October 9, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



heretofore printed. The Cakchiquels were a semi- 

 civilized tribe in Guatemala, and were reported by 

 the first Spanish explorers to have annals reaching 

 back 800 years before the conquest. The work 

 will be printed from the unique original MS. in 

 the pecuhar alphabet of that tongue. 



— The last volume (175) of the Philosophical 

 transactions of the Royal society of London, con- 

 tains a short report on the total solar eclipse of 

 May 17, 1882, prepared by Captain W. de W. 

 Abney and Dr. Arthur Schuster. The English 

 party, of wliich Captaui Abney and Dr. Schuster 

 were members, observed the echpse at Sohag, 

 close to the bank of the Nile, in Upper Egypt. It 

 will be remembered that during totahty there was 

 noticed by several of the observers a lummous 

 streak near the sun, which, by the photographs, 

 was proved beyond a doubt to be a comet ; and it 

 is shown as a very conspicuous object in a well- 

 executed engraving accompanymg the present 

 report. The followiag description of the comet's 

 appearance is given : " The nucleus is exceedingly 

 weU and sharply defined, the tail is somewhat 

 curved ; it did not point toward the sun's centre, 

 but in a dhection nearly tangential to the limb. 

 The extent of the tail was roughly two-thirds of a 

 solar diameter. . . . The different eclipse par- 

 ties, present at Sohag, decided at a joint meeting, 

 after the echpse, to give the name of Tewfik to the 

 comet, in. recognition of the E^edive's generous 

 hospitahty." This curious discovery, during a total 

 echpse, of a comet which eluded all subsequent 

 search has suggested to Dr. Holetschek, to enquire 

 into the conditions which must be fulfilled by an 

 orbit, that the comet should be hidden iu the sun's 

 rays during the whole time, that its absolute bright- 

 ness might be supposed to render it otherwise visible. 

 Such a calculation is not, of course, susceptible of 

 any great exactness, but the results are, however, 

 sufficient to show that the ' clandestine ' passage of 

 a comet, such as the echpse of the sun surprised 

 at Sohag, is probably not of so rare occurrence as 

 we should at first be inchned to suppose. 



— Recent statistics demonstrate that England has 

 6o square miles of colony to the square mile of her 

 ■own area ; Holland, 54 ; Portugal, 20 ; Denmark, 

 6.30 ; France, 1.90 ; and Spain 0.86 square miles. 

 The area of the British colonies is nearly 8,000,000 

 square miles — rather less than the area of the Rus- 

 sian Empire, including Siberia and Central Asia ; 

 but if the area of the Native Feudatory States in 

 India, amountiag to 509,284 square miles, be 

 added, over which England exercises as great con- 

 trol as Russia does over much of the territory 

 under its sway, together with that of the United 



Kingdom itself, 120,757 square miles, then the area 

 of the British Empire exceeds that of the Russian 

 Empire by about 200,000 square miles ; and it 

 covers within a fraction of one-sixth of the whole 

 land area of the globa. 



— A new Burmese embassy has been despatched 

 to Europe. It consists of an ambassador, two sec- 

 retaries, and two clerks. It is stated that some 

 Burmese ladies accompany the party, and ten 

 students, who are to be educated in Europe. 



— The Genie civil publishes some interesting 

 particulars with reference to the production and 

 sale of petroleum iu the Caucasus. There are 

 about 400 wells in the vicinity of Baku, but only 

 about half of them are at present being worked. 

 The gross total of the petroleum extracted during 

 the last three years is as follows : — 800,000 tons in 

 1882, 1,000,000 tons in 1883, and 1,300,000 tons last 

 year. Nearly the whole of this is converted into 

 lamp oil at Baku itself, about a pound of good oil 

 being obtained for three pounds of petroleum. 

 There are 150 petroleum refineries at Tchorny 

 Gorod (the black town), near Baku. In the course 

 of last year, 200,000 tons of lamp oU, 190,000 tons 

 of second-quality oil, and 500 tons of residuum 

 were exported, these figures showing a slight in- 

 crease over those for 1883 and 1882. The exports 

 were distributed in about even proportions over the 

 principal countries of western Europe. 



— Herr Luderitz of Bremen has always com- 

 missioned his agents on the v/est coast of Africa to 

 make collections of the tools and utensils of the 

 natives with whom they traded, beheving that 

 they would very shortly disappear before Em-opean 

 civilization. The result of this policy is a very 

 admirable collection of curiosities which Herr 

 Luderitz has now presented to the new Ethno- 

 graphical museum at Berlin. 



— In the Comptes Rendiis for August 10, 31. 

 Crova describes a self-recording actinoineter for 

 giving a continuous record of solar radiation, and 

 a plate shows the record of one day. It is princi- 

 pally valuable as showing the enormous and sud- 

 den fluctuations which are constantly going on in 

 the atmospheric absorption of these radiations, 

 thus confirming the results of Professor Langley's 

 researches at Alleghany and on Mt. Whitney, and 

 showing more graphically than anytliing else 

 could do the tremendous difficulties witli which he 

 was obliged to contend, and the vast number of 

 settings that must be made m these delicate quan- 

 titative measurements with the bolometer, m order 

 to reach fairly average values of the ever- varying 

 amount of energy that reaches us. 



