he does not find one which might not have been expected at 100 fathoms or less. The deepest haul producing any bivalve was 2,900 fathoms, where Callocardia was found in the Pacific, and an almost exactly similar species was obtained at 1,000 fathoms off the Azores, in the same latitude of the Atlantic. On the whole, lamellibranchs were scarce: but this may have been owing to the use of the trawl instead of the dredge. The greatest depth at which any gastropod was found was 2,650 fathoms, in the South Atlantic; and this was a little Stylifer parasitic on an echinoid. The fossil genus Actaeonina was a find worth having; and many, like Gaza and other trochids, were of great beauty. A number of arctic species were found at home in the antarctic sea; and several others seem to wander over most of the world. Professor Haddon reports a chiton (C. [Leptochiton] alveolus Sars) from 2,300 fathoms, which was the only really deepsea species found of this ancient group, though several others of the same genus range over 300 fathoms. Among the nudibranchs, an immense creature, Bathydoris abyssorum of Dr. Bergh, as big as a cocoanut (twelve centimetres long), forms a remarkable transition between Tritoniidae and Dorididae, and was obtained at 2,425 fathoms. It is the largest nudibranch known, and was purple, brown, and orange colored when alive. Among treasures from shallower water were a living Nautilus pompilius and a partly decorticated Spirula.

It is impossible to give an account of the varied, beautiful, aberrant, or exquisite forms of the crustacea, star-fish, echinoids, and brittle-stars which were brought up from the deep sea. Their attractions for the eye of the aesthete as well as of the naturalist are obvious to any one who may examine the charming woodcuts which illustrate their form and structure. The sea-lilies are among the most attractive; and yet it is hard to choose from among so many any special group as, on the whole, the most beautiful.

Among the worms, decidedly the most extraordinary is Syllis ramosa, a creature living in sponges, not satisfied with shaking off its progeny by dropping sections from its tail, but which actually branches in all directions laterally, and shares with these collateral relations the ramifications of its stomach. In another form, Genetyllis, the head is composed of little more than two enormous eyes, with a large median nerve-mass with which the retina of each is continuous. Some worms have tubes five yards long others ornament their dwellings with hyaline sponge spicules or spiny pro

cesses. They reach depths of 3,125 fathoms, and range to the surface, the Serpulae and Terebellae being the most noteworthy in this respect.

The consideration of the calcareous and horny sponges was undertaken by Dr. N. Poléjaeff of Odessa, who, after demolishing all previous attempts at their classification, aptly compares the systematist to a man wandering in the dark, - a condition in which the synopsis of his memoir certainly leaves its reader. The number of species was not large, and none of them came from great depths, though many were undescribed. The group of sponges to which the beautiful Venus's flower-basket, Euplectella, belongs, offers, as might be expected, many new and exquisite species, which are illustrated in a manner worthy of their attractions. Prof. F. E. Schulze reports that the Challenger collection has more than doubled the number of known species, which now amounts to more than one hundred. The tropical zone of the Pacific is the richest region, eighteen species having been obtained at one haul, in the vicinity of Papua; but the largest total number of species comes from the Southern Ocean. They are essentially abyssal animals. The richest additions to any single group of marine animals made by the expedition were to the Radiolaria. These rhizopods are now known to differ from the foraminifera and heliozoa chiefly by the separation of their unicellular body into an inner and an outer series of constituents. With few exceptions, they are remarkable for their skeletons, of the most varied and delicate form, and of siliceous or chitinous structure. They swim in numbers at the surface, or even at great depths; and the ooze at even the greatest known depths is often composed of astonishingly vast numbers of their delicate skeletons. From a few hundred known forms, the work of the Challenger has expanded the list to several thousands, among which Professor Haeckel has distinguished six hundred and thirty-four genera, included in twenty-four families and several orders. must, however, be borne in mind that these systematic divisions are far from having the zoological value of divisions similarly styled in higher groups, though here perhaps necessary from the multitude of species. We have regretted the necessity, from considerations of space, for omitting references to the admirable and epoch-making work of Professor Moseley on the corals, confirming and extending the work of the elder Agassiz, or that on the foraminifera and diatoms, both of which exhibit forms of great beauty, which are excellently

It

figured. But nearly every page contains matter which would be of interest to readers of Science, and unfortunately we cannot yet print numbers in twelve hundred pages quarto. We are obliged to reserve our concluding paragraphs for the geological aspects of the voyage.

