830 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 595. 



primarily devoted to ethnological subjects. 

 Ascending the Eio Negro, he made his head- 

 quarters at Sao Felippe, just below the junc- 

 tion of the Isanna with the main stream, a 

 well-ordered settlement in which a good deal 

 of real civilization has been introduced by 

 Don Germano Garrido y Otero, a native of 

 the north of Spain. A first journey led up 

 the Isanna, and its tributary the Aiari, which 

 was ascended to a point where it approaches 

 so close to the Uaupes as to permit the journey 

 from one stream to the other to be made in 

 three and a half hours, across a quite low 

 water-parting. This near approach of one 

 river-system to another seems to be a char- 

 acteristic of the region, for other instances 

 were subsequently brought to light, the most 

 remarkable being the separation of the Tikie, 

 a western tributary of the Uaupes, from the 

 system of the Yapura by a low water-parting 

 that could be crossed in as short a time as fifty 

 minutes. On the second journey. Dr. Koch 

 descended the Kio Negro to the mouth of the 

 Curicuriari, whence he ascended the mountain 

 of the same name, with which many legends 

 are associated by the natives. The path led 

 through magnificent virgin forests, and in- 

 volved much toilsome work, but the view from 

 the smnmit over the boundless forests was full 

 compensation for this. The few resident 

 Indians of this region are emigrants from the 

 Uaupes — ^mostly Tukanos — who have here 

 found a refuge from the advance of so-called 

 civilization. There are also wandering In- 

 dians — ^the Maku — on a much lower level of 

 culture. Dr. Koch ascended the Curicuriari 

 for a considerable distance, afterwards making 

 a portage across a low divide to another 

 tributary of the Uaupes, and ascending the 

 Tikie, already referred to, almost to its source. 

 The Tikie, like most of the rivers of this re- 

 gion, is broken by falls, among them the Pari 

 Fall, reached by Count Stradelli in 1881. 

 Dr. Koch collected much ethnological material 

 among the tribes visited, some of whom had 

 never seen a white man. He alludes to the 

 remarkable way in which the black- and white- 

 water streams alternate without apparent rea- 

 son, the two kinds occurring sometimes only a 



few hundred yards apart, though flowing 

 through the same forest and over the same 

 soil. Like other travelers, he found a reputa- 

 tion for fever ascribed to the white-water 

 streams, while those with black water are 

 immune. The third journey was in some 

 ways the most important, as it led up the 

 main stream of the Uaupes or Caiari (Uacaiari 

 of Wallace), past the turning-point of that 

 traveler at the mouth of the Cuduiari (Codi- 

 ari), and the Jurupari Fall reached by 

 Stradelli, to a station of Colombian rubber 

 collectors on its upper course. The many falls 

 involved great labor, but after the Jurupari 

 the river presented a quite different character, 

 flowing sluggishly through periodically water- 

 logged lands, entirely uninhabited. Above 

 his furthest point it is said to be formed by 

 two branches, one from the west, the other 

 from the open savannahs near the sources of 

 the Guaviare in the north. On the return 

 voyage Dr. Koch ascended the Cuduiari to 

 the more open country near its source (though 

 this is rather thin scrub than true savannah), 

 and visited some extensive underground cham- 

 bers and passages carved by natural agencies 

 out of the sandstone. When finally leaving 

 the country on his return to Europe, he ex- 

 plored the route from the Tikie to the Yapura 

 system before alluded to, descending the latter 

 river to the Amazon. The navigation of the 

 small streams leading to the Apaporis branch 

 of the Yapura was a matter of difiiculty, and 

 the country here was still quite a virgin field, 

 the tribes met with having not previously seen 

 a white man. Dr. Koch concludes with a 

 sketch of the ethnology of the region, and 

 especially the dances, of which he made a 

 special study. 



At a meeting of the Geological Society, 

 London, on May 9, a paper giving a scientific 

 account of the recent great eruption of Mount 

 Vesuvius was read by Professor Giuseppe de 

 Lorenzo, of the Mineralogical Museum in the 

 Royal University of Naples, a foreign corre- 

 spondent of the society. According to the 

 report in the London Times Professor de 

 Lorenzo stated that after the great eruption 

 of 1872 Vesuvius lapsed into repose, marked 



