of pinnaglobine, a new globulin, by M. A. B. Griffiths.On the existence of parallel series in the biological cycle of Pemphigiens, by M. Horvath.-The history of the Garcinia of the sub-group Rheediopsis, by M. J. Vesque.-Researches on the variations in the transpiration of flowers during their development, by M. G. Curtel.-On some diseases of mushrooms, by M. Julien Costantin.-On the rôle, distribution, and direction of ocean currents in France during the Upper Cretaceous period, by M. Munier-Chalmas.-The tubercular vaccination of the dog, by MM. J. Héricourt and Ch. Richet. The authors' experiments indicate that, by the inoculation of tuberculosis aviaire, dogs can be vaccinated against human tuberculosis.— On a new pathogenic diplobacteria obtained from the blood and urine of influenza patients, by MM. Teissier, Roux, and Pittion. -Measures of the variations in the lengths of the Dauphiny glaciers, by Prince Roland Bonaparte. Of the sixteen glaciers whose movements were studied in 1890, six were found to be

advancing, eight retreating, and two stationary. In 1891 the results obtained indicated that six glaciers were advancing, five retreating, and five stationary. The amounts of movement measured are given in the paper.

BERLIN.

Physiological Society, March 4.-Prof. Munk, President, in the chair.-Prof. Zuntz spoke on Dr. Werigo's experiments respecting the influence of oxygen on the elimination of carbon dioxide by the lungs. When an animal breathed pure oxygen into one lung and simultaneously pure hydrogen into the other, Werigo found more carbon dioxide in the alveolar air of the oxygen-lung than in that of the hydrogen-lung, and hence concluded that oxygen furthers the escape of this gas. Prof. Zuntz, however, pointed out that the diffusion of carbon dioxide from the alveolar air into the contents of the cannulae used for the introduction of the gases must be greater on the side supplied with hydrogen than on the other, and that hence less carbon dioxide must naturally be found in the alveolar air of the former than of the latter. The really important question whether the absorption of oxygen leads to an increased elimination of carbon dioxide has therefore not yet been answered. Werigo's experiments should be repeated, using oxygen and nitrogen.

Meteorological Society, March 8.-Prof. Schwalbe, President, in the chair.-Dr. Lachmann gave an account of a research on the extremes of temperature in Europe. He first assured himself of the trustworthiness of the readings of his maximum and minimum thermometers. He then determined for stations which afford prolonged series of data how many years must be taken into account in order to arrive at a trustworthy mean, and found that in the case, e g., of Brussels, ten years suffice for the determination of its maximum temperature, whereas some forty years must be taken into account when determining its minimum temperature. After comparing the extremes of temperature with the periodic observations, he discussed the maximal and minimal temperatures met with in Europe, and gave an account of their geographical distribution. When those places with equal maxima are joined by lines, curves are obtained which on the whole resemble the July isothermals, and are the same as the latter if 12° be added to them. The curves of equal mean minimal temperatures correspond to the isothermals for January after subtracting 10°-11°.-Dr. Knorre read a letter containing an account of a thunderstorm on January 31, near Jüterbock, accompanied by hail and light phenomena, which must undoubtedly be regarded as a case of St. Elmo's fire.-Prof. Sporer exhibited photographs of the recent large sun-spot group which he observed between February 9 and 16, and which were most probably connected with the magnetic storm of the 13th and 14th of that month.

Physical Society, March 11.-Prof. Kundt, President, in the chair. Dr. Stapff spoke on the increase in density of the interior of the earth, and deduced a mathematical formula for its determination.-Dr. Arons described experiments on the electrical polarization at the two sides of a metallic plate immersed in an electrolyte at right angles to the currrent. A platinum plate o'I mm. thick gave not only an evolution of gas but an increase of resistance, results which were entirely absent when a gold-beater's film was employed, as also with a film of silver. Pores in the metallic films were not the cause of the absence of polarization, since it appeared even when a small hole was bored in the above-mentioned platinum plate. When four gold-beater's films were superposed, they led to a slight increase of resistance and feeble polarization.-Dr. Rubens stated that he had extended his observations on the dispersion of the ultra

