July 8, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



19 



— A Geographical Exhibition, we learn from the Proceedings of 

 the Royal Geographical Society, will be opened this summer at 

 Mopcow, in connection with the two International Congresses of 



. Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology, which are to be held 

 in the ancient Russian capital. The General Staff will exhibit a 

 collection of all the maps, descriptions, and surveys made by 

 Russian travellers in Central Asia, China, and Korea, which are 

 deposited in the Topographical Department of the General Staff 

 and the Scientific Military Committee. They will show also the 

 recently-published maps, based upon surveys in the Empire and 

 adjacent countries. A catalogue of these works is now in prepa- 

 ration. 



— The degree of M.A. was conferred, honoris causa, upon Pro- 

 fessor Edward Sylvester Morse at the recent Harvard commence- 

 ment. Professor Morse was born in Portland, Me., in 1838. 

 When but thirteen years of age he began to form a collection of 

 minerals and shells. His first occupation was as a mechanical 

 draughtsman at the Portland locomotive works. Afterward he 

 made drawings on wood for a Boston concern. In 1853 he began 

 a course of study under Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology in Cambridge. In 1866 he founded the American Natu- 

 ralist, now published in Philadelphia. In 1868 he was made a 

 fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1871 

 Bowdoin College gave him the degree of doctor of philosophy. 

 In 1874 Harvard elected him to a university lectureship, and he 

 was also chosen vice-president of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, of which association he afterward 

 became president. While studying marine zoology in Japan he 

 accepted a professorship in the Imperial University at Tokio. He 

 made several other visits to Japan, and formed a collection which 

 was recently sold to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Professor 

 Morse is also the inventor of numerous ingenious appliances for 

 both scientific and domestic uses. 



— The British consul in Hainan, in his last report, says, ac- 

 cording to Nature, that during the past year he has made two 

 journeys in that island, one to certain prominent hills near Hoi- 

 how, known as the " Hummocks,'' which lie fifteen miles to the 

 west, on the road to Ch'eng mai, the other a gunboat cruise to 

 Hansui Bay. The people at both these places, and presumably all 

 along the north-west coast, though believing themselves Chinese, 

 speak a language which is not only not Chinese, but has a large 

 percentage of the words exactly similar to Siamese, Shan, Laos, 

 or Muong. The type of the people, too. Is decidedly Shan, with- 

 out the typical Chinese almond eye. At one time (1,000 years 

 ago) the Ai-lau or Nan-chau Empire of the Thai race extended 

 from Yun-nan to the sea, and the modern Muongs of Tonquin, 

 like the Shans of the Kwangsi province, the ancestors of both of 

 which tribes belonged to that empire, probably sent colonies over 

 to Hainan; or the Chinese generals may have sent prisoners of 

 war over. It is certain that some, at least, of the unlettered, but 

 by no means uncivilized, tribes in the central parts of Hainan 

 speak a type of language which is totally different from that spo- 

 ken by the Shan-speaking tribes of the north-west coast. Yet 

 the Chinese indiscriminately call all the non-Chinese Hainan dia- 

 lects the Li language. The subject, Jlr. Parker says, is one of 

 great interest, well worth the attention of travellers. It was his 

 intention to pursue the inquiry when making a commercial tour 

 of inspection round the island, but his transfer to another post 

 compels him to abandon his scheme. 



