JUJJE 29, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



611 



Nordenskiold's programme. — Baron Norden- 

 skiSld's programme for this year's expedition is pub- 

 lished in full by the concurrence of Mr. Oscar Dickson, 

 who provides the funds to carry it out. Besides the 

 object of penetrating to the interior of Greenland, 

 it is hoped to fix the limits of the drift-ice between 

 Iceland and Greenland, to sound and dredge in the 

 adjacent seas, to pay especial attention to the flora of 

 the ice and snow, to further investigate the plant- 

 remains in the fossiliferous strata of the region vis- 

 ited, and to collect new data connected with the fall 

 of cosmic dust. The expedition sailed from Gothen- 

 burg in the latter part of May, and expects to start 

 on its return iu September next. — (Nature, May 

 10.) w. H. D. [1161 



Corea. — J. C. Hall, British consul at Nagasaki, 

 visited Han-yang or Soul (Seul), the capital of Corea, 

 last October. In approaching the harbor of Nam- 

 yang, the west coast was found hedged in by a 

 thickly clustered fringe of islands, through which the 

 mainland could hardly be seen. The water was very 

 shallow; and the heavy fall of the tides, averaging 

 thirty feet, makes dangerous currents. Thousands 

 of square miles of mud flats are left bare at low 

 water; and, besides all these difficulties, there are the 

 dense fogs of summer, and shore ice of winter. The 

 coast is bold, rising in trap and granite headlands 

 two to six hundred feet high. The interior, as far as 

 seen, was bare and almost treeless. The Villages are 

 of miserable mud-hovels, and the people are very 

 poor. The only temples seen were two small huts 

 near a village at the landing-place. Soul is about 

 fifty miles inland; it is a shabby, squalid city of low 

 stone and mud houses, with a population of about 

 240,000. One long main street one hundred feet wide, 

 running east and west, and another about north 

 and south, divide it into nearly equal portions, and 

 lead to gates in the eastern, southern, and western 

 walls. On the northern side it is enclosed by steep 

 granitic peaks. Below their abrupt slope is the 

 royal enclosure, containing the king's palace and the 

 more important public buildings. Mr. Hall learned 

 from the Japanese consul that the population of the 

 kingdom, according to the government census, was 

 about 6,840,000 souls. The revenue is derived from 

 a tax on the cultivated land, and is payable either in 

 money or in produce: at present it amounts to about 

 190,000 pounds sterling. — [Proc. roy. geoyr. soc, v. 

 1883, 274.) w. M. D. [1162 



Upper Siam. — Between Nov. 9, 18S1, and June 14, 

 1882, Carl Bock, whose travels in Borneo are already 

 well known, made a journey from Bangkok up the 

 valley of the Menam, and across the Lao states to the 

 Mekong River, and back again by much the same 

 route. The country was found very productive 

 throughout, and well worthy of extended commer- 

 cial enterprises. As far as Rahang, the river was 

 ascended by poling; the country on either side was 

 low, flat, and fertile; numerous ruins were seen 

 there. A variety of valuable timber is brought from 

 the forests by elephants and oxen, and floated down 

 the river to Bangkok. Other products are cotton, 

 wax, resin, tobacco, hides, and horns. Above Ra- 

 hang, rapids interrupt the up-stream navigation, and 

 the journey was continued overland on elephants. 

 Lakon is the centre of the elephant trade : Bock 

 found a thousand of these great animals there, where 

 they are brought after capture in the forest; their 

 value varies from five hundred to two thousand 

 rupees. Oxen are sold at sixteen to twenty-five 

 rupees. Tchengmai, at an elevation of seven hun- 

 dred feet on the Meping (the upper course of the 



Menang, above the rapids) is an important and busy 

 city, with a population estimated at a hundred thou- 

 sand. Teakwood and gum-lac are among its chief 

 commodities. A railroad from the southern coast 

 should be constructed as far as this point, as, in 

 addition to what now goes down the river, it would 

 gain a large share of what is carried northward to 

 Yunnan, and out to Canton. From Tchengmai, 

 Bock turned a little north-east, and crossed a pass 

 of twelve hundred feet elevation into the valley of 

 the Mekok, that flows on to the Mekong at an alti- 

 tude of eight hundred and seventy feet. The latter 

 is a large river in a superb valley, lined with valua- 

 ble forests ; its lower course should be examined to 

 learn if timber could not be floated down to the sea. 

 Bock was unable to do this, and retui'ned to Tcheng- 

 mai, whence he descended the Meping, running the 

 rapids into the open lower valley. — {Peterm. mitth., 

 1883, 161. ) w. M. D. [1163 



BOTANY. 



Relative size of diclinous floTvers. — Fritz 

 Miiller mentions Carica papaya — which is some- 

 thing of a curiosity in having polypetalous pistillate 

 flowers and gamopetalous staminate flowers, which 

 have been divided into two so-called genera — as 

 forming an exception to Sprengel's rule, that, in 

 entomophilous plants with imperfect flowers, the 

 male are more conspicuous than the female; that 

 they may be first visited by insects, which carry their 

 pollen to the pistils. The greater size of the pistil- 

 late flowers in this species is explained by their con- 

 cealed position among the leaves, while the smaller 

 staminate flowers hang out in conspicuous clusters. 

 In this connection it is shown by Hermann Miiller 

 that in monoecious species, which attract a sufficien- 

 cy of insect visitors, it may be an advantage for the 

 fertile flowers to be the larger, as those of a given 

 stock will then be visited first, and fertilized by 

 foreign pollen, before the insects have been to 

 the sterile flowers of the plant in question. On 

 the other hand, in cases where crossing is uncer- 

 tain, the larger size of the staminate flowers will 

 insure at least close fertilization, and thus be ad- 

 vantageous. — {A'osmos, April.) w. T. [1164 



The purple-leaved barberry. — Mr. Thomas 

 Meehan referred to the fact that seed of the purple- 

 leaved variety of Berberis vulgaris, collected from 

 plants growing near Philadelphia, reproduced the 

 purple-leaved peculiarity to an extent which it could 

 not do more perfectly if the variety were a true spe- 

 cies. In a bed of seedlings containing on an estimate 

 one thousand plants, there were only two reversions 

 to the original green-leaved condition. — [Acad. nat. 

 sc. Philad. meetiny; May 15. ) [1165 



Influence of stock and scion. — According to 

 the Tropical agriculturist, Mr. Moen has obtained 

 some extraordinary and undesirable results from 

 grafting scions of Cinchona Ledgeriana upon stocks 

 of Red bark. The grafts have been cultivated under 

 glass, and are now four years old. Examination has 

 shown that the bark of the stock is rendered abnor- 

 mally rich in quinine 'by its contact with the graft;' 

 but the bark of the graft itself is found to contain 

 less quinine than it shoulil, while it has more cincho- 

 nine and cinchonidine. Since the amount of the bark 

 of the stock is, of course, very small when compared 

 with that of the vigorously-growing scion which must 

 ultimately form the bulk of the whole, nothing is 

 gained by the grafting. It diminishes, rather, the 

 value of the plant. It is now proposed to try the re- 

 verse experiment. It is very probable that subsequent 

 experiments may show that i^art, at least, of the un- 



