vega in this longitude is under 74° 8’. At 
any rate, M. Yurgens has been compelled to go for twenty miles | 
north of Sagastyr before reaching the extremity of the Dounay 
Island. 
SOME EXPERIMENTS ON THE VISCOSITY 
OF TCE 
HAT ice will change its form under the influence of pressure 
is exemplified at large in glaciers, and may be illustrated 
by experiments in the laboratory. How far this is due to a true 
viscosity, and how far to a rearrangement of the particles by 
melting and regelation, is a question the discussion of which 
among physicists has been of long continuance, though there 
there may now perhaps be some signs of permanent yielding 
under the influence of continuous pressure. 
In the first volume of NaTuRE (p. 534) Mr. Wm. Matthews 
describes experiments (1870) in which planks of ice, supported 
at each end, but free in the middle, become permanently bent. 
In the first of these experiments the plank was 6 inches wide, 
25 inches thick, and supported by bearers 6 feet apart. The 
temperature of the air was above the freezing-point of water. 
The plank bent rapidly, so that the total deflection was 7 inches 
in aboutas many hours. ‘* At its lowest point it appeared bent 
at asharp angle, and was rigid in its altered form.” Its lower 
surface showed minute fissures. In a second experiment a plank 
of somewhat similar dimensions (1§ inch thick, 6} to 63 inches 
wide, 6 feet between the supports) became permanently bent. 
The amount of deflection was 3 for the upper surface and 3§ 
for the lower surface. The time was 644 hours. The tem- 
perature ‘‘ never rose above the freezing-point ” ; but the fact that 
the thermometer registered 29°°5 F. one morning at 9°30 a.m., 
and 30° F. the next morning at the same time, would lead us 
to suppose that the midday temperature was not far from the 
freezing-point. Similar experiments were subsequently carried 
out (1871) by Prof. Tyndall, in Switzerland, and are mentioned 
in NATURE (vol. iv. p. 447). 
In Nature, vol. vi. p. 396, Mr. John Aitken describes 
experiments in which weighted shillings were caused to sink 
into blocks of ice. But when the block of ice was previously 
cooled to about 1° below the freezing-point, a shilling weighted 
with go Ibs. and left for three and a half hours, *‘ was found not 
to have entered in the slightest degree into the ice.” Sub- 
sequently, in 1873 (NATURE, vol. vii. p. 287), Mr. Aitken 
described experiments which showed that ice bends the more 
readily the more air-bubbles it contains. ‘* Temperature,” he 
says, ‘‘seemed to have some influence on the rate of bending of 
these beams, but this point was difficult to determine on account 
of the different beams bending at different rates at the same 
temperature ; but, so far as could be ascertained from the 
experiments, the beams bent slower the lower the temperature. 
The lowest temperature used in these experiments was rather 
more than 3° F. below freezing.” 
In 1875 Prof. Pfaff described in Poggendorff’s Annalen (civ. 
p- 169, reported in NaATuRE, vol. xii. p. 317) a carefully con- 
ducted experiment in which a paralellopiped of ice 52 cm. long, 
2°5 cm. wide, and 1°3 cm, thick, was supported in such a way 
that 5 mm. at each end rested on the bearers. This was left 
for seven days, from February 8 to February 15, the temperature 
varying between —12° and —3'5° C. The total bend was 
11°5 mm. ‘That is to say, to translate these measurements into 
inches for the sake of comparison with the other results, in a 
bar 20 inches in length between the supports, I inch in width, 
and 4 inch in thickness; the total bending was a little over 
“45 of aninch. When the temperature rose to slightly under 
o° C. the bending increased, and amounted to 9 mm. (*34 inches) 
in 24 hours. Other experiments are described by Prof. Pfaff in 
the same paper, and the general conclusion to which he is led is, 
“*that even the smallest pressure is sufficient to dislocate ice- 
particles if it act continuously, and if the temperature of the ice 
and its surroundings be near the melting point.” 
In the current volume of NATuRE (p. 329) there is a report 
of a paper recently read before the Royal Society by Mr. Coutts 
Trotter (to whom I am indebted for references on this subject) 
“On some physical properties of ice, &c.,” in which were 
described some experiments on the shearing of ice, carried out 
in a glacier grotto at a nearly uniform temperature of about 
o° C. In that report we learn that in the paper itself ‘‘reasons 
are given for supposing that the range of temperature through 
which ice is sensibly viscous is small.” ; : 
So far as I know no experiments on the viscosity of ice at 
very low temperatures have been recorded. It is the object of 
the present communication to describe some such experiments 
which I have recently conducted, through the kindness and 
courtesy of Messrs. J. S. Fry and Sons, of Bristol, in the snow 
chamber of the refrigerator, at their well-known Cocoa Works. 
