180 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VL, No. 134. 



below its foundations, creeks sable as ink sur- 

 rounding it, and the ground unctuous with 

 black fat alluvium." Not a pleasant place to 

 live in, one would say, but healthy, neverthe- 

 less. This is a curious condition of affairs, 

 and deserves to be carefull}^ studied by some 

 disinterested person of scientific attainments. 

 In summing up a fifty-page argument, written 

 to prove that the climate is not so much at 

 fault as the individual, Mr. Stanley practically 

 admits the unhealthiness of the whole region. 

 '' One more observation," he says, " will suf- 

 fice. However well the European may endure 

 the climate b}^ wise self-government, 3'ears of 

 constant high temperature, assisted bj-the mo- 

 notony and poverty of the diet, cannot be 

 otherwise than enervating and depressing, 

 although life ma}^ not be endangered. To pre- 

 serve perfect health, I advise the trader, mis- 

 sionar}', coffee-planter, and agriculturist, who 

 hopes to maintain his full vigor after eighteen 

 months' residence, to seek three months' rec- 

 reation in northern Europe. ' ' AVhat a prospect 

 to hold out to the emigrant ! Three months 

 out of every twenty-one to be passed away 

 from his business or farm ! Would not the 

 expense of such journeyings eat up the profits 

 of the eighteen months of hard work? And 

 how about wife and children ? Are the settlers 

 of Kongo State to be bachelors ? or are they to 

 be at home onh^ in those three months passed 

 in northern Europe ? 



Mr. Stanley has not improved as a writer 

 during the last six years. His volumes are 

 full of descriptions of the river and its banks. 

 But the}" are not interesting, except for the 

 amount of food for thought they contain. His 

 tone, too, towards his understrappers, is ver}^ 

 ungracious, to use no harsher term. The 

 maps are excellent, although it is diflicult to 

 see wh}^ the eastern half of the large map was 

 not extended to the ocean ; and a map on a 

 lai'ger scale of the countrj" around the Living- 

 stone Falls should have been added. With a 

 few exceptions, the illustrations are wretched. 

 They will not bear a moment's comparison with 

 those in H. H. Johnston's ' Congo from its 

 mouth to Bolobo.' Onl}- seventeen out of 

 the hundred and twent3'-two are stated to 

 have been made from photographs or sketches. 

 The rest seem to have been drawn on demand, 

 so to speak, in London. The wood-engraving, 

 too, is very poor, the pictures having a hard 

 and flat appearance that is unpleasing to the 

 eye ; while the flamboyant cover-design of a 

 negress poised on the Belgian coat-of-arms 

 defies description, and must be seen to be 

 appreciated. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



— The Electric power company of New York 

 announce that they have estabUshed an electric rail- 

 way running from Baltimore to Hampden, two and 

 a half miles. The road is very crooked, and the 

 gradients are as high as three hundred and fifty-two 

 feet to the mile. The motor draws a loaded car, carry- 

 ing sixty-five passengers without difficulty, stopping 

 and starting on the grade without slip of the wheels. 



— Mr. Edward Burgess, the designer and builder 

 of the new yacht Puritan, is the secretary of the ' 

 Boston society of natm-al history. 



— The report in the newspapers of the country of 

 a shower of meteoric stones at Salem, Ind., and the 

 injury by them to buildings and several persons, 

 proves to be without any foundation in fact. 



— The Macmillanshave just issued an 'Elementary 

 algebra for schools,' the joint work of Mr. H. S. Hall, 

 assistant master at Clifton College, and Mr. S. R. 

 Knight, late assistant master at Marlborough College, 

 — a work which is said to differ in some important 

 respects from the text-books now in use. The same 

 publishers also announced a ' Treatise on differential 

 equations,' by Mr. A. R. Forsyth, Fellow of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, and an ' Arithmetic for schools,' 

 by the Rev. J. B. Lock, whose works on trigonometry 

 have been favorably received. 



— The schooner Rosario, at New York, reports 

 that on June 23, in lat. 29° 14' N., long. 133° 35' W., 

 at 11 A.M., two heavy shocks of a submarine earth- 

 quake were experienced. These were about one 

 minute apart; and the last was much heavier than 

 the first, causing the vessel to tremble violently. 

 The sky was overcast, and the sea remarkably smooth. 



— Among the French species of the genus Poly- 

 gonum, hybrids are rare in a state of nature ; although 

 there are two kinds of flowers, one fertile, the other 

 sterile. In reply to some criticisms upon Gandoger's 

 work on this gro^p, he replies that this fact does not 

 necessarily mark a degradation, but simply a differ- 

 ent aptness in fecundation among different flowers; 

 and that, although the absence of fertile grains point 

 toward hybrid ity, this is not a sure sign. 



— As much of recent geographical discovery in 

 Asia has been due, says the Athenaeum, to native ex- 

 plorers trained in the surveyor-general of India's 

 department, it will be interesting to place on record 

 a list of the rewards lately granted by the government 

 of India to some of the more prominent of these 

 pioneers of Indian commerce. The most distin- 

 guished of them all, A. K., has received the title of 

 Rai Bahadur, and with it a jaghir of rent-free land. 

 The explorer known as ' the Bozdar ' has been made 

 a Khan Bahadur, and he also has received a grant of 

 land. ' The Meah,' who accompanied Mr. McNair in 

 his journey to Kafiristan, has been rewarded with a 

 sum of money, and the same recompense has been 

 given to A. K.'s companion; while a piece of plate 

 has been presented to Mr. Penny, a planter who 

 afforded the survey-officers much assistance during 

 the Aka operations. . 



