J ONE 22, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



991 



and put to some modern use. But the eight 

 others which we visited, were in most cases 

 partly or wholly filled with debris which had 

 slowly accumulated in them. In size they 

 differed greatly from one another, several of 

 them were so small that they could not have 

 served for habitations. When they occurred on 

 the side hill they were covered with earth re- 

 moved from the immediate vicinitj'. In the 

 roofs of two of them we measured stones which 

 were 9x7x3 and 10x5x4 feet respectively. In 

 all, Mr. Pettee had found twenty of these struc- 

 tures in the immediate vicinity. It is hoped 

 that more careful exploration will be made of 

 those which are filled with debris. The pres- 

 ent inhabitants have no knowledge of their 

 origin, and they are entirely out of analogy 

 with any structures of recent times. 



In a communication made to the Japanese 

 Asiatic Society of London, a few years ago (the 

 date of which I do not remember) the writer 

 spoke of having noted about four hundred such 

 structures in different parts of the Empire, all 

 substantially alike, but with minor modifica- 

 tions in shape, only a small portion of them 

 having the wall of the entrance and the room 

 flush on one side, like the one here observed. 

 The few ornaments found in them were unlike 

 anything of present Japanese manufacture. 



At Yokohama, also, I was taken by Rev. 

 Henry Loomis to see various rooms artificially 

 excavated in the soft rock of the region which 

 were evidently of ancient origin, as evinced by 

 the character of the tool marks upon them. 

 But more interesting still were two shell heaps, 

 about one hundred and fifty feet above the bay, 

 in which not only had most of the shells been 

 artificially opened to procure the food, but 

 there were numerous pieces of pottery of 

 antique character. The situation of these was 

 much the same as of those described by Professor 

 Morse near Tokio. 



The universality of such indications of a 

 primitive culture preceding that of existing 

 civilizations in Japanese as well as in Europe 

 and America is certainly interesting and sig- 

 nificant. Much further light is still in store 

 from their systematic study. 



G. Frederick Wright. 



Nagasaki, Japan, April 23, 1900. 



SEALS IN THE AMAZON DRAINAGE. 



On September 20, 1899, William J. Ger- 

 hard, a field entomologist, observed several 

 seals in a stream among the headwaters of the 

 Madiera river, in Bolivia. The exact locality 

 was a small tributary of the Rio Secure, whose 

 waters find their way into the Madiera by way 

 of the Mamore river. From the position as- 

 sumed by the seals, as described by Mr. Ger- 

 hard, it is evident they were members of the 

 OtaridiB, and most probably either Otariajubata 

 or Arctocephalus aiistralis. 



This is, I believe, the first notice of any seal 

 from the Amazon system. 



James A. G. Rehn. 



Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 Philadelphia. 



the international congresses of meteor- 

 ology and aeronautics at paris. 



To THE Editor of Science : As some of 

 your readers may be planning to attend the 

 International Congresses of Meteorology and 

 Aeronautics this summer, at Paris, it seems 

 proper for the oflBcial delegate of the United 

 States to call attention to an error in the dates 

 announced in Science of June 1st. These con- 

 gresses will not meet during July but during 

 September, the Meteorological Congress being 

 held between the tenth and the sixteenth of 

 that month and the Aeronautical Congress, 

 fixed for nearly the same time on account of 

 the allied interests, having its sessions from the 

 fifteenth to the twentieth of September. 



The mistake, which was made also by your 

 English contemporary. Nature, probably arose 

 from the fact that when the list of the various 

 congresses was issued several months since, the 

 dates of the two congresses in question had not 

 been determined ; nevertheless the blanks left in 

 the date column were assumed to mean that 

 each of these congresses coincided with the one 

 immediately preceding it in alphabetical order. 

 A. Lawrence Rotch. 



Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory. 

 June 7, 1900. 



THE NAME OF THE COCHINEAL. 



I HAVE elsewhere (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 

 Phila., 1899, p. 261) shown that the Coccus cacti, 



