194 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 579. 



3. Low air temperatures in central Europe 

 .from February to April. 



4. Little ice off Newfoundland in spring. 

 .5. Heavy ice off Iceland in spring. 



6. Bad wheat and rye harvests in western 

 Europe and northern Germany. 



B. 1. Strong Atlantic circulation (August- 

 February). 



2. High water temperatures on the European 

 Kjoast ( November-April ) . 



3. High air temperatures in central Europe 

 irom February to April. 



4. Heavy ice off Newfoundland in spring. 



5. Little ice off Iceland in spring. 



6. Good wheat and rye harvests in western 

 Europe and northern Germany. 



The wind observations made during the 

 -Antarctic expedition of the Gauss show that 

 the station was on the poleward side of the 

 harometric depression which surrounds the 

 Antarctic ice. There were few winds from the 

 western quadrant, and an increase of pressure 

 to the south, with an anticyclone in that direc- 

 tion, must be assumed. The station was, on 

 the whole, nearer the circumpolar low-pressure 

 ring than the anticyclone. Cyclonic weather 

 was more common than anticyclonic. Low 

 temperatures prevailed with westerly winds 

 and during calms. Easterly winds brought a 

 rise of temperature. 



Meteoeologioal observations during the 

 •solar eclipse of August 30, last, made at 

 Bernau, in southern Germany, showed that 

 the temperature fell from 65.8° to 59.7° in ten 

 minutes, and then rose again. The wind fell 

 from a moderate velocity to a calm during the 

 •eclipse, and then increased again. 



E. DeC. Ward. 



NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF NATURAL 

 SCIENCE. 



HIPPOCRATEAN FISHES. 



Included in the Corpus hippocraticum is, 

 ■next after Herodotus, one of the oldest of 

 Greek prose writings, a work ' On Regimen,' 

 in four books, by an unknown author, yet re- 

 garded by Galen as not unworthy of the 

 ■' father of medicine ' himself. Throughout 

 all antiquity, this work, especially the second 

 Tsook, was held in high esteem ; nor can its in- 

 terest be said to have vanished at the present 



day, whether regarded from a historical, 

 literary or purely scientific standpoint. In 

 that part of the second book which treats of 

 the dietetic value of various plants and ani- 

 mals, as many as fifty-two species of the 

 latter are enumerated, seventeen of which are 

 fishes; and their order of arrangement is such 

 as to have suggested to Burckardt^ the idea of 

 a definite system, called by him the ' Ooan 

 scheme of classification.' 



Notwithstanding the large number of fishes 

 mentioned in this work, some of the names 

 occurring here for the first time, I have been 

 unable to find any reference to it in ichthyo- 

 logical literature. Both Littre and Puchs, in 

 their translation of the text — there is no Eng- 

 lish version — attempt a precise identification 

 of species, but judged by the standard set by 

 Hoffman and Jordan in their ' Catalogue of 

 Greek Fishes,' it can not be said that these 

 classicists have been uniformly successful. A 

 comparison with the catalogue referred to 

 shows that at least ten of the Hippocratean 

 species can be recognized with certainty, five 

 are doubtful, ahd the remaining two may be 

 despaired of as hopeless. One of these, 

 iXe<piTci, also written ^/IsyijTi'y, seems to be 

 peculiar to the work in question, and no one 

 has ventured a conjecture as to its meaning. 



Of great importance for the early history of 

 ichthyology are the abundant notices con- 

 tained in Athenseus, 90 species of fishes being 

 enumerated by him in alphabetical order. 

 The extent to which this author drew upon 

 Dorion's compendium, and the sources from 

 which this in turn was derived, have been set 

 forth in an extremely interesting essay by 

 Wellmann.'' Erom this we take the following 

 estimate of Dorion's treatise, citations from 

 the latter occurring in thirty-four passages of 

 Athenseus : 



Die erhaltenen Fragmente zeigen, dass das Werk 

 in ziemlich umfassender Weise die Fischwelt be- 



' ' Das koische Tiersystem,' Verh. Naturf. Ges. 

 Basel, XV., pp. 377-414, 1904. 



■Hermes, Vol. XXIII., pp. 179-193 (1888). 

 Other valuable references to the early literature 

 are given in the chapter contributed by Eugene 

 Oder ('Ueber Fische und Fischfang') to 

 Susemihl's ' History of Alexandrian Literature,' 

 Vol. I., 1891. 



