998 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 416. 



commission have instituted are also in prog- 

 ress. It is understood that the commission 

 will complete taking evidence early in the 

 next parliamentary' session, and will then 

 prepare their final report. 



On December 6, at the Eandal Morgan 

 Physical Laboratory of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, a physical club was organized 

 under the name of the Kelvin Physical Club 

 for the encouragement of research and scien- 

 tific reviews in the department. Professor 

 Arthur W. Goodspeed was elected president, 

 Dr. Horace C. Richards, vice-president and 

 Dr. Joseph H. Hart, secretary. 



The American Society of Mechanical En- 

 gineers held its forty-sixth meeting in New 

 York City, December 2 to 5. 



At a meeting of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh on December 1, Lord Kelvin presiding, 

 Professor J. Cossar Ewart read a paper on a 

 new horse from the Western Islands. Ac- 

 cording to the report in the London Times 

 he said that until quite recently it was quite 

 commonly assumed that all living horses be- 

 longed to one and the same species. It had 

 also been generally assumed that various 

 breeds of European horses had been descended 

 from domestic varieties originally from the 

 East. Since numerous etchings had been dis- 

 covered on the walls of caves the belief was 

 no longer so universal that the horse had 

 not been domesticated in Europe before the 

 arrival of JSTeolithic man. After pointing 

 out the difference between horses and zebras 

 and donkeys in that zebras and donkeys had 

 no callosities, Professor Ewart proceeded to 

 describe the Przevalsky horse, and next the 

 new variety which had recently been discov- 

 ered. This was a pony, not the dwarf horse 

 that took the place in the West which the 

 Arab took in the East with similar character- 

 istics to the Arab, but having this essential 

 difference, that there were no callosities in 

 the hind legs, and instead of having long hairs 

 right up to the root of the tail, it resembled 

 the wild horse of Central Asia, the Przevalsky 

 horse, in having short hairs in the upper part 

 of the tail just as in mules. As the most 

 typical specimen had been found in an out of 



the way part of Iceland there was no chance of 

 its ever having been crossed with a Przevalsky 

 horse; it was exactly of the same color as the 

 wild horse of Central Asia. Not having cal- 

 losities, it agreed with the asses and zebras, 

 and, like the asses and zebras, it was highly 

 specialized in the size, form of the head, ears, 

 and under lip, and the position of the eyes. 

 The Celtic pony decidedly differed from the 

 Przevalsky horse. The limbs were slender 

 with small joints and narrow hoofs. The 

 Celtic pony occurred in Iceland, the Paroe 

 Islands, and Barra, and other smaller islands 

 of the Outer Hebrides. It at one time seemed 

 to have been common in the island of Tiree, 

 in which ponies were now extinct. Doubt- 

 less it occurred in Ireland, a very typical ex- 

 ample having recently been found in Conne- 

 mara. There was evidence also that it oc- 

 curred in the New Forest. On the other 

 hand, there was no evidence that ponies of 

 this kind were found anywhere in the East. 

 Java, Mongolia, Korea and Kathiawar had 

 all been examined, but all the ponies there 

 had had the characteristics of the Arab horse. 

 They had all callosities, well haired-up tails, 

 and long pointed ears. It was conceivable 

 that the Celtic pony in its present form never 

 existed in the East, but that it was the modi- 

 fied descendant of a small horse which left 

 the ancestral home in Central Asia and 

 reached Europe long before the arrival of 

 Neolithic man. There were drawings in 

 caves which suggested the existence of a 

 small horse that might very well correspond 

 to the Celtic pony, and further, bones had 

 been found of two kinds of horses, one a 

 horse with small head, slender limbs, and small 

 teeth, which, again, suggested the Celtic pony. 



At the Society of Arts, London, on No- 

 vember 26, Dr. Gustave Goegg, professor of 

 technology at the High School of Commerce, 

 Geneva, read a paper on the Simplon Tunnel. 

 According to the report in the London Times, 

 he observed that the pass over the Simplon 

 had been for centuries one of the routes from 

 the valley of the Rhone to Lombardy, and 

 after various schemes had been brought for- 

 ward, the Jura-Simplon Company, who had 



