SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 357 



that they can give. Among the papers and lectures already read 

 this season are " Electrical Exhibitions, and a Description of Recent 

 Electrical Developments in Europe," and " How to lest Electric 

 Motors." Among those yet to come are " Progress of Electric 

 Railroads," " A Talk on Cables," " The Electrical Torpedo, — 

 New York's Sole Defence," "Storage-Batteries," 'The Incandes- 

 cent Lamp," " The Telegraph," " The Telephone," " The Alternat- 

 ing Current," " The Galvanometer and its Uses," " Electricily in 

 War," " Phantom Wires," " How to run an Electric-Light Sta- 

 tion," " Transformers," " Power Transmission," " Laboratory 

 Manipulations," " The Social Side of the Electric Street Railway," 

 "The Solution of Every-day Electrical Problems," and "The 

 Progress of the Year." The officers of the society are as follows: 

 president, Francis B. Crocker ; vice-presidents, Joseph Wetzler, 

 Francis Forbes, and Dr. Otto A. Moses; secretary, George H. 

 Guy ; treasurer, H. A. Sinclair ; trustees, J. M. Pendleton, C. O. 

 MaiIlou.x, and A. A. Knudson. 



— It is well known, says Nature, that whales can remain a long 

 time under water, but e.xact data as to the time have been rather 

 lacking. In his northern travels. Dr. Kiickenthal of Jena recently 

 observed that a harpooned white whale continued under water 

 forty-five minutes. 



— For determination of the air-temperature at great heights, the 

 Berlin Society for Ballooning, we learn from Htimboldt , is going to 

 try a method of Herr Siegsfeld, who uses a thermometer, which, 

 by closure of an electric circuit when certain temperatures are 

 reached, gives a light-signal. Small balloons, each containing such 

 a thermometer, will be sent up by night ; and the light will affect 

 photographically a so-called " phototheodolile," while the height 

 then attained will be indicated in a mechanical way. It is hoped 

 that more exact formulae for the decrease of temperature with 

 height may thus be obtained. 



— From l\\e. Journal 0/ the Anthropological Society in Vienna, 

 we take the following conclusions of Dr. B. Hagen, respecting the 

 Malay peoples : Their great predilection for the sea, which makes 

 them pray to Allah that they may die on sea, seems to render the 

 Malay race adapted for the Polynesian and Further Indian Archi- 

 pelago. The centre from which they migrated is to be sought in 

 the highlands of West Sumatra, particularly in the old kingdom of 

 Menang-Kabau. Thence the peoples extended slowly eastwards, 

 — at first probably the races now to be found only in the interior 

 of the great islands (the Battas in Sumatra, the Sundanese in Java, 

 the Dayaks in Borneo, the Alfurus in Celebes, etc.). These " abori- 

 gines " of the islands crushed out a population already in posses- 

 sion, as remains of which the Negritos may be taken. The Malays 

 in the narrower sense, occupying Sumatra, Malacca, and North 

 Borneo, are to be regarded as the last emigration from the centre 

 referred to, occurring from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, 

 A. D. With the Indians and Chinese, who ha\'e been long in inter- 

 course with the archipelago, arose mixtures and crosses, in less 

 measure also with the Arabs. One must not therefore expect the 

 pure racial type, especially in the coast population. The crania of 

 the anthropological collections are too imperfectly determined in 

 respect of their locale to be of any service for a judgment of the 

 Malay peoples. Of more value are the measurements of the living, 

 begun by Dr. Weisbach and executed by Dr. Hagen, in four hun- 

 dred cases. The latter's conclusions are : (i) The peoples in the 

 interior of Sumatra — the Battas, the Alias, and the Malays of 

 Menang-Kabau — compose a closely allied group always in direct 

 contrast with the hither-Indian peoples, and yet showing just as 

 little community with the Chinese. We must therefore take them 

 for the pure original type, characterizable as follows : small, com- 

 pact, vigorous figure, of less than i,6oo millimetres average size ; 

 long arms ; very short legs ; very long and broad mesocephalous 

 skull of very great compass, with high forehead ; a prognathous 

 face 10 per cent broader than long, with large mouth, and uncom- 

 monly short, flat, and broad nose with large round nostrils opening 

 mostly frontwise, and with broad nasal root. (2) The Malays of 

 the east coast of Sumatra and those of the coasts of Malacca indi- 

 cate a much greater affinity to the Indians than to their tribal 

 peoples of Menang-Kabau. They are plainly, therefore, thoroughly 

 mixed with Indian blood. (3) The Javanese peoples stand much 



nearer to the original type of the Sumatrans than to the Malays 

 just mentioned. They show, therefore, less mixture with Indian, 

 but, on the other hand, more mixture with Chinese, blood ; and the 

 Ja\'anese more so than the Sundanese. 