— The latest researches of the Finnish expedition to the Kola 

 Peninsula will modify, as we learn from Nature, the position of 

 the line which now represents on our maps the northern limits of 

 tree-vegetation in that part of Northern Europe. The northern 

 limit of coniferous forests follows a sinuous line which crosses 

 the peninsula from the north-west to the south east. But it now 

 appears that birch penetrates much farther north than the conif- 

 erous trees, and that birch forests or groves may be considered as 

 constituting a separate outer zone which fringes the former. The 

 northern limits of birch groves are represented by a very broken 

 line, as they penetrate most of the valleys, almost down to the 

 sea-shore; so that the tundras not only occupy but a narrow space 

 along the sea- coast, but they are also broken by the extensions of 



birch forests down the valleys. As to the tundras which have 

 been shown of late in the interior of 1;he peninsula, and have been 

 marked on Drude's map in Bergbaus's atlas, the Finnish explorers 

 remark that the treeless spaces on the Ponoi are not tundras but 

 extensive marshes, the vegetation of which belongs to the forest 

 region. The Arctic or tundra vegetation is thus limited to a nar- 

 rovv and irregular zone along the coast, and to a few elevated 

 points in the interior of the peninsula, like the Khibin tundras, or 

 the Luyavrurt (1,120 metres high). The conifer forests, whose 

 northern limit offers much fewer sinuosities than the northern 

 limit of birch growths, consist of fir and Scotch fir; sometimes 

 the former and sometimes the latter extending up to the northern 

 border of the coniferous zone. 



— A sealed bottle containing a paper requesting the finder to 

 report the place and date of discovery was thrown into the sea at 

 Coatham Pier, Redcar, by Mr. T. M. Follow, on Oct. 8, 1891. On 

 April 12, 1892, according to the Proceedings of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, the bottle was picked up by a fisherman off the 

 island of Hjelmeso, in the extreme north of Norway. The bottle 

 had been immersed for six months, and the shortest distance 

 between the two points is 1,400 miles. This observation con- 

 firms the general set of the currents from the east coast of Britain, 

 at first southeasterly and then northerly along the continental 

 coast, as shown in Mohn's map of surface drift in the North Sea 

 and Norwegian Sea in Petermann's " Erganzungsheft," No. 79, 

 for 1885. 



— The Russian Official Messenger (April 33) announces that 

 the Ministry of Domains has decided to make, next summer, the 

 following explorations in Caucasia: (1) The exploration of the 

 mineral springs of the Eastern Caucasus having now been com- 

 pleted, to carry out a similar work in Central and West Trans- 

 caucasia; namely, the mineral waters of Khvedur, Uravel, Tsiku- 

 ban. Platen, and others, in the governments of Tiflis and Kutais, 

 and in the Chernomorsk District ; (2) to continue the systematic 

 geological exploration of the government of Tiflis, especially of 

 the valleys of the Yora and the Alazan in Kahetia, and their min- 

 eral resources, in view of the projected construction of a railway 

 in Kahetia; and (3) as the detailed study of the Apsheron naphtha 

 region was terminated last year, and the map of the region is 

 ready, to complete the exploration of the Caspian coast naphtha 

 region, and to explore the nickel ores of Daghestan. The geolo- 

 gist, Simonovich, and the mining officers, Konshin, Barbot-de- 

 Marny, and Gavriloff, are commissioned for this purpose, while 

 M. Rughevich is commissioned to explore the naphtha region along 

 the new Petrovsk branch of the Vladikavkaz Railway, which 

 yielded last year 15,000 tons of naphtha, and promises to become 

 an important centre of naphtha industry. 



— Professor Elihu Thomson, the inventor of the Thomson- 

 Houston Electric Company, contributes an entertaining, scientific, 

 and thoughtful paper on '' Future Electrical Development," to the 

 July New England Magazine, He explains the possibilities of 

 electricity, in all the public and private conveniences of life, and 

 gives practical examples of its application to manufactures, rapid 

 transit, and domestic offices, such as cooking, ironing, heating, 

 gai'Jening, raising fruit and vegetables, etc. 



— Macmillan & Co. announce the issue of a new and extensively 

 revised edition of Mr. Brvce's " American Commonwealth.'' It is 

 to be expected that this new edition will take notice of the many 

 important changes which have occurred since the work was first 

 issued. It is to be copyrighted in America. The same publishers 

 have already issued more than half of Stephen's " Dictionary of 

 Biography,'' one volume of which is published quarterly. Thirty 

 out of a total of fifty volumes have appeared so far, and the enter- 

 prise is so well in hand that there will be no break in the publica- 

 tion of the remaining parts. The work when completed will 

 contain at least thirty thousand articles by writers of acknowl- 

 edged eminence in their several departments. The memoirs are 

 the result of personal research, and much information has been 

 obtained from sources that have not before been utilized. It has 

 been the aim of the editors to omit nothing of importance and to 

 supply full, accurate, and concise biographies, excluding, of course, 

 those of persons still living. 



