Nov. 20, 1879] 



NATURE 



57 



The ribs of a serpent, which extend nearly throughout its 

 whole length, are very much smaller near the neck and near the 

 tail. At both these parts exuviation is much slower than where 

 the larger ribs have play in the process. This rib action pro- 

 duced an auton atic movement of the snake on the door of its 

 box, and across the folds of its companion, which kept a. till as 

 if it were dead. This involuntary movement of the reptiles 

 body was almost imperceptible. All told, it might have been 

 through two feet of linear space. But the exuviated skin was 

 nearly six feet long. This movement seemed much greater than 

 it really was. It was emerging from a tubular case, which was 

 doubling upon itself for a ■while, the inner or unevolved part 

 shortening as it moved forward with the body ; the outer, or 

 evolved part lengthening as it moved backward from the body. 

 The cast-off skin is presented inside out, so that every scale is 

 now seen on its under or concave side, and this is also true of the 

 eye-scales. To all this there is one exception : the last scale of 

 the tail is a hollow pyramidal or four-sided spike. This, for 

 plain reasons, is not everted. When the shedding has reached 

 this rcale a sharp shake of the extremity is sufficient, and the 

 uneverted spike is left inside of its everted skin. The entire 

 process of exuviation, allowing five minutes for the part that I 

 did not witness, took thirty-five minutes. 



Let me add that in poor health a snake has a hard time in 

 getting off its old coat. I could detail an instance wherein the 

 process took three months. The old skin adhered stubbornly to 

 the new one, and was only removed by friction and by tearing 

 off mere bits at a time. ' Samuel Lockwood 



Freehold, New Jersey, U.S. 



The " Hexameter," nSaa hi<ns 0708?) . . . 



There is an obstacle in the way of regarding this passage 

 (James i. 17) as a hexameter quoted by the Apostle from soine 

 poet, as the late lamented Prof. Clerk Maxwell is reported in 

 Mr. Garnett's interesting notice of his life, work, and, not 

 least, his character, to have suggested. The final syllable of 

 M<r«s is short, as the accentuation of irpa£is and similar verbal 

 nouns proves. Arsis, as in " BeAor ix elrivK **>" *'• "• 5 r » can 

 hardly be pleaded. J. J. Walker 



University Hall, W.C., November 17 



THE SWEDISH NORTH-EAST PASSAGE 

 EXPEDITION^ 



DURING the wintering of the Vega large quantities of 

 the bones of the whale were found on the beach. 

 These at first were supposed to be the remains of whales 

 that had been killed by the natives or by American 

 whalers. On examination it was found that they must be 

 sub-fossil. This was confirmed by the natives, who stated 

 that no whale had driven on land in the memory of man. 

 The remains were found to belong to four or five different 

 species, of which Balcna myslicetus, or a nearly allied type, 

 was the most common. 



Prof. Nordenskjold investigated the formation of the 

 strata of frozen earth several hundred feet thick which 

 occur in Siberia as in Polar America. Along the coast of 

 Siberia there is a stratum of water resting on the bottom 

 of the sea which is several degrees below the freezing- 

 point, so that a flask of the comparatively fresh surface 

 water, when sunk into this stratum, begins to freeze. 

 Stuxberg observed that the trawl-net often froze fast to 

 the bottom. This was accounted for by the ireezing of 

 the fresh water which the net carried down with it from 

 the surface. Nordenskjold thinks that the mud carried 

 down by the rivers into the sea as it sinks to the bottom 

 carries with it fresh water adhering to the minute particles, 

 and that this fresh water, like that carried down by the 

 net, freezes at the bottom, forming thus a frozen stratum, 

 which increases year by year until it reaches an enormous 

 thickness. He is of opinion that a portion of the earthy 

 la\ ers of Siberia was formed in this way, although, he 

 adds, he by no means considers this the only way in which 

 such formations arose. 



Along the whole coast, from the White Sea to Behring's 



* Continued from p. 40. 



Straits, no glacier was seen. During autumn the Siberian 

 coast is nearly free of ice and snow. There are no moun- 

 tains covered all the year round with snow, although 

 some of them rise to a height of more than 2,000 feet. 

 With one exception there were no rocks along the coast 

 precipitous enough to be suitable breeding-places for sea- 

 fowl, but a large number of these birds were seen during 

 spring Hying farther to the north. 



During the voyage of the Vega from her winter quarters 

 through Behring's Straits and farther south, Nordenskjold 

 searched for a tribe called Onkilon, said to be allied to 

 the Eskimo, but without success. He found only rein- 

 deer-owning Tchuktches, and supposes that the name 

 Onkilon, given by W'rangel to the old tribe inhabiting 

 the coast and driven out by the Tchuktches, is probably 

 related to the name Ankali, given by the reindeer-owning 

 Tchuktches to the coast Tchuktches. Nordenskjold 

 states that English authors who refer Eskimo and 

 Tchuktches to the same origin are mistaken. It was 

 found that the inhabitants on the American side are 

 pure Eskimo, with whom it was possible to carry on 

 barter by means of the list of Eskimo words published 

 in "Arctic Geography and Ethnology," London, 1875 ; 

 but that the language spoken by the Tchuktches, of which 

 Lieut. Nordquist collected about 1,000 words, is quite 

 different, and probably allied to that of the Iranian races. 

 On the other hand there is a complete correspondence 

 between the household furniture of the Tchuktches and 

 the Eskimo. It may be safely affirmed, he says, that 

 these two neighbouring races have a greater number of 

 identical articles in their tents than of common words in 

 their languages. 



The hills at Cape York on the American side were 

 found to consist of crystalline schists without organic 

 remains. Among the natives, who were Eskimo, there 

 was a Tchuktch woman who said that Tchuktch tribes 

 were settled on the American side between Point Barrow 

 and Cape Prince of Wales. The Eskimo used, along 

 with breechloaders, revolvers, and axes obtained from the 

 Americans, bows and arrows, bone boat-hooks, and 

 various stone implements. They were friendly and 

 agreeable, and less given to brandy than the Tchuktches. 

 There did not appear to be any chief among them. Com- 

 plete equality prevailed, and the standing of the women 

 did not appear to be inferior to that of the other sex. 

 Among the stone implements were found arrow-heads 

 and other articles of a species of nephrite so closely re- 

 sembling the well-known nephrite from High Asia, that 

 these implements were supposed to have actually come 

 from that region. 



A warm current, as in Europe, was found to flow along 

 the north-western coast, and to create there a far milder 

 climate than that which prevails on the Asiatic side. 

 The limit of trees therefore lies a good way to the north of 

 Behring's Straits, while the whole of the Tchuktch Penin- 

 sula appe rs to be devoid of trees. This is the case also 

 with the land along the coast at Port Clarence, but a 

 short distance inland there were bushes two feet high. 

 Vegetation was generally luxuriant, and a great number 

 of Species were "identical with, or nearly allied to, those 

 of the Scandinavian north, among others the Linnea. 

 Notwithstanding the luxuriance of the vegetation, the 

 land invertebrates were much poorer in species than in the 

 north of Norway. Thus only from ten to twenty kinds of 

 beetles could be found, principally Harpali and Staphy- 

 lini, and of land and fresh-water mollusca only seven or 

 eight species. The avifauna was also rather scanty, and 

 the dredgings in the harbour at Port Clarence, on account 

 of the unfavourable nature of the bottom, yielded only a 

 small number of animal and vegetable species. _ 



The Vega, crossing to the Asiatic side, anchored in 

 Konyam Bay on July 28. On the north shore of this Bay 

 Dr. Kjellman added seventy species of flowering plants to 

 the collection he had previously made. Here, too, were 