— A London paper says that some experiments in judging dis- 

 tance by sound were carried out recently by one of the London 

 brigades of the Metropolitan Volunteers. This branch of military 

 tactics is quite a new departure. It was first explained to the men 

 that sound travels at the rate of 1,100 yards in three seconds, and 

 on this basis they were to estimate the distance at which some 

 rifles were being discharged in the darkness. The answers at first 

 were very wide of the mark, some of the men being as much as 

 150 yards out in their calculations. With a little practice, however, 

 a great improvement was shown, many of the men guessing the 

 distance exactly. The experiments are not as satisfactory as was 

 hoped, and it is thought some time must elapse before judging 

 distance by sound can be relied upon with any certainty. 



— At the monthly meeting of the Royal Society of Tasmania on 

 Sept. 9, ttie president (his Excellency Sir Robert G. C. Hamilton) 

 said he desired to bring before the society a matter relating to the 

 young salmon at the Salmon Ponds. These were the undoubted 

 product of the ova brought out by Sir Thomas Brady, which had 

 been stripped from the male and female fish and artificially ferti- 

 lized, and the utmost care had been taken to keep them apart 

 from any other fish bred„in the ponds. He recently visited the 

 ponds, accompanied by the chairman of the Fisheries Board, the 

 secretary, and two of the members, when they carefully examined 

 a number of the young salmon, among which they were surprised 

 to find marked differences existing, not only in size, but in their 

 characteristics. It has often been held, according to Nature, that 

 the Salmonidce caught in Tasmanian waters cannot be true Salmo 

 salar, because so many of them have spots on the dorsal fin, and 

 a tinge of yellow or orange on the adipose fin ; but nearly half of 

 the young salmon they examined, which had never left the ponds, 

 had these characteristics. Again, many of them were almost " bull- 

 headed " in appearance, — another characteristic which is not sup- 

 posed to distinguish the true Saline salar. He would suggest to 

 the chairman of the Fisheries Board, whom he saw present, that 

 the secretary should be asked to make a formal report of the result 

 of this visit, and to obtain some specimens of the young fish, which 

 could be preserved in spirits, and perhaps sent to Sir Thomas 

 Brady to be submitted for the consideration and opinion of natu- 

 ralists at home. 



— British Consul Pettus of Ningpo, in his last report, says that 

 one of the principal and perhaps most profitable industries of his 

 consular district is the ming ftt or cuttlefish trade. For two 

 months, from the latter part of April until the closing days of June, 

 the number of small and somewhat barren islands of the Chusan 

 archipelago, situated within a radius of fifty miles of Chinhae (at 

 the mouth of the Yung; River), swarm with men engaged in the 

 occupations of cleaning and drying the fish for the Ningpo market, 

 and the adjacent waters are covered with boats engaged in fishing. 

 The cuttlefish boats are from twenty-five feet to thirty feet in 

 length, with a beam of seven feet. They are furnished with a 

 single lug-sail, usually made of foreign cloths tanned with man- 

 grove-bark. They are worked with two, sometimes three, oars, 

 with which the boats are propelled with immense speed. The 

 boats, as a rule, work in pairs, a bamboo fastened at the bows of 

 each to keep them separated, with a space of about twenty feet 

 between. To the bamboo is attached the large net. Others, 

 again, catch the fish by means of a square net, fastened at the 

 corners to the ends of two slender bamboos which cross at right 

 angles, and sewn together in the middle. These bamboos, with 

 the attached net, are suspended from a stout beam which projects 

 some distance over the bow, and has fastened to the inboard end 

 a heavy weight for facilitating the raising of the net. This is' used 

 in shallow water, and principally at night, when a fire is kept burn- 

 ing in a pan in the bow of the boat to attract the fish. One or 

 two men attend to the working of this net, while the rest of the 

 crew are employed in scooping in the fish with hand-nets. The 

 fish are then landed, cleaned, and sun-dried, the latter operation 

 taking about three days. The cuttlefish is called by the Chinese 