Royal Academy of Sciences, February 27.-Prof. van de Sande Bakhuyzen in the chair.-Dr. Moll communicated some results he had obtained on the karyokinesis of Spirogyra. By embedding the threads in collodion and paraffin, and cutting them into series of sections with the microtome, he has observed a special organization in nucleolus and karyoplasma, leading to the formation of the chromatic segments; he has been able to establish with certainty the existence of the phenomenon of heteropoly in Spirogyra; and lastly, he has seen that Tangl's and Strasburger's Verbindungschlauch between the daughternuclei appears at an earlier stage in the form of some vacuoles, of which a single one finally prevails.-Mr. van der Waals treated of the phenomenon of incomplete mixture of two liquids, in those cases in which the mixture is complete at a higher temperature, and gave a formula founded on his "theory of a mixture of two substances," by which the volumes of a given weight of dissolved matter may be calculated in the same way as the volumes of liquid and vapour of a single substance.-Mr. van Bemmelen treated of the difference of colloid oxides and crystalline hydrates, especially in reference to the oxide of iron. He demonstrated that only Brunck and Graebe have observed the crystalline hydrate of a definite composition. The substance prepared by Rousseau is not a crystalline hydrate, but ferrite of potassium, transformed by the action of water into amorphous hydratic oxide (of indefinite composition), and only pseudo-crys talline, as it has preserved externally the crystalline form of the ferrite. Mr. Franchimont showed a sample of ethylaldoxime (acetaldoxime), a beautiful crystallized body, melting at 48° C. The ethylaldoxime, discovered in 1882 by V. Meyer, was described by him and by Petraezek as a fluid, boiling at 114°-115° C. The crystallized ethylaldoxime has the same boiling-point, and may be a stereo-isomery.

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1892.

THE YAHGAN.

Mission Scientifique de Cap Horn. Tome VII. "Anthropologie, Ethnographie." Par P. Hyades et J. Deniker. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Fils, 1891.)

which spent a year at Tierra del Fuego. The Expedition was organized in June 1882 by a Commission appointed by the Academy of Sciences; and in November 1883, after its return to France, it presented to the Academy its preliminary reports. Since the latter date, its results have been embodied in a series of volumes, prepared under the control of the Commission, and published under the auspices of the Ministries of Marine and Public Instruction. The first volume contains a history of the voyage, by the late L. F. Martial, the Commander of the Romanche, in which the Expedition sailed. The second volume, by L. Lephay, is devoted to meteorology; the third, by F. O. Le Cannellier, to terrestrial magnetism; the fourth, by P. Hyades, to geology; the fifth, by Hariot, Petit, Bescherelle, Massalongo, and Franchet, to botany. It was originally intended that zoology should also be dealt with in a single volume; but the material obtained by the Expedition was so rich and of so much scientific importance that three volumes were found to be necessary. The present volume, nominally the seventh, is really the ninth, and completes the series. Although Dr. Deniker is associated with Dr. Hyades as one of the authors of this work, he did not accompany the Expedition. He has rendered, however, important service in the working-up of the anthropological and ethnographical data brought back from Cape Horn.

The book is one in which serious students of anthropology will find much to interest them. It offers a great mass of original observations, made, as Dr. Hyades explains, without any preconceived idea; and they are not only arranged methodically, but set forth in a style of admirable simplicity and clearness. The volume is also enriched with numerous plates, some of which are finelyexecuted heliogravures.

The Fuegians are divided into three groups—the Ona, the Alakalouf, and the Yahgan. The Ona inhabit the great island of Tierra del Fuego from the southern coast of the Strait of Magellan to near the northern shore of Beagle Channel. They are probably a branch of the Patagonians, and the Expedition had no opportunity of seeing any of them. The islands and a part of the mainland to the west of the Ona are inhabited by the Alakalouf, to the south of whom are the Yahgan. These two peoples speak different languages, but seem to have essentially the same racial characteristics. It was among the Yahgan that Dr. Hyades carried on his studies, and to them the volume almost wholly relates.

The Expedition brought back the body of a Yahgan who died while the Romanche was at Orange Bay, and who during his lifetime had been subjected to various careful measurements. They also brought the skeleton of a woman and the skeletons of five children; three skulls (two of men, one of a woman); two incomplete skeletons, and various detached bones. These remains

Most of the South American aborigines are decidedly brachycephalic ; but here and there tribes are found whose skulls resemble those of the Yahgan. This is especially true of the Botocudos, who are also like the Yahgan in being rather below the average height of other natives, and in the form of the face, the nose, and the mouth. Various ancient skulls which have been found at Lagoa Santa in Brazil, at Pontimelo in the Argentine Republic, and elsewhere, have the same general structure as those of the Botocudos and the Yahgan. The authors therefore conclude that these and some other tribes are more or less pure remnants of a race which at one time occupied the greater part of South America, and were displaced by brachycephalic peoples, with whom the survivors to some extent mingled. Of these brachycephalic peoples, the Patagonians alone are very tall, the rest being of moderate height. All, however, whether tall or short, are of a different physical type from the Yahgan.