GLACIERS, AND THEIR RÔLE IN

NATURE.

of the present time. The reference made to their former extension is sufficient for a volume that professedly does not discuss that part of the question. As in the earlier numbers of the series, illustrations and references to authorities are practically wanting. An index

is also absent in this volume; but its place partly taken by a well-arranged table of contents and page-headings. Our many students of the difficult problem of North-American glaciation will find much of value in the summaries of recent Swiss studies on the structure of glacial ice, of observations in Greenland on the motion of the great glaciers there, and of the many suggestions to account for glacial motion, as well as in the accounts of existing glaciers and their oscillations.

PROFESSOR RATZEL'S Bibliothek geographischer handbücher' reaches its fourth volume in Heim's comprehensive review of what may be called glaciology,' a general discussion a general discussion of glaciers, and the part they play on the earth's surface. It is fully up to the high standard attained by the earlier numbers of the series. Ratzel's Anthropogeographie' was the first issued; and, although somewhat venturesome in regard to the control that geography has exercised on history, it is a Hann's very suggestive book. 'Klimatologie' has already been reviewed here: it has everywhere received high praise, and at once takes its place as a stand

1960h

Gletsch

hone

Ozeanographie,' begun by von Boguslawski, was unhappily left incomplete on his death: one

7336

ane von 1818

The remarkable recession of the Swiss glaciers during recent decades, which travellers

part was issued a year ago, containing an exhaustive description of the oceans, but not reaching the discussion of their physical conditions. Drude, von Fritsch, Penck, Vetter, and Zöppritz are still to follow with volumes on special subjects.

These books have no equivalents in English. It is becoming very monotonous to record, time after time, that German writers are so far in advance of us; but the fact is very plain. If such works cannot be originated here, we wish that they might at least be translated and republished, so as to come within reach of our teachers and students.

Morane

Professor Heim has hitherto been known rather as a worker on mountain structure than on glaciers. His studies in the direction of the latter subject, so far as they are published, have been concerned chiefly with the share that ice has had in mountain sculpture; but the book now before us shows deliberate and careful work on all topics connected with glaciers

Handbuch der gletscherkunde. Von ALBERT HEIM. Stuttgart, Engelhorn, 1885. 16+560 p., map. 8°.

1818

Mor.1856

Alte Ufermorane

finely illustrated in the figure of the glacier of the Rhone, of which a part is copied here. The measurements carried on of late years, under the direction of the Swiss alpine club, give precise data on this matter, and, if continued long enough, will undoubtedly in the end lead to the discovery of the cause of glacial oscillations in the peculiarly dry or wet, warm or cold, weather of some antecedent series of years; the effect leisurely following the cause, as the excess or deficiency of upper snow supply arrives at the lower end of the ice-stream. A view of the Rhone glacier, as it was at its recent maximum extension about 1820, is given in de Charpentier's Essai sur les glaciers,' and offers a striking contrast

to the little remnant of ice at the foot of the steep slope, as seen by travellers of last sum

mer.

The anatomy of the greatest glacial system of Switzerland, that which forms the Aletsch glacier, is excellently shown in a folded map. The scale is 1:50,000; contour lines are drawn in blue on the ice and snow every thirty metres; the moraines are marked in detail; and the peculiar zigzag bands in the ice, like the grain of wood, so conspicuous in the wonderful view from the Eggischhorn, are carefully represented. This map may therefore be ranked even above the interesting one of the Mer de glace' system (scale, 1 : 40,000) on Viollet-leDuc's sheet of the Massif du Mont Blanc,' published about ten years ago.

