308 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
bitter. Its temperature ranges from 110° near the 
shore to 156° on the surface at the centre at;:l 2 1 G 
at a depth of 259 feet. Though the water i- jet 
black, it does not stain the skin of bathers, but 
the minute, solid particles it holds in suspension 
a liter to and colour the fibres of white doth. The 
lake — a bath in which is wonderfully exhilarating 
— has long been famous among the Indians as a 
place of cure for all forms of disease. 
Great Icebergs. — At certain seasons of the year 
as is well known, the Atlantic route to Europe is 
crossed by great processions of icebergs. These 
were especially numerous in 1890, and one that 
was passed on July 10, in 49° N., 24°W., is believed 
to have made the nearest approach to British 
shores of any iceberg since the glacial period. 
Fewer icebergs than usual were seen in May and 
June of this year. They were however, reported 
to Washington by 250 vessels; and one of them — 
seen from a German vessel, in 46° X., 47° W., — 
was 600 feet high and 4 miles long ! In the An- 
tarctic waters this seems to have been a maximum I 
year of floating ice. There the icebergs are always | 
more numerous and formidable than in the north 
yet it is not often that navigators have the expe- 
rience of an Aberdeen captain, who about the 
middle of May, in 45° S., 25° W., narrowly escaped 
running into an iceberg lO00 feet high, and the 
next day sailed along an immense ice island S00 j 
to 1000 feet high for a distance of 40 miles. From 
other vessels extraordinary reports have been 
made. Ice islands of similar vastness have not 
been unknown in former years, as from December 
1854, to April, 1855, no less than 21 vessels passed j 
in 40' and 20° W., a horse-shoe shaped mass of ice • 
60 miles long and 300 feet high, the arms of which 
enclosed a sheltered bay 40 miles across. A height 
of 1000 feet— which can better be appreciated 
when it is remembered that only about an eight of 
the mass of floating ice projects above the water's 
surface — has been several times reported. 
A New Form of Carbon. — It is generally known 
that carbon, one of the most important of the 
elements and a necessary Constituent of every j 
living thing, exists as an element in three ailotropic 
forms — the diamond, graphite, and charcoal or 
soot — having widely different proj*ertitrs. A new 
variety, differing somewhat from graphite, ha> 
recently been obtained by Luzi. When a piece of 
porcelain is heated in a blast furnace to ai • ut the 
melting point of platinum, and the-a tcess of air is 
cut off, the highly-heated porcelain Is mr: minded 
by a smoky flame, and in ten or fifteen minutes 
becomes covered with a peculiar deposit o* _,ubon. 
If the porcelain A unglazed, the 'deposit resend 1 - 
graphite. If glazed, the deposited :U n is bright 
and silvery and has a metallic lustre, s 
adhering firmly, others cleaving off readily and 
curling into exceedingly light rolls, which « 
metal shavings and stick to the fingers like silver- 
leaf, This form of carbon is free m ash, and 
does not give the nitric a id reaction for graphite 
Moreover, it is also* absolutely opaque, The same 
chemist has found that natural graphite - 
nitric acid leaction iu about half of the specimeus 
examined, and he regards these as uraphite pi opt .* 
separating the others into a new class which he 
calls grapliitite. On heating, .the diamond ‘Alls 
into a powder which resembles graphite, but which 
does not give the nitric acid reaction. 
Distribution cf Spiders.— Recent catalogues 
show that entomologists have . md 363 species < 
spiders in the Upper Cay ng i Lake Ik. sin. 37 in 
the District of Columbia, and 3 . 1 in New England. 
Dr. George Marx lias compiled a list < . 292 s; ecies 
which have been found in the polar regions of the 
globe, and after much study has reached these 
conclusions: 
1. The Arctic spider fauna is compose*! of the. 
ten families which we may term the common 
ones their species constituting the main bulk 
of the entire spider fauna of the wmld. They are 
cosmopolitan, and are f <und aim. st wherever 
animal life is possible. 
2. The genera of the Arctic spider fauna arc, 
without exception, those which also occur in 
other regions of the world, and there has been 
found so far not one genus which is original 
to that zone of eternal ice and snow. This is 
a very remarkable lac;, since in all other Arthropod 
orders, and those of higher rank, the polar fauna is 
distinguished by special and peculiar forms. 
