September 25, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



279 



the river in August and September, 1884, to the region 

 of the American trading-posts. Here he remained 

 until the present summer, returning on the steamer 

 St. Paul, to San Francisco, Aug. 30. Dr. Everette 

 has occupied himself in collecting geographical data 

 from traders, natives, and explorers ; making sketches 

 of trading-posts, native villages, and other points of 

 interest on the Yukon ; bringing together facts in re- 

 lation to the fauna, flora, and ethnology of the Yukon 

 and adjacent rivers; obtaining data for a history of 

 the explorations by Americans since the purchase 

 of Alaska, and collecting a full series of vocabularies 

 from the Yukon tribes. He has particularly interest- 

 ing geographical information from the little known 

 Yukon Delta, the Tananah and Upper Kuskokwim 

 rivers, the Shageluk district, and various hitherto im- 

 perfectly explored affluents of the Yukon. This in- 

 formation is necessarily in part of an approximate 

 character; but most of it, it is thought, will prove a 

 useful addition to our knowledge. Dr. Everette will 

 now devote himself to the preparation of a work on 

 the Yukon district of Alaska, for which his notes, 

 charts, and collections will afford abundant material. 



— The steamer St. Paul announces the wreck, July 

 31, of the bark Montana, in the Nushagak River, Bris- 

 tol Bay; but it is believed no lives were lost. It is 

 feared that by this disaster the Moravian mission to 

 Nushagak may have lost part of its supplies or outfit. 



— Lieut. Purcell of Stoney's expedition to the Kowak, 

 or Kuak, river of the Kotzebue Sound region, has re- 

 turned, disabled by illness. He gives the following 

 notes on the progress of the expedition. The passage 

 from Unalashka was extremely slow, owing to light 

 winds; but St. Michaels was safely reached, and three 

 natives and nineteen dogs were obtained, and the party 

 proceeded to St. Lawrence Bay, where skin-clothing 

 was purchased for winter use. The steam-launch 

 Viking will be used in exploring the Kowak Elver, and 

 birch canoes used when the limit of laanch-navigation 

 is reached. The expedition hoped to explore some two 

 hundred and fifty miles of the river before going into 

 winter quarters; and the engine of the Yiking is ar- 

 ranged so as to work a small saw-mill-attachment 

 to cut boards for building the houses, etc. After 

 October, exploration will be carried on by sledge-par- 

 ties. In May, 1886, Lieut. Stoney proposes to return 

 to Hotham Inlet and complete its exploration, and 

 to ascend the ISTunatak, or Noatak, river, which has 

 hitherto only been examined to a distance of a 

 few miles from its mouth. The members of the ex- 

 pedition were well and enthusiastic, and much may 

 be expected from their researches. On the way up, 

 Bogosloff Island and the Grewingk volcano were vis- 

 ited. There was less smoke than in 1884; and a small 

 spit was- making out to the northwestward of the 

 island, but there were no other changes of impor- 

 tance. 



— The September pilot-chart, issued by the Hydro- 

 graphic office, contains several novelties appropriate 

 to the season when tropical hurricanes come up 

 to our coast from the West Indies. The weather- 

 changes, indicative of an approaching cyclone, and 

 the manoeuvres needed to avoid its centre, are printed 



in the margin, with a storm-card for better illustra- 

 tion. In the latter, the winds are represented blowing 

 in true circles, which certainly should be corrected. 

 Besides the track of the cyclone which damaged 

 Charleston on Aug. 24, 25, eleven others are added 

 from former years, to give shipmasters an idea of the 

 course followed by these storms in different parts 

 of the ocean. The wrecked schooner. Twenty-one 

 Friends, has been reported twelve times from April 

 14 to July 31, floating in the course of the North- 

 Atlantic drift, from about latitude 40° 20', longitude 

 55°, to latitude 50° 20', longitude 27°; thus averaging 

 about thirteen miles a day to the east north-east. 

 The successful use of oil in stormy weather is illus- 

 trated by a number of examples. 



— Twenty-one pages of " Results of meteorological 

 observations made at the U. S. naval observatory 

 during the year 1881" are recently published. The 

 reductions were made under the direction of Lieut. 

 Wilson, Professor Eastman having been relieved 

 from charge of the department at his own request. 

 The tri-hourly observations, even of the clouds, were 

 made by the observatory watchmen, " who have ac- 

 quired such a degree of skill as insures a reasonable 

 accuracy in their work." The same can hardly be 

 said of workers on the reductions, as mistakes are 

 very numerous. The first half of table II. occupy- 

 ing half a page, when corrected of its more visible 

 errors, looks like a severely treated proof-sheet. The 

 form of publication is also peculiar: under temper- 

 ature of the air, the columns marked ' highest ' and 

 * lowest' do not contain the records of the maximum 

 and minimum thermometers, but show only the 

 highest and lowest of the tri-hourly readings; the 

 true maxima and minima being inconveniently set 

 apart in a special table. In table Y. we find the lowest 

 temperature for August by minimum thermometer 

 to be 60° on tlie 14th, while the tri-hourly obser- 

 vations give it as 57.5° on the 19th. Looking back 

 to the daily records, we see that the minimum for the 

 14th is not 60° but 66°, while the real minimum 

 for the month is 56.5° on the 19th. Again : the mean 

 minimum for May is given as 56.9° ; the mean of the 

 lowest tri-hourlies is 53.6°. The tri-hourly readings 

 are called ' hourly ' in all the tables, and the monthly 

 range of daily means is called ' extreme mefin range 

 for the month.' No reduction except averaging is 

 made for the wet-bulb thermometer, so that all hu- 

 midity factors have yet to be worked up. For Janu- 

 ary and December, the relative humidity from the 

 wet and dry bulb monthly means comes out ninety- 

 five and ninety-one per cent, which seems hardly 

 possible even in the naval observatory. In future 

 numbers of the Results, a considerable increase in 

 accuracy over this one might reasonably be looked 

 for; and much convenience would be gained by the 

 use of bold-face and hair-spaced type to indicate the 

 highest and lowest values in every column of records. 

 The care given to the thousandths of an inch in the 

 rainfall-data might be transferred to a determination 

 of the accuracy of the four-inch rain-gauge. 



— Mr. W. F. Denning of Bristol, Eng., directs at- 