6

The question of glacial erosion has always been fruitful of opposite views since it was first given importance by Ramsay; and we have to regret that the summary of the matter presented by Heim does not go further in reconciling the apparently contradictory facts quoted by the advocates of the contrasted theories. Heim writes, 'Glaciation is a period of rest in valley-making.' Professor Newberry concludes that a great glacial sheet, shod with stones and gravel, "would not only be capable of sweeping away any ordinary barriers that opposed its progress, but would grind down the underlying rock with a resistless and comparatively rapid action."

1

Neither of these authors gives sufficient indication of the more judicious middle ground taken by James Geikie and some others, to the effect that glacial action may be destructive in one district, and constructive in another; that glaciers, like rivers, erode chiefly in their upper streams, and deposit the detritus quietly on the flood-plains and deltas of drift near their termination. The great amount of glacial drift undoubtedly affords the strongest argument that can be made in favor of the marked changes effected by glaciers, just as the vast volume of stratified fragmental rocks testifies to the successful persistence of water-action; and for North America, at least, we cannot accept Heim's conclusion, that pre-glacial weathering afforded the chief part of the drift, while direct glacial erosion gave rise only to fine sand and mud. The occurrence of angular, unweathered, and unworn bowlders, and of drift rich in limestone, forbids such a conclusion, and has been successfully quoted against it. On the other hand, the evidence of the protective, or at least the very moderately destructive, action of the old glaciers near their

1 School of mines quarterly, vi. 1885, 152.

termination, and the not excessive erosion in any part, is ably stated; and, to our mind, this leads much nearer to the truth than does the path followed by those who see an argument for glacial erosion in nearly every lake of northern countries and every fiord of western coasts.

HOUSEHOLD SANITATION.

With

IF the author succeeds in winning the audience she desires, she may justly claim pioneership in one direction of the higher education of women. The path indicated is not well beaten. Sanitary science is of late origin; so late, indeed, that the men who formulated it are still young. Its proposition to prevent disease by removing the conditions that provoke disease, merits the popular approval, and legislation has been quick to help sanitarians put their science to the test. plenty of money, and in fair localities, it is not difficult to satisfy all the demands of the sanitarians. It will, however, hardly be contended that the sanitarians have formulated insurance against the outbreak of the zymotic diseases for the ordinary householder in any locality where necessity has placed him. And yet this is the very problem which sanitary science is to solve. Much can be done in one home to make it healthful; but the influences that affect one home are so intermixed with the influences that affect large areas, that state and national interference is demanded by sanitary science. The author has stated the sanitary conditions of healthful homes with accuracy, and with sufficient fulness to make these conditions readily comprehended. She appeals to the women of the land to familiarize themselves with the results of sanitary science, that they may be able to critically examine their own homes, and influence opinion, so that healthful conditions may be made compulsory under the law. This is good work, and the more of it the better. There is an immense chasm between crazy-quilts and sewer-pipes, sonatas and bad drainage; but it can be bridged by informing the women, and teaching the girls. If rosy children and long-lived husbands are worth the while, this education in what constitutes a healthy home is worth a place in the school curriculum for girls.

Sanitary science is so new, that consulting sanitary engineers,' without warrant of author

ity, are plentiful, and sanitary plumbing' is the unvarying advertisement. Implicit faith in either class is ill advised. The skill of the one and the handicraft of the other may safely be questioned and criticised. The easy conscience of the contractor, no less than the ignorance of the owner, makes poor plumbingwork possible, for much of it is hidden from sight. Smoothly wiped joints, with brass and plated fixtures, do not always insure sound and honest workmanship. The complexity of this plumbing problem in the great cities, with their crowded populations, must be solved through the agency of general legislation, and the authority of inspection must be derived from stringent laws. The state boards of health were organized with this end in view, and their conclusions are influential with the law-making powers. Sanitary science includes so much, and affects all to the degree that men have no monopoly in its results. Mrs. Plunkett is right in contending that women should master these problems to aid in procuring compulsory legislation. Her little tilt at the doctors on the titlepage is very much softened in the final paragraphs of her book. The millennium is not quite at hand; and as the doctors discovered the causes that brought sanitary science into existence, and have done all that has been done thus far in formulating it, and as they must be the final court of appeal in all questions that arise before sanitary science is rounded out and complete, the medical profession will probably see several generations before its'occupation's gone.'