The Yahgan live chiefly on fish and mollusks. They also eat any kind of bird they can catch, and are fond of the flesh of the whale, the seal, and the otter. When pressed with hunger, they will eat the fox, but never dogs or rats, the latter being held in abhorrence. Fishing is left entirely to the women, while the men hunt. They have splendid powers of digestion, and assimilate their food so readily that they sometimes become fat in the course of a single day. Their huts are made of branches or of the trunks of trees, the interstices being imperfectly filled up with moss or bark, with fragments of canoes or with sealskin. These slight dwellings are put together in a few hours, and as they admit the wind freely, the air in them is generally fresh. In the centre is a fire, around which the inmates sleep at night, and at other times, when they have nothing else to do, sit talking and laughing. The Yahgan lose early the attributes of youth, but often retain their vigour to a great age. They are very courageous, and enjoy games which test their physical strength.

Among the women intimate friendships are not uncommon, but men generally form attachments to one another only if they have been brought up together. Children are tenderly cared for by their parents, who in return are treated by them with affection and deference. Some men have two or more wives, but monogamy is the rule. The girls do not choose their own husbands; they must take those whom their parents provide for them. Before marriage they are allowed great liberty, but when they become wives they have less freedom, the husbands being extremely jealous, and being supported by public opinion in punishing severely any departure from conjugal duty. This account differs from that of some other observers, but Dr. Hyades is confident that his statements on the subject are strictly accurate. Both girls and mar

ried women are remarkable for the modesty of their demeanour, and expect to be treated respectfully.

When the Yahgan approach a strange vessel in their canoes, they might be taken for abject beggars; but on shore visitors obtain a different impression. There the natives display perfect independence, and they readily take offence at anything which they interpret as a slight. They are far from having a community of goods, every man claiming as his own that which he himself has found or made; but they are of a generous disposition, and like to share their pleasures with others. That they have a sense of right and wrong Dr. Hyades does not doubt, but their moral distinctions are not always very sharply drawn. They are accomplished liars, and the only disadvantage of a lie seems to them to be that the truth is sometimes apt to be found out. A man convicted of theft, however, will show that he is ashamed of his deed; and murder is punished with death. The Yahgan have often been accused of cannibalism, but Dr. Hyades agrees with Mr. Bridges, who knows them thoroughly, in regarding this charge as utterly without foundation.

They can occupy themselves continuously for a considerable time with any employment to which they are accustomed, such as the making of a harpoon; but it is hard for them to devote attention to anything with which they are not familiar. When questioned on any subject, they soon become confused, and give answers at random. They do not divide time or count beyond three, and have remarkably short memories. But they are good observers of the signs of the weather, of plants, and of animals; and they have an extraordinary power of mimicking attitudes, gestures, and cries, although they have no such faculty of imitation as leads to the production of new instruments, utensils, or other useful objects. They are wholly unable to make anything, however simple, after a given model. They often have dreams, but do not generally appear to attach to them any significance. They have neither poetry, nor history, nor traditions; and Dr. Hyades asserts that the members of the Expedition never saw among them the faintest trace of religious ideas or sentiments. Those of them who are directly under the influence of English missionaries have learned to live regular lives, but have lost many aptitudes possessed by the savage Yahgan; and they easily fall victims to various forms of disease which have been imported

with civilization.

The language of the Yahgan is dealt with in a long and most instructive chapter; and interesting details are given as to the occupations of the people, their domestic customs, and many other subjects. Of the plates, to which we have already referred, we need only say that they alone would have sufficed to make the work an invaluable contribution to ethnographical and anthropological science.

Part I. treats of the balance, the determination of physical constants, the purification of substances, and preliminary analytical processes generally. The more important simple gravimetric estimations are grouped in Part II.; and are followed, in Part III., by descriptions of the methods and the more common determinations comprised under volumetric analysis. In Part IV. are classed more complex exercises, involving both gravimetric and volumetric processes. Here are to be found analyses of ores, technical products, fuel, articles of food and drink, and including complete analyses of milk, butter, sugar, partial analyses of wine, beer, and tea. of tannins and soaps are next given, and the part concludes with a section on the typical methods of organic analysis. Part V. is devoted to a description of the ordinary methods of technical gas analysis.

