September 27, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



217 



— At the July meeting of the Anthropological Society of Bom- 

 bay, Mr. Kitts of the Indian Civil Service read a paper on the early 

 history of northern India, in which the theory recently put forward 

 by Mr. Hewitt, on the early history of India, was stated and dis- 

 cussed. The theory of Mr. Hewitt, as stated in Nature, is briefly 

 this : that the first immigrants who settled in India, and have left 

 traces surviving, were the so-called Kolarian races, who came from 

 the north-east ; and that their descendants, to the number of ten 

 millions or thereabouts, are still occupants of northern India. The 

 Kolarians were succeeded and conquered by the Dravidians, who 

 came from the north-west, and developed in India a very high state 

 of civilization, both social and political. Large estates belonged to 

 single owners, such as the talukdari tenures in northern India, 

 and the zemindari and patidari tenures in southern India. " In 

 short," says Mr. Hewitt, " it was the Dravidians who founded and 

 consolidated the present land-revenue system of India." The 

 Dravidians also organized Xh& pimchayet and c/iowkidar sy^itm of 

 village government, which has survived to the present day. All the 

 manual arts and industries practised in the India of to-day were 

 known to and practised by the Dravidians. The Aryans, migrating 

 into a land occupied as India then was by the Dravidians, with a 

 strongly organized system of government, found great difficulty in 

 obtaining a foothold, and, even when they had secured a tract of 

 country in the north-west for themselves, did not obtain supremacy 

 over the rest of India by force of arms. The agents of their sub- 

 sequent advance were three, — religion, commerce, and military 

 ability. Friendly alliances were concluded between the new-com- 

 ers and the snake races of the Dravidians. The Aryans admitted 

 the noble races of the Dravidians to be of royal blood, and ac- 

 cepted Siva or Lingam worship as not dishonoring to their religion. 

 The Dravidians, thus recognized as of noble blood, were the an- 

 cestors of the modern Rajpoots and the Kshatriya caste. Intel- 

 lectually the Aryans were far superior to the Dravidians, and the 

 Aryan tongue was accordingly adopted as the lingiia franca for 

 commercial purposes. So, too, the Aryan became a necessary ele- 

 ment in every court and in every commercial enterprise, and from 

 this time forward (about six centuries B.C.) their supremacy was 

 assured. 



— According to Nature, Dr. Rudolph Koenig, the well-known 

 constructor of standard acoustical apparatus in Paris, has just 

 made a discovery of extreme importance in the , theory of music, 

 the details of which he will expound at the forthcoming meeting of 

 the Naturforscher at Heidelberg. This is an extension of Helm- 

 holtz's theory of timbre to certain cases not represented in tfie 

 elementary mathematical theory, and corresponding to the actual 

 case of the timbres of certain musical instruments. The paper is 

 certain to give rise to discussion, and will be of interest to musi- 

 cians, who have never, as is notorious, taken kindly to Helmholtz's 

 theory in its original form. 



— Mr. Gustave Guttenberg, formerly of Erie, Penn., who is con- 

 ducting the Agassiz course of mineralogy, has accepted the posi- 

 tion of teacher of biology in the Central High School at Pittsburgh, 

 Penn., and desires his correspondents to take notice of the change 

 of his address. 



— The following topics have been selected for consideration at 

 the seventeenth annual meeting of the American Public Health 

 Association, Brooklyn, to be held Oct. 22-25: "The, Causes and 

 Prevention of Infant Mortality ; " " Railway Sanitation," — {a) 

 "Heating and Ventilation of Railway Passenger- Coaches," (b) 

 "Water-Supply, Water- Closets, etc.," (c) "Carrying Passengers 

 Infected with Communicable Diseases ; " " Steamship Sanitation ; " 

 " Methods of Scientific Cooking ; " " Yellow- Fever," — "(a) "The 

 Unprotected Avenues through which Yellow-Fever is Liable to be 

 brought into the United States," {h) " The Sanitary Requirements 

 necessary to render a Town or City Proof against an Epidemic of 

 Yellow-Fever," (c) " The Course to be taken by Local Health Au- 

 thorities upon the Outbreak of Yellow-Fever ; " " The Prevention 

 and Restriction of Tuberculosis in Man ; " " Methods of Preven- 

 tion of Diphtheria, with Results of such Methods ; " " How far 

 should Health Authorities be permitted to apply known Preventive 

 Measures for the Control of Diphtheria ; " " Compulsory Vaccina- 



tion ; " and " Sanitation of Asylums, Prisons, Jails, and other Elee- 

 mosynary Institutions." Addresses of welcome will be delivered 

 by Hon. Alfred C. Chapin, mayor, on behalf of the city, and by 

 Alexander Hutchins, M.D., on behalf of the medical profession. 