NOTES AND NEWS.

THE following short account of a tornado at Aden, reported by Commander Merrill Miller, U.S.N., commanding the U. S. steamship Marion, is interesting from the fact that it is the first violent storm that has visited Aden since the English occupation. On June 1 and 2 the weather at Aden was sultry and threatening, with moderate easterly breeze and sea. The sailing-directions give no accounts of storms in this locality. On the morning of June 3 the wind was moderate from north-west, with heavy and increasing swell from south-east. The sky was dark and threatening. At ten A.M., June 3, the wind increased to a gale, with squalls of hurricane force from the northward, and rain in torrents, and very heavy seas from southward and eastward. The sea broke over the rail of the English flagship, which was battened down. The barometer fell to 29.60. At three P.M. the barometer began to rise, when the wind shifted to the southward and eastward, and the gale moderated. Heavy rain-squalls continued at intervals all night. The gale was of the nature of a tornado, and ap

parently passed up the Gulf of Aden in a westerly direction. Vessels arriving from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea report having encountered heavy weather.

- Mr. I. C. Russell's reconnoissance in the northern part of the Great-Basin region, where it extends into southern Oregon (U. S. geol. surv., 4 ann. rep.), has furnished him with a quantity of interesting facts concerning this little-known part of the wide west. Its rocks are largely volcanic, spread out in great sheets of lavas that once formed a broad, smooth tableland; but in later times it has been broken by faults, so characteristic of the Great-Basin region, and thus divided into long, narrow blocks, stretching north and south, and tilted by very recent displacements, so as to expose fresh precipitous scarps that have not yet sensibly worn back from the fault-lines. In the Warner valley, for example, the orographic blocks of dark volcanic rock, miles in length, are literally tossed about like the cakes of ice in a crowded floe, their upturned edges forming bold palisades that render the region all but impassable. The faces of the numerous branching fault-cracks present naked precipices without system, that combine to make a region of the wildest and roughest description. The depressed areas were occupied, during quaternary time, by numerous lakes of considerable size. Some overflowed to rivers that reach the ocean, like the Klamath, that escapes westward through the Cascade Range; others contributed to the supply of the irregular basin of Lake Lahontan, farther south; and some had no overflow, their influx being counterbalanced by evaporation, thus indicating that the precipitation of the time was not excessive, and that their waters were saline. At present the waters have retreated from the terraces and benches that mark their former levels, and remain in greatly diminished volume. Some have altogether disappeared, or appear only in the wet season; others are relatively permanent sheets of very saline water, like Summer and Abert Lakes, which may possibly inherit part of their dissolved salts (soda and potash) directly from their larger ancestor; but the most numerous are those which are now essentially fresh, although occupying basins from which the quaternary lakes had no outlet (these are therefore not to be considered remnants left by the incomplete evaporation of the quaternary lakes whose basins they occupy, as in that case they should be densely saline). Their freshness is best explained by Gilbert's hypothesis that the quaternary lakes have been completely dried up, and their saline contents so well buried under playa-mud, that the waters subsequently accumulating in the basins did not take them into solution. Mr. Russell finds no evidence of either local or general glaciation in the region he examined, and thus differs in his conclusions from those reached by LeConte. The report is illustrated by several maps, showing fault-lines, quaternary and existing lakes, by numerous cuts illustrating the peculiar displacements so characteristic of the region, and by a sketch of Abert Lake, in which the tilted blocks that form its basin are shown. It is a valuable and most inter

esting chapter to add to the physical geography of our country.

-The Portuguese explorer, Serpa Pinto, has found considerable coal-beds south of the Rovuma. The Rovuma flows into the Indian Ocean, south of the German possessions on the east coast of Africa, on the old caravan track from Cape Delgado to Lake Nyassa. These coal-beds were claimed by the sultan of Zanzibar; but, as they lie south of the Rovuma, the Portuguese have taken possession of them.

