244 Scientific Intelligence. 
8. Nickeliferous metallic Iron from New Zealand (from a 
letter to the Editors dated Dunedin, October 14, 1886).—In the 
drift of the Gorge River (which empties into Awarua or Big Bay, 
on the west coast of the middle island of New Zealand), derived 
in part from the so-called “ Red Hill”—a high mountain mass 
consisting of older peridotite, more or less converted into serpen- 
tine—there occurs, associated with gold, platinum, cassiterite, 
chromite, magnetite, a nickel-iron alloy. According to an analy- 
sis by Mr. W. Skey, our government analyst, it is composed of 
Ni 67°63, Fe 31°02, Co 0°70, 8 0:22, SiO, 0°43, and has the formula 
Ni,Fe. Specific gravity 8°1 and hardness about 5. This as a 
new mineral he has named Awaruite. Mr. Skey also discovered 
the curious fact of this alloy not being able to reduce copper 
from its acid solution of cupric sulphate and argues from this the 
unreliability of the copper test for demonstrating the absence of 
iron alloys from rock masses. That the new alloy has been de- 
rived from the peridotite (olivine-enstatite rock, as far as I have 
found) of the Red Hill there can hardly be a doubt, as specimens 
of serpentine—partly resembling the antigorite, partly picrolite— 
have been found on the mountain, containing specks of it abund- 
antly impregnated. It is certainly a very close terrestrial relative 
of the iron meteorite, octibbehite (FeNi), mentioned in Dana’s 
System of Mineralogy and in Wadsworth’s comprehensive table 
of analyses, given in “ Lithological Studies,” as found in Octib- 
beha Co., Mississippi. GEORGE H. F, ULRICH. 
III. Botany anp ZOOLOGY. 
1. Mryor Boranicat Norrs.—That immense repertorium of 
botany, Baillon’s Dictionaire de Botanique, makes steady pro- 
gress. Fascicle 21, which is the first of vol. ii (pp. 104), carries 
the letter H down to the article Hypericum. 
Of Hooker’s Icones Plantarum, the third and concluding part of 
vol. xvii—a Fern volume—was issued in January. The North 
American and Northern Mexican species figured are Mothochlena 
Palmeri, Baker, and NV. Hookeri, Eaton. 
H. N. Patterson, of Oquawka, Illinois, has brought out a new 
and attractive Check-List of North American Plants, including 
Mexican Species which approach the U. 8. Boundary. It fills 
150 large 8vo pages in double columns, of rather large and very 
clear type, printed upon one side only of the paper, and sufficiently 
spaced for cutting up into labels, when that is desired, or for 
intercalation of new names. 
Dr. W. F. Tortie, who died at Victoria, British Columbia, 
toward the close of last year, was one of the last survivors of 
those men of the Hudson Bay Company’s service in its palmiest 
days who helped to develop the botany of our northwest coast. He 
was, we believe, one of Sir William Hooker’s pupils at Glasgow, 
and, going out to Fort Vancouver as medical officer in 1832, he 
became one of the principal contributors of materials from that 