The valuations

The above brief summary of contents will show that the aim of the volume is eminently practical; and with regard to the purely chemical sections little but praise can be expressed, both at the general and detailed treatment of the subject. All the more important estimations have been included, and the practical points to be observed in

accurate work are clearly stated. A noteworthy feature, and one especially helpful to the student, is the brief statement of the principle of each estimation, in a sentence or two, before the detailed process is described. The accounts of food and gas analysis are both useful and interesting, and are seldom met with in manuals of this kind.

There can be no doubt but the book will be a serviceable guide to the student, and aid to the teacher.

One or two minor points, however, seem worthy of criticism. It is stated in the preface that, in order to economize space, "unnecessary theoretical matter" has been omitted, and apparently this idea has been carried too far. For example, it is but just to tell the student why, in estimating sulphur as barium sulphate, nitric acid is first expelled. Knowledge of a similar kind, more especially in the physical portions of the book, is occasionally left out, and descriptions are thus rendered more or less empirical.

If it is considered necessary to give methods for determining specific gravities, boiling-points, &c., in a work of this kind, the accounts should be modern, and the accuracy aimed at should be comparable with that attained in the chemical sections. Absolute specific gravity-or shortly, specific gravity—as used in the book, with no temperatures of comparison attached, is now generally taken to be the weight of unit volume; such a definition is not hinted at, and none of the methods given serve to obtain the absolute specific gravity. The timehonoured but obsolete pyknometer, closed by a perforated stopper, still finds a place, and the original Sprengel pyknometer is figured, although it might well be replaced by Perkin's more generally useful modification.

With regard to the estimations of boiling-point, it should have been clearly stated that to take the barometric pressure was a necessary part of any trustworthy determination. In correcting for the exposed column of the thermometer, one of the more recent coefficients might have been given in place of the oldest and least satisfactory. What is supposed to be the mean tem

ground, what to plant, planting, pruning, cost and returns per acre, the renovating of old orchards, gathering, packing and distributing, storing and preserving, grafting, budding, and stocks. These chapters form the first part of the book. The second part consists of counsels on various subjects to private growers, and in the third the author deals with insect pests and disease. The work is essentially practical, and will tend to stimulate the development of what ought to become a more and more important British industry.

Blowpipe Analysis. By J. Landauer. Authorized English Edition. By James Taylor. Second Edition. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892.)

DR. LANDAUER'S work presents so much sound knowledge in so compact a form that the fact of the English version of it having reached a second edition is in no way surprising. The text, we are informed in the preface, has been completely revised, and new methods of approved value have been incorporated. The author and the translator call especial attention to the fact that some additional details of manipulation will be found of value by readers who are working up the subject without a teacher.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake

to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. No notice is taken of anonymous communications.]

Prehistory of Egypt.

THE evidences of denudation are so striking in the ravines of the Egyptian deserts, that I make the following notes, hoping that some trained geologist will be induced to do more for the subject. The successive periods which I have noted are as follow :

(1) Rainfall, before much excavation of the Nile bed; producing an enormous river with rolled gravels and blocks up to 3 feet long. It is unlikely that this was merely a beach, as the gravels extend for many miles north and south; nor would it be estuarine, as the flow must have been rapid. The only parts of these beds that I have seen are on the tops of the hills dividing the Nile from the Fayum, which are entirely composed of these gravels. The great mass of these beds has been denuded away by the later Nile and rainfall, leaving these ridges 200-300 feet above the present Nile.

(2) Rainfall and elevation. All over the desert plateau of limestone, the strata of which are usually horizontal, there are sharp depressions and faults. These are usually of small area, a quarter to half a mile across, with a drop of over 200 feet. The strata are at the same level, and horizontal, on the opposite sides of these depressions, but are steeply curved and faulted down into the hollows. The only cause seems to be the falling in of immense caverns in the limestone, for there is no trace of thrust or upward folding anywhere. Such caverns must have been produced by great rainfall, and high elevation to allow of the water draining off at so low a level, below that of the present Nile.

(3) Disturbances. It is impossible to suppose that the great gravel beds of the Nile in period (1) were deposited along the steep edge of a basin 400-500 feet deeper; hence the deep Fayum basin must have been depressed (as it can scarcely have been eroded) subsequently to the period (1), and probably during the same disturbances which shook down the strata into the caverns of (2).

