January Id, 1886.] 



SCIEXCE. 



57 



the most reliable sources of information at our com- 

 mand, they are only challenged by such bitter per- 

 sonalities and trifling evasions as those indulged in 

 by your correspondent. Writing with evident ani- 

 mus, he can find nothing better to object to Stepni- 

 ak's crushing indictment against the whole system 

 of government in his country than a quibble as to 

 whether a man who escapes from the prison hospital 

 can be said to escape from prison ( your readers 

 will find a detailed account of Prince Peter Kropot- 

 kin's escape in Stepniak's 'Underground Russia'): 

 and the obvious truism that polite circles at St. 

 Petersburg profess ignorance of cruelties, their mas- 

 ter desires to conceal. 



Until some better evidence to the contrary than 

 this is laid before us, we English lovers of liberty 

 must consider the case against Russian despotism as 

 proved ; and we shall endeavor — not in hatred, but 

 in love, toward the Russian people — to aid them by 

 every means in our power in their heroic efforts to 

 free themselves and their country. C. M. Wilson. 



London, Dec. 27. 



Ruminants of the Copper-River region, Alaska. 



While on the Copper or Atnah River of Alaska, 

 and its principal tributary the Chitina (Chitty, cop- 

 per : net, river), I had occasion to learn something of 

 the species of ruminants inhabiting the region. Of 

 the Cervidae, only two species, as far as I had occa- 

 sion to learn, exist; viz., the moose, Alces machlis. 

 called by the natives tenayga : and a form of the 

 caribou, Rangifer tarandus, called by the natives 

 honnai. 



Of the Bovidae, there were two species, one of 

 which, called by the natives teb&y, I had occasion 

 to carefully examine. It nearly resembled DalTs 

 mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis Dalli, Nelson), 

 "found in the mountains of Alaska and southward 

 into British America." My party killed several of 

 these animals, one of which, a ram, had horns twenty 

 inches long and nearly straight. It was killed on a 

 very high point, much above the timber-line, and in 

 its fall was considerably crushed. The horns were 

 similar in structure to those of the big-horn, but 

 had very little curvature. I saw a spoon made from 

 a tebay 's horn, which had a length of twenty- six 

 inches, and measured five inches across the bowl. 

 The natives informed me that some had much larger 

 horns than the one that furnished material for this 

 spoon. This may or may not be true. 



The head of the tebay was much like that of a 

 Southdown ram, the muzzle much less sharp than 

 that of Shaw's Ovis canadensis or Nelson's Ovis 

 canadensis Dalli. The hair, as to kind, was in no 

 respect different from that of the latter animal, but 

 was of a uniform white color, and by no means dirty; 

 in fact, was nearly as white as his surroundings of 

 snow. From the best information obtainable, I 

 would class it as an equal in size to the big-horn, and 

 a relative of Dall's mountain sheep. The ram and 

 one other tebay were killed on the most northerly 

 tributary of the Chitina, called by us Chitistone 

 (Copper-stone) River, on account of the existence 

 there of copper ore. 



The natives informed us that a few miles below 

 the junction of this tributary with the Chitina we 

 could kill small tebay, and four were obtained. 

 Their heads were left on the mountains, but the 

 body seemed identical with that of the Chitistone 



River specimens, though very much smaller. Why 

 only small ones should be found at this place, in the 

 latter part of April, I cannot say. The mountains 

 here were not so high as farther to the east and 

 north, where the large ones had been killed. The 

 last tebay seen or heard of by us were near the 

 source of Copper River, on the divide between it 

 and the Tanana River. 



The other species of the family was a white animal 

 whose pelt I frequently saw used in articles of wear- 

 ing-apparel, and which, from its description, was 

 probably the mountain goat, Mazatna montana, 

 found also on the head waters of the Yukon River 

 and its upper tributaries. I saw some of these ani- 

 mals at the junction of the Copper and Chitina 

 rivers, on the west banks of the former, but was 

 unable to obtain them. H. T. Allen, 



Lieut. 2d cavalry, U.S.A. 



Washington, Jan. 2. 



The festoon cloud. 



In the Philosojiliieal magazine for July, 1857, Mr. 

 W. S Jevons, then assay er at the Sydney branch of 

 the royal mint, had an article on the cirrous form 

 of cloud (vol. xiv. 22-35), and gave therein the best 

 early account that I have met with of a peculiar 

 form of cloud, since commonly called the 'festoon' 

 or 1 pocky ' cloud. He says these forms are often 

 to be seen on the under surface of dense cirro-stratus 

 clouds, 1 especially at the front or tail of a thunder- 

 cloud.' Sometimes these dropping portions of cloud, 

 or ' droplets,' as he calls them, seem to come into 

 contact with dry air, when their well-defined form 

 is destroyed, and a fibrous or fur-like appearance 

 only remains. ' They appear to be truly portions of 

 subsiding cloud.' An accompanying 'imaginary 

 section of a thunder-cloud near Sydney ' nicely illus- 

 trates their attitude, but not their form. 



The earliest valuable figure of the festoon cloud is 

 presented in an article by A. Mitchell, on weather 

 prognostics "in Scotland, in the Edinburgh New philo- 

 sophical journal (xviii. 1863, 221), where it is copied 

 from a drawing by the Rev. C. Clouston : it is prob- 

 ably the same figure that is given in a work by the 

 latter author, 1 An explanation of the popular weather 

 prognostics of Scotland.' etc. (Edinburgh, 1867) ; 

 but this I have not seen. The drawing shows the 

 cloud to be distinctly convex downwards, the sepa- 

 rate festoons being grouped together somewhat like 

 the adjacent grapes on a bunch : and it is spoken of 

 as a sure sign of stormy weather. Its relative rarity 

 may be estimated from a note by Symons, the vet- 

 eran English observer, in his Meteorological maga- 

 zine for July, 1868. He first saw it early in the 

 morning of a June day in 1858. just before a violent 

 thunder-storm : then during the succeeding ten years 

 he never saw it, or heard of its being seen, till he 

 came upon the book above mentioned. He said it 

 looked like * bags of sand,' but does not refer to it as 

 a falling cloud. 



Poey, a lifelong student of cloud-forms, sent a 

 brief not^ to Nature (Oct. 19, 1871, p. 489), in which 

 he speaks of this cloud as a new form, and gives a 

 rough figure of it : he considers it very rare, having 

 seen it but twice in his life, both times suspended 

 from the pallio-oirrus of thunder storms, — once in 

 Washington, D.C.; again in Beloit, Wis. This note 

 brought out several others : among them one signed 

 'J.,' evidently by Jevons, calling attention to his 



