March 1 8, 1880] 



NATURE 



469 



Tangaroeng and Moara Karaan, Herr Bock has found 

 traces of a former Hindoo race, and a Dyak had lately 

 dug up a beautifully formed bronze Hindoo goddess. 

 From this point Herr Bock diverged from the Mahakkan, 

 in order to visit the lake district and observe the Dyak 

 inhabitants. He has made a number of sketches of these 

 savages, many of whom are cannibals. The most dreaded 

 tribe are the Tring Dyaks, whose chief, by name Sibau 

 Mobang, Herr Bock summoned to meet him in the name 

 of the Sultan. This man is most villanous in looks, and 

 told our traveller that he frequently cut off the heads of 

 either sex for the sake of eating the brain, which was 

 sweet, as were also the palms of the hands, but the 

 shoulder was bitter ; and he presented him with his shield, 

 covered all over with tufts of human hair. At the last village 

 in the Malay part ofhisdominions,MoaraPahou,the Sultan 

 summoned a large number of the Dyaks to accompany him 

 and accumulated a body of some 600 in all, of whom 75 

 accompanied Herr Bock one or two days' journey in 

 advance. The Dyak tribes are constantly at war with 

 each other in order to obtain heads, and the Malays look 

 down on them as savages, and by this means the terror 

 of their name is increased. The upper part of the Moara 

 Pahou branch of the Mahakkan is broken by rapids, 

 over which the praus had to be dragged by rattang ropes. 

 The last village on this river, Moara Anar, was reached 

 on December 20, and then the march through the forest 

 over the water-shed commenced. One of the advanced 

 party was here killed, but no further loss was sustained. 

 A Dyak road has been made through the forest with 

 narrow bamboo bridges over the numerous small streams; 

 these, however, were at the time mostly under water, 

 owing to the recent floods. The journey on foot occu- 

 pied four days of twelve hours, during two of which Heir 

 Bock had to feed on the wild fruits, his provisions having 

 been left behind. Perfect silence here reigns, broken 

 only by the occasional note of a bird, though none are to 

 be seen. No attempt at molestation appears to have 

 been made by the more savage tribes of the Dyaks, 

 although at one village the chief pressed his visitors to 

 partake of rice and fruit, which they had been forewarned 

 was poisoned, and therefore declined. The end of this 

 march brought our traveller to the river Benangau, a 

 tributary of the Tewe", down which he passed till he 

 arrived on Dutch territory, where the Dyaks are alto- 

 gether comparatively civilised, and very different to those 

 of Koetei. 



Very little that is new in zoology appears to have been 

 obtained in this journey, which lay across a rather barren 

 district ; but Herr Bock has had splendid opportunities 

 for making ethnological observations and these have been 

 turned to good account. Many attempts were made to 

 find the family which were said to have tails — but though 

 several Dyaks were spoken to who had seen them, their 

 ■whereabouts was not discovered. 



The journey was undertaken at the desire of the Dutch 

 government, who will doubtless take care that its successful 

 accomplishment is duly honoured. 



THE A UD1PHOXE 



THE instrument which is now being introduced into 

 this country under the name of the audiphone, is the 

 invention of Mr. R. G. Rhodes of Chicago. It is in- 

 tended, as its name attempts to indicate, to provide the 

 deaf with the means of he.tring, and is for some persons 

 undoubtedly a more efficient aid than the hearing-trumpet. 

 The figures appended show the original form of the in- 

 strument, and the modification of it suggested by Prof. 

 Colladon of Geneva. The American audiphone consists 

 of a thin clastic plate or sheet of hard ebonite rubber, 

 furnished with a handle, and about the size and shape 

 of an ordinary palm-leaf fan. The strings attached to 

 the upper edge serve to bend it into a curving form, and 



a small clamp fixes the string at the handle. When thus 

 strained into shape, the instrument is pressed against the 

 upper front teeth by the deaf ooerator, the convex side 

 being turned outwards. The sounds received upon the 

 thin sheet cause it to vibrate, and the vibrations are thus 

 conveyed through the teeth and bones of the skull to the 

 auditory nerves. Its use is therefore confined to the 



Fig. 1.— Rhodes's Audiphone. 



partially deaf, or at least to those in whom the auditory 

 sense is not entirely absent, or the nerve atrophied. 



The ebonite of which the audiphone is made being 

 costly, Prof. Colladon has suggested a cheap and efficient 

 substitute in the form of a snip of elastic cardboard of 

 the peculiar kind known to the trade as satin-board or 

 shalloon-board, and which may be described as a fine kind 

 of yellow mill-board with a very smooth, glazed surface. 



A sheet of this material, about eighteen inches long by- 

 ten broad, and varnished at the edge where it is placed 

 in contact with the teeth, yields results quite equal, if not 

 superior, to those afforded by the ebonite article of fifty- 

 times the cost. Prof. Colladon has made a number of 

 experiments in conjunction with M. Louis Sager, upon the 

 hearing of deaf-mutes Not all who tried the instrument 