— Dr. George H. Cook, the New Jersey State geologist, and vice- 

 president of Rutgers College, died Sept. 22, at New Brunswick, of 

 heart-failure. Dr. Cook was taken ill Saturday noon, but his illness 

 was not considered at all. serious, and his death was totally unex- 

 pected. His work as State geologist has been varied and of great 

 importance. The topographical maps of the State which have 

 been published under his supervision have been among the best of 

 any published by the different States. The last of the series was 

 recently issued, and Dr. Cook was at the time of his death engaged 

 on his final report. Two volumes had been prepared, the latter 

 now being in print. He was seventy-two years of age, and leaves 

 a widow and two children, — one son and one daughter. 



— Among the recent scientific missions undertaken by order of 

 the French Government, says Nature, are one by Professor Viault 

 of Bordeaux, in the tablelands of Peru, Eucador, and Bolivia, to 

 continue the investigations of the late M. Paul Bert into rarefied 

 air ; one by M. de Coubertin, secretary of the committee for the 

 encouragement of physical exercises in education in the United 

 States and Canada, to visit the universities and colleges, to study 

 the working of the various athletic associations frequented by the 

 young people of these countries ; one by M. Jacques de Morgan, 

 mining engineer, to explore those parts of Asia Minor lying be- 

 tween the south of the Caspian Sea, Armenia, the Gulf of Alex- 

 andria, and Anti -Taurus (this mission will occupy two years and 

 three months); and one by M. Candelier, to Colombia, to make 

 ethnographical researches and collections for the State. 



— Exactly a century ago — namely, in 1 789 — Klaproth succeeded 

 in isolating from a dark- colored mineral known as pitchblende a 

 yellow oxide, which, after carefully testing, he pronounced to be 

 the oxide of a new metal. To this metallic substance he gave the 

 name of " uranium," so calling it after the planet Uranus, then re- 

 cently discovered by Herschel ; and it was at once classed among 

 the rare metals, and still remains so. Its rarity is indicated by its 

 market price, which is about $12,000 per ton. There are several 

 oxides of this metal ; but the best known and most important is 

 the sesquioxide, which forms a number of beautiful yellow salts. 

 This oxide is largely employed for imparting delicate golden and 

 greenish yellow tints to glass, while the protoxide is much used in 

 producing the costly black porcelain. Uranium is also found to 

 be useful in certain photographic processes as a substitute for the 

 chloride of gold ; but its rarity and consequent high price have 

 hitherto caused its application to be very limited, although there 

 are uses other than those already named to which it could be put 

 if it were less scarce and less costly. It is found in Cornwall, 

 Saxony, and Bohemia ; but up to the present time it has only been 

 met with in isolated pockets and patches. The centenary of its 

 discovery by Klaproth has, however, according to the London 

 Times, been marked by the finding of a continuous lode at the 

 Union Mine, Grampound Road, Cornwall, which is believed to be 

 the only known lode in the world. This discovery is regarded as 

 unique in the history of the metal ; for the lode is what is known 

 as a true fissure-vein, and the ore is found to contain an average 

 of twelve per cent of the pure metal, the assays going up as high 

 as thirty per cent in some parts of the lode. Several tons of the 

 ore have already been raised and sold, fetching high prices. The 

 lode traverses the mine from north to south, and the uranium oc- 

 curs in it chiefly as a sesquioxide. It is anticipated that the present 

 discovery will enable two important applications of the metal to 

 be followed up. The first is as a substitute for gold in electro- 

 plated ware, inasmuch as with platinum and copper it forms two 

 beautiful alloys, each having the appearance of gold, and the for- 

 mer also resisting the action of acids. The second application is 

 in connection with electric installations, where its usefulness con- 

 sists in its high electrical resistance. The mineral deposits gen- 

 erally at the Union Mine are of an exceptional character, compris- 

 ing, in addition to uranium, magnetic iron, silver, lead, tin, copper, 

 ochre, and umber. 



