January 31, 1890.] 



SCIENCE 



73 



gives a strong current. In all the experiments, says Nature, it 

 appeared that, with equal nerve-excitation, the strength of 

 the skin -currents depended on the degree to which the part of 

 the skin bearing the electrodes was furnished vyith sweat- 

 glands. Thus some parts of the back, and upper leg and arm, 

 having few of these, gave hardly any current. Herr Tarchenoff 

 considers that the course of nearly every kind of nerve-activity 

 is accompanied by increased action of the skin-glands. Every 

 nerve-function, it is known, causes a rise of temperature and 

 accumulation of the products of exchange of material in the 

 body. Increase of sweat-excretion favors cooling and getting 

 rid of those products. 



— In the summer of 1887 Herr Lindenbaum found a petroleum 

 lake on a narrow tongue of land in the north of Saghalien. It 

 is about twenty-two miles north-east of a village named Pomor, 

 and at about 54° north latitude. A little south of Pomor lies 

 Baikal Bay, a good harbor, which has a depth of eight feet at 

 low tide, and could therefore be entered by small vessels. 

 There would be no diflSculty in making a road from this place 

 to the petroleum lake. There is also another spot, one hundred 

 and twenty-five miles south of the former, where petroleum is 

 said to occur. 



— Herr T. Thoroddsen was in the summer of 1889 travelling 

 in Iceland, and has given an account of his discoveries in 

 Petterman's Mitteilungen, Bd. 35, No xi. The part of the 

 island he visited lies on the western edge of Vatna JokuU, to 

 the north-east of Hecla. A great part of this country has never 

 been visited by any one, for the total absence of grass for horses 

 renders travelling 'difficult. All the lower slopes of Torfa Jokull 

 are covered with lava and ashes, but the substratum and the 

 ridge itself are composed of palagonite breccia and tuff. The 

 large river Tungnaa approaches much nearer to Torfa Jokull 

 than it is drawn on maps. Crossing this river, Herr Thoroddsen 

 took up his quarters by the Fiskivotn, and made several 

 excursions in the neighborhood. The lakes abound in trout; 

 they are small, and are represented on the maps on too large a 

 scale. They are not surrounded by glacial difbris, but are 

 almost all crater lakes. Across an extensive tract of lava, 

 totally devoid of grass, lies the Thorisvatn, which is not a very 

 small lake, as represented on Gunnlaugsson's map, but one of 

 the largest in the island, and not much less than Thingval- 

 lavatn. The lakes are generally enclosed by steep mountains, 

 so that it is difficult to approach them. It has been supposed 

 that the rivers Skapta, Hversfisfljot, and Tungnaa rise at the 

 same place from a glacier, and they are so represented on 

 Gvflmlaugsson's map; but Herr Thoroddsen found that the 

 Tungnaa flows in two branches from a large glacier, the edge 

 of which extends in a long curve from the mountains south 

 of Vonarskard to those near Fljotshvcrfi, that the source of the 

 Skapta lies about nine miles farther south, and tbat the 

 Hverfisfljot rises from ten to fourteen miles still more to the 

 south. Three serrated lidges run between the Tungnaa and 

 Skapta, from the Vatna Jokull to the Torfa Jokull. Tliese 

 mountains are composed entirely of palagonite breccia, and the 

 valleys are filled with volcanic ashes and shifting sands. 

 Between the middle and southern ridges lies a lake about 

 twenty-three miles long, which stretches nearly to the foot of 

 Vatna Jokull, and, though in most places very narrow, is one of 

 the largest in Iceland. It is fed with milky water by numerous 

 glaciers. Near the last of these, Herr Thoroddsen, on his way to 

 the Torfa Jokull, visited several warm springs and solfataras. 



— The remark made at a recent meeting of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society by the president, apropos of certain explora- 

 tions by Mr. Theodore Bent, viz., thit there is still much work 

 for the competent observer in regions where practioflUy no risk 

 need be encountered, is strikingly exemjjlified in the account of 

 the last voyage of that accomplished explorer along the south 

 coast of Asia Minor, as described in the Journal of Helleiuc 

 Studies. Sailing along the Carian coast,, he landed in the bay 

 of Aplotheka, at the ancient town of Loryma; and, hearing 

 there of some ruins a few hours distant, he rowed to the place, 

 and discovered a curious little harbor with the entrance not a 



stone's throw in width. Thence an hour's walk brought him to 

 some extensive ruins, which, from an inscription, he believed 

 himself able to identify with tolerable certainty as Kasarea. 

