588 



NATURE 



[April 22, 1880 



for lS66, 1867, 1868, Prof. Agassiz 1 had already called attention 

 to the probable great antiquity of the oceanic basins. 



Dr. Carpenter seems also to have overlooked the series of 

 physical observations of the depths of the sea commenced by the 

 United States Coast Survey 2 in 1S50, and carried on without 

 interruption to the present day. 



The statement made by Mr. Wild 3 that the deepest sounding 

 of the Tuscarora is not trustworthy, because "no sample of the 

 bottom was brought up," is apparently endorsed by Dr. Car- 

 penter, who says : " The sounding wire of the United States 

 ship Tuscarora twice broke without reaching bottom .... at 

 depths considerably exceeding 4,000 fathoms." This should be 

 modified by stating that the wire broke -while reeling in twice, 

 once the bottom was not reached, and five casts were made over 

 4,000 fathoms, bringing up each time a specimen of the bottom. 4 

 Capt. Geo. E. Belknap, of the Tuscarora, says, 5 speaking of the 

 casts beyond 4,000 fathoms in depth : " The wire parted at the 

 last two and deepest casts. . . . the result of momentary care- 

 lessness on the part of the men at the rcding-in 'wheel." 



The method of sounding with wire has now been in use long 

 enough to show that even if the Tuscarora had not brought up a 

 single specimen of the bottom during her whole trip, and if the 

 wire had invariably broken while reeling in, we could not for 

 that reason alone have rejected those soundings as inaccurate. 



Those who have sounded with wire know that the instant the 

 sinker has touched bottom is recorded on deck, and the precise 

 depth is then known, whether the cylinder is brought up or not. 

 There is no more reason for rejecting the deepest sounding of the 

 Tuscarora of 4,655 fathoms than for rejecting the 480 other 

 casts which are accepted because a bottom specimen came up. 



Cambridge, Mass., April 5 Alexander Agassiz 



On the Alum Bay Flora 

 In the list of fossils appended to the paper upon the Alum 

 Bay flora, brought before the Royal Society by Baron von 

 Ettingshausen and reported in Nature, vol. xxi. p. 555, the 

 new species have Ett. and Gard. attached to them, implying that 

 Ettingshausen and myself are their authors. It is only fair to 

 Ettingshausen to state that I had no share in making the deter- 

 minations, and to myself, that I accept them simply as provisional. 

 Associated as he is with me in the work upon the British eocene 

 floras, he felt that he could hardly publish preliminary work 

 connected with it in any other way. I completely disagree with 

 him, however, as to the utility of publishing new specific names 

 unaccompanied by drawings or descriptions of any kind, and 

 think that a simple list of genera, with the number of new 

 species in each, would have been unattended with any incon- 

 venience. He appears to me to attach altogether undue weight 

 to mere priority in nomenclature, and the existence of such 

 provisional lists, far from aiding research, must prove a serious 

 difficulty to our fellow workers. In the highly probable event 

 of an author being unable to come from spme distant country to 

 examine the specimens themselves, is he, for instance, to forbear 

 naming every undescribed species of such common Tertiary genera 

 as Fictts, of which eight new and unpublished species are in the 

 li-t, of Cclastrus, of which there are five, or of any other of the 

 some fifty genera containing new specific names ? He could not 

 safely name even any indeterminable leaf or fruit, for fear it 

 might be one of the long list of Phyllites or Carpolithes for which 

 Ettingshausen has devised specific names. 



1 Bulletin of the Museum of Comp. Zoology, 1S69. vol. i.. No. 13. 

 - Coast Survey Reports, 1S50 to present day ; also Bibliography of Biolo- 

 gical Results (Bull. Mus. Comp. Z00L, vol. v., No. 9. 1878). 

 Lisa," 1877, p. 15. 

 4 "Deep-Sea Soundings in the North Pacific obtained by the United 

 States ship Tuscarora." (Washington : Hydrographic Office, 1874, No. 54, 

 p. 30) :— 



1874. Fathoms. 

 June 1 1 ... 4,643 ... Wire broke ; lvtt,<:r: uoi 

 ,. 17 ... 4,340 ... Yellow and clay brown mud. 

 „ 17 ... 4.356 ... Yellowish mud and sand and specks of lava. 

 ,, 18 ... 4,041 ... Yell ,w and clay-coloured mud and gravel. 

 „ 18 ... 4.234 ... Rocky ; point of cylinder came up battered. 

 ,, 18 ... 4,120 ... Yelljw and clay-coloured mud mixed. 

