432 



sciujsrcu. 



[Vol. VI., No. 145. 



successfully bringing about the explosion, so graphic- 

 ally described in Colonel McFarland's letter. 



From the stand-point of an outside would-be ob- 

 server, the story of the Flood Eock explosion may be 

 told as follows. The idea of determining the velocity 

 of the vibrations through the ground was suggested 

 at a late date, and the preparations were necessarily 

 hurried and incomplete. No official information 

 could be obtained, fixing even approximately the 

 date of the explosion, and we were obliged to depend 

 upon the newspapers for that information. Near 

 the end of the week preceding its occurrence, the 

 papers announced that the time was set for Wednes- 

 day, October 7, at 9 a.m. We hurriedly collected the 

 apparatus prepared to date, boxed it, and shipped it 

 to New York on Monday the 5th, and were to follow 

 it that night, when the evening papers announced 

 a postponement probably till Saturday the 10th. 

 Nearly all the astronomical observatories within 200 

 miles of New York had been invited to co-operate (see 

 Science, vi. 327), and had been asked to watch the 

 New York papers, and been promised a telegram 

 several hours before the event, fixing, if possible, the 

 nearest minute at which it would occur. 



The announcement and warning by General New- 

 ton on the afternoon of Thursday the 8th, together 

 with a letter at the same time to the representative 

 of the geological survey, were the first information 

 we had of the time set for the explosion. 



I would say that General Abbot cordially co- 

 operated with us, and that his offer to send his time- 

 signals to the Western union ojffice (after the explo- 

 sion) was duly appreciated. We did not take 

 advantage of it, however, as it would have been very 

 troublesome to distribute signals to fourteen observa- 

 tories or institutions scattered in all directions over 

 an area of 200 miles radius, and it was entirely 

 unnecessary, as every one of them had the means of 

 determining standard time for itself, or was in daily 

 receipt of standard-time signals at noon. With the 

 delay in the time of firing, of which we do complain, 

 we understand that General Abbot had nothing 

 to do. 



It should be distinctly noted that the engineer 

 observers within sound of the telegraphic ticks from 

 the chronometer at Astoria, and waiting for the pre- 

 liminary automatic signal from the firing-key, were 

 in a vastly more favorable position in case of delay ; 

 and if this had been anticipated, and there had been 

 time and opportunity to distribute the chronometer 

 ticks and firing-signal to all the outside stations, of 

 course it would have been done. 



Regarding the observations cited by Colonel McFar- 

 land as having been successfully made at Columbia 

 college, Yonkers, Princeton, and Cambridge, I 

 would say that, at the first two, it was due to their 

 proximity, while, in view of Professor Young's de- 

 scription of the Princeton observations {Science, vi. 

 335), it seems somewhat of a strain upon the meaning 

 of language, — unless used in some approximate, engi- 

 neering sense, — to call them a success ; and at present 

 the writer considers it somewhat doubtful if the 

 Cambridge observations refer to the explosive wave. 

 The statement that the two officers at Willet's Point 

 would have watched an hour, if necessary, only goes 

 to show how much better posted the engineer ob- 

 servers were as to a possible delay in the firing. 



As to my own observations at Staten Island, their 

 failure is of itself of little importance, but it is to 

 me a source of wonder and sincere admiration to see 



how much more an engineer officer can know about 

 them than the observer himself. They will be 

 described in due time with the other reports. At 

 present I can only say that under the same circum- 

 stances, if endowed with only the same ' degree of 

 intelligence ' I then possessed (even after a study of 

 the Hallet's Point explosion of 1876), I should prob- 

 ably do just the same again ; but, with the rapid 

 growth since Oct. 10 of my knowledge of engineering 

 science, I can hardly state now how long I would 

 not wait for the occurrence of a definitely predicted 

 engineering phenomenon. 



Suffice it now to say that eight out of the seven- 

 teen stations were successful in observing either 

 the first arrival or the pretty certain non arrival 

 of the vibrations. The others were all thrown off by 

 the delay, combined, in four cases, with observation 

 of earth-tremors occurring at several places during 

 the first ten minutes after eleven. It would almost 

 seem as if the earth itself were, about that time, 

 growing uneasy at the delay in the oncoming of the 

 dread event. H. M. Paul. 



Washington, Nov. 9. 



The arms of the octopus, or devil fish. 



Prof. T. Jeffrey Parker (Nature, October 15, p. 

 586) refers to an octopus of the New Zealand fauna, 

 with arms five feet five inches long, as the longest 

 seen by him, and as exceeding what Mr. Henry Lee 

 calls the longest-armed octopus known, namely, that 

 from Vancouver Island, which had arms five feet 

 long. 



In 1874 I speared an octopus in the harbor of 

 Iliuliuk, Unalashka, which was afterward hung, by 

 a cord tied around the body immediately behind the 

 arms, to one of the stern davits of the coast survey 

 vessel under my command. As soon as the animal 

 died and the muscles relaxed, I noticed that the tips 

 of the longer tentacles just touched the water. On 

 measuring the distance with a cord, I found it to be 

 sixteen feet, giving the creature a spread from tip 

 to tip of the longest pair of arms, of not less than 

 thirty-two feet. The arms toward the tips were all 

 exceedingly slender, but rather stout toward the 

 body, which was somewhat over a foot long. The 

 largest suckers were two and a half inches in 

 diameter ; the whole creature nearly filled a 

 large washtub. Parts of this specimen are now in 

 the U. S. national museum. Having heard oc- 

 topi were eatable, and the flesh looking white and 

 clean, we boiled some sections of the arms in salt and 

 water, but found them so tough and elastic that our 

 teeth could not make the slightest impression on 

 them. Wm. H. Dall. 



Washington, Nov. '3. 



The care of pamphlets. 



In printing my letter on p. 408 of your issue of 

 Nov. 6, you printed the Dewey classification numbers 

 with a comma, thus obscuring their character as 

 decimals. According to the custom of Mr. Dewey, 

 you might have placed a comma or period after the 

 third figure, but unless you did that you should have 

 printed them without punctuation marks ; 526, for 

 instance, is a primary division, of which 52641 is a 

 subdivision. P. Pickman Mann. 



