February 17, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



79 



expedition sent out jointly by the Geological Survey of Canada and 

 the commissioner of crown lands of Quebec. The latter has re- 

 cently sent surveyors who explored the numerous rivers emptying 

 into the St. Lawrence. I mention particularly C. E. Forgues's sur- 

 vey of the rivers St. John, Mingan, Natashquan, and Esquimaux. 

 Last summer the missionary Edmund James Peck succeeded in 

 crossing Labrador from Richmond Bay to Ungava Bay. Green 

 Island, in Hudson Bay, as shown on Packard's map, does not exist 

 according to observations made by Gordon on his expeditions to 

 Hudson Bay. The archives of the Department of Marine of France 

 possess a number of manuscript maps of Hudson Strait, which, 

 however, have not been published. 



LABRADOR, 



An interesting sketch of the physical geography of Labrador was 

 given by Dr. R. Koch, who wintered in Nain in 1882-83, a-nd visited 

 the stations of the Moravian missionaries. He describes the country 

 in the Deutsche Geographische Blatter (vol. vii. No. 2, 1884). The 

 outlying islands are barren and destitute of vegetation ; the valleys 

 adjoining the bays and fiords, however, have beautiful forests of 

 pine and larch, surrounding dark, quiet lakes. Towards the moun- 

 tainous region the woods are lighter, and the numerous dead trunks 

 testify to their struggle against the gales of winter. Travelling 

 by sledge westward from Nain, the plateau of the interior is reached 

 after four or five days' travel, of about thirty miles each, through 

 fiord-like valleys. After one or two days more, the height of the 

 land is reached. The height of the land approaches the shore in 

 the northern parts of the peninsula, being only one day's journey 



distant from Rama. The narrower the mountainous district be- 

 comes, the higher it is. Near Hoffenthal the mountains do not 

 exceed a few hundred feet in height. At Nain the mountains close 

 by the sea are from eight hundred to twelve hundred feet high. 

 The Kiglapait, between Nain and Okak, have an elevation of several 

 thousand feet. North of Hebron the country is alpine in character, 

 the mountains rising almost vertically from the sea. Deep, nar- 

 row fiords intersect the coast, which is not sheltered by islands 

 from the heavy swell of the ocean. But, although the peaks attain 

 a great height, no extensive snow-fields and glaciers are found. 

 From Hebron to Komaktorvik there are hardly any islands off the 

 coast, but farther north it is skirted by innumerable dangerous 

 rocks. Near Rama, Koch ascended a mountain twenty-six hun- 

 dred feet in height. He describes the scene as very grand : " At 

 my feet I saw the deep bluish-green fiord surrounded by steep, wall- 

 like cliffs. The mountains were covered with shrubs colored red by 

 the first frost of the season. To the left spreads the dark blue 

 ocean, with its greenish-white icebergs. On the opposite side of 

 the fiord, and towards the west, extended steep and ragged moun- 

 tains, and narrow gorge-like valleys, in one of them a dark lake, 

 the water of which, black as ink, reflected the high peaks. In the 

 interior I saw mountains rising to still greater heights, and covered 

 with fresh snow extending north and south as far as I could see. 

 The liighest points of this range are opposite the island of Aulat- 

 sivik, and reach elevations of from eight thousand to nine thousand 

 feet. While mountains less than fifteen hundred or two thousand 

 feet in height are rounded, and bear evidence of having been covered 

 by glaciers, the ragged forms of the higher mountains show no 

 such signs." Continuing, Koch describes the terraces and lakes 

 formed by the rivers and the old beaches, which he found in several 

 bays as high as one hundred feet above the level of the sea. 



Some additional information is cbntained in the publication of 

 the reports of the German polar stations of the international sys- 

 tem. Since Koch's visit to Labrador, meteorological observations 

 are being made at all missionary stations of the Labrador coast, 

 which are of particular value as filling the wide gap between the 

 system of Canada and the Danish stations in Greenland. , 



PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL REVERSION. 

 Writers on evolution, and especially Darwin, have endeavored 

 to explain many curious facts in the forms, colors, and general ap- 

 pearance of animals by reversion to a condition existing in ances- 

 tors more or less remote. As this explanation has seemed to be 

 the only one that met the cases, it has been largely accepted. But, 

 so far as 1 know, physiological and pathological reversion in the 

 sense in which the terms are used in this paper, has not been em- 

 ployed to any appreciable degree by writers of any class to explain 

 phenomena which seem to me to gather fresh interest around them, 

 and appear in a new light when thus viewed.' By physiological re- 

 version I mean a return to a condition functionally similar to, if not 

 identical with, that existing in some lower form ; and by pathologi- 

 cal reversion, an analogous result dependent on a disordered con- 

 dition (disease). 



It is now almost superfluous to point out that the embryo of the 

 highest mammals passes through stages of development closely al- 

 lied to the permanent forms of groups of animals lower in the 

 scale. But that there is also a close functional resemblance in 

 many particulars has not been much insisted upon. The subject is 

 so large that the various adaptations in the embryo to an environ- 

 ment that is but temporary can be only indicated, and not treated 

 in detail. It is plain that the embryo of the mammal, being sur- 

 rounded by a fluid medium and drawing the oxygen supplies for its 

 tissues independently of any actual contact with an atmosphere, 

 must resemble functionally aquatic animals proper in many respects. 

 It breathes by the placenta, virtually as the fish and other aquatic 

 animals by gills. The condition of the blood puts it on a par with 

 lower forms ; and, even in the highest intra-uterine stage of develop- 



1 It w^s not till long after this paper had been written, and a considerable time after 

 it had been read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Montreal, that I became 

 aware that the principle involved in the discussion had been previously announced by 

 Dr. Milner Fothergill of London in a communication printed in the .'l/frf/c<2//'rfM 

 and Circular ior August, 1886. I am glad, however, to be able to make this 

 acknowledgment on behalf of so bold and original a writer as Dr. Fothergill. 



