494 
which might be imitated by other Governments with advantage. 
It has distributed fifty copies of Prof. de Hollander’s ‘‘ Hand- 
leiding bij de Beoefening der Land- en Volkenkunde von Neder. 
Oost Indié” to its officials in all parts of its colonies, and has 
instructed them to compare their own observations with the 
statements in the work, and to report the result. 
THE German Goyernment has despatched a mission under 
Baron Pring to the Cheshire salt districts, charged with an 
investigation of the local industry, and especially of the pheno- 
menon of land subsidence through brine pumping, Prince Bismarck 
being about to propose certain legislation affecting similar land- 
slips in Germany. 
WITH reference to Mr. G. J. Symons’s letter last week on the 
subject of the trees in Richmond Park struck by lightning, Mr. 
Percy Smith writes to the Zimes that ‘‘ the most probable cause 
of the liability of certain trees to be struck by lightning is that 
they are bad conductors of electricity. The suggestion that oak 
trees are struck because they contain iron is both erroneous and 
absurd. If oak did contain iron it would in all probability 
increase its conducting power and act as a preservative. If oak 
contained an estimable quantity of that metal the wood would 
turn black on exposure to air, on account of the tannin which is 
present. This blackening may be seen surrounding the iron 
nails in any oak fence. The contour of the ground, nature of 
the soil, and the presence or absence of water has more influence 
in deciding the locality of an electric discharge than the height 
ofatree. Add to this the difference in conductibility between 
various woods and we have at once an explanation of the 
apparent peculiarity of tall trees escaping unharmed while shorter 
trees are destroyed.” 
ONE of the proofs commonly advanced for the theory that the 
cold in northern regions has increased in historic times is that 
there is an increase of ice on the eastern shores of Greenland ; 
another is that barley, which was successfully grown in Iceland 
from its first settlement in 870 down to the middle of the 
fifteenth century, is no longer cultivated there. It is, there- 
fore, of much interest to learn from Gloéu; that the Icelandic 
Government lately attempted to grow barley in the island ona 
considerable scale, and that the results were very favourable. 
Norwegian barley from Altenfjord, which is on the extreme 
north of the barley-growing zone, was planted and was fit for 
cutting down in eighty-nine days. The decline in the cultivation 
of barley in Iceland was really due, not to an increase in the 
cold, but to the fact that cattle-breeding paid better. Attempts 
are being made to grow other plants: at Reikjavik a botanical 
garden has been established, and the seeds of 382 kinds of 
plants which oceur around Christiania have been planted there, 
It is probable, therefore, that the scanty garden flora of Iceland 
will be increased in the near future. 
AT the recent meeting of the French Association at Grenoble, 
M. de Mortillet read a paper on Tertiary “man before the 
anthropological section. The question, he said, was not to 
know whether man already existed in the Tertiary epoch as he 
exists at the present day. Animals varied from one geological 
stratum to another, and the higher the animals the greater was 
the variation. It was to be inferred, therefore, that man would 
vary more rapidly than the other mammals. The problem}was 
to discover in the Tertiary period an ancestral form of man, a 
predecessor of the man of historical times. M. de Mortillet 
affirmed that there were unquestionably in the Tertiary strata 
objects which implied the existence of an intelligent being. 
These objects have, in fact, been found at two different stages 
of the Tertiary epoch—in the lower Tertiary at Thenay, and in 
the Upper Tertiary at Otta, in Portugal, and at Puy Courny, in 
Cantal. These objects proved that at these two distant epochs 
NATURE 
e 
| Sepz. 17, 1885 
there existed in Europe animals acquainted with the use of fires 
and able more or less to cut stone. During the Tertiary period, 
then, there lived animals less intelligent than existing man, but 
much more intelligent than existingapes. M. de Mortillet gives 
the name of axthropithegu?, or ape-man, to the species, which, 
he maintains, was an ancestral form of historic man, whose 
skeleton has not yet been discovered, but who has made himself 
known to us in the clearest manner by his works. A number of 
flints were exhibited from the strata in question, which had been 
intentionally chipped and exposed to fire. The general opinion 
of the savants assembled at Grenoble was that there can be no 
longer any doubt of the existence in the Tertiary period of an 
ancestral form of man. 
AN ingenious instrument for ascertaining the distances of 
accessible and inaccessible points from the observer and from 
each other has been invented by Dr. Luigi Cerebotani, a Pro- 
fessor of the University of Verona. This apparatus consists 
mainly of a pair of telescopes mounted on a stand and fixed on 
a tripod for use. The telescopes are both brought to bear on — 
the object, and a reading is then taken from a graduated scale 
on the instrument, which, compared with a set of printed tables, 
gives the distance. By this means the inventor obviates the 
necessity for the base line, which has hitherto had to be laid 
down in these operations, and he dispenses with all trigono- 
metrical calculations. Distances can be measured between far- 
off objects, and, by means of a sheet of paper fixed on a drawing- 
board, a rough plan of the country under measurement can be 
sketched. In the same way the distances of ships at sea or of | 
moving objects on land can be determined. The apparatus 
appears to be well adapted for land-surveying, and particularly — 
for military purposes. In fact, it is stated to have been already — 
adopted in the German army in the latter connection, and it is — 
about to be tried by the authorities of our own War Depart- 
ment. A practical trial was made with this instrument on the 
Thames Embankment on the 11th inst., when its varied useful- 
hess was demonstrated. 
WE have received from the Director of the Batavia Observa- 
tory a volume containing statistics of the rainfall in the East 
Indian Archipelago for the year 1884. Rainfall observations 
were made during the year at 145 stations without interruption, 
although at the end of the year there were 172 stations, 94 of 
which were on the islands of Java and Madura. 
Ir is stated that the Physical and Mathematical Society of 
Tokio has decided in future to print its official proceedings 
in Japanese written in Roman letters instead of Chinese cha- 
racters, although the authors of papers may employ any style or 
language they please. A similar step is in contemplation by the 
Japanese Chemical Society. 
In a note in a late issue of the Bulletin of the United 
States Fish Commission, Prof. Verrill discusses the ques- 
tion how long oysters will live out of water. In a fish- 
monger’s in New Haven his attention was drawn to a large 
cluster of oysters attached to an old boot which hung in 
the window from about December 10 to February 25, when 
he found several of the larger oysters still alive. Most of the 
smaller and many of the larger ones were dead and dried up ; in 
the case of the latter the edges of the shells had been broken or 
chipped. Those that were alive had all been hung up with the 
front edge of the shell downward and the hinge upward, They 
had been hanging in the show window, attached to a gas burner, 
freely exposed to.the air and light. The place was doubtles: 
cool, but the air must have been dry, and temperature variable. 
The remarkable duration of the lives of these oysters he attributes 
to two causes : first, the perfect condition of the edges of the shells, 
which allowed them to close up very tightly ;_ secondly, th 
