March 13. 1885. 



SCIENCE 



223 



The first year the means diminished to February, and 

 then rose. The second year the change was not so 

 regular. This is in marked contrast to the extreme 

 variations from month to month, experienced on the 

 islands of the European polar sea and their vicinity 

 (Jan Mayen, Bear Island, Spitzbergen, Novaia Zem- 

 lia, and Franz Josef Land), as well as in the North- 

 American archipelago. In both seasons the number 

 of auroras increased from September to a maximum 

 in February, and then decreased rapidly. 



Mean temperatures {Centigrade) and number of hours 

 of auroras at the Russian polar station of Sagas- 

 tyr, mouth of the Lena. 



September . 



October . . 



November . 



December . 



January . . 



February . . 



March . . . 



April . . . 



May . . . 



June . . . 



July . . . 



August . . 



Tear . . . 

 General mean 



Temperature. 



1882-83. 1883-84 



0.1 



■15.1 



•27.9 



■33.5 



■37.2 



•41.3 



■31.5 



-20.7 



■ 8.1 



0.9 



5.1 



3.8 



-17.1 



0.6 

 ■14.1 



•25.7 

 ■33.3 

 •35.8 

 ■34.0 

 ■35.2 

 ■21.8 



— 16.7 



Hours auroras. 



1882-83. 1883-84 



13 



87 

 179 

 191 

 194 

 197 

 137 



10 



23 

 69 

 83 

 178 

 151 

 126 

 118 



— We learn from the Athenaeum that three new 

 tidal observatories have recently been established in 

 Indian seas, — one at Cochin, and two at Ceylon. 

 There are now, in all, twelve such observatories in 

 those seas, each continuing its work for a period of 

 five years, as tidal observation has this advantage 

 over land meteorology, — that, after a limited time, a 

 particular locality is exhausted, and the instruments 

 can be taken up and moved elsewhere. These obser- 

 vatories have recently absorbed a great deal of the 

 attention of the Indian survey department; although 

 their results bear only in a strictly scientific way 

 upon the operations of the trigonometrical survey, 

 and in helping to correct the charts and tables which 

 are furnished to the practical navigator. 



— The Independent practitioner for January con- 

 tains an article by Dr. J. G. Van Marter of Rome, 

 upon evidences of prehistoric dentistry in Italy. In 

 the museum of Corneto-Tarquinius, a city on the 

 Mediterranean coast, the author found two specimens 

 of ancient dentistry, which the mayor of that city 

 certifies were found upon the first opening of the 

 buried Etruscan tombs. Professor Helbig further 

 assures him that these were virgin tombs, which date 

 back four or five hundred years before the Christian 

 era. In one of the specimens the two superior cen- 

 tral incisors are bound by a band of very soft gold to 

 the teeth on either side. The artificial teeth are well 

 carved, evidently from the tooth of some large ani- 

 mal. One other artificial tooth was held by the same 

 band, but it is lost. Dr. Van Marter has in his own 

 possession a skull in which the first upper molar on 

 the right side is missing, and which shows plain 



marks of an alveolar abscess, proving conclusively 

 the existence of toothache among the early Etruscans. 

 As the tombs have been only slightly explored, and 

 as only the noted men of Etruria were embalmed, the 

 rest being cremated, it is not strange that these evi- 

 dences of dentistry have been so long undiscovered. 



— At a meeting of the Society Isis, Jan. 15, Profes- 

 sor Hempel, Dresden, Saxony, made a communica- 

 tion concerning his chemical analysis of the air, 

 especially of the air collected daily by Prof. E. Hagen 

 during his voyage from Liverpool to New York in 

 1883. The results may be summed up as follows : 1. 

 The quantity of oxygen changes from day to day by 

 one-half per cent; 2.- The quantity of oxygen in the 

 air seems to be larger the lower the barometer, and 

 vice versa ; 3. The air taken on the ocean, compared 

 with the air taken by Professor Hempel the same day 

 at Dresden, shows the same composition. The quan- 

 tity of oxygen may vary on different days by one-half 

 percent; but the air from the oce^in varied from the 

 air of Dresden only by some hundredth parts of one 

 per cent. Professor Hempel intends to continue his 

 studies, and hopes to receive sets of tubes with air 

 obtained from the meteorological stations nearest the 

 north pole and the equator, and from one between, 

 perhaps from Heligoland. He expects to find varia- 

 tions in the quantity of oxygen in these widely sepa- 

 rated places, though they were not found in the 

 specimens obtained in Dresden, and on the voyage 

 from Liverpool to New York, because both are of 

 about the same latitude, and influenced by the same 

 currents of wind. Professor Hempel intends, there- 

 fore, next fall to go to New York, via Teneriffe, and 

 to collect on the top of the peak, and at the bottom, 

 air from the upper and lower trade winds. 



— According to notes made by Mr. L. Belding at 

 Zorillo and other places near La Paz, Lower Cali- 

 fornia, in 1883, the Pericue Indians, the original in- 

 habitants of that region, are now represented by a sin- 

 gle individual, — an old woman of about seventy years, 

 who was universally reputed to be a pure-blooded In- 

 dian, the last of her race. She was of good stature, 

 robust frame, and dark complexion. The Indians 

 south of 24° 30' buried their dead in caves, or below 

 shelving rocks, without regard to the points of the 

 compass. The bones which were found were usually 

 painted red. The skeleton of an adult male, found by 

 Mr. Belding, was wrapped in cloth made from the bark 

 of the palm, and bound with three-ply cord, plaited as 

 sailors make sennit, the material being the fibre of 

 the agave. The package, which was about twenty 

 inches long, nearly all the bones having been disjoint- 

 ed, did not appear to have been disturbed since burial, 

 although a femur and some of the small bones were 

 missing. This skeleton was found in a small cave at 

 Zorillo, the floor of which was covered about a foot 

 deep with dry, coarse sand, formed from the disinte- 

 grating granite rock. 



— This last season a small apple-tree on the shore 

 of Todos Santos Bay, Lower California, blossomed 

 and bore large, perfect fruit on its trunk, about an 

 inch from the ground. 



