Nov. 30, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



557 



British Association to the effect that if examples of each 

 of the three remaining herds were brought together and 

 allowed to interbreed, they would more nearly revert 

 to the aboriginal wild type, and we should have a better 

 idea of what they were formerly. It is supposed that 

 the fact of the several herds being confined -to such a 

 limited area as they now occupy, has caused them to 

 become degenerated and somewhat smaller in size. 

 The experiment, anyhow, is worthy of a trial. 



Breeding Canary Birds. — This pursuit has become a 

 business of some importance at Paris, and is conducted 

 under the auspices of the Societe Serinophile. On 

 November 4th this society held its yearly exhibition of 

 Dutch canaries. The competition took place in the 

 Vautier Rooms, Avenue de Clichy. One hundred and 

 fifteen Dutch canaries were exhibited in their cages, 

 a; ranged on tables covered with green cloth, and forty- 

 fojr have received prizes. These birds are worth from 

 3 to 500 francs each, and the members of the society 

 rear more than 4,000 canaries annually. At Puteaux 

 there are no fewer than 150 cultivators of chickweed for 

 the use of these birds, and it is estimated that more than 

 10,000 francs' worth of this plant is sold daily in Paris. 



The Plague of Mosquitoes at Bombay. — A corre- 

 spondent of the Medical Press ascribes this plague with 

 much probability to the existence of offensive swamps 

 very near to the city. One of these is a stagnant lake of 

 sewage " backed up by heaps of town-sweepings." It is 

 expected that mosquitoes will not be the only result 

 of this shameful neglect. The Bombay Natural History 

 Society applied for the use of the waste and marshy 

 ground at the foot of the Chompathy, intending to drain 

 and reclaim it and convert it into a zoological garden, but 

 their request was refused. 



The Solom and its Products. — The attacks of the 

 phylloxera upon the vine have not merely affected the 

 supplies of grapes, of wine, and of raisins, but they 

 threaten a scarcity of two products of great importance 

 in the arts, tartaric acid and cream of tartar, the com- 

 mercial supplies of which are entirely drawn from the 

 grape. It is therefore very satisfactory to find that the 

 solom (Dicilium nilidmn), an African tree, contains in its 

 fruits both free tartaric acid and cream of tartar (potas- 

 sium bitartrate), unmixed with any other acid. 



The Star-fish and its Depredations — On the coasts 

 of New England the star-fish are estimated to destroy 

 several hundred thousand dollars' worth of oysters every 

 year. These pests cannot live in fresh or brackish 

 waters, and hence they do not infest the oyster-beds of 

 Chesapeake Bay. In a great flood which took place in 

 Rhode Island in the spring of 1886 an immense volume 

 of water found its way into Narragansett Bay, and 

 freshened the water to such an extent that all the star- 

 fishes perished. 



The United States Fishery Commission. — Accord- 

 ing to Science, the problem of restocking the coast of 

 New England with in shore cod has been definitely solved. 

 It is only a question of time before cod-fish can be made 

 more plentiful on the New England coast than they were 

 years ago, and a lost industry restored that will be 

 worth millions of dollars to that section of the country. 



THE BANDAI-SAN ERUPTION. 



A CORRESPONDENT of the Times gives the follow- 

 ing account of the results of the investigations made, 

 by Professor Sekiya, a young seismologist already 

 known to the world, and Mr. Y. Kikuchi, a geologist — ■ 

 both of the Imperial University — into this eruption, 

 which formed the subject of a paper read by the former 

 before the Seismological Society of Japan on Octo- 

 ber nth : — 



Sho-Bandai-san, the peak that was destroyed on the 

 15th July, is, or was, one of a group of four conical 

 mountains, known collectively as Bandai-san, forming 

 the walls of an old elevated crater basin, and rising to a 

 height of some 6,000 ft. above the sea. Stratified vol- 

 canic rocks, of the most part gneiss and andesite, form 

 the bulk of this mountain mass, and are mainly dis- 

 posed in six great layers, the fruits of as many succes- 

 sive eruptions. Lava, apparently of prehistoric date, 

 is found on the slopes. But, though Japanese records 

 often speak of fire and smoKe .and poisonous vapours 

 issuing from Bandai-san, the latest known active erup- 

 tion took place i,oSi years ago, and all that remained 

 to warrant the mountain's retention in the list of live 

 volcanoes were a few solfatara in and near the old 

 crater, Numanotaira, which from time immemorial have 

 given off steam. On the morning of the 15th of July, 

 however, this condition of tranquility was suddenly and 

 violently disturbed. Soon after the mild preliminary 

 earthquake, which took place at about half-past seven, 

 there came a second and prolonged shock of fearful 

 intensity. Then, while the ground in the whole region 

 was still heaving and groaning and making the houses 

 rock, a dense black column was shot forth from Sho- 

 Bandai-san to a height of some 4,000 ft. During the 

 next minute there were fifteen or twenty repetitions of 

 this phenomenon, all of them accompanied by horrible 

 and tremendous noises. In the last of them, the 

 ejectamenta took a course highly inclined to the vertical. 

 Zigzag flashes of lightning, resulting from the electricity 

 generated by the steam explosions, were seen to shoot 

 forth from the ascending columns. Then, for another 

 half-hour, the thunders of minor explosions were heard at 

 frequent intervals. Meanwhile, the lighter particles of 

 the black columns, consisting of mingled steam and dust, 

 rose steadily upward, attaining an altitude of some 12,000 

 or 15,000 feet above the volcano, and spreading out into 

 a vast cloud like an open umbrella in shape, which 

 shrouded the earth beneath it in midnight darkness, until 

 dispersed and wafted away by the north-v esterly wind. 

 From this cloud descended the shower of blue-gray ash, 

 so-called, which has been mentioned in every account of 

 the catastrophe — in reality, volcanic dust or powder 

 (augite-andesite), caused by the violent mechanical disin- 

 tegration of ejected rocks, hurled swiftly through the air 

 after having been rendered brittle and soft by the action 

 of steam and gases. Highly heated itself, and mingling 

 with the condensing steam, it assumed a fine granular 

 shape and fell on the adjacent country in a solid, 

 scalding rain, which caused shocking injuries to many 

 individuals and clothed the ground with a hot mantle on 

 which it was difficult and painful to walk. On the map 

 this dust-strewn region has the shape of a half-open fan, 

 and covers 1,040 square miles of land area, attaining at 

 the Pacific shore, 62 miles from the volcano, a breadth 

 of some 41 miles, and spreading yet farther over the 

 ocean. About six inches deep at and near its origin, the 