Professor Forel of Morges continues his reports to the Swiss-Alpine club, on the periodic variations of the glaciers of the Alps, and in his fifth statement, for 1884, confirms the conclusion announced a year ago, that the decrease of thirty-four distinct glaciers has come to an end, and is now followed by a moderate advance. In the valley of Chamounix, the glacier of Argentière crept forward thirty-three feet last year: it had a maximum in 1819, and again in 1854, followed by a minimum in 1883. The Glacier des bois, at the foot of the Mer de glace, shows no change; but that of the Bossons is advancing rapidly, having extended its front about one hundred and fifty feet in the past year; and so with a number of others. Part of the Hôtel des Neuchâtelois, from which Agassiz made his early observations on the Unteraar glacier, has been found twenty-four hundred metres down stream from its position in 1842, giving an average annual velocity of fifty-five metres; but it is curious to note, that as its velocity from 1842 to 1846, when determined by Agassiz, was seventy-three metres a year, its recent velocity must have been about forty metres, to bring the forty years' average down so low as fifty-five. Another peculiar fact found by Forel is that the recent change from retreat to advance is much more common in the western than in the eastern Alps. The observations of the next few years promise to be of special interest in this connection.

Capt. Downie of the British steamer St. Andrew's Bay, reports that on June 25, in mid-ocean, a meteor resembling a ball of fire two feet and a half in diameter descended from overhead a short distance from his vessel. This occurred about noon. The weather was misty and rainy, but there had been no lightning or thunder. The flash made by the passing meteor was so brilliant that it blinded those who witnessed it. The meteor exploded with a terrific report, resembling cannonading, followed by a noise like the rattle of musketry. Immediately after the passage of the meteor the weather cleared up. The vessel was loaded with iron ore, but there was no play of electricity upon any part of her.

-The third report of the Swiss seismological commission, by Forel, covers the years 1882 and 1883. It gives a list of the earthquakes observed during the two years in Switzerland, with the accessory shocks. The intensity of each earthquake is marked according to the Rossi-Forel scale, and its 'value' computed by the formula adopted by Forel in previous reports, which takes into account the intensity number, the extent of the seismic area, and the number of acces

From these figures the author infers that there was a maximum of seismic activity in Switzerland in 1881, which a comparison of the monthly values shows to have been in November of that year; and that in 1882 and 1883 the activity was notably diminished, especially so in the latter year, in which only one earthquake (Jan. 8) exceeded a value of 10, and none exceeded 15. In the figures tabulated, no account was taken of twenty-one slight shocks, twelve in 1882, and nine in 1883, which were only reported by a single observer.

- Dr. M. E. Wadsworth has accepted a position as professor of mineralogy and geology at Colby university, Waterville, Me. We understand, that, as at Cambridge, he will continue to give instruction to advanced students in lithology; and there will thus be one more opportunity for those who intend pursuing this growing science to familiarize themselves with the latest methods of investigation.

-The Berlin congress, says the Athenaeum, appears to have stirred the Portuguese Commissão de cartographia into activity. Among a batch of maps recently forwarded to us from Lisbon, we find a capital general map of the province of Angola, compiled by A. A. d'Oliveira, on a scale of 1:3,000,000, which distinguishes salubrious from insalubrious districts, and shows, among other novel features, the recent routes of Capello and Ivens to the east of Mossamedes; a map of the country between Loanda and Ambaca, on a scale of 1:400,000, based upon railway surveys made by Major A. S. de Souza Prado, Major Goyâo, and others, and of much original value; and, lastly, a map of the lower Kongo up to Noki, from recent surveys by L. de Moraes e Souza, C. de Magalhaes, and E. de Vasconcellos. These maps are reproduced from autographs, and their external aspect is consequently not very inviting; but they contain matter which the cartographer cannot afford to neglect. We are glad to hear that maps of the island of St. Thomas, of Angola (on a scale of 1:1,500,000), and of Mozambique, are preparing by the Commissão de cartographia, under the direction of Senhor Leite.

- A remarkable instance of the tenacity of old beliefs among an ignorant class lately occurred not