Januaky 2, 1885.] 



SCIENCE, 



19 



proposes to issue a work in two volumes, in which 

 are described and figured many microscopic forms 

 resembling the spores of higher cryptogams, but 

 which the writer considers to be independent uni- 

 cellular organisms. They appear to have been very 

 abundant in the carboniferous period, when higher 

 cryptogams were the prevailing vegetable type. Dr. 

 Reinsch offers to furnish to purchasers of his work 

 duplicate specimens of some of the species described. 



— A second edition of Dr. Lant Carpenter's 'En- 

 ergy in nature ' has just been published in England. 



— According to Nature, the collections made by 

 the polar traveller, Capt. Jacobsen, by order of the 

 Berlin museum, on his American tour, are now on 

 view at the Royal ethnographical museum at Berlin. 

 That part of the collections which was obtained from 

 Alaska territory consists of some four thousand ob- 

 jects, collected among various Eskimo tribes, and 

 among the Ingalik Indians living on the Yukon River. 

 Most of the objects in question closely resemble those 

 dating from the stone age, consisting principally of 

 stone, bone, horn, shell, or wood. 



— The Athenaeum states that Consul O'Niell has 

 this year accomplished two remarkable journeys in an 

 unknown portion of East Africa. In the first he left 

 the river Shire at Chironzi, and walked to Blantyre, 

 leaving the Ma-Kalolo country on his left. In the 

 second he walked to Guillimani, on the coast, from 

 Blantyre, by a route leading south of Milanji, which 

 will prove to be the nearest and most direct overland 

 communication with the coast. He took twelve hun- 

 dred observations for longitude, which will help to 

 fix a trustworthy meridian in the interior, which has 

 been much wanted. The account of these journeys 

 will appear in the Proceedings of the Royal geograph- 

 ical society. 



— The International Paris exhibition of manufac- 

 tures and processes will be opened on July 23, 1885, 

 and closed on Nov. 23. The exhibition will be held 

 at the Palais de l'industrie, Champs Elysees, under 

 the patronage of the minister of commerce and the 

 minister of public works. 



— From Nature we learn that the expedition of 

 the German travellers, Dr. Clauss and Herr von den 

 Steinen, who undertook to investigate the tributaries 

 on the upper right bank of the Amazon and Xingu 

 Rivers, starting from Paraguay and Cuyaba, have 

 successfully accomplished this task, and safely ar- 

 rived at Para at the end of October. The Brazilian 

 government, and especially Senhor Batovi, the pre- 

 fect of the province of Matto Grosso, have supported 

 this scientific undertaking in a praiseworthy manner. 



— At a meeting of the Anthropological institute of 

 Great Britain, held on Nov. 11, Mr. Francis Galton 

 described the object, method, and appliances of the 

 late anthropometric laboratory at the International 

 health exhibition, reserving the statistical results, 

 which were not fully worked out, for another occa- 

 sion. 0,344 persons passed through the laboratory, 

 f-ach of them being measured in seventeen distinct 

 particulars for the sum of threepence, in a compart- 

 ment only six feet wide and thirty-six feet long, So 



many applications have been made abroad and at 

 home for duplicates of the instrumental outfit, that 

 it was deemed advisable that any suggested improve- 

 ments in it should be considered before it became 

 established in use. 



— Dr. Siemens of Berlin has offered the German 

 government a piece of land in Charlottenberg worth 

 $100,000, for the building of an Institute of mechani- 

 cal and physical science. Preliminaries are already 

 being arranged by Dr. Forster and Professor Helm- 

 holtz. 



— Bulletin No. 6 of the U. S. geological survey is 

 ' Elevations in the Dominion of Canada,' by J. W. 

 Spencer, now at the university at Columbia, Mo., 

 lately of King l s college, Windsor, Nova Scotia. Dur- 

 ing his studies of Lake Ontario, Professor Spencer 

 collected the altitudes along all the Canadian rail- 

 roads constructed up to 1882; and these are now 

 published in convenient form. The tables occupy 

 thirty-three octavo pages, first arranged by railroads, 

 followed by a selected alphabetical list. The alti- 

 tudes are referred to mean ocean-level. 



— Professor Paulitschke left Vienna on the 30th of 

 November for eastern Africa. He proposes, in case 

 access to Harar should be denied him, to explore some 

 of the least-known districts of southern Abyssinia. 



— Petermann's mitthellungen publishes the report 

 of an excursion into the Somal country by J. Menges, 

 one of the hunters employed by Carl Hagenbeck of 

 Hamburg, the well-known dealer in wild animals. 

 The explorer succeeded in reaching the plateau sixty 

 miles to the south of Berbera, where its altitude is 

 fifty-one hundred feet. He was disappointed in the 

 ruins of stone houses promised him on the coast ; such 

 remains of buildings as he found being, to all appear- 

 ance, due to the Galla, who formerly inhabited this 

 country. A valuable map accompanies the report. 



— Recent deaths: Dr. L. Fitzinger, formerly keeper 

 of the Vienna museum, Sept. 22; Dr. Thomas Wright 

 of Cheltenham, geologist, Nov. 17; Mr. R. A. God- 

 win-Austen, the geologist, Nov. 25, at his residence, 

 Shalford House, Guilford, Eng. ; Mr. Henninger, one 

 of the editors of Science et nature. 



— Nature states that Admiral von Schleinitz has 

 resigned the presidency of the Berlin Gesellschaft 

 fur erdkunde, and has been replaced by Dr. W. Reiss. 

 At the last meeting of this society it was stated that 

 there are now foiir polar expeditions in preparation, 

 of which one will start for the antarctic regions. The 

 African traveller, Dr. Aurel Schulz, has started on a 

 journey across Africa from east to west, by way of 

 the Zambesi River and the Victoria Falls. Lieut. 

 Schulz, the leader of the German-African expedition. 

 reports from Cameroon that the joy of the German 

 colonists there is most intense in consequence of 

 recent political events. 



— The course of lectures to graduate students at the 

 Johns Hopkins university, which was opened on the 

 15th of November by President Gilman on academic 

 degrees, will consist of the same number (twelve) 

 as last year. Dr. G. Stanley Hall followed President 

 Gilman with a lecture on student life. The other 