(4) Great rainfall and elevation continued, during which the present Nile bed has been eroded, and the ravines graved out in its sides, reaching back for many miles through solid rock. This was subsequent to (3), as the ravines were partly determined by the subsidences, and have cut through them. This was a long period to allow of 200-300 feet of rock to be cut out of the Nile bed. The elevation was probably the same as in (3), as the rock bed of the Nile is at a great depth under deposits in Lower

Egypt. The rainfall was violent, as the sides of narrow ridges of rock, which cannot have collected much, are grooved into deep flutings all along; and the waterfalls from basins of only one or two square miles, are wide and steeply cut.

(5) Rainfall, and depression forming an estuary. Up to about 300 feet above the present Nile, remains of perfectly horizontal beds of débris may be found clinging to the sides of the ravines, which must be subaqueous deposits. In front of each of the ravines are foot-hills of débris, evidently washed out of the ravines, and deposited in an estuary. There cannot have been much current in the main valley, as these foot-hills extend sometimes two miles outward; yet there was some current, as they are always on the lower side. This appears to be in the human age, from the rolled river paleolith which I found at Esneb, and which cannot have belonged to a later time. These estuarine beds occur as far up as Tel el-Amarna or further.

(6) Rainfall, gradual and intermittent elevation, leaving various levels of foot-hills in the estuary. To this belong the chipped flints of the débris beds in front of the ravine of the kings at Thebes, as man was probably inhabiting that valley, for these to have been washed out of it. The rainfall continued until the estuary was completely dried, as the watercourses have cut down to the present Nile level. Nile mud began to be brought down and deposited while the water was yet 30 feet above the present, either as a river or estuary.

(7) Complete desiccation, throughout the historic age. The roads marked out with stones on the plain at Tel el-Amarna in 1400 B.C. are only destroyed in the very lowest lines of the watercourses. The ancient buildings in Egypt only show the effects of rare storms, and not of continued rain. The mud deposits throughout this age are at an average rate of 4 inches per century in the old bed of the Nile.

The sequence described here seems to be tolerably clear, though much more detail needs to be filled in as yet. W. M. FLINders Petrie.

Aphanapteryx in the New Zealand Region.

I SENT you a short note some weeks ago announcing the discovery of a species of the Mauritian genus Aphanapteryxwhich I had named Aphanapteryx hawkinsi--in the Chatham Islands. I have just returned thence from a visit made expressly for the purpose of searching for further remains of this bird, of which I received at first only the cranium. I have been very fortunate in my search, and have procured several most perfect crania, with tibia and femora, which I have no doubt belong to the same bird, as more than once I discovered these bones in the immediate neighbourhood of the crania. The bones have been disinterred from the lower beds of a sandbank facing the shore. Some years ago, a great storm, followed, as I am told, by a tidal wave of great height, broke the Eurybiaprotected shore bluff; and now the wind, having carried off the upper bed of light-coloured sand into the lands behind, is continually planing down more and more the brown lower bed in which these bones seem mostly to be entombed. They are in a most perfect state of preservation, and very complete, though deprived of all their animal matter. Of the Aphanapteryx crania some are considerably larger and some much smaller than A. Brackei, the larger reaching to within inch of 6 inches from the top of the slender arched upper mandible to the occiput. The tibia and femora vary in size corresponding to the differences in the crania; but they present the main characters of the bones figured by M. Milne-Edwards in his "Oiseaux fossiles de la France." It may yet turn out that more than one species of Aphanapteryx inhabited the Chatham Ilands. It is very singular that, among the thousands of bones that have been collected from different swamps, Maori middens, and caves in various parts of New Zealand, not a single bone of this bird should have come to light. In one refuse heap from a Moriori feast laid bare by the wind on the beach of Petre Bay, I found several specimens of Aphanapteryx hawkinsi, along with crania and other bones of ducks, swan, sea-birds, seals, whales, &c. Swan-bones were everywhere very abundant in this brown sand bed; some of them indicating birds equal in size to Chenopis atrata, others considerably exceeding it. In one very ancient midden the remains i dug up consisted almost entirely of swan-bones, with the intermixture of only a few duck-bones. The Aphanapteryx must, I think, be the wingless bird spoken of by the Morioris as Mehiriki, although those to whom the skull has been