Mabch 23, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



209 



lying in thie archives of the Smithsonian, until Major 

 Powell, in 3876, received them to be "consolidated 

 and published in connection with like material col- 

 lected by himself and his assistants while among 

 the Indians in the western portion of the United 

 States." A succinct account of the work accom- 

 plished by the bureau completes Mr. Filling's intro- 

 duction. Major Powell has issued a more elaborate 

 Introduction to the study of Indian languages than 

 the instructions of his predecessors, of which the 

 -analysis will be found at the close of Mr. Filling's 

 preface. Besides those printed in former volumes, 

 over three hundred manuscripts of various extent, 

 from thick tomes down to a few pages, remain to be 

 elaborated, and put in print. Mr. Filling has in type, 

 as far as the letter M, an exhaustive bibliography of 

 North-American Indian linguistics, bringing the sub- 

 ject down to the hour of going to press. He goes to 

 San Francisco this month to consult the Bancroft 

 library. 



— Eogozinski and his party, including a geologist, 

 meteorologist, engineer, and mechanic (all Poles), 

 sailed from Havre Dec. 13, 1882, for Fernando-Po, 

 on his African expedition. 



— The proceedings of the Belfast nat. hist, and 

 phil. soc, for 1881-82, contain, among other articles, 

 papers by J. J. Murphy on the rainy or post-glacial 

 period, and by Professor Cunningham, on corals and 

 coral islands. The former claims, that, as the astro- 

 nomical causes which produced the snowy or glacial 

 climate faded away, the rainfall remained heavy for 

 a time, as is shown by the deposits in the bogs of 

 Norway, and the shore terraces of our extinct western 

 lakes. It is supposed that the glacial time was pre- 

 ceded by similar rainy conditions, but their record is 

 lost. The latter gives a general review of the ques- 

 tion, and calls attention to Murray's view, that 

 subsidence is not necessary to explain any of the 

 eharacteristic features of barrier reefs or atolls. They 

 might equally well be produced in regions of rest, or 

 slow elevation as well as depression. The atoll form 

 is taken because the chief supply of food for the coral 

 polyps is on the outer margin, and the rook is carried 

 away from the interior by solution. 



— Dr. Cohn of Vienna describes two manuscripts 

 of Dioscorides, on parchment, now in the imperial 

 library at Vienna, which date from the latter half or 

 the fifth century, and are still, for the most part, well 

 preserved. One is known as the Codex Coustauti- 

 nopolitanus, the other as the Codex Neapolitanus ; 

 the former having been made for a grand-daughter of 

 Emperor Valentianus III. at Constantinople, after- 

 wards coming into the possession of the Turks, and 

 in 1570 purchased for the imperial library, from the 

 family of a former physician to Sultan Soleiman, for 

 a hundred ducats. It consists of about four hundred 

 iolio leaves of fine vellum between worm-eaten 

 ■wooden covers, with illuminated title, dedication, and 



other prefatory pictures, followed by. the botanical 

 figures and text. Two opposite pages are given to 

 each plant, — on one side the drawing, with the name 

 and synonyms ; and on the other, the description in 

 cursive character, without spacing, punctuation, or 

 accent, together with various citations in Arabic, 

 Greek, and Hebrew. The paintings in both codices 

 are evidently copies from the same originals; and 

 though somewhat conventional, and more or less in- 

 correct or imperfect as to details, yet the general and 

 often the specific characters of the plants ai-e pre- 

 served in a remarkable degree. 



Under the Empress Maria Theresa, and at the in- 

 stigation of Gerard van Swieten, court physician and 

 librarian, the figures of the Codex Constantinopoli- 

 tanus were carefully engraved upon copper ; but only 

 two impressions are known to have been taken. One 

 of these was sent by order of the empress to Linn^, 

 and is now in the possession of the Linnean society 

 of London, in an imperfect condition. The second 

 was given by Joseph Jacquin (or only loaned, as 

 afterward was claimed by Jacquin the younger) to 

 Sibthorpe, from whom it passed by bequest, with the 

 rest of his library and collections, to the University 

 of Oxford, which still holds it. 



— The eleventh annual report of the curator of the 

 Museum of Wesleyan university, Middletown, Conn., 

 records some noteworthy accessions to the museum, 

 particularly of Australian marsupials, and of the 

 Sheldon collection of minerals. Attention is called 

 to the fact, that this includes several specimens of 

 the rare mineral samarskite from Portland, Conn. 

 "This mineral, first discovered in the Urals, after- 

 wards found to occur more abundantly in North 

 Carolina, has never hitherto, to the writer's knowl- 

 edge, been reported from this vicinity." 



— At a meeting of the Philosophical society of 

 Washington, March 10, a paper by Mr. M. H. Doo- 

 little, on Substance, matter, motion, and force, elicit- 

 ed an animated discussion. He was followed by Mr. 

 E. B. Elliott, who developed a new formula for the 

 computation of the position of Easter in any year, 

 past or future. 



— Rev. E. E. Hale of Boston invites the editor to 

 introduce his wonderful friend, Col. Ingham, to the 

 readers of Science. In that fabled city of Sybaris, 

 Col, Ingham observed in 1859 a similar contrivance 

 to that mentioned in our summary, paragraph 102. 

 Let us quote him : — 



" I sat quite in tlie front of the car, so that I could see the fate 

 of my first friend, nArjpes, — the full car. In a very few minutes 

 it switched off from our track, leaving us still to pick up our 

 complement; and then I saw that it dropped its mules, and was 

 attached, on a side-track, to an endless chain, which took it 

 along at a much greater rapidity, so that it was soon out of sight. 

 I addressed my next neighbor on the subject, in Greek which 

 would have made my fortune in those old days of the pea-green 

 settees. But he did not seem to make much of that, but, in suf- 

 ficiently good Italian, told me, that, as soon as we were full, we 