 The village of Fhoenike being just beyond, he could also 

 identify with certainty the little harbor as the Kpf/aa lifirjv of 

 Ptolemy ; for this harbor lies, according to that geographer, 

 between Loryma and Fhoenike. Pliny also mentions that 

 Tortus Cressa lies just opposite Rhodes at a distance of twenty 

 miles, which agrees with the position. Again, a little farther 

 along the coast, on the Gulf of Makri, Mr. Bent was able, from 

 inscriptions on the ruins, to identify the site of a Lycian town 

 of some importance, — Lydse, the capital of a district known as 

 Lydatis. A little farther on, an old Hellenic acropolis, sur- 

 rounded by a few tombs, seemed, from some half-defaced 

 inscriptions, to have been known as Lissa, though the site 

 seems to be that assigned by Ptolemy to the town of Karya. 

 Some of the inscriptions found in these places are of considerable 

 interest, and the remains are described by Mr. Bent lo be not 

 without artistic merit. The whole region is now inhabited 

 only by nomad tribes of Yuruts; and these discoveries are 

 alluded to here merely to show how much more may be done 

 and discovered by the explorer, within easy reach of home, than 

 is commonly supposed. Indeed, to quote Mr. Bent's words 

 with reference to this district alone, "Inasmuch as Pliny tells 

 us that there were once seventy cities in Lycia and in his time 

 thirty-six, of which he only knew the names of twenty-five, 

 there is room for much more geographical discovery in this 

 interesting district. ' ' 



— Garden and Forest states that it has received at its office, as 

 a reminder of the mild winter, a very interesting photograph of a 

 group of Christmas roses which came from Cazenovia, N.Y. , to 

 testify how beautiful these flowers can be in mid-winter. 

 Branches of many slu-ubs with fully expanded flowers were also 

 received ; and in a collection of this sort from the Meehan Nur- 

 series at Germantowu were sprays of the Cornelian cherry with 

 the yellow stamens showing through the opening buds, and the 

 Tartarian honeysuckle with buds just opening. 



— We learn from Nature that remarkable phenomena aie 

 witnessed at the new observatory on the steep and isolated 

 Santis in northern Switzerland. Thunder-storms are extremely 

 frequent. Thus in June and July last year, only three days 

 were without them. As a rule, thunder peals from mid-day 

 till evening. Tlie noise is short, partly owing to shortness of 

 flashes, and partly to the small amount of echo. The thunder- 

 storms come on quite suddenly, in a clear sky. One of the 

 surest indications of their approach is the bristling of the 

 observer's hair. During hail the iron rods of the house give a 

 hissing sound associated with luminous effects. 



— Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. will issue in Febniary, as 

 an extra number of the Riverside Literature Series, ' 'The River- 

 side Manual for Teachers, ' ' containing suggestions and illustra- 

 tive lessons leading up to primary reading, by I. F. Hall, super- 

 intendent of scholars at Leominster, Mass. The manual will 

 appear later as the introductoi-y part of ' 'The Riverside Primer 

 and Manual for Teachers." It points out, principally by the 

 aid of illustrative lessons, what steps the pupil should take be- 

 fore beginning the primer. The primer and manual form the 

 first book of the Riverside Reading and Language Course, which 

 also includes ' 'The Riverside First Reader, ' ' ' 'The Riverside 

 Second Reader, ' ' and, for higher grades, the regular numbere of 

 the Riverside Literature Series. To accompany the manual and 

 primer, JIi-. Hall has designed an instruction frame equipped 

 with tlu'ee sets of language and object pictures, prepared espe- 

 cially for this purpose by F. T. MeiTill, script and printed words 

 and sentences, and a displaying holder. Tlie object of the River- 

 side Language and Reading Course is, fh-st, to give young chil- 

 ch-en such a ti-aining as will enable them, while overcoming the 

 mechanical difficulties of learning to read, to acquire a taste for 

 good reading-matter, and incidentally to gain a power to express 

 themselves orally and in \^Titing with accuracy, good taste, and 

 facility; and, second, to supply children of each gTade with tlie 

 best reading-matter that the world's literature affords. 