 „ 18 ... 4,411 ... No specimen; «ire broke {while reeling in). 

 ,, 19 ... 4,635 ... ,, ., ,, ,, 



» United Service Magazine, July 



But were our supposititious author to go on with his work, in 

 spite of this " sword of Damocles," would Baron Ettingshausen 

 claim priority and deprive the man who had first figured and 

 published descriptions of them, of the pleasure of christening 

 them in accordance with his views and wishes ? If not, cut bono ? 



To show the purely provisional light in which the list must be 

 regarded, I may mention that, unfortunately just as the Baron 

 left England, a large collection, that of the late M. Watelet 

 from the Gres du Soissonnais, came into my possession, and 

 seems, on a cursory examination, to contain a preponderance of 

 species identical with those of Alum Bay. None of Watelet's 

 published species appear in the list of the Alum Bay flora, 

 which therefore must of necessity be considerably modified to 

 include them. The same may be said of the flora of Gelinden, 

 of which a large series has also reached me. 



Again, even in the only section of plants yet worked out by 

 us for the palceontographical memoir, the ferns, discrepancies 

 occur. Two ferns occur in this Alum Bay list which are not 

 included in our fern flora from that locality. These are inserted 

 on the authority of Heer, who states that he has seen them from 

 Alum Bay ; but as on the occasion of that gentleman's visit or 

 visits to England many years ago the floras from the different 

 localities had not been systematically collected, and were generally 

 mixed together in museums, in the same drawers and cases, and 

 cannot always be identified by the matrix, I prefer to adhere to 

 the opinion of that indefatigable collector, Henry Keeping, who 

 lived within a short distance of Alum Bay, and to my own, 

 Mr. Mitchell's, and all other workers' experience, that no fern 

 but Maraltia is found there. At all events, if they are to be 

 included in the Alum Bay flora, they should be so with reserve, 

 especially as Prof. I leer's ideas as to the position of the localities 

 and their ages are so hazy that he puts the Alum Bay leaves in 

 the "Bartonisem" (above, if anything), or about 1,000 feet too 

 high, and thinks that Bournemouth is somewhere in the Isle of 

 Wight. 



An illustration of the inconvenience caused by publishing names 

 without proper figures and descriptions occurs to me. Heer 

 named a small fern fragment which he supposed to be from 

 Alum Bay, Aspleniutn martinsi. This name has got into works 

 by Saporta and Crie, who have each tried to fit ferns of their 

 own into Heer's meagre description. Neither had seen the 

 original, nor could they give any information, and it was only 

 after several attempts to obtain it that Ettingshausen received a 

 rough sketch from Heer showing conclusively that the "species" 

 in question was a fragment of the abundant and well-known 

 Anemia subcretacea of Sezanne. I do not even now know whether 

 it was upon this fragment or some other that Heer wrote that he 

 had " seen this forma" {Anemia subcretacea) from Alum Bay. 

 J. Starkie Gardner 



Negritoes in Borneo 



Having had inquiries addressed to me as to the existence of 

 a Negrito race in Borneo, I think it may be useful to recall 

 attention to, and possibly save from oblivion, a statement on 

 this subject which was published by Windsor Earl in the Journal 

 of the East Indian Archipelago. Mr. Earl says that a Capt. 

 Brownrigg, who had been shipwrecked on the east coast of 

 Borneo, informed him (J.E.I.A., No. 9) that he had lived 

 several months at a town some distance up the Berau River, and 

 that during his stay the town was once visited by a small party 

 of men from the interior, " who must have been of the Papuan 

 race " (sic). He described them as being short, strongly-built 

 people, black in complexion, with hair so short and curly that 

 the head appeared to be covered with little knobs like peas ; and 

 with many raised scarifications over the breast and shoulders. 

 He described them as being on good terms with the people of 

 the town, mostly Bugis, and as supplying them occasionally with 

 jungle produce. 



Of this account it may be remarked that Mr. Earl would not 

 have retailed it unless he had had some confidence in the credi- 

 bility of his informant— that, so far as it goes, it is curiously 

 circumstantial — and that these people are said to have come 

 exactly from that district in Borneo where we might expect 

 il priori to find Negritoes if they existed at all. 



Whilst on the subject of Borneo, may I suggest that ethnolo- 

 gists should make a more sparing use of the term " Dyak'' when 

 treating of the Malay Archipelago? It should only be applied 

 to tribes who themselves use it as the distinctive appellation of 

 their people. As more than one tribe so uses it, there should 

 alwaj s be prefixed some word still further limiting its applica- 



