May 7, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



409 



tween the Petchora and the Obi, under the auspices 

 of Sibiriakoff and others, through the northern 

 Urals. There are, it appears, several passes, the 

 best probably that of Shokurinsk. This is ninety- 

 eight miles long, and extends from Kurga on the 

 Petchora, a town accessible by steamers, to the 

 Sigva River, an affluent of the Sosva of the Obi 

 basin. The pass is only 1,450 feet above the level 

 of the sea, and 1,150 above the Sigva. A railway 

 a hundred miles long will therefore connect these 

 two great water systems, and avoid all the perils 

 of arctic navigation in the Kara Sea and Gulf of 

 Obi. Another pass, the Voikarski, is of about the 

 same length, but rises two hundred feet higher. 



Partition of Patagonia. — Patagonia has disap- 

 peared from political geography. The Panama 

 Star and herald announces the result of the agree- 

 ment, in regard to this region, by Chili and the 

 Argentine Republic, who have absorbed it. To 

 Chili has been assigned all the western slope of 

 the Cordillera to the southern extreme of the 

 continent, to the Strait of Magellan, and all the 

 islands off that coast. The eastern slope of the 

 range, and the vast pampas extending to the 

 Atlantic, are now the property of the Argentine 

 Confederation. The Strait of Magellan is declared 

 neutral, and free to all nations. The chief island 

 of Tierra del Fuego is parted equally between the 

 two nations, Chili taking all the other islands, in- 

 cluding that of Cape Horn. 



Miscellaneous. — It is announced that news has 

 been received from Ghardaia, in the Sahara, of the 

 assassination of Lieutenant Palat the explorer. 

 He was murdered by his Mohammedan guides two 

 days after leaving Insalah. It is alleged that his 

 death was due to the Senousian fraternity, the 

 fanatical association, whose members were the 

 assassins of Colonel Flatter's party in the same 

 region, and are held responsible for the death of 

 numerous other explorers. Baron Kaulbars, after 

 nine years' labor, has finished a new chart of 

 South America. It is published by Iliin of St. 

 Petersburg, in eight sheets, and on a scale of 

 1 : 6,300,000. The author is now engaged on a 

 chart of Africa, to have the same scale. It is 

 said, that, after the fixing of the frontier line 

 by the Russo-English commission, many of the 

 Turkomans living on the fertile slopes of the 

 Afghan mountains have moved to the Russian 

 side of the line. As the country on this side is a 

 desert, it is supposed that they cherish the idea that 

 they will hereafter have an opportunity of raiding 

 the Afghan settlements from Russian territory, — 

 a course which would be likely, if not energeti- 

 cally repressed by Russia, to raise anew many in- 

 ternational complications. Lieutenants Ryder and 

 Bloch of the Danish navy will devote this summer 



to hydrographic explorations in the district of 

 Upernavik, Danish Greenland. 



PARIS LETTER. 



Since my last letter, a good deal of stir has 

 been created in some circles by the death of three 

 of the Russians sent to Pasteur, after having been 

 bitten by a mad wolf. As is always the case, 

 some persons cannot believe in methods that are 

 liable to miss fire now and then : they think that 

 medicine and physiology ought to be as precise 

 and unvarying as mathematics ; they cannot un- 

 derstand that he who operates on living matter, 

 operates on the most moving and varying of all 

 grounds. No person of scientific training will 

 wonder if Pasteur does not always meet with suc- 

 cess : in fact, the experiment has only just begun, 

 and we shall have to wait some time before a 

 legitimate conclusion may be reached. I do not 

 suppose that the fiery attacks of Rochefort, the 

 renowned — and sadly renowned — pamphleteer, 

 on Pasteur's experiments, are even able to attract 

 the great experimenter's attention. They are good 

 enough to amuse a few, but that is all. 



However, as many newspapers have seemed 

 rather dismayed by the death of the three Rus- 

 sians, and as some persons have seemed to be 

 shaken in their confidence, M. Pasteur has 

 deemed it advisable, at the meeting of the Acade- 

 my of sciences, on the 12th of April, to give his 

 opinion on the question. In his last paper, then, 

 he begins by recapitulating the whole number of 

 persons attended to by himself. At present this 

 number is 688, of which more than half have out- 

 lived the more dangerous period, — that during 

 which rabies is most likely to develop. Turning 

 then to the question of the great danger of rabies 

 communicated by wolves, he quotes many docu- 

 ments referring to the same, showing that re- 

 covery is very rarely met with. In Russia it is 

 generally considered that persons bitten by rabid 

 wolves have no chance of escaping their fate ; and 

 it must be noticed, as M. Pasteur remarks, that in 

 such cases the duration of the period of incubation 

 is remarkably short. But the fatal effects of the 

 wolf's bite is not due, according to Pasteur, to any 

 increase of rabid virulence in the wolf. The virus 

 is not, or at least does not seem to be, any stronger 

 in the wolf than in the dog ; but as the wolf usu- 

 ally inflicts very severe bites, especially on the 

 face and hands, the virus penetrates the body with 

 much more ease. Such is, in Pasteur's opinion, 

 the reason of the seriousness of rabies communi- 

 cated by wolves. This opinion has led him to 

 alter somewhat his method in cases where rabies 

 is of wolfish origin : he is to tell us some day how 

 he has altered it, and with what success. 



